A lock of hair fell over his forehead, swaying with the rhythm. I had one leg over his shoulder, one arm around his neck, his knees using the plush of the mattress as leverage as he drove into me so hard his body rubbed my clit.
“Deeper,” I cried, clutching the hair on his chest. “Fuck me so deep.”
“Take it. Take it all.”
He found another millimeter and I rubbed against him, exploding, arching away as he pulled me into him. He took my hair in his fist and pulled my face into his so I could see him come inside me, all gritted teeth and power, not just coming but conquering.
Then our joints and bones melted into each other, and he settled behind me with his chest to my back, fitting together in a matched pattern.
“I love you, Capo,” I said when I finally had the breath to speak. “Ti amo, ti amo.”
“Your accent, Contessa…”
I laughed and tried to wiggle away, but he held me.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Today. I’m sorry I pulled you away from the house.”
“It’s all right. I understand.” I didn’t need to ask him any questions, I just needed to give him space to speak. He rolled onto his back and I tucked my head in the crook of his arm.
“They were the caretaker’s children,” he said.
“Ah.”
“Fuck.” He rubbed his eyes and drew his hand down his face. “Their parents hid them in the basement.” Hard swallow. “They only heard the gunshots. Nevio almost suffocated Simona trying to keep her quiet. Made her unconscious. He thought he killed her.”
“How old were they?”
“She was five. He was eleven.” He turned his head to look me in the eye. “A year ago.”
It was my turn to create the long pause. I didn’t know what to be sad about. The fact that they’d been on their own for a year, or the fact that their parents were assassinated when Antonio and I were married.
My husband saved me a response. “They were in the front yard. The parents. I don’t even know their names. The children dragged them into the orchard and buried them. It took a week, he said. They were so little.”
“And they were too scared to leave.”
“Si. I need a cigarette.”
He tried to get up but I pushed him down.
“Capo,” I said. “No. Don’t run away. Talk to me.”
He dropped back down, surrendering for once.
“It was the Carlonis. Donna Maria’s son, Luca. What they did? Payment for marrying you. Revenge for rejecting their daughter. I will not let that go.”
I turned and straddled him, pushing his shoulders to the mattress. Physically, I couldn’t hold him down. He was stronger and more vicious than I’d ever be, but the fact that he hadn’t already left me in the hotel so he could run off and shoot Luca Carloni told me he wasn’t past sense.
“No vengeance.”
“It’s not revenge. It’s justice.”
“It’s a cycle.”
“This will hang over us for the rest of our lives,” I said. “Is that what you want?”
“If you do what I know you’re thinking, we’re going to spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders. No, Antonio. No. I won’t. Not until they come for us, and they won’t.”
“Those kids—”
“Are alive. And if you kill Luca Carloni? You’re putting them right in the middle of a pattern that almost ruined your life. Is that what you want? To fuck them up too?”
He cupped my face in his hands. “I can’t let it go.”
“Don’t let it go, but don’t kill. Please.” I took his wrist and kissed his palm, speaking into it like a prayer. “No more.”
I laid on top of him, feeling his heart beat against mine. I thought I’d convinced him. But I’d have to win this battle over and over. Revenge was a habit only death could break.
“I have to go talk to some people,” he said.
“Antonio. No.”
He pushed me off him and stood by the bed.
“If I don’t, and we get through to the agency…they’re corrupt. It’s all corrupt. The kids will be targets. That what you want?”
“Of course not.”
“Then trust me.” He plucked his clothes out of his bag. Clean clothes, as if he had to dress for the following day.
“Oh, like hell.”
“After everything, you can’t believe me?”
I kneeled straight on the bed, legs apart not to offer myself, but to stand my ground.
“I believe you now, but once you get around those people—”
“I’m not so weak.” Hotel key. Wallet. Switchblade. He couldn’t get a gun on the plane, thank God.
“You’d better be back here in time to see Nella and your mother, and without blood on your hands.” I sounded hysterical. I’d run a criminal enterprise for a year and a half, and I was acting like a powerless mafia wife. That wouldn’t do. I wouldn’t kneel, and I wouldn’t agree with his decisions out of deference.
“They know I’m here, and they are not evolved. They still live in vengeance. If they know the children are there they may come for them.”
“They may not.”
He stood over me fully dressed and put his thumb on my chin.
“There will be no blood on my hands,” he said, stepping back to button his jacket with hands already stained red with violence.
I stood between him and the door with my arms crossed under my breasts.
“That means you don’t dirty someone else either. Not for money or favors. Do you hear?” That was my capo voice. That was the voice I used with his foot soldiers. It didn’t threaten consequences. It promised them. “I can’t stop you from leaving, and I won’t.”
He got close to me. He didn’t try to go around me to the door, but gazed down at me and waited for me to move.
“I trust you,” I said.
“Besides your love, your trust is the most valuable thing I have.”
“Then don’t break it, or you’ll break both.”
He nodded in understanding, then jerked his chin over my shoulder, indicating the door.
I opened it, standing behind it so I wouldn’t expose my naked body to the hallway.
“Be safe, Antonio.”
“I am safe. You stay here. Don’t leave this room.”
He leaned on the jamb and lightly pressed his lips to mine. He didn’t linger. He didn’t make more of the kiss than he had to.
This wasn’t a final goodbye.
I closed the door and got dressed.
MONICA
Theresa drove our rental. Even in the middle of the night, she knew where she was going. She spoke enough Italian to read road signs and—bottom line—I wasn’t confident staying to the left.
Also, she was just too badass to be driven around.
My hands were shaking too hard to drive anyway. Jonathan would kill me if he found out I’d lied to him, and by “kill me” I meant “be very, justifiably too angry to punish me the way I liked.”
“We’ll be back before he even notices you were gone,” she said, turning onto a side road. The groceries in the back seat shifted. Gabby’s nanny, Martha had picked them up after we’d gotten out of dinner and kept them in the room across the hall.
“He sleeps like, nil,” I said. “So we have to be quick.”
“We will.” The dashboard lights made the contours of her face bluish green, blackening the red of her hair. She looked so much like Jonathan I couldn’t help but love her.
“Was Antonio sleeping when you left?”
She let out a sardonic laugh. “Fucking men.”
“Wait, was he awake? Does he know?”
“No. He went off to see some friends.”
She glanced at me sharply, then back to the dark road.
“Friends? Okay.”
She didn’t say more, so I didn’t ask. Theresa’s life was left to the imagination. In the years I’d known her, she’d focused on running the Temecula olive orchard, while I focused on Jonathan’s transplant and my career. But the family whispered, about Antonio’s business and Theresa’s acuity in running them. I never got to the bottom of what the business was, exactly.
We came to a gate, and she stopped.
“Shit,” she muttered.
The gate was open, and a metal chain hung on a rung with a padlock on the end.
“What?”
“Antonio locked that today.”
She twisted around to see behind her, and backed the car up, pulling off the road and stopping behind a copse of trees. The engine cut and we were in the dark.