Salvation (32 page)

Melody burst into tears all over again
and exclaimed, “I missed you so much, Slayer!”

As she leaned over and grabbed him in
another hug he asked, “Does this mean you’ll marry me?”

“Of course I will!”

“I really want us to be a family,
Mellie. You, me, and the baby. I talked to my older brother Mark, he says we
can stay with him in Tucson until we get on our feet. He’s got a really nice
house with a guest room and a big back yard. You’ll like it there, I promise.”

“But...Slayer, I decided to give the
baby up for adoption,” she said, her voice breaking.  

Slayer climbed up beside her and grabbed
her in a hug. “Is that what you want, Mellie? To give the baby up?”

“No!” she wailed. “I thought I did, I
thought it was the best thing for the baby, but I regretted it the moment he
was born. I love my baby, Slayer! I don’t want to give him up!”

“Oh no,” Vincent whispered.

I took a deep breath, got up from my
bedroll and picked up the sleeping baby carefully. Then, as my heart shattered
into a million tiny pieces, I crossed the room to Melody and put Sam in his
mother’s arms. “Trev, I’m so sorry,” my cousin said, tears streaming down her
face.

“You’re doing the right thing,” I said
softly. “No way could you give up the world’s most perfect baby.”

Melody looked at Sam for a long moment,
and I could see a light coming on in her eyes. For the first time, she let
herself bond with him. As soon as that happened, I knew there was no going
back.

“So, Vincent and I are going to spend
the night in his apartment,” I said, “since you guys need your rest. There are
plenty of diapers and formula and everything you need, right over there.” I
gestured at the big pile of supplies against the wall. “I’ll check in with you
tomorrow.”

All my cousin could do was nod. There
was heartbreak in her eyes, she knew what she’d just done to me. I didn’t have
it in me to be angry with her. I bent down and kissed the baby’s forehead, and
then I turned and walked out of the apartment with Vincent right behind me.

When we reached the street, Vincent
glanced at his watch and I glimpsed the time. Surprisingly, we actually were
able to hail a cab in just a few minutes, despite the late hour. As we rode to
his apartment I asked, mostly to distract myself, “What was Bo Millen doing at
that factory?”

“Do you really want to talk about that
now?”

“Not really, but I want to get through
this cab ride without totally losing it, so I thought it’d be good to talk
about something.”

Vincent’s arm was already around my
shoulder, and he pulled me a bit closer and kissed the top of my head. After a
moment he said, “Millen approached me in front of my grandmother’s house a
couple weeks ago and told me he was a friend of yours. He said he knew I was in
the mafia and wanted in, or else he was going to turn me in to the police, as
if that was a viable threat. What an idiot.” Vincent shook his head. “Anyway, I
figured any man that would hit his girlfriend and get violent with the man I
loved deserved to get caught in the net I was casting for those heroin
importers. I simply brought him along and let him dig his own grave. When the
importers brought out samples of their wares, Millen stuffed his pockets. He’s
going away for a long time with all the drugs he had on him when the police
arrested him.”

I’d eventually want to know all about
what had led up to the night’s events, but I just couldn’t muster the energy to
ask any more questions just then. We soon arrived at his building, and Vincent
paid the cab driver before leading me to his apartment. I went straight to the
bedroom, pushed off my shoes and got under the covers, and Vincent climbed in
bed with me and put his arms around me.

Only then did I let myself mourn.

I started sobbing, so hard that my
entire body shook. Vincent held me firmly. He didn’t try to tell me it’d be
okay, he didn’t say anything at all. He just let me cry.

I’d gotten to be a parent for exactly
seventy-three minutes. But in that time, I’d fallen in love. I’d made a
promise. I’d planned a future. I’d been completely ready and willing to
dedicate myself to that little baby. In only seventy-three minutes, he’d made a
permanent place for himself in my heart.

I never knew that anything could hurt so
much.

Chapter
Eighteen

I could see why I almost never let
myself cry. Even after the tears stopped, all these raw emotions kept pushing
to the surface. I mourned more than the loss of the baby. My brush with
parenthood had stirred up all these things that I’d been keeping tamped down,
things I tried not to feel. It brought my own parents to mind, and I kept
replaying bits of my childhood I never revisited because it was just too
painful.

Considering how much I’d loved that
baby, and in such a short time, I just couldn’t understand how my own parents
had loved me so little. I knew my mother’s drug addiction played a big role in
her inability to take care of me, but what about my father? I couldn’t
comprehend what would make a man take off and leave his child like that.

Vincent stayed with me all the next day
as I tried to work through my grief. He tucked me in with a soft, white blanket
on the couch, holding me and listening as I talked through my hurt and anger. I
realized once I started talking how much holding all of that in had been
damaging me.

“Thank you,” I murmured after a while,
burrowing deeper into his arms.

“For what?” Vincent pulled the blanket
up over my shoulder and kissed the top of my head.

“For this. For caring about me, and
listening, and taking care of me.”

“You don’t need to thank me for that,
Trevor. That just goes right along with loving you.”

I was quiet for a while before saying
softly, “A few months from now, I’m going to ask you to marry me. I know you
asked last night because you’re such a good man and wanted to help the baby and
me. I also know you wouldn’t have asked so soon under normal circumstances. But
when the time is right, I want to commit myself to you. I want to be yours
forever, and I want you to be mine.”

 “I didn’t just ask you for the
baby’s sake,” he said. “I asked because I love you like I’ve never loved anyone
or anything in my entire life. I agree that we shouldn’t make it official until
the timing is right, since you’re dealing with so much right now. But this is
my promise to you, Trevor. I will always love you, and I’m going to marry you.”
I threw my arms around him and held on tightly. Vincent pulled me onto his lap
and kissed me, holding me just as securely as I was holding him.

*****

Later that afternoon, the intercom
sounded from downstairs and Vincent buzzed up his brother Dante. “Dmitri told
me some of what went down yesterday evening,” Dante said as he came into the
apartment. “But I need to hear it from you, Vincent.” He spotted me on the
couch, hugging my knees to my chest. I must have looked pretty bad, because his
face instantly creased with concern as he asked, “Are you okay, Trevor?” I just
nodded. I didn’t have the energy to explain all I’d been going through.

Dante didn’t look convinced, but he
chose not to push. He and his brother sat on two pearl grey leather club chairs
across the coffee table from me and he asked, “What exactly went down last
night?”

“I’d been working with the D.E.A., not
by choice,” Vincent said. He sat rigidly in the chair, his voice emotionless as
he recited the facts to his brother. “They found out I had ties to the heroin
trade, since my former addiction had brought me in contact with a lot of key
players. They figured between that and my family’s history with organized
crime, I’d be the perfect inside man. They wanted to stem the supply of heroin
entering the city from Mexico. Thanks to turf wars and infighting among the
cartels, that had been reduced to a single source, and that’s who we were
meeting with last night.”

“What were you supposed to do?”

“I’d been working on gaining the
cartel’s trust over the last two years, posing as a drug lord that was trying
to run all of San Francisco’s heroin market. Finally, I was able to garner a
meeting with the heads of the cartel. They normally just sent middlemen to the
States, but I was able to get the leaders here. That’s who the D.E.A. was
gunning for.”

“Were those men arrested?” Dante asked.

Vincent nodded. “A lot went wrong last
night. Bobby Grenzell showed up with a couple men. Grenzell had been after me
for several weeks because he wanted to eliminate his competition. Apparently,
he even figured out where I live. Somehow, he must have caught wind of the
meeting with the cartel and followed me there. I imagine he planned to kill me,
then make an exclusive deal with the cartel himself. It all escalated quickly.
A couple people got shot, but no one was killed. Just as that was going down,
the S.F.P.D. showed up, which was totally unexpected. The two D.E.A. agents I
was with were furious. But really, it was good the police showed up when they
did, since the D.E.A. was on the verge of losing control of that entire
situation.”

“Tell me how the D.E.A. convinced you to
do something so incredibly dangerous,” Dante said, his voice low.

“They’d coordinated with the F.B.I., who
had a file on our family as thick as my arm,” Vincent told him. “The family had
always been careful to cover its tracks, but the F.B.I. had managed to piece
together enough to arrest you. They wanted you to take the fall for three
decades worth of illegal activities. You’d have gotten twenty years in prison.”

“You mean you did that for me?”

“You didn’t deserve to go to jail,
especially not for the crimes of past generations. Now you won’t have to. I
carried out my end of the deal and in exchange, the Dombruso family’s criminal
history is being wiped clean.”

Dante stared at his brother for a long
moment, then exclaimed, “You could have been killed, Vincent! Why didn’t you
come to me when the D.E.A. first approached you?”

“You would have tried to talk me out of
it.”

“Of course I would have! I wouldn’t have
wanted you risking your life for me!”

“Well, it’s done now, and it all worked
out,” Vincent said, breaking eye contact. “You and the rest of the family are
safe.”

 Dante looked furious. When he got
to his feet suddenly, Vincent did too, squaring his shoulders as he faced his
brother. I was afraid they were going to start fighting. Dante yelled, “Don’t
ever
do anything like that again, Vincent! In a situation like that,
you come to
me!
You don’t take all that shit on alone, you don’t endanger yourself!
You
fucking come to me so I can help you!
”

Abruptly, Dante grabbed his brother in a
huge hug. Vincent’s body went rigid at first, his hands balling into fists.
Dante just went right on hugging him though, and after a while Vincent relaxed
slightly and put his arms around his brother as Dante said, “It’s not your job
to take care of me, Vinnie. I’m the older one, it’s my job to take care of
you.”

“You’re wrong. It’s our job to take care
of
each other
.”

“It just pisses me off that you put
yourself in danger. Thank God you’re okay.”

“I was trying to do the right thing,”
Vincent murmured.

“I know, little brother.”

Vincent pulled back and grinned at him.
“I think the phrase ‘little brother’ became null and void when I hit 6’4.”

“How about kid brother? Is that better?”

Vincent shook his head. “That’s worse.”

“Tough shit, you’re stuck with it,”
Dante said with a smile. Then he asked, “Are there any loose ends that still
need tying up? What about Grenzell? That son of a bitch might still come after
you. Do we need to call a family meeting?”

“Grenzell’s going to prison,” Vincent
told him. “He shot one of the people I was with in front of two federal agents.
And that was after they recorded him bragging about the size of his heroin
operation and trying to make a deal with the cartel. I don’t really think he’s
going to be a problem.”

“Well, if he finds a way to make trouble
for you from behind bars, you need to call me.”

“He doesn’t know I was working with
those D.E.A. agents. No one does. I was taken out of there in cuffs, my cover
was never blown. For all he knows, I was just a drug dealer caught in their
sting operation.”

“It’ll get back to him that you’re not
in jail, though.”

“So he’ll just think I have a good lawyer,”
Vincent said. “I’m telling you Dante, there’s no cause for concern.”

His brother looked skeptical, but after
a few moments he relented and said, “Maybe you’re right. But you need to come
to me if anything changes.”

“I will.”

“Do you swear?”

Vincent rolled his eyes. “Yes.”

“Good.” Dante turned and headed for the
door, saying, “I’m leaving before we find something to fight about. I love you
Vinnie, and I’ll talk to you soon. Take care, Trevor.”

“That went well,” I said as the door
closed behind Dante and Vincent dropped onto the couch beside me.

He nodded before murmuring, “Typical
Dante. He’s made it his job to look out for my brothers and me since he was
seven years old. Never mind that he was just a kid too, and lost as much as the
rest of us when our parents and sister were killed.”

I climbed onto his lap and kissed him
gently before wrapping my arms around him and resting my head on his shoulder.
“You’re so alike. You both have an overwhelming need to take care of others.
That’s probably why you have conflicts, you’re too similar.”

“Maybe.” He grinned a little and added,
“Or maybe he’s just a pain in the ass.” I smiled at that and let my eyes close
as he put his arms around me.

We stayed like that for a long time. I
couldn’t imagine anything more comforting than being here in this tranquil
apartment, in Vincent’s arms. His home had seemed austere at first, with its
modern lines, grey and white color scheme and sparse decorations. But this
place made sense to me now. When life was overwhelming and chaotic, it was nice
to have a perfect, uncomplicated place to retreat.

*****

I stayed with Vincent over the next
week, venturing back to my place just long enough to grab my clothes. I felt
like I was intruding in my own apartment. Melody and Slater had really taken
over, rearranging everything, buying a couple pieces of furniture at the thrift
shop and even paying to turn on the electricity. It was Melody’s place as much
as it was mine, so I was glad she was making herself comfortable. It still made
me feel a little adrift though, like I no longer had a home.

It was heartbreaking to see the baby,
but I was really trying to move past that. I held him for a while when I came
by the apartment, and had to fight the urge to cry. “We kept the name Sam,”
Melody told me as she sat beside me on her bed, fidgeting with the hem of her
sundress. “It really feels like the right name for him.” I nodded at that.

“So, Slayer and I were talking,” she
said. “We both want you to be the baby’s godfather because we know you love him
and will always look out for him. What do you think?”

I glanced at the guy in the corner, and
Slater smiled at me shyly before going back to sorting through a bulky diaper
bag. When I turned to look at Melody, she had such a hopeful expression on her
face. She really was trying to make things right in any way she could.

“Thanks, I’d like that,” I said quietly,
which made her smile. “Well, I’d better go. I need to get to work.” I’d
intentionally timed the visit right before my shift, so I’d have an excuse to
get out of there quickly. I handed Sam back to his mother, wondering if there’d
ever be a time when that didn’t hurt so much.

I rode the bus across town, glad that I
had that time to get my emotions back under control before I started work. It happened
to be the same bus I took frequently, and I was in my preferred seat toward the
back. As I ran my finger over the little name carved in the window, I thought
once again about that other Trevor and wondered if he felt lonely too right
now.

When I realized just how lonely I was,
my first impulse was to talk myself out of it, telling myself I had no reason
to feel that way. I reminded myself that I had a boyfriend who loved me and
some terrific friends. But then, maybe loneliness didn’t have anything to do
with how many people we had in our lives. Maybe it was really about how we felt
on the inside.

And maybe I should go ahead and let
myself feel these things, instead of always trying to push down and deny every
negative emotion. Maybe they were just a part of me, and maybe it was
okay
to not always feel happy and positive. I was forever trying to silence that
other part of myself, but maybe I’d feel more whole if I stopped doing that.

*****

When I arrived at work, it took a minute
to stuff the backpack containing my clothes into my narrow locker. I then
donned a fresh white apron and joined Dmitri in the kitchen. He’d finally found
an opening for me as a sous chef, and this was going to be my first official
day working in the kitchen.

He greeted me with a big hug, sympathy
in his eyes. He’d heard about the baby earlier in the week, and after telling
me he was there for me, he’d been making a real effort not to keep bringing it
up. The sympathy itself was a constant reminder, though.