Epilogue
There was plenty to be worried about. Paulie had turned on Antonio, Daniel was after him with renewed vigor, and I rarely had in idea of where exactly I was running to whenever Antonio took me to a new location. He’d left the Maserati in a nondescript garage built into the side of a hill because it was too conspicuous. He spoke in Italian with some of his crew, and a pidgin of English terms I didn’t understand. I spent a lot of time alone, sequestered, protected, bored to tears.
Daniel was an unfaithful creep, but I had been completely integrated into his life. A partner, at least outside the bedroom. Was I always going to have to choose between sex and respect?
The second night after he gave me what I wanted under l’uovo, he started to take me up to the little Spanish house.
“I’ve set it up,” he said. “It should be safe for you.” His smile was meant to transmit confidence, but I saw the effort.
He pulled the Mercedes SUV up the hill, slipping his hand between my thighs. My legs reacted immediately, spreading for him. I thought maybe partnering in only the bedroom might be the better that being a complete part of his world. His body could break a woman’s heart, who knew what his business could break?
I put my hand on top of his before it reached my crotch.
“Antonio, what’s happening? Can you tell me?”
He paused, taking a hairpin turn by pressing the heel of his hand against the wheel. I had no cause to feel safe with him, but I did.
“I cannot,” he said, his arm out the open window. “Not completely. There’s talk, and it’s cheap. I can’t react to it as if it’s truth until I know.”
“Know what?”
“If two families are trying to unite with a marriage. If they are, it’s trouble. One organization will be too big.” He shrugged. “If it’s Paulie trying to work with the Sicilians, he’ll be too powerful for me to fight.”
“You still do that? Marry for business?”
“Of course.”
He took a softer turn, glancing at me, then back at the road.
Of course.
That was why they kept mistresses.
It was on this thought that Antonio swerved left at a fork when I knew the Spanish house was to the right.
“Get down!” he shouted, grabbing a fistful of my hair because that was what he reached first and yanking my head onto his lap.
“What?” I shouted into the cavern between the bottom of the dashboard and the pedals.
The gunshots answered. The passenger window shattered, and the gravity in the car changed as my cheek slid across his lap and the sounds of cracking, popping, screeching flooded my ears. A wood plank from a fence shot through the window, missing me by an inch. I still couldn’t see past Antonio’s feet on the pedals, but when the car stopped the feet were gone. I knew the car was sideways from the pull of gravity, and rocking back and forth ever so slightly.
“Theresa!” Antonio called me from a thousand miles away.
I said his name.
I didn’t.
It was no more than a groan.
Wake up. Wakeupwakeupwakeup.
I heard a click and my hips slid away from the seat. He’d taken the belt off.
Another smash, like a pop and a crackle, and I woke up enough to realize the sun roof had been broken. I turned. Blinked. Mentally rooted around for the boundaries of my body.
“I’m fine,” I said, twisting a little more. The jagged-edged rectangle framed and flattened Antonio so perfectly he looked like a renaissance portrait. My battered mind was surprised when he reached in. The car rocked and creaked.
“Slowly, Contessa. Don’t move suddenly unless I tell you to.”
I wrapped my hands around his forearms, and he did the same.
“Do I have you?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Slowly. Let me pull you.’
I let him guide me out the sunroof. We were on the edge of a cliff down into the San Gabriel Valley, having broken through a fence in the back of a little Victorian bungalow. The Mercedes rocked at the edge held up by a patch of bushes and a busted clothesline.
“Look at me,” Antonio said.
I turned. He held me in his gaze, brown eyes serious and supremely confident at the same time. If I just did what I was told, I’d be all right. I was sure of it. His hand was scratched. Had he been thrown clear? How do you survive that?
Until my hips got stuck in the window.
“What do I do?” I squeaked. What kind of partner was I? I was totally unqualified to be his equal in this or anything. I was going to get pulled off a cliff by an SUV any minute. My heart raced to the point of pain. I wanted to run away, scream, and cry all at once.
“Go back in a little and twist,” he said. “Slowly and be calm. Put the widest part of you at the diagonal part of the window.”
He glanced at the road. Were they coming back? Would they just shoot us here, like this?
When he put his gaze back on me I got calm again, shifted back in, twisted, pushed, causing the SUV to rock and creak.
“Exhale,” he said and when I did, he pulled me with all he had. The SUV creaked one last time before I separated from it, sprawling on the ground with him. It pitched down the hill another ten feet, the front hitting something with a crack and smash.
I got to my feet. My knees were barely holding me, and a shoe was missing.
Antonio looked down the hill then toward the road.
“They were trying to kill you.” I said. “Who were they?”
“Spin!” I heard the voice before I heard or saw the car up above, on the side of the road.
“Were they after me?” he growled, “Or you?”
“What’s the—”
“Spin! You down there? Hurry up!”
“This is over.” He said it as if he didn’t hear Otto calling his name. I didn’t know what he meant, so I took his arm. He yanked it away. “I cannot do this.”
He walked away from me, up the hill to Otto.
Would he get in the car and drive away? I ran to him and caught up at the road.
“What do you mean?”
He cut the air with his flattened hands. “Done.”
Otto barked with urgency when we crested the hill, his Italian full of spit and percussion. Antonio nodded and barked back.
“Get in. Quickly. Andiamo.” He opened the rear door. “They’re coming.”
I had a million things to say. Denial. Refusal. Venom. Sweet phrases to get him to see the light, but his jaw was set and he breathed such certainty the pit of my stomach dropped out.
I got in the car. I thought he was going to get in after me. I’d talk to him. Plead, beg, curse, demand he see it differently. But he closed the door and walked to the rear of the car. I twisted to see out the dust-covered back window. Another car, driven by Lorenzo, had pulled up behind.
Otto got into the front seat of the car I was in just as Antonio opened the driver’s side door of the one behind us and shooed Zo across to the passenger side.
“Otto, wait,” I said.
“Sorry, miss,” he said. “I got a lotta orders and no time.” He pulled away. The road was straight enough for me to see Antonio get into the driver’s side, but we went around a corner before I could see which direction he went.
———
The story continues in
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