Rule

by CD Reiss

“Sure.” What had he smelled when he put his nose in her hair? Hope? Togetherness? Completion? “I’m just a little…” I spun my hand at the wrist. There was a word, but I couldn’t think of it because I was trying to get to the primes over a hundred, where it got complex enough to sustain me. I had to shut off the TV in my head. She stayed gentle. She stayed gentle and died. “He told me she was dead.”

  “He thought she was.”

  He thought she was. Why was it taking me so long to process things? Why couldn’t I turn the TV down? He thought she was dead. Right. Okay. So I wasn’t half the whore, and he wasn’t a liar. He’d asked me to marry him.

  Don’t cry.

  Meaning Daniel was telling it right. Antonio wouldn’t have asked for my hand if he thought he had a living wife.

  Don’t.

  Cry.

  Focus.

  53. 59. 61.

  “She’s been in hiding. She wasn’t in the car when it exploded. It was a setup. She and her mother-in-law set it up. She’d disappear until he finished and came home.”

  I shook my head. The prime numbers clattered around. “Why?”

  “They hate the mob, his mother and his sister. Valentina’s no different. From what she says, they were fighting a lot about his new line of work. So his mother convinced her Antonio would get clean and return. Told her he knew she was alive. So she waited until she found out he’d died in an explosion in downtown LA.”

  “And she was pregnant when he left.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s an Italian opera, isn’t it?”

  “Except you’re not fat, and you can’t sing.”

  I felt my face stretch into a smile, but my mind was still working on the TV. The tuning had changed, but the volume was the same. Antonio hadn’t known. He must be as confused as I was. I worried about what he felt. What he would do. About him as a person who had resigned himself to losing someone he loved and then found her in a police station.

  “I don’t understand what you have to do with this,” I said. “Why I’m not being questioned by the police. Why you know. Any of it.”

  “Everyone knows Spinelli shot Patalano. That’s first. You’ll be questioned, trust me, but you’re not a suspect. Not as long as I’m the district attorney. And the way the mayor’s race is going since the wedding, I’m going to be DA long enough to put him in jail and keep you from throwing yourself to the wolves for him.”

  I nodded. I’d do what I had to, but I couldn’t put it together right then.

  “Theresa?”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you look like this when I hurt you?”

  I shrugged. “I’m going to do better this time.”

  When I said “this time” as if it was a done deal and I had no hope of feeling whole again, I took a sharp, involuntary breath. I cleared my throat. 101. 103. 107. 113. No. One was missing.

  Daniel put something in my hand. “This is yours. It’s the only thing I gave you of any value.”

  I looked down at a soot-covered engagement ring.

  “You’re too good for me,” he said, closing my hand around it. “I had no business asking you to marry me. And he had no business being with you, whether he knew about Valentina or not. I don’t want you to settle.”

  107. 109. 113. 127.

  “You’re a real fuckup,” I said.

  “Yeah. But I’m a good DA.”

  That was the truth. He was even a great DA.

  I put the ring at the top of my thumb and let it rest there. Stupid thing. I’d been so excited to get it. I’d felt completed. I’d thought Daniel and I looking up at the solar system together was what it meant to be fulfilled. But it had been precarious, and I was a different woman now. Bone to flesh, I was different. I’d run away, shot a man, been shot at, died, come back to life. I’d gone nose to nose with danger and walked away stronger. I didn’t have to make common choices anymore. Antonio had freed me of my own expectations of myself, and I could be whomever I wanted.

  “You know Donna Maria’s after him,” I said. “He has a price on his head.”

  “There’s not much I can do until they try to kill you.”

  “Is his wife safe?”

  “Probably not. Why?”

  My tears had dried up, and the rote repetition of numbers that kept me from thinking of Antonio and Valentina in that room dissolved into sense.

  “I’m glad you have him,” I said. “He’s safer with you.”

  He pressed his lips together. “I can’t much longer. I have nothing yet.”

  “You can’t throw him to the wolves.”

  “I can’t keep him in custody. Believe me, I’d love to lock him up, away from you.”

  I imagined Antonio getting gunned down on First Street, two steps out of the building, cars screeching away, return shots fired, a movie in three dimensions. A man dying, bleeding out, his wife and son finally reunited with him. The drama was epic, and I didn’t see how it could happen differently. “You need to protect him. They’re after him. He was supposed to marry Irene, and they killed the last guy who tried to get out of it.”

  “I know.”

  “We almost got killed in Mexico.”

  “He’s a big boy.”

  He wasn’t budging.

  “What about her? The wife? And the boy? Are you going to be responsible if something happens to them?”

  “They’re staying with me.”

  “That’s a little off book, isn’t it?” I said.

  “There’s no rulebook for any of this. And like I said, my reputation barely matters anymore. The election is a formality.”

  “So keeping a beautiful, vulnerable woman at your place…”

  “A married woman and her child,” he said.

  “You really hate him.”

  “Hate’s a very strong word.”

  “Protect him, Daniel. If only to keep my heart from breaking again.”

  He gave every appearance of considering it. His gaze drifted to the half distance with a little tilt of his head, a lowering of his eyelids, half a swallow. Tick, tick, tick. I had no idea what was going on in his mind, except I did. There was a veracity about him. An honesty that you could see on people who’d had an epiphany. Those who had taken a hard look at themselves and made choices based on what they saw.

  He’d never be a politician, but he’d become a man.

  eleven.

  antonio

  loved Valentina. She never gave up on anything. She fought endlessly for things that were destined to die. Her grandmother’s rotting crochet tablecloth. A bird with a broken foot left at the door by our cat. Her Fiat.

  We’d met on a rainy day in Napoli because she wouldn’t let that hunk of metal go.

  Some cars needed to be put out of their misery. The little ones that didn't go far enough on a liter of gas. The big ones that didn’t go fast. The cars so dented and bruised they hurt the eyes. I could keep a car running a long time. Slow, inefficient, or ugly, I’d fix it even if I wanted to kill it. We had that in common. We let things live too long.

  “Take this one, Tonio!” Imbruzio had shouted from his office.

  He was fighting with his mistress over money. I could hear them through the door every first and third Monday of the month. She cooed. He excused. She scolded. He got defensive. She whined. He comforted. She cried. He cried. She shouted. He put his foot down. Then either she stormed out or the desk legs started creaking. The putting down of his foot was the critical juncture, and when Imbruzio told me to take the little Fiat cutting a turn from the narrow cobblestone street into our tiny lot, he and his mistress were in the comfort/cry stage.

  I put down my lunch and stepped out of the office into the rain. It had been drizzling all morning and had just increased to a light rain. A thunderstorm was imminent, and she looked like a bird with a broken wing.

  The Fiat was smoking like a Turkish cigarette, rattling and clanking up to the garage. The car itself had a rust problem, a dent problem, needed a paint job, an
d shook so hard I thought the carburetor’s idling pin might not just be screwed too loose but was probably missing entirely. When she got out of the car, the little sheets of water turned into a deluge, and the sky lit up as if it were on fire.

  I’d gotten the car running again. Cars and vengeance, I didn’t let either go. La vendetta di cent’anni ha I denti da latte.

  Yes, we had that in common. We held onto things.

  ***

  Valentina was pissed. Before she even opened her mouth, I knew she was about to start crying. Antonin had been pulled out by Zia, my aunt. Who knew the whole time. And my mother. And my wife.

  I was holding a chest full of anger, but held it back. Too many things were moving. Theresa. Paulie. Daniel, that fuck. Losing control would do nothing.

  She felt out of place. Awkward. Angry. Sitting primly on the bench at First Street Precinct, she was a tightly wound coil of unhappy confusion.

  “You don’t look happy to see me,” I said once she and I had sat down. Being able to speak about things in my language was a relief, but of course, I couldn’t talk to her about anything real.

  A Los Angeles police woman came in with bottles of water. I opened Valentina’s and put it in front of her, then I gave myself a moment to think as I drank from mine. Valentina didn’t even look at hers, and I needed much more than a moment.

  “And you?” she asked.

  “I’m happy to see you. You have no idea. I mourned you for a long time.”

  “I mourned you for a day.”

  I twisted on the bench so she and I faced each other. I needed to see her to read her.

  “Somewhat smaller investment.”

  “Oh, shut up.” She rubbed her eyes. “This lawyer met me at the airport and told us he was taking me to see you, and I didn’t believe him. I said I didn’t trust lawyers.”

  “I’m a lawyer.”

  “I waited too long. I got comfortable where I was, doing what I was doing. I work in a fabric factory. I do the books and operations. And it’s good. I manage a little team. I never would have left the house if things hadn’t happened the way they did.”

  “Happened?” As if she had no hand in it. As if she hadn’t disappeared of her own free will. As if her love hadn’t been a rose with thorns.

  “Years just went and went,” she said.

  “And then I was dead.”

  “I was going to stay home. But Antonin wanted to see your face, even if it was at a funeral. I couldn’t tell him there was no body, so what was I supposed to do? Refuse him? And your mother, she’s broken a hundred times. She couldn’t leave. So between the two of us, we decided Antonin and I would come.”

  “My mother knew?”

  “For Antonin, she thought it—”

  I slammed my hand on the table. “Damn you!”

  “This!” She pointed at me. “This is what I’m talking about. This craziness. Yes. She hid me. She hates what you became.”

  “You could have just left me.”

  Her eyes, huge and almond-shaped, pouted at me. “You would have found me and dragged me back. Me and the baby. I didn’t want that for him.”

  She was right. I would have hunted her, and when I found out she was carrying a child, that would have been it. I would have had her watched, and another opportunity to leave never would have presented itself. She would have been stuck with a man she loved and hated, but mostly hated.

  “You’re right,” I said.

  She raised an eyebrow. “I’m right?”

  “You hate me. But I wouldn’t have let you leave.”

  “I don’t hate you, Antonio. I never hated you.” She touched my hand gingerly, then laid hers flat over mine. “Seeing you—” She shook her head.

  And there I was, thinking I’d had fake death sorted out. Theresa and I had caved to the temptation to come back to life in less than twenty-four hours. Yet for ten years, Valentina had resisted the temptation to find me.

  She was good.

  Where did I find these iron-spined women?

  As if summoned by my thoughts of Theresa, the door opened, and Brower came in. “Valentina.”

  Calling her by her first name like that, he irked me, twisting the edges of my discomfort. It was too familiar.

  “You’re required down the hall,” Brower said.

  “Scusi,” she whispered before she spun on the bench and slipped out. I imagined it was her son, our son, she needed to attend to.

  Brower was left. I stood. I wouldn’t straddle a bench with this fucker in the room. I would break his head open with it. He closed the door and stepped toward me until we were nose to nose. I was in his territory. His building. I couldn’t touch him, and he knew it.

  He sat down and indicated the bench across from him.

  “What did you think you were doing?” I asked.

  “Can you sit?”

  I didn’t move. I could sit, but I didn’t want to be across from him. Didn’t want to be on an equal footing.

  “There was no easy way to tell you,” he said. “It was going to suck no matter what.”

  “So you tried to spare my feelings?”

  “Your feelings? I couldn’t give a shit. Are you going to sit? Or do you think standing puts you in some kind of position of power?”

  He sat with both elbows on the table, palms up. I assumed he was going to tell me about Valentina. How he found her, what he intended to do with her.

  I sat.

  He tapped his fingertips together. “I know you guys. I know how you operate, and you know why.”

  “Because you pick the olives and uproot the tree at the same time?”

  He smirked. “Spoken like an Italian.”

  “Spoken like a man who can keep two conflicting ideas in his mind.”

  “The skill of criminals and priests.”

  “Which are you?” I asked, because in a way, he was both.

  He stopped tapping his fingertips and folded his hands together. He took a long time to answer—too long, as if he was searching in a file for what he wanted to say and couldn’t find the paperwork for it.

  “You know what I think of you,” he said.

  I nodded. I didn’t need a list.

  “But that aside, I’m conceding defeat. You win,” he said.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I thought Theresa was dead, and I died with her. Everything died. Even my desire to hurt you for it. When I realized she was alive, I swore I wouldn’t make her life difficult any more. Which means I’m not taking revenge on you for hurting her, or stealing her, and I’m not coming after you for fucking me up. I don’t care if you think I’m a coward for that.”

  “Not for that.”

  “Touché. But I’m not done. We have conflicting intel regarding the price on your head for bailing on Irene Carloni[→9]. As low as half a million for your corpse. Alive, we’ve heard up to two million.”

  “Alive is nice. They get to torture me.” I smiled at him. I wasn’t afraid of torture or death. I’d been hurt before, and I’d be hurt again.

  “I assumed it was because if the murder is witnessed and documented, she gets your territory.”

  “Money is a great motivator.”

  “They also want Theresa. Quarter million.”

  My hair stood on end. My fists balled tightly enough to stretch the skin over the knuckles to white. I put my hands under the table.

  “Who told you this?” I asked.

  “Fuck you.”

  “No. Fuck you.”

  We regarded each other over the table. It didn’t matter who the mole was. What mattered was that the life I’d promised Theresa wouldn’t happen.

  “And your wife and child?” Daniel said as if reading my mind. “Once they find out they’re here, she’ll be a target. Never mind the fact that if you’d married Irene, you’d be a bigamist. Let’s focus on this. You’re going to be followed everywhere. You’re going to be in constant danger. Even if I wanted to cut you down, I wouldn’t. All I’d
have to do is step back and watch. Except for Theresa, who’s so upset you’re married, I don’t think she’s absorbed that she’s going to get killed.”

  “You told her? That’s for me—”

  “Do you even know her? Do you even know what you made her? She doesn’t hear the word ‘no.’ I told her to stay in the hall, but she was in the room before I could close the door.”

  He jerked his finger at a wood panel on the wall. I hadn’t given it a second look until that moment, but when I trained my eye directly on it, I saw the translucence. Theresa had seen the whole thing. I tried to piece together my reaction to Valentina. Had I kissed her? Held her? Spoken a tender word in English?

  “The safest thing to do would be to keep you here,” he said. “But I can’t. I don’t have enough on you.” He stood. “And you need to protect Theresa, because I can’t do that either. I’ve tried, and I have no resources. Not like I did before the wedding.”

  The facts were damning. If I hadn’t made that last unnecessary volley against him, he’d have the power to protect the woman we both loved. The result of my vengeance was vulnerability.

  Daniel opened the door. “I’m sorry to say, you’re free to go.”

  “And Valentina?”

  “She’ll be in touch.”

  twelve.

  theresa

  finally left Daniel’s office drained, wrung out, a shell of hard skin around an empty core. I’d have to get to the hospital in a cab. That was all I had to do. That was what I’d come back for. After seeing Jonathan, I could let my world crumble. I could make decisions, run, stay, thrive, die. But this thing with my brother had to be done first.

  I felt pressure on my elbow, then at the base of my spine, and lost control of my direction and will just as I caught the scent of burned pine. I couldn’t spin around to face him until the door was shut and he was pushing me against the wall of an empty room.

  “Antonio,” I said firmly, “stop it.”

  “Stop what?” A lock of his hair dropped in front of his eye, and his lips parted with the tick of the last T. “You can’t leave without me.”

  I pressed my hands to his chest and pushed him away, but I couldn’t move him. “I know.” I paused to see if he could tell what I meant. “About Valentina.” I watched the flick in his eyes as they moved across my face, looking for my feelings on the subject. Feelings I was desperate to hide. “I’m happy for you.”