by Amarie Avant
Vincenzo rubs softly at his Adam's apple as I hustle down the stairs.
The sliding glass door is open, so I pull out Vinny’s key ring. There are three Ferraris of varying shades of blue. I press a button and the pale-blue one purrs. When I’ve pulled out of the driveway, Vinny stands at the edge, bending over, breathing hard. I toss the key ring to him with the rest of the set.
“You better bring my baby back without so much as a scrape or I'll tell Tony!” He shouts, hand gripping his side.
Fucking dumbass. “If it has a scratch, I'll do you the honor of keeping it.” I smile and then the back tires screech against the asphalt as I pull off.
Chapter 43
Reese
“Ma,” Matteo pats the shoulder of the woman in black. I take it she's Milo's old lady. I want to ask if the bitch was ever pretty but realize I have no need to be jealous on my mother’s behalf.
The dining room is long. There are display cases with crystal vases, shiny utensils and crystal flutes behind us. Adela has her side. I have mine. For the past half-hour, my half-brother has rushed back and forth between us, conflicted.
She says something in Italian about Giovanni.
In an attempt to not be rude, Matteo replies in both languages, “Sal will be here in a couple of hours. He apologizes for being late, Reese.”
His mother reminds me of one of those crazies on talk shows when finding out their significant other has cheated. Every few minutes she arises from her seat as if on stage, I can just hear a crowd of talk show viewers egging her on to hit me. I'm an inch from taking off my shoe and throwing it at her head. As I consider this, I smile. Maria is my girl when it comes to tossing a zapato at someone.
“What is so funny?” Adela enunciates every syllable with a frown.
“Humph, so you speak English again? Lady, are you going senile?”
“Lady? I am Adela Giugliano. Wife of Milo Giugliano. He didn't even give you his fake last name… Benincassa, was it? Hah!”
“Ya got a point there,” I reply. She seems taken off guard. Well, it's true. Despite how postal I went on Evan the night before last, my tongue isn't as venomous as usual. “But you were unable to keep Milo's eyes on your droopy-ass tits.”
Why am I rooting for the mistress, although, I believe my mom assumed she was the only one…
I'm escorted to an office which rivals Evan’s penthouse apartment, and I thought that was big. The man in question is seated at a cherry wood table, the room is all big, extravagant carved wood as if just the size of the place is just one more notch on Salvatore’s pursuit for ultimate power.
“I want that fucking pansy’s head on a platter, capiche?” He shouts into a headset, his index finger points hard against the desk. Someone on the line is responding to him, hopefully in his favor. As his face has reddened, his lips are a pale, thin line of anger.
Sal’s face brightens, he notices me and smiles. Not another word is said to whomever he was chewing out over the phone, he tosses the headset, and tells me, “Judges, give ‘em an inch, they wanna assume control.”
Tongue glued to the bridge of my mouth, I sit. My hands go to my lap, fingers fidgeting. And then I do some shit my mother hasn't done in years. I become mother hen to this growing babe and allow my arms to wrap around by lower abdominals.
“You are here in the flesh,” his hands spread wide, palms out. A toothy grin brightens his face.
“Yes. I'm here to appeal to any sanity you may have…”
“Sanity? Come again,” his bushy left eyebrow rises.
“Leave me alone… please.”
“Not allowable, Reese. We’ve headed down this road before. I’ll do you one better than staying outta your life, doll.”
Rubbing my index finger over my thumb nail, I hesitantly inquire, “Sheesh, what are you up to?”
He opens a small wood box, and pulls out a fresh cigar. Sal gestures toward me. I shake my head, and he lights it.
KNOCK. KNOCK.
I repeat my question, “What are you—”
A goon steps inside of the room, “Boss, I know you said not to disturb you unless Zacarro is here. He just arrived.”
“Zacarro! Evan’s here?” I fly around in my seat.
The man doesn’t address me. Chin up, shoulders square, he just waits for my grandfather to answer.
“Tell him to leave,” I blurt. He can’t be here… What if Salvatore intended to use him like Riker endeavored to? I turn back to my grandfather. “Please, Sal, make him leave.”
Salvatore’s eyes narrow. “Signor Zacarro came all the way from the States to see you, Reese. Your dismissal of him has me on alarm, here I was preparing to extend my gratitude to Evan and allow him into my home. Has he hurt you?”
“No,” my pupils almost pop, I gasp.
“You sure?” My grandfather leans back, fingers steepled in thought.
I can just about see Sal give the orders to ‘ice’ Evan, I speak quickly, “I love Evan with every bit of me. Sal, I have never known love like this before, and it has scared the shit outta me. Baking once held my entire concentration, and then I laid eyes on him… oh, his eyes,” I stop from divulging the truth to say, “He has the most amazing eyes, kind, warm and I swear on my life, I don’t know how I’m breathing at this very second without him,” I clutch a hand to my chest, “I’ve never expressed my love to him. I, honestly, have done nothing besides pushing him away. And to this moment, I doubted how much he cares for me. Determining the cop’s love was an obsession to put the puzzles of all my secrets together. I was determined that I am not worth the trouble Evan’d have to go through to muddle through the murk of lies I live in. I miss him dearly, and I can’t let you touch a hair on his head. I can’t let you turn him into my father. Evan is the hero I never got.”
Salvatore kisses his teeth, taking in my purge. Should I keep declaring my love for Evan Zacarro? The Boss’s face is a clear slate. Maybe I’ve dissuaded Sal from setting in motion Evan’s execution, but he hasn’t extended the offer to allow Evan to leave or stay, either. I’m perched at the edge of my seat, and his solider is awaiting an order.
“So, you love Valentino?”
I nod.
“And you’ve never told him so?”
Tears spill down my cheeks as I shake my head ‘no.’ “Evan is a good guy, he’s done nothing wrong. If you refuse to leave me alone, leave him alone, I beg of you.”
“I’d prefer Zacarro as family. Valentino is a strong enough name, Tino, if he gets in my good graces. I still don’t like this Evan crap. But I believe you,” Salvatore says pointing the cigar toward me.
He finally gives an order to the guy at the door. “Bring Zacarro to me.”
Then Salvatore nods his head in another direction, “Escort my granddaughter to her room.”
“No,” I glance over my shoulder and there is another man, a man I hadn’t even noticed. He was posted in the shadows, and hadn’t made a single sound. The guy in a suit that molds to muscles comes alive from attending to the wall. Rolling my shoulder away from one of the soldiers, I try to side step him but he grabs my arm firmly. If he wanted, he could squeeze all the way down to the bone.
“Please, Signora Dunham.” His eyes are unwavering.
I expect to pass the front door on our way upstairs, but the man escorts me down a long hallway, studded with candle scones and candid canvas paintings of a confident, happy family. The Giuglianos. At the flight of stairs, my heart sinks.
“Is Sal gonna hurt Evan?” I ask.
The man nods his head toward the stairs. Taking a deep breath, I walk on shaking legs.
In the bedroom, I flee toward the window, and see Evan stepping through the courtyard, there are two men behind him.
“The windows are bulletproof.”
I begin to unlatch it, but the stranger tells me that it’s time to get dressed. Evan is no longer in the window frame.
“I’ll be waiting outside, Reese,” the man says ominously, “It is for your own goo
d that you wash and prepare for dinner, por favore.”
Chapter 44
Evan
“So, Zacarro, they tell me you came empty handed?” Giugliano says.
I had chosen at the last moment to leave Vincenzo’s gun beneath the front passenger seat. “Yes.”
“I take that is as a sign of respect.” Holding a cigar, he waves his hand for me to sit.
“Where is Reese?”
“She’s dressing for dinner.” Giugliano glances around the room at one of his soldiers against the wall. “Arrange for a seat for Zacarro—”
“I’m not staying; Reese and I are not staying.”
“A day ago,” the old man begins, tapping his index finger into the air, “I would have taken your decision to come by my home, this is my home Zacarro, unannounced as a sign of disrespect. Moreover, I’d suspect your intentions with my granddaughter aren’t— “
“Your granddaughter?” My eyebrows rise, mouth sneered as if that doesn’t sound right.
Salvatore swivels ever so slowly in his seat, though I have the high-factor of standing, he clings to confidence
“As I said, this is not a day ago, Zacarro, and despite your inability to guard your tongue around me, me the motherfucking Boss of all Bosses, I will take your misgivings as a sign of lack in judgement. Lemme tell you exactly why I thought about our blossoming relationship.” He smiles, “You iced McGregor in cold blood on my granddaughter’s accord.”
My eyelid twitches. He knows about McGregor. Milo’s partner didn’t just happen to be at Reese’s old apartment. The gleam in Giovanni Giugliano’s gander tells me that he personally sent McGregor to suss out my intentions…
“Fuck,” I shouted, on the floor in Reese’s old living room. The karambat knife McGregor had used to dice my intestines has done a number on me. The skin at my side, split even more as I moved into a seated position.
Pure testosterone had begun to siphon through my veins as I gripped the walls and leaped into a standing position. The back of McGregor just slipped out of the front door. As he scurries down the steps in the dark outside, I rounded the corner to the upstairs landing, he was halfway down the stairs as I took my first step.
Dead head of us, and down the long alleyway, a few cars straggled by. At the last handful of steps, I lunged myself at McGregor, he’d just passed the door to the closed for business Flour Shoppe. My hands pressed into his trapezius upper-back muscles, and gravity propels him forward
A clicking sound told me that he had hit his teeth on the ground.
“Get the fuck off of me, Zacarro,” he shouted, blood flying from his lips.
“Shhh,” I pressed my knees into his back, and gripped the squaring of his jaw with one hand, as my other braced itself at his neck. With a quick swivel of my hands came an eerie cracking sound as his spine dislocated from his brain.
I sat there for a moment and took a deep breath. This was by no far au stretch of the word: self-defense. Even a rookie detective who ran down the scene could see our struggle throughout the house. A coroner’d easily put together how McGregor had just landed and had his neck snapped.
So I stood, bent down and I grabbed McGregor by the abdomen. I tossed his body over my shoulder, his weightless body heavier than its approximately one hundred-seventy pound, five-foot-ten frame. The sheer act was torture. A fresh flow of blood drenched down my side, coasting over the sticky, drying blood.
“McGregor got a little threatening note from our Reese telling him he ruined her life and should've gone to jail like Milo. That’s enough to set off a man who ain’t all there anyway,” Salvatore elaborates, since he’s the one who set this all in motion. “You had to defend yourself from the madman. You then took McGregor back upstairs into Reese’s bathroom. Placed him in the bathtub. Cleaned up. Bought that erosion stuff, eh? Then you continued on your quest to find Reese, to bring her home safely.”
I nod. In addition to dousing his corpse with sulfuric sulfate, I’d called Reese’s old landlord and said that she’d need one more extra month to move. Though I would be back to remove the decomposing body soon, that bastard had charged through the nose.
“I’m smarter than you take me for, Zacarro. At this instant, you see me as a crazy motherfucker, just like McGregor was molded into. Milo too… My fucking son held his own child out as his own personal vest when SWAT and the DEA surrounded his home! Instead of that bitch of his blood, his blood —our little Reese— became his safety shield!” Salvatore makes his hand in the shape of a gun and places it at his own head. His eyes are glossed, saucers, teeth bared, spittle flies as he shouts, “Milo, that lousy piece of shit, placed a motherfucking burner against his own child’s head. You think I’m scum too? Milo was my son, my legacy. I raised him to be a man, what a fucking man he turned out to be, eh? It’s my fault he had shit for brains! He was scum, so I’m scum too; right?”
“Yeah, no disrespect, but I believe you and your son are one in the same.” My jaw is clenched, and because I’m in his home, I will listen to the lunacy.
Giugliano holds his index finger out and taps it against the air, it’s an acute manner of his while angry. Giugliano nods to one of his men. An iPad is handed over to him. “How are things going?”
“Everything’s all good, Boss,” someone says on the screen.
“Gimme a preview,” Giugliano orders, I take note that he isn’t identifying the man’s name.
“Zacarro, take a look,” the Boss says, holding the iPad up so I can see. Now the screen has been flipped around, whoever has it, shows Reese’s apartment.
“It’s spick and span, and the traces of blood up and down the stairway and toward the alley are all cleaned up too.”
“Alright, that’ll do.” Giugliano hands the iPad back over to his soldier and looks at me. “I’ve had ‘em on the team for a while now, Tino, but feel free to assess the scene once you return.”
“And the body, Giugliano, where is what’s left of the body?”
“A mass dumping ground, Zacarro. I do believe our Reese prefers to keep a certain level of separation between you and I,” Giugliano stands. He reaches out a hand, “Now the name is Sal, I’ll call you Tino.”
For Reese’s sake I shake hands with the devil.
He pulls me to him, pats my back. “You’re family, Tino. And my granddaughter loves you.”
He laughs boisterously, “Reese doesn’t know how to show it. Napolitano blood but so inept at love. Fucking Italian yet uneducated in the ways of adoration. Tino, let’s take you to the woman of the hour.”
I breathe easy.
In the dining room, there’s a long stretch of table. The mass cluttering of silver chargers and the feast before me is all a blur. There are people seated on either side and soldiers posted against the wall.
“Evan!”
I hear her voice before I see her, and my fucking heart beats so wildly in my chest as Reese come from the opposite entrance of the room. A royal-purple ball gown is clasped in her hands, and pulled up since it sweeps and sways across the floor. She’s about fifty-yards away, but running every inch of it. I brace myself as she wraps her arms around me. I won’t complain, I close my eyes, breathe in the top of her head.
“I’m so sorry,” she’s crying to me. Reese reaches up and kisses me. Glancing at the nick on my chin, she says, “Oh, who the fuck hurt you, Evan, I’ll kill them.”
But she doesn’t realize that her squeezing my waist is more pain than the superficial bruises to my face.
I’m a fucking man outta control when Reese is gone. All I want to do is take her in, hold her close and leave these motherfuckers behind. Yet, Reese takes my inability to speak for anger on my part. Eyes full of tears, Reese says, “Oh, Evan don’t be mad at me, baby.”
I brush my hand across her cheek. “You have to learn to listen, babe.”
“Where is the Dom? There should be champagne for everyone! We are having a celebration, aren’t we?” Salvatore shouts from behind me. He pats my shoulder. The de
mented man who had argued about his son holding Reese hostage, and the other crazy McGregor, has been replaced by a family man. Pride radiates in the form of a smile.
“And a fresh batch of apple cider for Reese,” he winks.
I turn to Reese. She nods, rivers flowing down her cheeks. Even in the dull ache of a pain, I fall to my knees before her, and my forehead kisses softly against her stomach. There’s no greater feeling than becoming aware that my child is growing inside of her. Loving Reese isn’t easy, not in the least, but every second of chaos has always been worth it. We’ve created something beautiful, half of her, half of me. Though Reese will do the carrying, I will move heaven and earth to care for her and my seed.
She rubs my hair, giggling as I kiss her stomach.
The room becomes loud with congratulations to us and our baby.
Salvatore says, “See, Tino, I knew I’d like you.”
About fifteen minutes later, Reese is seated next to Salvatore at the head of the table, me to her left, and a man who introduces himself as her half-brother Matteo to my left. Sal goes down the line introducing Reese and I to her family, from uncles and aunts to their offspring. And a woman, mid-fifties, dressed in black is the only one frowning, I wait to learn her name. Adela.
“We’ll be leaving after dinner,” Reese says.
“Alright, it’d be nice for you to stay. But I am a man of my word, I said I would have your answer, and…” he pauses to glance at a watch, “And the answer to all of your questions will walk in that very door in about ten minutes.”
“Thank you.”
Her answer? What answer, and what question? There’s no opportunity for inquiry as Sal smiles at her, nodding his head. He places a hand over Reese’s. “This one, this one have I loved before I even knew her, I loved her!” She sinks ever so subtly closer to me. Sal senses it, but smiles more.
“You remind me of Milo, in everything you do,” he says, then picks up the champagne flute, downing it in one gulp.