29. MAGIC
GIOELE
Silvina claims that the space around us is “chiffon yellow.” It’s the color of the walls, but to me it’s just yellow. A light yellow, a promising yellow, the yellow of our future. A yellow that would never have allowed for her to be marred with bruises in blue, purple, and black.
She lets me touch her. She wants me to touch her. Her body is a map with valleys and mountains, ravaged by disasters it will never see again. Supple to my fingers, she doesn’t wince when I run them along the patch of a black rose over her cheekbone. Her eyes close, dry eyelashes fluttering with emotion.
I needed her safe, away from reality. That’s why we’re here, not in the Vernal Heights apartment, not at her place, not at mine. We’re in a small boutique hotel at the outskirts of San Francisco, hidden away from the disaster I ripped her out of. In this moment, there is no evil, no judgment. It’s just Silvina and me, just air and chiffon yellow and hope.
Fragile, Silvina is bare to me. It’s not the expanse of skin, of legs curved in awkward repose against her pain. It’s not the way her arms don’t hide her body from me. No, it’s in her gaze. How can eyes be wet without floating in tears?
The war isn’t over. The others have returned to L.A., my brother included, leaving Fritz and Bully to keep guard in the lobby. I have work to do too once Silvina is safe in our bubble, sleeping, healing, the pain of broken bones eased by the drugs from the doctor.
I can’t allow my famiglia to suffer the way it has for so long. We’re mafia-born, ignorant allies and victims. We’re forced to take sides and kill in the name of self-preservation.
But for now, it’s just my Silvina and me. Chiffon yellow won over the Milky Way, a permanent change her mind and body shall finally absorb. I’ve got her, and every cell of her needs to recognize this truth. “I will drench you in it,” I hum. “I will soak you until no remnant of what he did to you remains.”
A smattering of Spanish disseminates the news from the TV. It’s a soothing hum while I trace the curved mound of her shoulder. She’s bare. Damp from our shower. I lower my head and run my nose along the bone at an edge of her frame.
“I have his fingerprints on me.” Her voice is so quiet.
“Don’t worry. I’ll erase every one of them. First, I’ll erase all the fingerprints we can’t see. Then, Father Time and I will work together to take away the colors.”
Silvina’s chest rises in a stuttered inhale. The fruity scent of the shower gel I washed her with softens the air around us. It makes my mouth water with the impulse to taste her.
“Here’s one,” I whisper, letting my kiss touch a red-streaked trench on her lip. “It’s magic, sai, Ina mia? I can erase each fingerprint like this.”
“You’ve become a magician, now?” She can still joke. There’s a flutter of lightness in those wet, wet eyes.
“Oh, no. I don’t have the magic. It just comes to me. Like your mother’s Moonflowers that blossom only after dark, this special kind of magic appears when a man loves a woman so much that nothing else matters.”
“And you’re that man?”
My girl, is she flirting? Hurt and rattled to her bones, she’s so frail. But she still broadcasts this other weakness, our weakness, a good weakness that promises chiffon yellow and futures. For years, I’ve only seen it in glimpses. I’ve only drunk of it for precious hours when her guard has been down. She’s weak for me. Me! And she isn’t trying to hide it.
“Yes, I’m the man who loves a woman so hard it hurtles past the borders of reality. Love conjures magic, see? And all I need to do is this.” I kiss the scrape between her nose and the miniature dip of her upper lip. I stare at it with purpose and make sure to change my gaze from concentrated to satisfied. “There we go. It’s just the scratch left. His touch is gone, and I’ve covered it with my love for you.”
“Smettila.” She rolls her eyes while she tells me to stop it. “I think you’re rehearsing for an Italian soap.”
My face breaks open in a smile, and it feels good. “So why are you tearing up? I never knew you were into Italian soap actors.”
Quiet laughter whiffs from my Silvina. Her chest rocks with the movement, and it makes her face contract with pain.
“Careful,” I say while my smile falters. “It’ll take me a bit longer to fix seven broken ribs, but you sure as fuck won’t have a single one of his fingerprints left on them once I’m done. Lay still.”
I kiss along the ridge of her stomach, starting at the slope between her breasts. Cautiously, I follow each rib to the far side beneath her arms. I take my time, covering every inch of her torso with my lips. Small sighs escape her. Soon, they quiet, and each muscle I trail over relaxes.
“See?” I whisper later, once the night is blue and her eyes are closed. “Love is magic. You should’ve believed me from the start.”
She stirs again with the knock on the door. Quietly, I walk to it and see Bully through the peephole. I frown. Open anyway. Let him in with a quick look at my girl. No other man should be in here while she’s broken and warm in our bed.
“What do you want?” I ask.
“Oh. Just… I heard back from the band.” Ill at ease, he shifts on his feet.
“The what?” I’m not on his wavelength right now.
“The band. You know, Luke Craven.” His eyebrows lift while he waits for realization to dawn. “Tomorrow is Sunday, and tonight’s the deadline if we want to be on their guest list. I was thinking that maybe— Maybe.” He clears his throat, eyes sliding from me to Silvina and back.
“You were thinking she would be my plus one? That Silvina would really love to see a concert tomorrow?” This shouldn’t upset me. A second ago, I was reverent, looking at her, seeing how she’d survived, how she was back in my arms. And yet now I’m finding the universe unfair. Because Silvina, dancing, enjoying Night Shifts Black would’ve been incredible.
“No, of course not. Bad idea, man. I don’t know.”
“Gioele?” Her voice is silk-paper thin.
“Yes, baby? Don’t worry. Go back to sleep. I’ll be right there. Bully was about to leave anyway.” The last part I growl at him through my teeth.
“Go for us. Okay, Bully?” she breathes. “Take lots of pictures.”
“Oh?” Happy surprise brims in his voice before he reins himself back in. “No, we can’t do that. We’ll be here with you. You need us around.”
“We’ll be fine. You heard Isaias. S.F. is clean of Santa Colombini,” she sighs out.
The dim room can’t quell the hope in Bully’s eyes. I narrow mine, growling again. “You come here in the middle of the night, checking out my girl, and then you’re getting a free pass from work too? I thought you were on the clock for Isaias!”
“Gioele… Sweetheart?”
Sweetheart.
“Yes, Ina mia.”
“Please. I’m too tired to fight. Let them.”
“Sure, baby.” I turn abruptly and glare at him. Then, I whisper so low I’m sure she can’t hear me. “You heard Silvina. Go have fun. Do the whole backstage thing with our favorite band. No worries. Some other time, ya know.”
The hours and days after Silvina disappeared were nerves buzzing with no lull in sight. I was vibrant. I was frayed. I prayed for what I have tonight.
Tonight, I watch her sleep with a violet elbow bent over the unharmed part of her face. Battle-ravaged but whole, her chest rises and sinks beneath the sheets, and the sight gives me the courage to do what no one else will: cross famiglia and breach diamond-hard loyalty for the safety of the rest.
“Hello?”
“Gioele, hi. Everything okay?”
“Yeah. My brother told me why you weren’t here.”
“At the bust?”
“Yes.”
“I see. What does this mean? Do you want to testify?”
I allow myself a twist of the head, a slide of my eyes to the reason for every fight I’ve started since I was little. Silvina’s eyelids quiver. I hope I’m protecting her in there, making sure nothing happens behind her thin veil of sleep. Sweet dreams, Ina mia, while I fix the reality we were raised in.
“I do,” I reply to the buzz from the phone. “Yes, I do.”
The Spanish news channel still churns at the foot of our bed, inseminating the room with static light. It’s what my girl wanted: harmless disquiet with the power to stir the aftereffects of John’s world.
As an FBI agent, Tatiana is in the middle of the most successful mafia raid in West Coast history. Even so, she pauses her engagement for me to ask, “Are you sure? I can get you subpoenaed. It’ll look better for your family.”
“I’m sure. And for the record, your fiancé should go voluntarily too.”