Claudio’s waiting for me out in the hallway.
“We have another room to go to,” he says. That’s odd.
I follow him to the elevator and it goes to the Intensive Care Unit, two floors down. When we get there, he nods at the nurse behind the desk, an older, white-haired woman, and there’s a look that passes between them. Faint alarm bells ring in my head. Something’s up, and he’s bribed or threatened this woman to be part of it.
Claudio leads me to a room where a man lies swathed in bandages.
I walk in and sit down next to the bed. The man’s face is so swollen that I couldn’t tell who he is. Black eyes, broken nose. Both his legs are in casts.
“Hello?” I say in confusion.
“Heather,” he croaks. “Featherbrain.” His childhood nickname for me.
It’s my brother.
I take his hand in mine, very carefully. “Jimbo. You poor thing. How did you get here?”
“I don’t know,” he mumbles. “I was in California. The last thing I remember is a car’s tires screeching, and then I woke up here. Are we really in Chicago?”
A wave of dizziness sweeps over me, and I clutch at the chair arm, afraid I’ll fall over. “Yes, we are. You’re fine. You’re in the same hospital as dad.” I’m sick at the thought of how much power and influence Claudio must have, to have my brother transferred here.
Tears run down my cheeks, and I wipe them away quickly. Images of James as a little boy flash through my mind. Hand drawing me a birthday card on a napkin. Sharing his lunch with the neighborhood stray cats.
“I’m so, so sorry,” I say to him “This is all my fault. I won’t...I won’t let anything else happen to you again.”
“Not your fault,” he mumbled. “I was a dumbass.”
“You were just trying to help dad. You risked everything for him. You had some bad luck, that’s all.”
He peers at me from swollen eyes. “No. That was just an excuse. I wanted a reason to work for those guys. I just wanted to be one of the ballers, you know? Wanted to be somebody important, for once.”
Oh, God. I feel my heart breaking into a million pieces. All I can say is “We’ll be all right. I promise, we’ll be all right.”
But how?
I don’t know. All I know is that I’m not going to resign myself to this life. When my brother gets out of the hospital, I will figure out a way to get us out of here, away from Claudio and the mob and all of this. I may have to leave Mary and my father behind, which will break my heart, but I don’t have many good choices left.
When we leave, I’m so drained and angry at Claudio that I can’t even speak. I float down the hallway and out to the car like a ghost.
I can’t believe what he did to my brother. Any good feelings I had for him, for sticking up for me with Alison, have vanished.
“Go wherever you want tonight,” I say to him, once we’re back home. “Go wherever you want every night. Screw all the women in the world. I’m not your wife, I’m your hostage. And I’ll never beg you again.”
He doesn’t say a word. That night, he goes out at ten o’ clock. I sleep alone in the bedroom. He comes in at 4 a.m. and gets in bed next to me, with his back turned. It feels as if he’s a million miles away.
Chapter Fifteen
Claudio
Tiberio, the Capo di Tutti Capo of Chicago, is sitting in his office, chatting to the Russians, while Diego and I cool our heels in the hallway.
So far we haven’t heard any gun shots or screams, so things must be going well.
Tiberio’s doing that thing where he makes us wait for no reason, just to show us that he’s more important than us. He ordered Diego to meet with him at 9 a.m., and it’s 9:45.
Diego leans back in his chair and scans through emails on his phone, completely un-ruffled. He’s always calm, on the surface. I’m one of the few people who knows how he really feels about Tiberio.
He fucking hates him. And some day, he’s going to kill him. Tiberio and his late brother Angelo, and Donata’s father, ordered Diego’s father to rob a bank. It was an impossible job, it went wrong, and Diego’s father was shot to death by the cops.
It happened when Diego was a teenager. Diego’s mother died of heart failure shortly after, leaving Diego orphaned and homeless. Tiberio doesn’t even know that Diego’s father was the one who died in the bank robbery. That’s how little the high-ranking mafia men care about us, about our lives and deaths.
So far, Diego’s worked his way up to the ranks to the position of underboss. He’s a master puppeteer, working behind the scenes, turning those in power against each other.
Diego is considerably more popular than Tiberio. He takes his men’s safety and welfare into account, and rules in a way that earns him respect. He is a man to be feared, but unlike Tiberio, he’s not a bully for the sake of it. Even Tiberio’s men prefer Diego. Unfortunately, it’s not easy to unseat a third-generation made man.
I stir restlessly in my chair. I’m in a fog of dull exhaustion and anger. I haven’t spent the night with my wife for the last two days. Heather’s cooking for me, she’s eating everything she should and finally putting some weight on, but she’s not speaking to me.
I want to explain to her that I did what had to be done, that she left me no other choice, but the words die in my throat when I try to talk to her.
One of Tiberio’s lackeys sticks his head out the door. “Diego, come here,” he calls. I tense up. “Chill,” Diego says to me in a low voice. “If they wanted to take out a hit on me, they wouldn’t do it here.”
Nonetheless, I climb to my feet and stand ready, listening for the slightest sound of trouble until they call me in a few minutes later.
When I walk in, the Russians nod in greeting. The fog of their cologne makes my eyes sting. I feel the familiar irritation scratching at my nerves. I dislike most of humanity, but these people, I loathe more than most. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but they annoy the fuck out of me. Why the hell do they have to make everyone else breathe in their reek? I settle in next to Diego and give them a quick nod of acknowledgement.
“We have reached an agreement as to territory,” Tiberio says. “Here are the new boundaries.” There’s a map in front of Diego; I lean in to look at it.
It appears as if we’ve kept some of the businesses that we took over when the Russians left, and Kostya has reclaimed about half of them. Diego nods in agreement. He’s got a faint crease to his brow; something happened here that he’s not happy with.
“Excellent,” I say, waiting for whatever crap Tiberio’s going to sling in our direction.
Tiberio turns to me, and his lips curve up in an oily smile. He folds his hands in front of him. I sit there with my face blank, waiting. I imagine myself gutting Tiberio and strangling him with his own intestines, and I feel my anger fading. Diego taught me that trick.
“Kostya has asked that you lend him one of his men for the next week,” Tiberio says. “He’d like Claudio to show him around, to help him get the lay of the land. He’s given his assurances that he won’t ask for any information that is proprietary to our organization.”
Even though I want to rage at them, to yell, “What the fuck?” My expression never changes. Instead, I glance at Diego for approval, and Diego nods.
“I told him we’d be happy to help,” Diego says blandly. Yeah. Fucking ecstatic.
“You’ll meet me at Tovarish tomorrow at noon,” Kostya says. Tovarish is the Russian word for “Comrade”, and it also is the name of a restaurant that he owns.
The meeting wraps up a few minutes later, and Diego and I head out to the car.
“Diego, this is a bad idea. There’s something about the Russians that messes my head up,” I tell him as I’m driving him home.
He shakes his head, frustrated. “Fucking hell, Claudio. Everything messes your head up these days. If you can’t work for me, you need to let me know. What is it?” His voice softens a little. “Is it something to do with your past?�
�
“Can’t be. None of these guys are Albanian,” I say. I know that the abuse I suffered at the hands of my uncle and Ditmar has permanently messed up my head, but I’ve always been able to go through the motions of life anyway. There’s no reason for my sudden mental breakdown, but I can’t ignore the facts – whenever I’m around Kostya and his men, I’m significantly more pissed off.
“I can’t turn Tiberio down,” Diego says. “Can you keep your shit together for one week? You can take a month-long vacation after that if you want to. As long as you need. But I need you to do this for me.”
Sweat beads on my forehead, and anger sizzles through my veins. But there’s only one acceptable answer. “Yeah, no problem.”
Diego’s cell phone rings as we’re driving. “Hey, babe, everything went fine,” he says. He chats with her for a minute, then hands me the phone. “She wants to talk to you.”
Seriously? Just what I need right now. Another lecture from Saint Donata.
The second I answer, she lights in to me. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she snaps. “I went over to check up on Heather today, and she’s miserable. You know, if you’ve got your wife so scared of you that she’d rather run away than tell you she burnt dinner, you’ve got a real problem.”
“I handled it,” I say, feeling an irrational desire to punch through the car window.
“No, you didn’t.”
“Did she tell you that?” I demand.
“Why, so you can go home and punish her?” she’s yelling now. “No, she didn’t say anything, I can just tell! You know, getting married is more than signing a piece of paper and shoving a ring on her finger. There’s some give and take there. Fix this, you jerk.”
I groan aloud. “I can’t help that she wants what she’ll never have. She’s got some crazy fairy tale idea of marriage, and it’s not reality.”
“Oh, bull. That’s just an excuse for you to be a lazy ass and not even try. Diego and I have the fairy tale. I know plenty of wives who have the fairy tale. Quit being such a little bitch, and talk to your wife, Claudio.” Before I can answer, she hangs up the phone.
Chapter Sixteen
Heather
“Make the frittata for me again,” Claudio says when I emerge from the shower. “That’s your best dish yet.”
A compliment, from Claudio? If this had happened just a few days ago, I’d have been so happy.
But I’m too hurt and angry to appreciate the fact that he’s finally lightening up. He’s been out every single night. When he comes home, he goes straight to the shower. I imagine it’s so he can wash the scent of other women off of him.
I make his breakfast swiftly and silently.
When I bring the food to the table, he pats his lap and indicates I should sit down.
I hesitate, and he arches an eyebrow at me. “Do you need me to remind you what happens when you don’t follow orders? Or do you just love the way I spank?”
Scowling at him, I perch on the very edge of his lap, almost sliding off his knees, but he circles his arm around my waist and tugs me back until I’m pressed up against his chest. His cock swells for me, pressing into my private parts, and my body responds the way it always does. I feel that warm desire pulsing up between my legs, but I promise myself that this time, I won’t let him draw me back in. He’s pushed me too far.
He feeds me slowly, bite by bite, as if to draw it out. As if he wants to keep me close. I think of my brother, and of all Claudio’s other women, and harden my heart. I accept each bite, chewing obediently, and stare off into the distance.
“I’m full,” I say finally.
He looks at me for a long moment and then shrugs. “Okay.” I start to move, and he tightens his arm.
“You don’t have to eat any more, but I didn’t say you could get up,” he says roughly.
He leans in and kisses my neck, then nips at it sharply. I stifle a gasp of pleasure at the sting, and he laps at the bite mark.
“Mmm.” The sound purrs from my throat before I can stop myself. What the hell is wrong with me?
“You missed this,” he murmurs into my neck. “I missed it too. I love fucking you, you know. I love the noises you make. I love how you endure the pain for me, and turn it into pleasure.”
For a moment, I start to melt. Then I remember the way I felt lying in bed, night after night, waiting for him to come home. His cock has been inside someone else’s pussy. He made someone else scream in pain and pleasure. The thought chokes me with anger, and I deliberately stiffen up, every muscle in my body going tight. I try to make myself feel as rigid and uninviting as possible.
“I won’t,” I say. “Ever again. Not after you’ve been screwing other women every single night.”
He grabs my chin and turns my head, tipping it up and forcing me to look at him. I struggle to turn away, and he gives my head a little shake. “I haven’t had sex with anyone else.”
“You think I have brain damage or something?” I say indignantly. “Like I can’t remember what happened this morning? Say, four hours ago? You got home this morning at 4:17 a.m.”
“Well, that’s very precise,” he smirks. “Waiting up for me, were you?”
I was, but I hate that he knows that. I’m so mad that I want to leap up and run away, but he’s holding me trapped. Instead I close my eyes, so I won’t have to see the smug look on his face. I’m ashamed of my need for this terrible man.
He won’t let me hide from him; I can’t have even that little bit of comfort. “Look at me,” he growls. “Unless you want me to show you what a real spanking feels like.” He squeezes my chin hard.
When I open my eyes, they’re filled with tears.
He drops his hand, releasing my face. “I didn’t go to a club. I didn’t go anywhere. I sat in my car outside the house, all night,” he says gruffly. “I didn’t sleep. I just sat there and stared at our window.”
“Why would you do that?” I say, baffled. “I thought you were going to go have sex with someone else.”
He meets my gaze, and I see genuine pain glinting in his brown eyes. “Because I was angry at you for pushing me away. You told me to go. You said you didn’t care if I screwed the whole damned city.”
“I lied,” I say tightly. “I do care.”
I feel the ice around my heart thawing. I was able to hurt him. I couldn’t have been able to do that if he didn’t have feelings for me.
But I still can’t find it in my heart to look past what he did to my brother.
“Claudio, that’s not the only reason I can’t be with you. You had your men hurt James really badly,” I say, squirming and trying to pry his arm off my waist. It tightens like an iron bar, and I am pressed up against his broad chest, feeling every thump of his heart. “I can’t forgive that.”
“He stole money from the mafia,” he says. “You’re the only reason he’s alive. I was supposed to kill him and hand you over to men who’d have trafficked you.”
A queasy feeling bubbles up inside me. “Would you have really done that?” I demand, remembering the way it felt to be strapped down in that beauty parlor. The revulsion of Grigorio’s finger slipping inside me, the terror of what would come next. The thought of him subjecting another woman to that degrading treatment...it’s horrifying.
“If it were anyone else but you? Yeah. I follow orders.”
I look at him with hurt and anger. I don’t want to hate my husband, but he’s making it very hard for me. “That’s terrible.”
He nods. “It is. That’s the job, that’s the life. Sometimes, I do very ugly things. Most of the time, I guess. Except...” he trails off.
“Except what?”
“Except since I’ve been with you. Before I met you, I’d never have done something like pay for your dad’s apartment, or tell him you were away on business. Being with you...” there’s a puzzled look on his face, as if he’s learning new things about himself. “I don’t want you to be unhappy. I don’t want you to hate me. To hate bein
g with me. I want you to be happy here. I’m not doing a very good job of explaining myself, am I?”
Something hurt him, long ago, something made him like this. He’s been a monster for so many years, to so many people. But he’s trying to change his harsh nature, at least a little. He’s doing it for me.
I feel a dull sorrow for him – and a deep guilt. Because being with me is making Claudio a better human, maybe even a happier one, but I’m still going to leave him. Some day, when my brother’s out of the hospital, I’ll find a way for us both to escape. And we’ll stay gone. If I’m with James, I can make sure that he doesn’t repeat whatever stupid mistake he made that led Claudio to him.
I just can’t accept this life - subject to Claudio’s moods and whims, kept at arm’s length emotionally. I won’t live in this darkness forever.
He strokes my cheek with his fingers, staring into my eyes, and now he’s looking at me exactly the way Donata said. As if I were something sweet that he wanted to devour.
My nipples are swelling with desire. Mere minutes ago, I was promising myself I’d be strong, and now I’m about to surrender to him. No, not again.
I struggle to find my strength again. “My brother’s lying in a hospital room because of you!” I say fiercely.
Claudio’s eyes flash with anger. “He’s lying in a hospital room because of his own stupid decisions,” Claudio says harshly. “You should be way more pissed at him for the position he left you in. He’s a cowardly little chickenshit who stole from the Family and then ran off and left you to deal with it, knowing what we do when people cross us.”
Those words sting, because they’re true. James knew the risk he was taking, and he totally screwed me over. I love my brother, but Claudio is right - I have the right to be mad at him too.
His lips trace soft kisses down my neck. I shiver with pleasure, and arch my back, pressing my heated sex down onto his thick erection. When it comes to Claudio, my brain says no, but all he has to do is touch me and my resistance melts like an ice cream sundae in the Sahara.
Claudio: A Dark Mafia Hate Story (Chicago Crime Family Book 2) Page 11