“It’s the only way to get around Capri.”
He went around to the left side and slid in, buckled in, and put his headphones on as if he knew what he was doing. I put on mine. He reached over to my headset and snapped the broadcast function off.
“If you kill us, that’s fine,” I said. “Do not kill anyone else.”
He turned to me and raised an eyebrow before pulling the helicopter off the roof. The bottom dropped out of my gut, and I gripped the edge of my seat.
“I think the word in English is ‘ironic,’” he said once we were airborne. “You don’t want to kill anyone by accident?”
“You want to discuss this now?”
“Yes.”
I lost my train of thought when he swerved east and my stomach twisted.
“I can drive anything,” he said. “They all work the same. This just has forward and backward plus up and down.” He dipped again, high over Hollywood. “Like this.”
We swerved across Wilshire, north toward the hills and the Observatory.
He leveled it and took out a pack of cigarettes. He offered me one and I refused. He bit the end of one and slid it out.
“I hope Domenico’s dead,” he said, clicking open his lighter as if he wasn’t flying a helicopter at the same time. “I told you once, I’ll kill anyone who touches you.”
He was dead serious, almost bored. As if stating the date a war ended or began. As if vengeance was no more than a mathematical equation that needed to be solved. And it was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen. Almost as sexy as the knowledge that I’d kill for him with the same seriousness.
“Capo,” I said to get his attention.
He shifted his attention while keeping the helicopter at a steady level.
“I don’t know who I am with you, but I like me better now than I ever have. I’m scared. And elated. But the wife. Your wife—”
“Stop. We are not discussing her.”
“We have to,” I said.
We crossed the twisting thread of the LA River, which actually had water in it from the recent rains.
“You are my life. It doesn’t matter what I am, or what I’ve done, as long as you’re mine. Nothing in the past matters. There is you, and nothing else.” He didn’t look at me but kept his eyes on his work. A cluster of taller buildings appeared ahead, and he headed for them. “My one job,” he said, holding up a finger, “is to make sure you know how to protect yourself when they finally kill me.”
“Stop it.”
“It’s very clear to me. Do you know why I didn’t confess to doing Paulie? Because if they send me to jail, I can’t protect you. And yes, I have to protect Valentina too, because I made a promise to her. But it’s not the same. Do not make the mistake of thinking it’s the same.”
He looked at me, a world of confidence and confusion churning in his eyes. Both and neither. I read him like a book and understood that he knew what he had to do, even if he didn’t like or understand it.
I wasn’t as sure. I didn’t know what I had to do. I wasn’t as confident that I could keep him alive or as comfortable with the moral ambiguity of the past week.
I gripped the seat on our descent, but he landed the helicopter smoothly.
He winked at me. “Easier than the beach.”
“You’ll have to tell me how you managed this,” I said.
“I’m surprised you don’t know already.” He snapped off his headset. I unbuckled as he got out and crossed the front of the craft to my side.
“I’d just like a straight answer,” I said.
He held out his hand, and I took it. “You come from a very powerful family, Contessa. They are no less organized than mine.”
I should have been insulted. Shocked. Confused and curious. But I wasn’t. I was frozen in place as I remembered everything I knew and had been told. My father’s way of moving mountains to get what he wanted. Margie’s way of making things happen with a phone call. The way people who hurt us wound up ruined or dead.
Was I made for Antonio by dint of my genetics?