Complete Corruption (Corruption #1-3) (81 page)

“How’s Jonathan?” I asked.

“Near death. You might want to stop by.”

“I wish I could.”

“Indeed. Now.” He jerked his head toward where Otto stood outside. “The gentleman tells me you wanted something?”

“There’s a woman inside this hospital,” I said. “She’s probably being discharged right now. She’s being watched by a group of people—”

“The Carloni family?” Dad said.

Antonio twisted around to face my father a little more. Was he regarding him more seriously? That was wise.

“How many?” Antonio asked.

“I haven’t had cause to count, but if you put them together with the family of Paulie Patalano, it’s like an underworld reunion.”

“Dad, this is important. I know you have some pull in this hospital. If you could just put her in a room alone for ten minutes, Antonio and I could go in and walk her out. No problem.”

“How is it you can do that?”

“She and I have the same name,” Antonio said.

I tensed up. We would have to explain.

Antonio, as if sensing that I needed to get it over with, finished the thought. “I’m her husband. They’ll let me take her.”

Why had that felt like a knife in my heart? As if I didn’t know it already. Was it because my father was sitting right there, and my shame was so great, the pain became fresh and raw all over again? Dad seemed to consider all the implications, letting the pause hang.

“They’re going to kill her,” I said.

“So they brought her to the hospital? Please, Theresa, you’ve never been one for dramatics. This is disconcerting. Disheartening, even. Mister Spinelli, I am sure you’re a man of values, but they’re not my family’s. And it seems like in addition to losing my son in the next few days, I’ve already lost my daughter. My goal in life has been keeping this family together, and it’s blown apart.”

“It hasn’t,” I said. “I’m here, and this is a bump in the road.”

I didn’t even believe it, and neither did he.

“Prove it,” he said. “If this is a bump, when it’s done, you stay. You don’t do a Carrie and move away.”

I glanced at Antonio, whose eyes stayed on my father.

“I can’t promise that,” I said.

“Then I can’t promise anything either.”

“I promise it,” Antonio said. “We’ll stay within reach.”

I wanted to kick him. Was he giving up his dream of going back home, or his dream of being with me? Or was he failing to take my father seriously?

“Hardly something you can promise, Mister Spinelli, seeing as you’re already married.”

That should have hurt. Should have cut me to the bone, but it didn’t. The initial shock of my father knowing I was sleeping with a married man was bad, but once that was done, I felt nothing either way about it. Antonio had promised. That was good enough for me.

“You told me to make one good choice,” I said. “One good choice, and you’d release the funds to keep Zia’s afloat when Antonio was gone. Well, I made a good choice—I came back to LA to see Jonathan. Here I am. And I don’t need the money anymore. So this is the trade I want.”

“You’re pushing it.”

“I could still be gone.”

He leaned forward in his seat. I turned.

“You will never leave,” he said. “Not for any man. Not for any money. Not for any reason. You belong here. Your blood runs beach water and backwash.” He opened the back door. “If there’s a woman being held against her will, you need to call the police.”

He was out the door before I could formulate an answer. We watched in silence as he strode across the street.

“It’s okay,” I said. “We’ll figure something out. He was a long shot anyway.”

Antonio was too quiet, tapping the steering wheel and watching my father cross the street, his umbrella straight. Not a drop got on him.

“We’ll go in the hard way.” Did I sound desperate?

“We shouldn’t go in. I’ll take care of it. I’ll do the trade. I’ll let them take me and figure it out, or not. I’m not afraid to die.”

“If they hurt you, Capo, I’ll kill them.”

He turned to the windshield and took a deep breath, like a man falling under the weight of his burdens.

I took his hand. I hadn’t meant to worry him, but I’d said the wrong thing. The same words that made me feel confident when they came from his lips ripped the world out from under him when they came from mine. I was about to take it back, lie and say I’d do nothing. But he gave my hand a quick squeeze and ran out into the night, dodging a car. The car door slammed behind him, and I lost him in the wash of rain on the window. I rolled it down. Antonio caught up to my father on the other side of the street. Otto watched, smoke rising from under his umbrella.

They were talking, and I couldn’t hear a word. I saw Antonio’s gyrating hands and the bend of his back. He wasn’t flinching from the rain; he was imploring my father for something, arm stretched toward the car, where I was. Jesus. What was he saying? What was he trading? Discomfort spiraled from my gut to my throat. Dad wasn’t even talking, just Antonio, out in the cold and wet. Supplicating. Begging for what? I didn’t even know. But I couldn’t take it anymore. I got out and was pelted with rain. Otto tried to cross around the car to give me his umbrella, but I pushed it away and started across the street.

My father nodded.

They shook hands.

No.

No no no.

“Antonio!”

He came to me, hair flattened and face studded with raindrops, lips dripping before he even spoke.

“What did you say to him?”

“Get in the car.” His clothes stuck to him, leaving veiny ridges up his arms. I saw the flex in his forearms when he grabbed my biceps and tried to turn me around.

“Capo.”

“Get in the fucking car.”

“We’re in this together.
Together
. Did you forget?”

He shook his head, eyes dark in the night, with only a glint from the streetlights to tell me confusion and pain swirled in them. He put his lips to mine so hard it hurt, and it wasn’t until I yielded to his arms and his mouth that they softened on me.

“Trust me,” he said between kisses, cradling my head. “Just trust me.”

And I did. Through the raindrops and thunder, the groans building in my throat, the warmed space between our bodies, I trusted him, his judgment, his intentions, his actions.

But I didn’t.

theresa

e passed Margie’s car on the way to the elevator. It was still parked in the spot reserved for the neurology guy she’d helped with a “thing.” When this was over, I was going to sit Margie down and ask her what she really did for a living.

Otto stayed in the car while Antonio and I stepped into the elevator.

“What’s the plan?” I asked, watching the numbers change. The secure lot was four levels down.

“Cardiac wing is on four.” He didn’t look at me. He looked at the numbers. “There’ll be a distraction in fifteen minutes. We will be on two.”

“This sounds pretty vague.”

“I’m using what I have.”

The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open into a back hallway painted a particularly diarrhea shade of mustard.

Antonio walked out, and I followed. He was closed to me, and I didn’t know why. No. Forget that. I did know why. The price for whatever this distraction was must have been sky-high if he would rather shut me out than talk to me.

I’d mastered my impulses long ago, covering them with implacable smiles and social maneuvering, but I almost grabbed Antonio and yanked him back to demand an answer because he’d stripped away all my practiced refinement. But did we even have time for that? Did he have a moment to tell me what we were doing? Or were there too many components to explain as we walked down a hall lined with laundry bins and broken gurneys?

I had to trust him, and when he turned to an open door, stopped himself midway, and looked at me with full engagement, I was glad I’d waited. He gestured at the empty staff lunch room. Two vending machines. A wall of lockers. A coffee maker with a crust of sludge. A round tabletop on a single center pedestal and three red chairs with chrome legs.

I stepped inside, and he pushed me through to the “Pump Room,” which was no bigger than the smallest of my mother’s closets. Meaning, it had room enough for a glider and footrest, a cabinet, and a little table with a half-full paper coffee cup.

He snapped the door closed behind him.

“What’s the problem?” I asked. “What’s happening?”

He crashed his lips onto mine.

I pushed him away with force. “There couldn’t possibly be a worse time for this.”

He took my hands, holding them between us. “Please, just do this for me. Don’t ask questions.” He turned my hands over and kissed my palms. “Don’t ask to be hurt. Don’t fight. Just love me.”

His voice was soft enough to turn stone to putty, and all desire to defy him left me.

“Okay,” I said, “but I—”

He pressed his fingers to my lips. “Hush. Trust me. I’ve worked it out. All you have to do is follow along.”

“The bouncing ball.”

“Follow the ball.” He picked up my shirt and ran his hands over my nipples until they were as hard as stones. “That’s it. I need you by my side, and right now, I need you to love me. No more.”

“You’re scaring me.”

He unbuttoned my pants and slid them down my legs. “You wouldn’t be scared if you loved me.”

“That’s not true.”

It was hard to concentrate on everything that was happening when he stroked my thighs, kissing them as I stepped out of my clothes.

“It is. There’s no fear if there’s love.”

He guided me to the wooden slider and sat me in it.

“Open your legs,” he whispered, gently parting my knees until I was exposed to him. His eyes alone sent shockwaves through me, and he kept them on me when he kissed inside my thigh slowly, from knee up. He brushed his lips against my folds, flicking his tongue.

“Oh!” I cried. I couldn’t help it.

“Shh. Quietly.”

He opened me with his thumbs, exposing my clit to his tongue. He was good, so good. Skilled, yes, but he loved it. Loved every inch of my body. Loved every place we joined and touched. No one could do what he did without love.

I dug my fingers into his hair and put my legs on the armrests. I pressed my hips into him, whispering, “Yes, yes, yes.”

The closer I got, the slower his tongue got. I was engorged, soaked, gasping for breath, and the tip of his tongue barely touched the very edge of my clit.

“Please, Capo, I’m so close.”

He said nothing, answering by keeping his movements slow and light. The build, drop by drop, filling an ocean of tension, felt impossibly taut.

But still… he was slow and steady.

“Please, please. Oh, God let me go.”

I looked at him. He moved his face from me, smiling. The air touching my clit was going to bring me right to orgasm.

“Stay there,” he said, getting his pants down. “Don’t move.”

He sat on the footrest, his cock a waiting rod. He pulled me up, and I maneuvered myself to straddle him and brought myself onto him. I was so close already, so full of blood, tight as a drum, that when I slid my body onto his length, my body crackled to life. I moved back up and slowly, slowly back down again. The pace left me time to feel every inch, every trickle of pleasure, building at the next perfectly timed stroke.

I exploded, curving against him, biting back a howl. He held me still while he pounded me from below, and I came in a torrent, wiped clean of worry, stress gone, just a flood of love. When I looked at him, his lips were parted and his breath had become ragged. He held my face and pulled me close. I moved along him, still feeling shots of pleasure where we joined. He put his face to mine, his short breaths against my mouth.

“
Ti voglio bene, Theresa. Ti amerò sempre. Fino alla fine dei miei giorni.
”

His eyes closed in utter surrender, and he came inside me, giving me everything.

We panted together for a few minutes, clutching each other, his dick still inside me. We had ten or fewer short breaths together before he pulled back.

“You ready?” he said, looking at his watch.

I got up, dripping. “I could be if I knew what we were doing.”

He yanked up his pants. “We’re trusting me. We’re not being afraid.” He tucked in his shirt.

“We’re staying together.”

He held out his hand. When I took it, he kissed it. “Let me check outside first.”

He took me back out into the lunch room.

I let him, because he asked me to. I slid a paper cone from the sleeve and rested my hand on the watercooler lever. I let him walk to the door because I didn’t think anything of it. He’d asked me to trust him, which was redundant, because I trusted him already. He’d tried to leave me to protect me four times, and all four times he’d come back to me.

So why would I expect a fifth time?

That would be crazy.

Right?

I released the water lever when the cone was full, watching him in admiration of his grace. He looked out the door, the angle of his body as desirable in my satisfaction as it had been ten minutes earlier in my ache.

He looked back at me, fingers sliding along the edge of the door. “You should never doubt that I love you.”