by CD Reiss
“What do you think, boss?” Gennaro says.
Carmine throws his dart.
I sit on the edge of the pool table and pull out my gun to give it a nice polish. I fantasize about blowing holes in every motherfucker in a fifty-mile radius, but know I won’t.
“What do I think?” I ask, but it’s more of a quiz than a question. I know what I think. “Where the fuck is Roman?”
“Got a whore in Green Springs,” Carmine offers. “Won’t say who.”
Green Springs is a good place to do a job. Two towns over, it’s a clean, white-bread American town, except for one family.
“So, we were thinking—” Vito pops up off the couch as if he’s spring-loaded.
“No, you weren’t.” I push him back down. “I think someone tried to hit my wife to get to me, and I want to know how they knew where she was.”
“Wasn’t Gia with you?” Vito asks. “Maybe she—”
I cut him off with a glare.
“Tavie knew where to pick her up,” Gennaro offers up Gia’s brother’s life.
“Look at you all,” I say. “Fucking detectives. Any one of you coulda told them, but none of you’s wondering who was told, eh? You think Arturo and Benny drove up and grabbed her on their own? To what? Get one over on Franco? Huh?”
“Maybe?” Carmine said.
“No!” I bark in Carmine’s face. “They’re too fucking stupid.” I jab my finger to his temple, and he cringes but doesn’t move. “You think this is Franco Tabona, Carmine?”
“Yeah, who else?”
“He’s a hundred fucking years old. One foot in the grave, too sadistic to hand down succession. He lets them kill each other for position. Now say it, Carmine. Who? Enzo? Lucio? Maybe Nicolino?”
“All of them?” He winces as he says it, and I’m about to slap some sense into him when Gennaro’s voice comes from behind me.
“A free agent.”
“Ah.” I tap Carmine’s cheek and turn. “Right.”
“None of the Tabona guys are gonna risk a war while Franco’s alive,” Gennaro continues. “But they’re so weak at the top, a free agent could hire a few hard-up guys for one job, so long as they don’t really know who the job hits.”
“Because no one’s gonna hit Santino’s wife,” Vito adds as if he’s finally seeing the light. “And no one’s really seen her but a few of us so…” He indicates me as if I’m the one who hired guys to pull my wife into a car and he’s just throwing ideas out there.
I lean on the desk and cross my arms, knowing damn well why Franco hasn’t set a line of succession. Men raised in America are too stupid to do the job. They were raised to be butchers, not surgeons.
“So?” I say. “So I did it?”
“Nah, nah.” Gennaro waves the idea away.
“I’m just saying she coulda been bait?” Vito’s looking from Gennaro to Carmine, getting less confident with each glance.
Choosing speed over power, I don’t wind up to punch Vito’s face. A quick jab puts him on his knees, hands covering a bloody nose.
“Ah, I’m sorry!”
I push him over and step on his throat, leaning enough to hurt him. I don’t want to kill him.
No, I do want to kill him, but the man controls the emotions, the emotions do not control the man.
“I’m saying this one time,” I say to him for the sake of everyone in the room. “She is my wife. I protect her. You protect her. If anything happens to her, I will kill everybody between me and the devil himself. Capito?”
Vito tries to nod, but my foot’s in the way. He’s turning red because thinking about her getting hurt while he’s under my shoe has unleashed my white-hot rage—the insatiable demon who never leaves my side. The need to bring revenge to whoever tried to take her is one of the purest things I’ve ever felt, and I know from experience that I cannot act on what I cannot control.
“You are here to listen from now on,” I say to Vito. “You will be silent. You will not speak a word in my presence until I release you. Do you understand?”
His chin’s pointing up, and the blood’s dripping into his ear as he gurgles, trying to nod against the toe of my shoe.
“Not a word, Vito. I will gut you and bury you so deep you won’t need to walk to the road to hell.”
He gurgles. I haven’t broken his nose, but the blood’s going back into his throat. I will destroy whoever set Violetta up, but it wasn’t Vito.
I take my foot away and wipe the blood from my sole on his shirt, indicating to Gennaro that he can help Vito up. He and Carmine do the job.
“I’m sor—” Vito starts, but Gennaro slaps him.
“Stai zitto already,” Carmine says, tossing Vito a hankie. “No words, eh?”
Good, they got it.
“So?” I say, walking around my desk. “You stronzi would have hit the laundry.”
“We was just talking,” Carmine says.
“About bringing this town to chaos and war? Splitting it in two so…what? We make everyone take sides. The shop owners, the schoolkids, the fucking hipsters moving in from the college? And then in the chaos? What? We’re spread thin.”
And they take her. Pluck her up like a hawk. Whoever “they” are, there would be more of them, and she’d be easier to seize in the chaos, but I can’t tell them that she’s more than my wife. They can’t know she’s the priority of not just my house, but my heart. Once I show them that truth, I’m vulnerable.
There’s a knock at the door.
“Si!” I call out.
Gia pokes her head in. “Rom—”
Roman bursts in with a little paper bag in his hand and a shit-eating grin on his face. I nod to Gia and she closes the door behind her.
“Where the fuck have you been?” I ask, keeping my voice level and calm, but something about his whore in Green Springs is bugging me.
“I got the rings, boss. Had to go to all different engravers, just like you asked, and…” He stops when he notices Vito’s bloody face, then turns back to me with the grin wiped off. “That ain’t easy, finding guys who won’t talk. They’re industrial engravers instead of jewelers so no one’s gonna think to ask. The guy in Wallings took twenty-four hours because he’s a dumbfuck, but the guy in Green Springs only took an hour this morning.”
Green Springs. Of course.
“Sorry I couldn’t check the work.” He hands me the bag. “If they’re wrong, I’ll take ‘em back. Rough ‘em up too.”
I take the box from the paper bag and flip it open. Three rings shine at me. On the right, a thick one sized for my finger. On the left, Violetta’s diamond set.
When I married Violetta, these rings were already heavy with meaning, but now they carry a weight I’ll never describe to these sorry excuses for men.
“Did you tell anyone what you were doing?” I ask, plucking out my ring and checking the new engraving before putting it on my finger.
“Not a soul,” Roman swears. Is that sweat on his brow? It certainly is.
“No one? Not a soul?”
“Not one, Re.”
“Tell me, Roman.” I take extra care to examine Violetta’s rings. “Where did you go while you were waiting an hour in Green Springs?”
Roman shrugs and looks away.
The room’s gone quiet. The other men won’t look at Roman. Maybe they weren’t supposed to tell me about his tricky whore, or maybe they just know how much I don’t like lies.
“You know who lives in Green Springs?” I ask, and answer before they have a chance to. “Theresa Rubino.”
“So?” Roman still won’t look at me. I can smell his guilt like a dog smells a bitch in heat.
“Theresa Rubino is Damiano Orolio’s niece.” I approach Roman, who looks at his feet. Damiano was a Cavallo on the other side, but now? There’s no way to know. “Acting like a big shot get you laid, Romey?”
“I ain’t a big shot.”
“Is that what you told Theresa?” I put my hand on the back of the young man’s neck an
d squeeze my thumb and middle finger into him. I know it hurts, but to his credit, he barely flinches. “Told her all about how much I trusted you, how you were running a top-secret mission.”
“It’s not like that, I swear.”
Still gripping his neck, I whisper in his ear, “I bet your dick smells like Theresa Rubino.” He’s white as the Pope’s cassock. “What if I get Vito here to take a whiff? Bet he can smell her cunt through a busted nose.”
I shake him a little. His eyes flick back and forth, looking for an exit or help from his buddies. He will find neither.
“Did you tell her what you were up to?”
“I didn’t tell her nothing.”
“Except.” I say it as if I know exactly what he said and I’m giving him an opportunity to come clean. It’s the same technique the police use, and I learned it from them in Italy.
“Don’t everybody get their wedding rings engraved?” he says.
I press my forehead to his as if I feel a tender affection for him, which I do and don’t.
“I can smell her cunt on your breath,” I say. “Did you mention you had a little extra time because your boss was out shopping with his wife?”
He says nothing. I grip him with my right hand and pull out the gun at my waist with my left, clicking the safety.
“Do you know what you did?” I ask evenly as the rage fills me. I am a ball of fire, burning my control from the inside out, but I am still and calm inside it, because once I give up trying to control it, the anger is my friend.
“Nothing,” he squeaks, tears forming. “Just got a little action.”
“Open your mouth, Roman. Let’s get the pussy stink out of it.”
I feel the other guys in the room stiffen. They know I can shoot him, and I might, but I also might not. Roman knows the same. He knows that if he does as he’s told, he may live, but if he doesn’t, he’s finished.
So he crushes his eyes shut and opens his mouth.
“You killed my wife.” I slide the gun along his tongue. “Maybe not today, but the day they finally murder her is the day you pulled the trigger. Should I save you the guilt?”
Roman ahhs as if he’s at the dentist.
“Padre nostro,” I start the Lord’s prayer. “Che sei nei cieli.”
He whimpers the rhythm, and when I’m sure he’s deep in prayer, with a chance to defend his life before God Carmine’s practically holding Vito up, and Gennaro’s looking at Roman praying around the gun in his mouth, calculating how much dirt he’s going to have to move to bury him.
I don’t kill him. Not today. I take the gun out and hit Roman with it. He drops, holding the blood running from his head, crying. I kneel next to him and hand him a handkerchief.
He sways, pressing the cloth to his head. I steady him by the shoulder.
“I brought you here to learn,” I say. “And you did. America taught you how to watch a big televisions and follow your dick around.”
“I didn’t say nothing I swear.”
“You don’t have to.” I squeeze his shoulder. “You should know that. Because you know what I’d do? I’d follow the smell of Theresa Rubino’s cunt coming off your dick.”
“I wasn’t followed. You gotta believe me.”
I stand over him.
“You’re going back to the other side.”
“No!” he shouts, pleading, then crouches under the headache it gives him.
Maybe I put his brain back where it belongs.
“Put him on a plane tomorrow night,” I say, making eye contact with each of my men. “And I don’t want to hear any of you make plans without me again.”
“Please,” Roman sobs. “Don’t send me back.”
I pat him on the shoulder and leave him there.
20
VIOLETTA
I smell tobacco. It rouses me, almost, from a dream, one in which I remember nothing but fear, and somehow I know it’s him immediately. The dream shifts. It feels as if I’m on a boat, swaying softly to this beautiful tongue. He’s speaking in Italian, I know his voice, but I hear the words in English.
“I promise on my life, nothing will ever happen to you.”
Back and forth, so gently.
“You will never be hurt.”
Caresses on my cheek lull me deeper.
“You will never cry.”
I’m inhaling his scent and his words and disappearing into a beautiful black.
“The streets will be covered with blood before another drop of yours spills.”
A hand runs up my leg, under the nightgown Loretta loaned me. In the blackness, I turn to flame. His fingers tease the edge of the underwear. His other hand moves to the scratches on my calves where one of the guys grabbed me, and the deeper wounds where the glass cut me on the way out.
I roll over with a moan, still drowning in euphoric darkness, where I don’t have or want the strength to say no. He can fuck me now and I won’t have to resist out of anger or hate, or tell myself he’s no more than a kidnapper taking what he wants.
All I have to do is stay in this half-sleep and surrender completely.
Yes. I want that more than anything. I can feel the whole shape of him without even seeing him. Both of his hands join between my legs, thumbs slipping under the edges of the underwear, prying me open and finding me soaking wet.
My entire body throbs, and with a gasp of disappointment, I awaken.
“Forzetta,” his voice rumbles against my cheek as his hands slide away. “It’s time to come home.”
He picks me up, cradles me to his chest, and carries me outside. I’m conscious, but still drowsy and limp. The world around me is dark with dots of light from the veranda, then the headlights. I lean my head on his shoulder, inhaling the tobacco and cologne and soap.
“You’ve been smoking.”
“So?”
I bury my face against his shirt. “It’s bad for you.”
His chest rumbles as he scoffs, placing me gently into the back seat of the car, where the dome lamp turns the world under my eyelids into a flat orange. He buckles me in but doesn’t close the door just yet. He takes my hand. Thick metal slides down my ring finger.
“Same as before,” he says, and I open my eyes to see him in all his stern glory. “You are not to take these rings off, ever. Not to bathe. Not to cook. Not unless someone cuts off your finger. Do you understand?”
I nod.
He shuts the door and joins Loretta on the porch. The tightness in my stomach this creates wakes me up more than anything. She hands him a bag I’ve never seen before. Unlike the performance at our arrival, she doesn’t move to hug him or kiss him. Santino looks back at me a time or two while they talk.
He’s eager to get back.
It warms me in syrupy places I’d rather not admit exist. I’d be okay living like this forever. Reality edges back in when I lift my hand to my face and feel the weight of the rings once again. They’re still a sign of bondage, but they’re also a sign of my safety.
He’d break heaven and earth to save me. That gives me a little power, something I can use in the future, or enjoy now.
Power over a man like Santino, who grazed my panties and made my whole world want to erupt, sends a tingle down my spine. His touch was lingering, perfect, not enough. Even the sting of his hands on my wounds felt so good it stirred something deep and desperate in me. Santino could have taken my virginity in that very moment, when I was too weak to resist.
All I can see, as he walks back to the car, is the outline of his statuesque body leaving hers behind for me, and I’m wet all over again.
As he turns to back out, he doesn’t watch the road. He stares at me as if he’s devouring my soul. Phantom fingers stroke my thighs, my calves, steal my breath.
Somehow, he knows. He knows how wet I was and how much wetter I’ve become, and when his fingers curl around the back of the seat, it’s just a reminder of how they felt when they touched me.
He doesn’t say a word as we drive. I wa
nt him to talk to me.
“It was nice of Loretta to take care of me.”
Our eyes meet in the rearview.
“You want to ask me something, Forzetta?”
“Will you answer?”
“Probably not.”
I take a deep breath and make myself look in the rearview. “How long have you been fucking her?”
“That mouth.” Santino shakes his head. Then he meets my eyes again. “Why do you want to know?”
“I want to know how long it’s going to take me to get that bitter over you.”
“She’s not bitter.” He shakes his head at me, but I see a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “And she’s not my wife.”
“Why not? I mean, she’s beautiful. Loyal. You obviously trust her.” More than me.
“Yes. She’s a good woman. But I only have one wife. She knew from day one.”
“So, when was that? Day one?”
Santino shrugs and bobs his head a bit. “Some here, some there, seven years.”
“What?” I gape at him, shaken from my sleepy stupor. “Jesus!”
“I’m going to wash that mouth out with soap.”
“You led her on for seven years? Then you dump your blood-soaked wife in her house?”
“Hey! She was engaged to my cousin Elio for two years of that.”
Unbelievable. “And you broke them up?”
“No.” He goes straight. Not somber, not serious. Stoic. “She loved him. He was killed two years ago. Assassinated.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say, but he waves away my condolences.
“Loretta never recovered.”
I let him distract me from his own pain over his cousin. He doesn’t want it, so my heart wrenches for her. I know what it’s like to have someone you love murdered. I only saw the photo of my dead parents that was plastered all over the Naples’ newspapers for a few seconds, and that was all I needed to never forget it.
My parents lying on the sidewalk, caught in the crossfire of a robbery. Mom was faceup, turned away, Dad was facedown as if kissing the ground. They were in separate pools of blood. My mother’s encircled her head like a halo, with the splatter reaching for my father’s like a desperate hand. My father, facedown, the back of his head blown out where the bullet exited. There were three others, shot dead for the bag of money from the day. I’m sure my father would have emptied it for another chance at life.