Calisto
Emma sat still and quiet in the passenger seat. She propped her chin in her hand and watched the buildings fly by as Calisto navigated the tough, thick early morning traffic. She hadn’t said more than a couple of words to him.
It wasn’t like he blamed her.
After last night, she had every reason to want to avoid him. He’d been stupid, got stupid-drunk, and then acted stupid all over her.
Calisto knew better than that.
“Hey, Emmy?” he asked.
She never took her eyes away from the window. “Hmm?”
“About last night.”
“It doesn’t matter, Calisto. Leave it alone. I’m fine.”
“Yeah, I figured. What I said still stands. I wanted to say it again.”
Emma slowly rotated in the seat until she was staring at him. “Which one? The part where you deliberately accused me of keeping something from you, the part where you accused me of not trying to tell you at all, or the apology?”
Calisto’s hands squeezed the steering wheel harder.
Good men apologized when they did wrong.
Simple as that.
“The apology,” he said quietly.
“Thank you. Now, can you please drop it? I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I get that. I just …”
“What?” Emma demanded, blowing out a heavy breath.
“Why are you so irritated?” Calisto asked. “I’m making small talk. You’re barking at me.”
Emma shook her head, and turned back to the window. “You don’t get it, Calisto. I don’t want to talk about it. Not the pregnancy, the baby, or what happened. It hurts.” She pointed to her chest, drawing Calisto’s attention from the road for a moment. “In here, it hurts me all the time. I don’t want to talk about it, okay? Drop it.”
“Dropped.”
“Great,” she muttered.
“I am sorry you had to go through it alone,” he added quickly.
Out of the corner of his eye, Calisto watched as Emma clenched her hands in her lap until her knuckles turned white from the pressure. She let out a slow exhale, and her pretty mouth turned down into a frown.
“I wasn’t entirely alone,” she said. “Affonso was there for a while.”
“For a while?”
“He left after he took me to the hospital.”
Calisto’s brow furrowed as he slowly took a sharp corner with the car. “But he must have come back, yes?”
“A day later when I was released, he sent Carter to come pick me up and bring me home.”
Carter was one of Affonso’s men, and Emma’s full-time enforcer. Calisto’s rage bubbled up from his stomach at the very idea of Emma being alone in the hospital while she was suffering, and probably lonely.
“I’m sorry,” Calisto said again.
Emma shrugged. “Don’t be.”
“I can’t help it. Last night wasn’t entirely about you, either. I was pissed at myself for being a fucking idiot, and for putting you in that kind of position. I should have taken more care in Vegas. Instead, I made a mess and you were left to clean it alone.”
Calisto had kept his eyes on the road, not wanting to chance hitting another vehicle if someone cut in front of them. The last thing he needed was for Emma to be hurt in her current condition. Affonso wouldn’t be pleased.
Emma’s hand landed on Calisto’s arm with a gentle touch. The softness of her palm soaked into his skin immediately, reminding him of what it felt like to feel every inch of her body, explore all her silky curves and dips, with his own hands.
Just as fast as her hand was there, it was gone.
But he’d still felt it.
Nonetheless, he was grateful she quickly let him go.
“It takes two people,” he heard her say faintly.
“You’re right, but it only takes one of those people to be an asshole.”
Emma laughed softly. “You must enjoy punishing yourself. Is that it?”
Maybe.
Calisto didn’t know anymore.
“How is this pregnancy coming along?” he managed to ask.
“So far, so good.”
It bothered him in a way he couldn’t explain that Emma was pregnant with Affonso’s child. She was far too early in the pregnancy to actually look pregnant, but Calisto knew and that was enough to set his blood on fire.
Jealousy compounded in his chest. His heart ached. His fingers itched with the need to wipe all his nonsense away. He couldn’t explain it, but he felt fucking awful.
Terrible, even.
What was worse, was the fact he still couldn’t look at Emma without seeing who he knew she was beneath her new last name and status. She wasn’t just Affonso Donati’s pretty, young wife with no opinion to share and her fake smiles plastered on. She had fire. She had passion.
Calisto still found that he was ridiculously attracted to the woman, and that wasn’t okay. She still made his cock hard at night when he was alone. His memories of her didn’t do her any justice.
The real thing was far better.
Calisto swallowed the lump in his throat, and ignored the snugness of his slacks. It wasn’t the time. It was never going to be the time.
Not again.
Then, he glanced at Emma in the passenger seat. She was watching him under her long lashes in that way of hers. Silent, unmoving, and sweet.
She knew he was remembering.
She had to know.
“Staying away didn’t help much, huh?” Emma asked.
Calisto cleared his throat. “I beg your pardon?”
“You heard what I said.”
He had.
“No, it didn’t help,” Calisto admitted.
“Shame. I hoped we could be friends, at least.”
Calisto didn’t know if that was possible. “Did it help you when I stayed away?”
Emma laughed, but it was strained and shallow. “Help what? The difference between you and me, Cal, is that you had a choice in the end. You were capable of walking away. I was simply moved from one hand to the next without a single say. There was no helping me. Don’t delude yourself into thinking differently.”
“You’re right.”
And it killed him.
Emma rested back into the seat, and pressed two fingers into her temples. “I don’t know why, but I am exhausted.”
“I hear pregnancy will do that.”
“I suppose. But I feel like hell and probably look like it, too.”
Calisto shot her a small smile. “For looking like hell, as you say, I think you look beautiful.”
Emma’s eyes snapped open and found Calisto immediately. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“That, Cal. I don’t even want to walk that line.”
“I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.”
Emma frowned. “That’s exactly my point.”
“Why do you need to be here today, again?” Calisto asked.
“Bloodwork.” Emma perched herself up on the edge of the patient bed. She tugged off her cardigan and set it aside. “Nothing too invasive today.”
“A needle inside your veins is a little invasive.”
Emma snickered. “Scared of needles?”
“Not really.”
“Sure,” she teased.
Calisto had never been a fan of pain, but he found it provided a certain relief.
It was a high that couldn’t compete with anything else he experienced. That was why he fought bare-knuckled, why he drove fast, despite knowing he might crash, and why he still enjoyed looking at Emma Donati—no matter her current status.
Pain felt good.
He might have been a fool for doing so, but as long as he got what he wanted from it, he didn’t really care.
When he fought, he was given release. When he drove, he was given freedom. When he looked at Emma, he was given memories.
All of them brought a certain level of pain. All three might kill him someday.
Calisto glanced at Emma, taking her in again when she didn’t know he was looking.
He realized then that only one might actually be worth dying for.
Craziness, he told himself. You’re being crazy again.
Calisto wished it was as easy as simply putting Emma out of his mind, but he quickly learned that it wasn’t the case. She was always there in one way or another. His guilt over delivering her to his uncle for marriage still ate him alive. Calisto still worried that she wasn’t happy, or that she wasn’t being treated in the way she deserved.
That she wasn’t being cared for, attended to …
That she wasn’t loved.
“Ah, Mrs. Donati,” came a voice from the doorway.
Calisto found an older doctor he recognized immediately. The man was on Affonso’s payroll for certain things. Curtis Lea was a good man, if not a little crooked. He didn’t mind taking cash to stitch someone up, dig out a bullet, or write a few prescriptions and turn his cheek at the same time.
“And Calisto,” Dr. Curtis said, smiling. “I haven’t seen you in … a couple of years. How are you?”
“Tired,” Calisto said honestly.
The doctor chuckled. “Life makes us that way. What brings you here?”
“Carter had other things to do. Calisto is driving me around,” Emma explained.
“I see,” the doctor said. “You can wait outside, Calisto. There’s no need for you to be in here.”
Calisto didn’t need to be told a second time. He took the reprieve the doctor offered, and practically bolted out of the room.
He needed space.
Time, maybe.
If his wayward inner thoughts were any indication, Calisto was still walking a thin line between stupid and insane where Emma was concerned. He should be disgusted with himself. The woman was pregnant, married, and entirely unavailable.
Yet, he still wanted her.
A little.
God, he was a fool.
“How is the doctor appointment going?” Affonso asked.
Calisto balanced the phone between his ear and shoulder as he punched in the code for the soda he wanted to get out of the machine. “Fine, as far as I know. The doctor made me leave.”
Affonso chuckled. “Yes, Curtis is particular like that. He doesn’t like others in the room when he’s got a patient in there. Thankfully, he handles all of Emma’s medical needs. I prefer it that way.”
Who cared about Affonso’s need to control every little detail of the lives of the people around him? Calisto didn’t.
“What did you think about the mess this morning?” he asked, wanting to get his uncle on a different topic.
Affonso hummed under his breath. “I went down and looked at the body. The police hadn’t found it by then. Good thing.”
Calisto had been woken up at six in the morning by a phone call from one of the Donati Capos. Apparently, one of his soldiers hadn’t made it to the warehouse by five. He was supposed to, in order to do a job later that morning. The Capo, knowing where his man was supposed to be working the night before, went looking for the seventeen-year-old street kid. The Capo found him in an alley behind a pizzeria that he owned.
A bullet had been put between the kid’s eyes.
A shamrock had been drawn on his cheek with blood.
It was a very clear message from the O’Neil family. They were still trying to work their way into Donati territory, and anyone who got in their way would earn themselves a bullet to the head and nothing more.
Calisto knew his uncle was going to have to sit down with the boss of the O’Neil family and work something out so that the warring families could work together. That, or Affonso was going to have to take out the man altogether.
Something.
Anything other than doing nothing.
Doing nothing would only let the O’Neil family believe that the Donati Cosa Nostra was weak in protecting their territory. It wouldn’t lead to anything good.
“You’re going to have to handle that,” Calisto said.
“I’m aware,” Affonso replied dryly. “For now, I will send out my own message. If they don’t get the point, then I will handle it in a different way. It’s just a solider, Cal. One boy, nothing more. I can overlook one dead man that wasn’t even made.”
Calisto’s jaw clenched. “He meant something to someone, zio. His mother, or father. Maybe he had siblings. I know the Capo he worked under cared for him a great deal because he was one of his best men. And for that matter, by default, that makes him one of your men.”
“Perhaps, but I won’t start a street war with the Irish simply because one solider met his maker. That seems extreme.”
Calisto didn’t see it the same way, but he wasn’t the boss.
He didn’t get a say.
“Whatever you want, zio,” Calisto settled on saying.
“You know what I want, Cal. For you to drop the zio nonsense.”
Calisto could hear the smile in his uncle’s tone. It made him sick and furious at the same time. “Are we going to do this again?”
Affonso grumbled. “Not with that attitude.”
“Good.”
He hung up the call without saying goodbye.
A week later, Calisto found a spot in a familiar pew and let the comforting space of his church surround him. There was nothing like the house of God to settle his mind, and let him think properly.
Well, that and his priest.
Calisto didn’t pretend to be a good man, or even one with great morals, but he had his church and his priest. That was enough.
“Calisto, my son, what brings you through these doors on a beautiful Summer day in the middle of the week?”
The voice of Father Day relaxed Calisto in a way he couldn’t explain. The man had counseled Calisto from the time he was a young man, straight into his adult years. When a personal issue came up, his priest was the best person to talk to. Father Day didn’t judge.
“Stress,” Calisto murmured, watching the rays of sunlight dance in the stained glass windows. “What else?”
Father Day took a seat beside Calisto in the front pew. “It’s always about some kind of stress with you. I’ve been telling you for years to—”
“Let the little things go.”
“Precisely. It’s all the little things piling up on your shoulders that make one huge weight for you to carry around.”
Silently, the priest handed Calisto his favorite item. It was a rope of black rosary beads, attached to an ornately designed golden cross. When he was just a child and following his uncle around, Calisto had watched Affonso go to the church regularly to confess his sins. To keep him from becoming bored during the ordeal, Father Day would let Calisto play with his string of rosary beads as long as he promised to give them back and not break them.
Calisto never broke them. He always gave them back.
Now, as an adult, the string of beads sometimes helped to soothe his nerves when he talked. The little things his priest remembered never failed to amaze him.
“Tell me what’s bothering you,” the priest demanded. “Let me take the little things, Cal.”
“I learned something this week, and I didn’t react well to it. I acted horribly, actually. My mother would be ashamed.”
“Shame is a heavy weight to carry.”
“It shocked me; that was all.”
The priest chuckled. “Are you excusing your behavior?”
“No,” Calisto said, frowning. “But I lost something, and it hit me like a ton of bricks.”
Father Day sat a little straighter in the pew. “What else?”
“Don’t you want to know what I lost, Father?”
“If you want to tell me.”
Calisto didn’t want to explain about the lost child, the one that never got the chance to see the world, to the man. It seemed unfair to burden the priest with that knowledge.
But the miscarriage had been plaguing Calisto for the last week. From the moment he learned it had happened, it had constantly poked at the back of his mind like a hot fire, charring his nerves at the already frayed ends.
It hurt him.
He felt like he was missing something.
The guilt quickly followed whenever he thought about it all. Calisto wasn’t sure he had any right at all to grieve for the miscarriage that he hadn’t even experienced. It wasn’t his body, it hadn’t been his blood spilling from his body.
It had been his baby.
He couldn’t let that go.
“I think it was the idea of something that I lost more than the reality of it,” Calisto muttered heavily. “I don’t know how to grieve for the idea of something when it never had the chance to actually be something. Am I making sense?”
“You always make sense, Calisto. Even in your ramblings.”
“People are supposed to learn from their mistakes.”
“They are,” the priest confirmed.
“So why haven’t I learned from mine?”
Father Day let out a quiet sigh. “Sometimes, there are men who need to walk the wrong road several times over before they find the small path that links them to a new one. The right one. As for this … grieving … you mentioned.”
“Hmm?” Calisto asked. “What about it?”
“No one but you gets to decide how you grieve for something, be it imaginary or real. If you feel like you lost something, then maybe you did. There’s nothing wrong with giving yourself the chance to heal and move on from that.”
“It wasn’t mine to have in the first place,” Calisto said.
Father Day’s smile evaporated. “You’re still allowed to grieve.”
“Am I?”
“Of course, my son.”
Father Day stood from the pew and patted a hand on Calisto’s knee as he straightened fully. Calisto was still rolling the rosary beads between his fingers, calmer than before and a little more settled in his mind.
“You can stay and be by yourself for as long as you need,” Father Day told him.
Calisto shrugged. “I’m good. I have business to do.”
After the incident last week with the Irish leaving one of Affonso’s Capo’s men dead in an alleyway, the streets were as tense as they had ever been. Calisto had some collecting to do, money-wise. He didn’t trust the Irish as far as he could throw them, but Affonso had assured his famiglia that the Jersey family had backed off a bit.
Enough for the streets to be safe.
Bullshit.
This life was never safe.
Calisto stared down at the small cross in his hand. The only safe place was right where he was sitting. He still had a job to do.
“Keep that for a while,” the priest said, bringing Calisto from his thoughts.
Calisto’s gaze snapped up. “The rosary?”
“Mmhmm. Keep it. It helps you.”
“It’s yours.”
“Consider it a loan.”
Calisto laughed darkly. “In my business, loans never end well.”
The priest smiled. “Good thing this is my business then, hmm?”
Who could argue with that?