“You’re welcome,” I replied, kneeling in front of her. “I want to give you an option, because you’re a grown woman, and I know you won’t take it because you love me.” I’d intended to pull up her pants, but I stroked her legs because they were supple and perfect and meant for my hands. “But if you need to go, ever, then I will let you go.” I slipped up her pants. “Even right now, if you need to walk out, I won’t stop you. When we’re in the middle of the storm, if you need to leave, I won’t think less of you. Because there is going to be a storm, my love. I think you can handle it. I do. But if you can’t, don’t even say good-bye. Just turn your back and go.”
I meant all of it, and I didn’t. If she left, I’d be half a man. No plan I made would ever work without her. But I had to give her the option as much as I needed to hear her say she’d leave if she had to. I needed her full consent.
She didn’t say anything at first. She let me fasten her pants and straighten her clothes. She let me put myself back together and button up. Then she answered.
“If I can’t hack it, I’ll walk,” she said. “As an act of loyalty, I’ll turn my back on you.”
“Is this your wise mouth? It doesn’t sound like it, but I need to be clear. I am going to make a deal with the Carlonis. Zo has proven it can be done. But I’m not him. I pose a bigger threat, and I have more to lose. It may go south.”
“No sarcasm. I mean it. It’s a promise between us.”
I believed her, and in doing that, I was free to make any decision I needed to in order to save us. I opened the door feeling like a whole man.
thirty.
theresa
s we strode out to the dining room, I decided I meant it. If things got too hot to handle, I’d walk because he wanted me to. I’d walk because it was the best way to prove I was loyal. I’d leave him behind if that gave him comfort. I’d do it because he didn’t try to force me. Didn’t pigeonhole me. Gave me the choice to do it or not based on what I thought, felt, knew, and expected. He didn’t try to think for me.
When we got out to the front room, the trouble was obvious. A brick lay inside a spray of broken glass. Zia was screaming at Zo, who was trying to soothe her. A man with a broom waited at the edge of the spray to sweep it up, and the waitstaff set up the room as if the broken window was no more than an obstacle to a final goal.
Otto had gone outside to look down the block with his hand on his waistband. He came back in looking sheepish. “Missed them.”
The brick hadn’t been touched. They were more worried about the person who threw it, which made sense. But there was a rubber band around it, and that couldn’t have been a mistake.
Zia turned her attention to her nephew and rattled off what must have been a litany of southern Italian cusses. I thought he apologized, but after only a few words, she threw up her hands and stormed to the kitchen, giving the guy with the broom the go-ahead.
Antonio hoisted the brick, tossing it up a few inches and catching it. The blue rubber band that looked like it had been taken from a head of broccoli held a piece of paper to the weight. He tossed the brick up and down until he had the attention of everyone in the room.
Otto lit a cigarette. Zo leaned on the booth and crossed his arms.
“Come on,” Zo said, flapping his hand. “Presto.”
Antonio took the paper from the rubber band. I took the brick so he could unfold the note. He let me look over his shoulder, and though that meant a lot to me, and seemed symbolic of a real trust between us, it was useless. The short handwritten note was in Italian. He pressed his lips together, and his face tightened. He was angry. He wanted to vault into action. I knew him at least that well. But he kept it together long enough to read it out loud.
“Shit,” Zo said.
Antonio glanced at me. “The Carlonis. They say they’re going after Valentina.”
“No deal then,” Zo mumbled.
“No deal.” The note disappeared into Antonio’s white-knuckled fist.
“Daniel,” I said. “She left with Daniel.”
thirty-one.
theresa
is look went from red hot to ice cold in the time it took for him to pull me to the kitchen. No words were transmitted between us. We weren’t telepathic. No. We were something deeper.
“What?”
His tongue flicked over his bottom lip. Almost a nervous tic. The first one I’d ever seen on him.
“I can’t,” he said as if he’d made a full statement.
“Can’t what?”
He ran his fingers through his hair. “They could hurt her. Or kill her.”
“What do you want to do?”
He didn’t say anything.