LUCA_Her Ruthless Don

by Theodora Taylor

  My eyes slam closed, the image of that basement overtaking my head. Hanging above that tarp. A meaty fist pounding into my face, just like it pounded into hers.

  But I don’t open my eyes. Because the sight in front of me is even worse.

  I wish…I actually wish to God I could go back to that basement. Take another one of the beatings that haunted my nightmares before Amber agreed to be my wife. In exchange? I need him to roll back time. Taking back what I just saw and make it so that when I open my eyes, Amber’s no longer in that hospital bed, but back in her office. Pissed off because her husband keeps calling during her meeting with her IEP clients.

  But I’m Catholic enough to know that’s not how God works. I open my eyes, and everything’s still the same. The scene before me just as horrifying as it had been before I shut it out with a desperate squeeze of my eyes.

  She’s still there. More than hurt. Broken. She’s lying on her side, her breath coming out with a stunted noise, somewhere between a wheeze and a gasp.

  The doctor said she was lucky the family of three she was supposed to be meeting with at four, walked in early, causing the two men they found punching and kicking her to cut and run. But at least she wasn’t bleeding internally. She’d made it out of her severe beating alive, with a concussion and a broken rib.

  But lucky ain’t what I think’m thinking as I look at her. And with her eyes swollen shut the way they are, I can’t tell if she’s sleeping or awake.

  I should have gone straight to her office, I think to myself. I should have never let her get an office. Those and a hundred other thoughts punch me in the gut, paralyzing me where I stand.

  “I’ll leave you two alone,” the nurse says beside me. Then, with a scratching roll of a curtain closing, she’s gone.

  “Ambs…” I say, voice low and choked. Not wanting to wake her if she’s asleep but needing her to know I’m here now at the same time.

  She’s not asleep. “Luca,” she answers, immediately, like she’s just been lying there, waiting for me to talk. And her voice is softer than I’ve ever heard it as she asks, “Did they tell you about the baby?”

  Her eyes don’t open. And technically, I get that they don’t have to. I walked in on her studying to Aron Amarath with her eyes closed enough times to know that keeping her eyes open whenever a sighted person is in the vicinity is a conscious choice she makes. When she’s in private, she often keeps her eyes closed. She told me once it helps her concentrate. But as soon as I walk into our apartment, she opens them. Just for me.

  Just for me…

  My throat clogs with what feels like a scream, trying to get out. But I clench my teeth and swallow it back down to say, “Yeah.” One word’s all I can manage at this moment, and it takes more effort than running the ten blocks to get here.

  “I was going to tell you tonight,” she says, her voice distant like she’s talking more to herself than me. “When I first found out, I wasn’t sure what to do. I’d just signed the lease on my office, and I knew now wasn’t the time to have a baby—”She stops, coughs, then grimaces hard against the pain that involuntary reaction must’ve caused with a broken rib.

  “Ambs…” I start to say, wishing to both God and the devil that there was some way for me to trade places with her and take on her hurt. “You don’t have to explain anything to me. I understand, baby.”

  “No, let me finish,” she gasps out. “Please.”

  So, I stand there. Not knowing what else to do but listen as she continues.

  “I’m blind, just starting out, super newly married—I mean, we never even talked about kids. It seemed crazy to consider anything but getting rid of it. But I…I just couldn’t. It…it felt like the baby represented something…this new beginning we’d started—”

  Another cough and this time her body jerks so hard with the pain, I reflexively reach out again, my hand grazing hers, right before I snap it back with the fear of hurting her.

  But she recovers and is already talking again, by the time I lower my arm.

  “I couldn’t stand lying to you about my period, and getting rid of it without telling you, felt wrong. Like I was getting rid of us. That’s what it felt like, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it, even though I wasn’t sure if you’d want it—” She chokes on the it, her voice giving out. And it takes her a few moments before she’s finally able to say, “But now the baby’s dead. Dead inside of me. I shouldn’t be upset about it. I mean, I only decided to keep it a couple of days ago. It’s stupid to be so sad it’s gone.”

  I’m trying to let Amber speak her piece, but I can’t hold back anymore. “No, Ambs, I get it. I’m fucking broken up about it, too.” I grab the hospital bed rail and squeeze it like I’m wringing somebody’s neck. “And I swear to you, I’m going to find out who did this. Then I’m going to make them pay.”

  More than pay. She’s hurting, she’s in incomprehensible physical and emotional pain. And there’s nothing I can do about it. No way for me to fix this. I’m not going to just end whoever did this, I’m going to fuck them up so bad, they’ll be begging me to die by the time I’m done with them.

  “I already know who did it,” she says, her voice going so completely flat.

  I’m suddenly reminded of the girl I met in Public Health. The one who pronounced the name I fed her like it was AssDouche.

  “Who?” I say, fist balling. Already planning the torture session for whatever names come out of her mouth.

  “It was you,” she answers.

  I falter, and for the first time since meeting her, I wonder if her blindness has affected her perception of what actually happened. “No, no Ambs, I would never—”

  “You would never what, Luca?” she asks, her voice dipping viciously. “You’d never say to my face that you weren’t going to kill Greggi Deltano’s sons, then go ahead and do it anyway?”

  My veins, which had been coursing with rage just a few minutes ago, ice right back over at her words. How did she find out?

  Her next words answer the second question like I asked it out loud.

  “People get really talky when they think beating you to death is next on the agenda, and apparently Greggi Deltano’s nephews didn’t appreciate how you did his sons.”

  My brain stutters as all the pieces finally fall into place and form an arrow, pointing at me. My throat thickens and my chest bands so tight with guilt and self-recrimination I can barely breathe.

  The Deltano nephews…

  I actually remember those fucks. Two kids from the old neighborhood guys that Greggi kept trying to get recruited into our family as foot soldiers after his older son bailed for Miami. But after meeting them once, my father had denied the requests for one vague reason after another.

  “Greggi’s proven himself a value-add, but those nephews of his are too smart to be wise, and that makes them dumb as shit far as I’m concerned,” Dad once told me privately when I asked why not just let them into our crew.

  And apparently, Dad was right. They were dumb as shit to come after my wife, but their plan had probably made sense to them. I was no longer connected to the Ferraro family, which they would’ve mistaken for weakness. But at the same time, I’m still my dad’s only son. No way in hell the Ferraro crime family would let that lie if they tried to kill me. So, Amber, it was. The black wife that wouldn’t be avenged by anyone in my family.

  Technically, it was a good plan. They just hadn’t taken me into account.

  Because yeah, I might look weak on paper. Good schools, no arrest record, soft life, and then instead of taking my place at my father’s right hand, I got married and took a nine to five—that must be what it looks like to them. The Deltano nephews probably don’t even know it was me who killed the Deltano sons with my own hand, that I didn’t just have Stone dispense with them like most made men my age would.

  And they’re right, on the outside, I look weak. “I’m sorry, Ambs. So sorry they did this to you because of
me.”

  But on the inside…something dark and vicious moves through me. It’s the animal I made lie down for the last year. It opens its red eyes and seeing what the Deltano nephews have done to my wife, it snarls, “I’ll kill them. I swear to you, baby, I will not rest until—”

  The eye that isn’t swollen shut suddenly pops open, angry and fierce. “Killing is why I’m lying here with a baby inside of me that no longer has a heartbeat!” Amber spits, her voice harder than concrete.

  My breath cuts off at the sight of that eye, red with shed tears, but dry now.

  “Ambs,” I start to say, again, wanting her to understand that I know this is my fault. That I should have protected her better. Should have made sure nothing I did ever blew back and hurt her.

  But before I can say any of that, she says, “Luca, in an hour, a nurse is going to come in here and take me to an operating room where they will put me under and then D&C this dead baby out of my body. About thirty minutes after they do, I’ll wake up, and I will no longer be pregnant. I’m going to take a week off work after that.”

  “Of course—” I start to say.

  “Let me finish and do not interrupt me again until I’m through.” She cuts me off before I can offer to take a week off too to take care of her.

  The dumb half of me wants to shout her down, wants to try to explain what I did and why I did it. Defend myself against the accusing eye. But the smart half of me…God…that half knows she’s right. And that there’s nothing I can say that will make someone who’s been beaten into a miscarriage feel any better about what happened to her.

  So, I shut up like she wants me to. Shut up and listen as efficient words spill out of her mouth in a near-monotone stream.

  “I will tell the police that I don’t know who broke into my office. And after my week off, I will draw up divorce papers and send them to you. It will be a very simple process. No fault and I won’t ask you for a dime. I don’t want anything from you,” she says. “And in return for me not talking to the police and not asking you for a single thing, you and everything you own will be out of the apartment by the time I come home from this hospital. You will not visit me. You will not call, text, or email me. You will just sign the papers. Because I was wrong about us. So wrong about you…”

  Here her voice cracks, emotion pushing up like something suppressed. But her open eye remains dry and fierce, as she tells me, “We’re poison to each other, and we have been from the start. This just proves it.”

  As she speaks my heart does a slow shatter inside my chest before turning to dust.

  “No, we’re not, Ambs. Don’t fucking say that. Don’t…”

  “I’m saying it,” she hisses. “I have every right to call it over right now. So please, please don’t try to Jake me on this. Just let me go. Leave me in peace to grieve, and recover, and try to forget I was ever stupid enough to think I could spend the rest of my life with a man who’s done nothing but lie to me from the start. We’re over.”

  We’re over…

  At that moment, I want to kick. I want to scream. I want to pull a gun and eat all the bullets inside.

  Because she’s serious. Not serious, like the girl who told me to get out of her assistant seat, but serious like a woman in pain. Because of me. A woman who’s been beaten. Because of me. A woman who’s lost our baby. Because of me.

  There are a thousand things I’m thinking. And none of them come close to being something worth saying out loud. All I want to do is hold her. And beg my way back into her heart.

  But holding her would hurt her. And I suspect begging her would, too.

  She’s serious, and more fucking importantly, she’s right. Right in ways I’ll never forgive myself for, even if she changes her mind tomorrow and decides to love me again the way I still love her.

  So, I go. Instead of bothering her with my need to be forgiven, I force my body to turn around and walk out of that room. I leave my dry-eyed wife behind, moving fast to keep myself from doing something other than what’s right.

  And when the piece of bacon outside her room calls, “Ferraro! Ferraro! Need to ask you a few questions!” I keep on walking without saying a word.

  Or looking back.

  18

  Drinking Again

  In my dream, I’m still walking. Walking and walking away along a hospital corridor without end.

  But then I’m jolted awake by low-pitched voices shouting in Arabic, and much higher voices screaming back in harried Spanish.

  That’s all the warning I get before the door crashes open and a bunch of dudes in black jumpsuits flood into the room. The bed I’m lying in suddenly comes alive with the squirm of soft bodies jumping out of bed. Even more high-pitched Spanish screaming comes next.

  It’s a lot to process, first thing in the…whatever time it was.

  Daylight’s shining through the small room’s dingy windows, but it’s so loud and bright, I get the feeling morning time might have already gone and passed.

  My head’s pounding on top of a bone-dry throat, and it feels like I’ve got an empty Tequila bottle in my gut, rolling around and just a few seconds away from barfing itself up.

  “Fuck, what are you doing?” I choke out to the uninvited guests. Hungover as I feel, I must still be a little drunk. My words come out stupid and slurred, and just sitting up on my forearms feels like climbing fuckin’ Everest.

  I look around the tiny stucco room, with zero ideas of where I am. Or what day it is. Or who the fuck any of these naked girls screaming Spanish at the four jumpsuits now standing in an arc around the bed are. Probably whores, since one of the last things I remember is deciding to fuck every woman on the planet after I put the divorce papers back in the mail to Amber. Fuck and fuck until I stopped aching to be inside her. The plan must’ve worked a little bit if I managed to obliterate every memory after that decision. But still, it would be nice if the girls would stop screaming for a second and introduce themselves or something.

  The jumpsuits shout back at the women in heavily accented English. “Get out, Get out now!”

  They’re not brandishing guns or anything, but their voices sound enough like bullets to turn the women from a frenzied flock of chickens into efficient clothes gathering and scramming machines. Less than a minute later, the room is clear of both pros and jumpsuits. And that’s when Zahir walks in.

  He looks even graver than usual, which is saying a lot since his usual setting is the villain in one of the darker James Bond movies.

  But I must also be on something along with being drunk because I just grin up at him like I was expecting him to stop by. “Hey, Z, what’s what?” I say, holding up my fist for a bump. “Guess what? I’m single now.”

  Then I start laughing. Uncontrollably. Even though getting those divorce papers is all I can fucking remember. Not getting here. Not fucking, what I’ll be told later when I wake up again in Holt’s guest cottage in Connecticut, was a whole Mexican brothel worth of women. Just the words No-fault divorce. Like the year we spent together was nobody’s bad. An understandable screw-up that could have happened to anybody. Sorry, dude…

  And now Zahir’s shown up at my post-divorce bacchanal. I can’t stop laughing about it. “I’m free! I’m free!” I cackle.

  Then I start to sob like the goddamn baby Amber, and I never got the chance to have.

  The next few weeks, like the two that came before it, are a blur.

  Zahir, being Zahir, takes care of everything, from getting me out of Mexico to dropping me off to Holt in Connecticut, like two divorced parents passing off a naughty kid.

  Holt, being Holt, stuffs me in his guest cottage and pretty much decides to forget I’m there, just like he represses every other fucking unpleasant thing in his life.

  I spend a couple of weeks moping around. I binge Netflix. Listen to that nightmare kid of his, scream at his nanny like she owes him an apology just for breathing the same air. Watch his wife sunbathe
at the pool that sits between the two houses. The housekeeper brings her a steady string of drinks like she’s on vacation.

  Frankly, I’m jealous. There’s no alcohol in the guest house, and the housekeeper seems to be under instructions not to bring me so much as a glass of wine with dinner. Every time I ask about getting a drink, she tells me in a heavy Polish accent that I’ll have to talk to Mr. Holt about that.

  The few times I venture out of the house to walk the grounds, I can feel Holt’s bored wife eye-fucking me. Just like she did before and at Holt’s wedding. A couple of times, I think about fucking her, just to get to one of her martinis.

  But you know, Holt’s one of the only two friends left standing right now…blah, blah, blah. Not that I think Holt would particularly care. From what I can see, both the kid and the wife are just a couple of accessories he was told to acquire as part of his “next CEO of CalMart” brand.

  He’s not crazy over the beautiful blonde the way he got over that Jamaican girl before she fucked him over. He punched me once, just for flirting with the Jamaican girl. If I fucked his wife and he found out about it, he’d probably just consider it bad manners. Same as me never showing up for work at the CalMart offices again after what happened to Amber.

  Holt’s still a lifelong friend. But he’s cold now. An automaton made up of “what I’m supposed to do” and “notes from the PR department.”

  And as the days pass, I start to overstand why. I can feel my heart hardening into stone where all the soft stuff used to be. Getting ready for the next chapter, even though when I married Amber, I really did think it would be forever.

  Three weeks in Connecticut is all it takes to give in and decide to go back to my original plan. Return to the clear path I was on before I got sidetracked by Amber. Hell, now that I have a stone in my chest where my heart used to be, living the life I was groomed for will probably be even easier.