Her jaw jutted out, but she stepped on the upside-down bath mat. “You old world guys… you think it’s fine to have a wife and fuck a mistress. Don’t think I haven’t been on the other side.” She held up her hand. “And before you even speak, I know this situation is different.” She dried herself off, apparently unaware of what her naked body did to me. “It’s crazy. Your dead wife shows up because she thinks you’re dead. There’s no precedent for this, I know. And its irony isn’t lost on me. But you’re not seeing this situation for what it is because you figure you can keep on sleeping with me while you figure out what the whole ‘Valentina and a son’ thing means. Well, I don’t figure it that way.”
She poked her feet through her pants, and I watched her beautiful legs disappear into the fabric. My balls ached. My thoughts were disorganized. All I could think about was getting inside her, like an adolescent.
“The way I figure it,” she continued, wrestling on her shirt, “you just had a priority shift, and you have to shift back to your wife.” Her head stretched through the neck of the shirt, and her red hair left wet splotches on it. “You belong with her. You speak the same language. Same country. Same community. Your dream to go back to Naples and live in peace? You can’t have it with me. You’ll never have it with me.”
She tried to open the door to end the conversation but couldn’t. She pushed, but I’d wedged it closed very effectively. She yanked the door back and forth. “Damn it, Antonio!” She smacked the door so hard she had to cradle her aching hand.
I took her injured hand and turned her back to the door. She had defiance in her face, and I wanted to wipe it away with a fuck so hard we’d both break.
“You listen to me,” I said, getting close to her and putting up my finger so she knew I meant what I said. “I want what I love, and I love what I want. What I want is you. You came to me as a lady and now you are a queen. I’ve never met a woman like you. I don’t even deserve you, but I have you. And having you, I’m not giving you up. Not for an old promise I made when I was a boy. Not for a place that rejects me. Not for a family that won’t have you. Your world is my world. Our world.”
“You have a child.”
Her eyes blazed, and her words were the end to a story. She was right. I had a son who was a stranger. I would never shirk my responsibility to him, but I needed a minute’s peace to get my head around what that meant.
“I’ll take care of him. Don’t worry. That’s outside all this.”
She shook her head slowly. “It’s not enough.”
“I don’t have anything else.”
“I love you. But I won’t share you.”
“I’m not asking you to share.”
“In the eyes of God?”
I pushed myself away from her. “You choose your sins like a woman.”
“I’ll kill for you again, because I love you still. I’ll kill for you a hundred times. But I’m not touching you. Not like a lover.”
I saw white hot. Did she think she was going to walk away from me? She was wrong.
“No other man will lay his hands on you as long as you live.”
She looked as if I’d slapped her, and I had a moment of regret. I’d only spoken the truth, but maybe I spoke it too soon. Or too hard.
“Capo,” she said softly, “there will never be another. I’m ruined.”
She blinked, and a tear fell. Then another. I wanted to kill the man who’d hurt her.
seventeen.
theresa
d made every effort to keep Valentina in a little compartment in my head. To stick her in a box, mark it “LATER,” and keep it on the shelf. But when Antonio tried to fuck me in the safe house, the box rattled off the shelf and fell to the floor, breaking apart in a spray of unwanted news.
He is taken.
He has a son.
He will never be happy with you.
He made a promise.
There was more, some more hurtful than others. Some had a comma and the phrase “and you love him,” following, as if to drive home the point that not only was all this true, all this mattered. In the bathroom, I stabbed myself with those phrases and tried to wash them from me in the shower.
I knew he loved me. There was simply no question. I’d never been loved the way he loved me. With him, I felt important and whole. Without him, I was a piece of a person.
How pathetic. How old world.