Chapter Twenty-Seven
Our final shoot had been in the West Valley, a straight shot down the 101. The freeway was relatively empty, and I went into auto pilot, listening to the news that the shootings and violence were unrelated, random. A southside gang shooting had hit the wrong man. A shooting during a robbery attempt. A beating in Griffith Park.
“The lady doth protest too much,” I mumbled.
A Lexus cut me off as I was complaining to myself. I slammed the brakes, screeching and swerving as adrenaline dumped into my bloodstream. The Club slid out from under the passenger seat.
“Fuck!”
The Lexus picked up speed, and I did too. I was filled with a blinding hot anger. The Lexus swerved around, and I saw the man in driver seat. Young. Goatee. Flashing me his middle finger. He sped ahead, and I had no choice whatsoever.
I chased the car. I had no idea what I would do when I caught it, but I would catch it. It sped up even as it pulled off without a blinker. I rode his ass in my little blue car. Twenty-four, then twelve inches away at eighty. I was insane, not thinking like Theresa.
He didn’t know who was in my car. I could have been a gangbanger, and he ran. Oh, if I caught him, what would I do… Choke. Kill. I couldn’t imagine it any more than I could control it.
We landed on Mulholland, the most dangerous, twisted street to speed down, but we did. He would get an ass full of vintage BMW if he slammed to a stop, and I didn’t know how to care. The Lexus turned so fast I almost missed it. We stopped on a private street with only our headlights illuminating the trees on either side of the road.
A bloated bag of unreleased rage, I grabbed the Club from the floor and got out of the car. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I yelled from deep in my diaphragm.
His driver side door opened. I didn’t have time to hope there was only one of them. I swung the Club at the nearest taillight.
Smash.
That felt good. I went for the brake light.
“What the fuck?” shouted Goatee.
As the light smashed, I recognized him from Zia’s. He’d been in a booth. I went at him with the Club, and he stepped back.
“Lady, you’re fucking crazy.”
He reached into his jacket just as the street flooded with light. Cars. I felt caught in the act and rescued at the same time. Goatee got his hand out of his jacket. He had a gun in it, but instead of shooting me, he shot at the cars pulling up behind me. A ping and a clunk. Another shot, and Goatee spun, screaming and clutching his bloody hand. His gun had been shot out of it.
Three car doors slammed behind me. I couldn’t see the three men due to the backlighting, but I recognized the shape of a Maserati.
“Bruno, you dumb shit.” It was Paulie.
When I felt strong hands on me, pulling on the Club, I knew it was Antonio. I felt like falling apart, but I didn’t, even when I saw his dark eyes, their joy and charm gone. He had the face of a mafia capo.
I yanked the weapon away from Antonio and stepped forward, nailing the side of the Lexus on the foreswing. I aimed for Bruno’s screaming head on the backswing. He ducked, and I swung again.
Everything happened at once. I was pulled back. Bruno’s screaming stopped. Doors slammed. Road dirt sprayed my face. Antonio shouted in Italian, and Paulie shouted back in English. A few fucks were the only words I understood.
I was in the passenger side of my car, and the car was moving. Fast. Antonio was driving. I held the Club up, and he grabbed it from me while driving with his other hand.
“You’re fucking crazy, you know that?” he said.
He hit the gas, slipping the seat back to accommodate his height. In front of us, the Lexus took off, and Antonio chased it.
“Where were you?”
“Put your seatbelt on.” He threw the Club into the back seat. “What did you think you were doing?”
“Breaking things!” Why was I screaming while I was obeying? “Not like it’s your business, but I was going to crack his head open.”
“Do you know who that was?”
Our car swung around a corner. Behind us, the Maserati followed, with Paulie at the wheel, I assumed.
“Bruno Uvoli,” he said. “Cazzo! He’s a made man. He’d sell his sister for a dollar. And you’re like a fucking beacon, asking about me everywhere. What the fuck, Theresa? I’m trying to protect you, and you step in it. Deliberately.”
“Answer a text next time.”
We blasted into the Valley on the Lexus’s tail, onto flat, wide boulevards and poorly lit side streets.
“Hold on.” With one hand, he held me to the seat while he followed the car under a viaduct and out into a twisty service road, clipping the concrete wall in a shower of sparks. We were going seventy-five, and though I thought I should care about what my car would look like at the end of this, I didn’t.
“I want you,” I said, breathless. “I want you, and I’m going to have you. That’s it.”
“I’m death to you.” He accelerated. The BMW kicked awake as if that was its shining moment.
“No. You’re like mainlining life. I want it. I need it. I don’t care what I have to do to earn your trust, I’ll do it.”
He pushed me down, swung the car right, then left, bumping the Lexus onto a turn up the foothills. The Maserati shot around us and in front of the Lexus, taking it in the side with a crunch.
“Cazzo,” he growled again, but not to me. He screeched the BMW to a halt inches from the Lexus.
Paulie and Zo were already out of the Mas with their guns drawn.
Antonio unbuckled me with one hand and pulled my head onto his lap with the other. “Stay there.”
I glanced up at him, his rock of an erection at my cheek.
He looked out the windshield. “I need you to drive away.”
“You’re not getting rid of me.” I heard a scuffle outside.
“I don’t want you seeing this. I don’t want you near it.”
“I’m not going back to Daniel with any of it.”
“It doesn’t matter. Look at you, ready to kill a man with a club. I’ve contaminated you enough.” He slipped out from under me, opening the door and getting out.
I sat up. In my headlights, I saw how desolate the area Antonio had pushed the Lexus into was. Bruno was pinned to the ground by Paulie’s foot on his busted hand. Zo knelt on him with one knee on his unbusted arm and the other on his thigh. Bruno’s sneaker had been stuffed in his mouth to muffle his screams.
It all sunk in, what I’d gotten into and how. I froze, becoming myself again for a second.
Antonio leaned in the door. “Contessa. Drive.”
“I want you.”
“I heard you.”
“You don’t believe me.” My eyes were locked on the pinned man.
“You want a man you imagine. If you knew who you were talking to, if you knew what I could turn you into, you’d run back to your DA.” In my peripheral vision, I saw him take a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.
I turned to him. “Walk away. Don’t do this. Not over a little road rage.”
He lit the smoke with a clack of his silver lighter. “This wasn’t road rage. He is stupid and dangerous. And he was after you. Now I have to make sure he never touches you, and that I never touch you.” He closed the door and spoke through the open window. “Make no mistake, I will hurt you to protect you. Now go.” He turned to the three men. “Zo, get off him, I got it. Drive her if she won’t go.”
“Yes, boss.”
Antonio turned his back on me, and Zo approached. My beautiful capo didn’t look back, only down at the man who had gotten me to chase him into a desolate area for a purpose I could only imagine, with the smoke and fire of hell winding around his fingertips.
Before Zo could reach me, I backed out and into the street. I didn’t get far before I had to pull the car over. I covered my mouth with my hands and cried, muffling myself as tears fell down the cracks between my fingers.
What had I done?
Of all the things I could do from the front of my dented BMW, I had not one I would do. I could call 9-1-1. I could call Daniel. I could reveal the whole thing to the press. But I wouldn’t, and I knew it.
And Antonio knew it. On some level, he trusted me.