Complete Corruption (Corruption #1-3) (78 page)

He stood up, straightened himself, and spoke. “
Pronto
.”

Daniel stood, wavered, got his bearings.

“
Signora. Buon giorno
.”

That was all I caught. The rest was a tangle of syllables I didn’t understand. Zo understood though, and by watching him, I could gauge the level of worry I should feel. Daniel spoke enough Spanish to communicate with his constituency, and Italian wasn’t that far off, so his sharp breath worried me as well.

Antonio, however, was very calm up to a point. Then he changed completely. “
Valentina
?”

I couldn’t pretend to understand any of what he said after that. The words were just a sharp music, slicing me apart with their song. He was gentle with her, and he was upset, looking at the ceiling while he listened to her voice. I couldn’t hear a thing. He turned away from all of us slightly, the angle of his body courteous and inclusive but sending a message that the conversation was not for my ears.

His voice was reassuring, confident. I couldn’t help it—I leaned in and caught just enough of her voice to hear hysteria and tears.

He lowered the phone, tapped the glass a few times, and put it back against his ear. “
Shh, Tina,tesoro. Shhh. Cinque secondi
.
Non dire nulla
.
Respira
.”

He spoke to her as if she were a child. There was love in it, but not as a husband to his wife. If I’d ever doubted him, I stopped completely when he was gentle but not tender with her. She was silent but for a few sniffs, and he closed his eyes. What was he doing?

A female voice came over the phone and barked in Italian. Antonio put the phone down, and I saw on the screen that the line was dead. He tossed the phone back to Zo, who caught it.

“What did they want?” Zo asked.

“To prove they had her and she is upset. To pull my heart around so I do what they want.”

Daniel leaned on the arm of the couch to stand. “We have to get her.”

“I’ll get her, Brower. Just stay out of it.”

“She didn’t look good when they pulled her out. I know she was scared, and they had me by the balls.”

“Shocking.”

“She was white as a sheet. Sweating.”

“Do you know where she is?” Antonio asked. “Did they say anything?”

“No. Not that I understood.” He looked chastened, and I wanted to slap Antonio.

Antonio gestured to Zo, who gave up his phone as if reading his boss’s mind. Antonio laid down the phone.

“You set the recorder?” Zo asked.

“Yes.” Antonio tapped the screen. “First, we need to figure out where they have her. Then we discuss the rest.”

Antonio fiddled with the phone and came up with his call to Valentina. She was hysterical; I hadn’t heard that. I felt sorry for her. She was totally out of her element. I didn’t need to understand the language to understand that much.

“
Shh, Tina, tesoro. Shhh. Cinque secondi
.
Non dire nulla
.
Respira
.”

She did quiet down, and the background noise became audible. Indoors, yet the sound of a siren came through. And someone talking. Two people. Professionals. But I couldn’t hear the words. Then another siren with a different cadence.

And a beep.

An odd beep.

Then more hysterical Italian chatter from her, and my deep, heartbreaking pity for her.

Antonio played the five seconds of silence again. Siren. Talk. Siren. Beep.

“The hospital,” I said, leaping forward. “She’s in the hospital. The first siren is an ambulance. The second is police. The only time you’re getting those two so close is in the hospital. And the beep. It’s an ECG monitor. I remember it from my brother.”

Antonio pressed the phone to his forehead and closed his eyes, as if thinking hard. “She has an arrhythmia. This is why she looked pale to you. And why she has no business with wine.” He spoke to us but seemed deep in his own world. “Zo, get Otto and find out if his daughter still works for the medical supply company. See if she can make some calls. Find out which hospital.”

antonio

 didn’t tell Theresa what Donna Maria had said. The details were irrelevant.

She is safe. For now.
You, we will gut.

“She” was Valentina. The gutting was assumed to be literal. Donna Maria had used the word
sbudellarlo
, which had a particular Sicilian connotation. It was used for the most disloyal offenders. The ones who broke
omertà
and gave information to the police, who stole, or who married outside the business.

And if you don’t come to us by tomorrow night, we will open her up. Don’t think I won’t for this shame you visited twice on my family now. My granddaughter still has no husband. It will not go unanswered. You have twenty-four hours to present yourself, or she’s dead.

I wasn’t afraid of that or anything, but Theresa would go after anyone who hurt me, and she would get herself killed by less talented and more experienced hands.

I held out my hand for Theresa. “We’re taking care of this, Mister Brower.”

“What are you going to do?”

“We’re going to find her first,” I said. “Then we’re going to send her home.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“Keep the police off us,” Theresa interjected. “I don’t care how.”

Daniel nodded. “Today. No problem. I can’t guarantee tomorrow.”

I held out my hand, and he took it. “Take care of that head,” I said.

“Sure, sure.” He still looked a little red in the face. “Don’t let this asshole get you killed.”

She hugged him. “Go to the fundraiser if you can.”

When she hugged her ex, and he rubbed her back, I had a sudden sense of wholeness with her. I’d changed. What a fool I’d been. Not a fool but a man in a box. A box I’d been raised in but had had every opportunity to break out of. A man nailed to the ground by tradition and conformity.

When I’d first seen her on the news, next to him, I admired her purity because that was what I thought one admired in a woman. It never occurred to me that she could be more. Though I’d come to respect her ability to do what needed to be done when the air was on fire with bullets, my mind didn’t truly expand until I saw her inside her old life and knew she didn’t fit. My world unfolded and laid itself before me. I’d loved the wrong reasons inside the right woman and made excuses for the love. But I’d known it the whole time, hadn’t I? The way she aligned herself with Daniel. The way you could tell she meant more to him than a docile little wife. She was the power behind him. The fearless, intelligent, fierce lioness.

I didn’t know what to do with her or myself. Now, today, she fit with me and I with her. But tomorrow? I’d been a man without a nation for a long time, and now I was a man without friends. She was mine, and she fit me where it counted, but not where it counted with everyone around me. They’d turn on us. As soon as there was a moment’s peace, we would be targets, and she wouldn’t let me stand in front of her. I’d tried handcuffing her, leaving her, diverting her, yet she bent herself toward death.

I had no answer. I only knew if she died, I was going with her. It was the only way.

theresa

 could never predict his moods. He was businesslike and managerial while figuring out the whens and wherefores of the coming twenty-four hours. He called Otto and got us a car. Half an hour later, we were in a nondescript lot in Silver Lake, walking up to a white Porsche. Otto leaned on it, holding up the keys.

“Did you talk to your daughter?” Antonio asked, snapping the keys away.

“She needs time.”

“We’ll be in Paseo. If she can’t, you need to call me.” He opened the passenger side of the Porsche, staring at me as if he wanted to eat me alive.

“Does Otto know how you feel about Porsches?”

“His idea of a joke. And the sooner you get in this shit car, the sooner you’re out.” He pulled out of the lot and threaded through the back alley and out onto Sunset.

“Where are we going?”

“We own a building on Paseo Del Mar. Not a luxury, but I’ll be fucking you so hard, you won’t even notice.” He glanced over with a gaze like a starving cat.

“Before that, I need to know we have a plan,” I said as he made a left, using his signal, keeping it under the speed limit. No sharp moves.

“A plan? We’re going to find out what hospital she’s at and grab her.”

“And then?”

“I can’t predict the future. No. I can. I’m going to fuck you tonight. I’m going to fuck you until Otto calls or until you’re in a thousand pieces on the bed. Whichever comes first.”

A thousand pieces on the bed. I knew what that looked like. It looked like me, naked, sated, catching my breath. Sore everywhere. Drenched in sweat and the smell of pine. Barely conscious with not a thought or worry in my head. It sounded so good, I didn’t want to derail it. I wanted it to happen as promised.

But as we drove west, I had a nagging question, and I was sick of dancing around it. I needed a plan.
We
needed a plan. I played a game of Whac-a-Mole in my head. Every time the issue popped up, I smacked it down, but it popped up again.

“Antonio, I…” I didn’t finish the sentence because he smiled at me and looked at me as if I were the last woman on earth.

“Yes?” He pulled into a narrow alley behind a little house that was packed against its neighbors.

I could press him about his wife, or I could take what was mine and discuss it later, after I was in a thousand pieces on the bed. I was sure there was no right choice. “I hope this place has a washing machine.”

He snapped a key off the car’s ring and dangled it in front of me. “Go in while I put this in the garage. And get your clothes off. If you’re not naked when I get in there, I’m taking my belt to your ass.”

I turned red from my cheeks to my chest, where my nipples hardened under my shirt.

“Go,” he whispered.

I got out and walked up the wooden steps to the back. The little porch was clean of dust, dirt, and personality. No one lived there, of course. When I unlocked the back and went in, I knew I was right. There was a pot on the stove, but it was spotless. The lights went on, and the kitchen could have been a hotel.

I realized how few times Antonio and I had made love in anything that resembled a permanent home. His unfinished house in the hills. His temporary space in Mount Washington. The loft I shared with Katrina. That was as good as it ever got. And now we were in another generic space, probably owned as a business loss. The likelihood that he and I would ever have a marriage bed was unlikely, and I got sad for a second before I remembered his demand that I be naked.

I felt like hell. Filthy to the core. I took off everything and found a washer/dryer in the closet. I threw everything in, dumped in some soap, and snapped the lid closed.

“What about mine?” Antonio asked from behind me.

“You’re fast,” I said, opening the lid.

He responded by peeling off his shirt, a fast reveal of the perfection underneath. The hard abs, the straight shoulders, the line of black hair from his navel to the heaven below.

He threw his shirt into the wash then got out of his pants. He was fully erect, and I found my need for a shower turned up a notch.

The rest of his clothes went into the wash with a swoosh. I turned my back to him and snapped the lid closed. I pushed buttons. I didn’t even know which ones. The colors were mixed, and I didn’t know if I’d put the right amount of detergent. Hot water? Cold? Rinse? His body was against mine while I turned dials and pushed buttons. He grabbed the hair at the back of my head.

“Where do you want it?” he whispered in my ear, his cock at my ass.

I trembled then turned. “I need a shower, Capo.”

“All right.” He leaned into me and reached behind me to pull the dial.
Click
. The water whooshed as the machine filled.

“Oh, you do laundry?” I cooed.

“Tonight, I do laundry and you.”

I kissed him through a smile, and he carried me to the bathroom.

antonio

 knew what was on her mind. I wasn’t stupid. But I didn’t know how to soothe her without fucking her. I didn’t know what to say that would be practical. She was hiding her worry from me, and that bothered me. I didn’t like it. She needed to be completely open.