by Cecy Robson
There’s more I want to say, but her stiffening posture halts my thoughts. “What’s wrong?” When she doesn’t answer, I straighten, turning her so she faces me. “Aedry, what is it?”
She purses her lips as if wrestling with what to say. “My lease is up next month. I’m not going to renew it.”
I want her to tell me it’s because she wants to move in with me. Based on her tone and the way she seems to slip further away, I know that’s not it. “Why?” I ask, pulling her closer and scared out mind over what she’s about to say.
She doesn’t look at me when she speaks, something’s she’s been doing a lot lately and that kills me every time. “I was given notice last week,” she says. “All the counselors, with the exception of Jalisa, were let go. The principal said he was sorry, but there was nothing he could do.”
“You have to be fucking kidding me. What about all those kids you see?”
“They have volunteer counselors and students earning their masters lined up for the fall—” She releases a breath when I curse. “It’s okay. I knew it was coming.”
“Move in with me, until you get a new job.”
I’m spitting out the words, despite what remains of her disappears within my grasp.
“I’m not moving in with you, Salvatore.” She swallows hard. “I’m moving back to North Carolina.”
I’m barely breathing, waiting for the next blow to come. All that follows is a heavy silence that pries us further apart.
The air in my lungs turns to liquid cement. “What about us?” I ask, unable to take it anymore. I stroke her back gently when she doesn’t answer, ignoring the way it’s shaking. “Adrianna . . . what about us?’
My question causes her to crumble. I hate how defeated she seems. But I hate that she’s not answering me.
She closes her eyes, like what I say causes her pain. When she opens them, they give away her misery, as does her tone. “I can’t stay with you. Not with what you do, and who you work for.”
If I were anywhere else, I’d be sure there was a bug and that she was baiting me to give her information. But this is Aedry being honest and calling me out on my lies.
My hand falls away from her back. I don’t even try to deny it. “How long have you known?”
She clasps her hand over her face and leans forward, stifling a sob. I guess she expected me to pretend I didn’t know what she was talking about—or convince her she’s wrong. But I can’t. I can’t do this shit to her anymore.
“I had my doubts early on. But you were so sweet, I thought I was reading too much into it.” She wipes her eyes. “It’s when we had dinner with him and Rita that I finally realized what was happening.”
“Why didn’t you say something?” I’m not accusing her of burying her head in the sand, but I know her and can see what this is doing to her. I don’t understand why she didn’t confront me before.
“I wanted to, but I kept . . .” She gasps, as another row of tears trickle down her face. “I kept wanting to believe in you, believe in the good man I know. But when we went to the islands and you returned covered with blood, I couldn’t believe in you anymore.”
Each word she says pounds my skull, but it’s the disappointment and pain claiming her small form that rips me apart.
“You held me in your arms like I could somehow break,” she tells me. “As if you would do anything for me.”
“Because I would,” I grind out, my voice harsh with how much it hurts to look at her. “I would do anything for you and my family.”
“If that were true, you wouldn’t be where you are, Salvatore.” Her face crumbles like she’s trying not to cry, but she doesn’t manage. “I don’t understand how you could be so kind and good to us, while belonging to something so horrible.” Her hands slap against her lap in frustration. “Tell me why you did this. Please, I need to know how you can be a part of that world.”
Words jumble in my mind like a traffic jam. She needs and deserves an explanation. Except what comes out isn’t planned, but maybe I don’t need it to be. Maybe for once in the God damn time we’ve been together, I need to come clean about who I really am.
“I did what I had to do to survive. But I’m not what you think I am, not entirely.” Her lips part, her shock as obvious as her pain. “I’m not a made man. I’ve never hurt a woman or a kid, and I’ve never killed . . . but I’ve seen and done a lot of bad shit, protecting Vin.”
I’m ready for her to tell me to walk—to get the hell away from her and not look back. What she says is worse and laced with everything that makes me love her.
“Come with me, you and the boys. Come with me to North Carolina.”
Everything she said, from her first tear to the last hits me like a row of linebackers. But it’s her last few words that finish bowling me over. I throw my legs over the bed, pulling on my briefs and shoving into my discarded pants.
Her voice breaks. “Where are you going?”
I finish buckling my belt. “Not to North Carolina,” I respond.
She scrambles to stand beside me, clutching my wrist when I reach for my shirt. “Don’t walk away. Come with me and we’ll start fresh far away from here.”
“I’m not leaving. This is my home.” It’s a lame excuse and yet another lie, and we both damn well know it. But after hearing that she’s leaving―that’s she’s not willing to stay anywhere near me―shit―she might as well have belted me in the stomach with a sledgehammer.
“So, that’s it?” she asks me, the agony in her voice freezing me in place. “It’s over?”
Those lies―every last one I’ve fed her― those times I brushed her away to keep my secrets―morph into a noose, fastening around my neck and pulling tight. I’d fucking kill for her, die to keep her safe, rip out my soul and hand it to hell itself to save hers. I would do anything for this woman, but I can’t do this.
“Stay with me,” I say. “Here, in Jersey.”
“No,” she says, taking a step back. “Not like this.”
My shoulders rise and fall with each tortured breath. I knew the day would come when Aedry would call me out. But I didn’t expect it to be today. And I sure as shit am not ready for it.
The weight of her disappointment clouds her features, threatening to split her in half. “My parents have a house we can stay in,” she says. “We can live there until we both find jobs―”
“I have a job,” I snap, my fury at Vin, at myself, and every piss poor decision I’ve made since deciding to work for him burning its way through my veins.
Menace unleashes like venom through my pores. Anyone else would bolt. But this is Aedry, the one person in this world who doesn’t fear me. She closes the distance between us, cupping my face with so much tenderness, I practically melt against her palms.
“This isn’t a job,” she says, struggling to speak. “This is a death warrant. You said you haven’t killed. But I saw what happened to Lucca and I know what he did to stay alive. Leave with me before you finish killing the man that I love.”
When I meet her gaze, everything I kept from her releases in a few simple words. “This isn’t something I can walk away from alive.”
My words are like vicious blows I can’t spare her from. Her hands fall away from me as she edges away from my reach. I follow her, wanting to take it back―to spare her from the truth and shield her from the monster I sold my soul to.
She knew. Since learning Vin was Mafia, she fucking knew he’d order my kill if I left. But it took me telling her for that dam of lies to break and crush her, and for her to accept there’s no getting out.
I expect her to scream, to hit me, to run away in fear. I don’t expect the heartache that claims her features or the betrayal that trembles her voice when her face meets mine.
The tears she beat back release at once, spilling like raindrops across her paling skin. “I love you, Salvatore. I do,” she adds, when I clench my jaw in disbelief. “Prove to me that you love me, and that you’re the good man I believ
e in.” Her words claw at my insides as she embraces me with her slender arms. “Please,” she says, weeping. “Let’s leave all this behind.”
What I do next doesn’t come easy. It’s the hardest fucking thing I’ve ever done. I clasp her wrists and pull them down carefully, breaking her hold and keeping her in place. “I can’t,” I answer, the words burning like acid down my throat.
She doesn’t move, her tears drying as numbness claims her. “You promised never to let me go.”
I did. But it’s because I love her that I do.
I step away from her, my chest throbbing in agony as I reach for my clothes. I march across the room, barely feeling the floor beneath my feet. I make it to the hall, slamming the heavy door behind me.
It’s not enough to muffle Aedry’s sobs.
I walk down the stairs, my vision blurring as my eyes burn. She was everything to me. Now the only thing I can make her is a memory.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Salvatore
I keep my eyes ahead, toward the door and away from Donnie. She’s sitting at her vanity, putting on her makeup like she isn’t too fucked up to focus, like she isn’t so wrecked her hand doesn’t shake. Two lines. That’s how much she already snorted.
That door leads out to her living room. The next leads me out of her apartment. The minute Vin steps through, I’m out and on my way back to my brothers. But, I’m sure as shit not back to anyone else.
Two lines, I repeat in my head. But it’s been two months since I last saw Aedry, last held her, last touched her. I sent her a dog. That’s right, a black Lab puppy. It was supposed to be something to make her smile, knowing how much she loved the last dog she owned.
I never intended it to be a goodbye gift, but that’s what it became. It took everything in me not to see her. I ignored her texts, her calls, her pleas, until she finally stopped reaching out. That didn’t mean I wouldn’t give my life to hear her voice.
When the breeder called me to say the puppy was ready, I couldn’t bring myself to tell him I didn’t want it or give up one last opportunity to show Aedry I love her. I had him send the dog to Aedry’s parents’ home, something sweet to give someone sweeter, and maybe something to show her how sorry I am.
She called Gianno and Apollo to let them know she received the dog and to tell them she loved them. She also told them that she wasn’t coming back. Apollo . . . God damn it. He broke down, losing his shit like he was losing our mother again. But, it’s what he did when she disconnected that I can’t get past.
He charged out of his room, nailing me square in the face. “What did you do?” he demanded when I shoved him to the floor. Vicious tears streamed down his face. “What the hell did you do, Sal?”
When I eased off him, he just lay there, releasing his grief as Gianno lowered to his side. Gianno . . . you can say he was pissed, meeting my eyes with enough hate to rip my insides out. I could tell he wanted to lash out, take a swing, destroy some shit. Hell, he still does. Apollo, too, based on how they’re behaving―getting in fights, mouthing off.
Their hearts are broken. They don’t realize mine is, too.
“What will it take for you to kill?” Donnie asks, yanking me back to reality where my head should be and away from the memories that haunt me.
My stare fixes blankly on the door. I don’t answer, knowing she’s trying to bait me.
She laughs in that way she does when she’s high. It’s not her real laugh, the one I used to hear when we were kids. The one she used to mean. No, that real laugh is dead, just like she feels on the inside. I can relate, seeing how part of me died when I walked out on Aedry.
Shit.
“I know you haven’t killed. Vin’s told me you always leave it for someone else.” She stares at her reflection, like she’s someplace else. “He says, ‘Sal will make pussies bleed, but he’s too much of a pussy to make them stop breathing.’ You know what I think?” she doesn’t wait for me to answer. “That killing means you’re finally his, and what’s left of your soul is gone.”
I push off the wall, not bothering to argue. She’s right. She’s smart. But like me, Vin’s ruined her.
On her vanity, between her sixty-dollar lipsticks and hundred-dollar perfumes, lie small empty vials of blow. Tina, the new girl Vin’s been keeping on the side, isn’t into this shit. At least not now. I know, because I’ve started watching her. I give it another month, maybe less, and Donnie’s out.
Donnie’s a friend. But I can’t help her like she needs me to. That doesn’t mean I don’t care what happens. “You need to get out of this,” I tell her.
She laughs again when I loom over her. But while she’s playing it off like she’s in control, I know she’s not and I don’t stay quiet. “You’re beautiful, Donnie,” I say. “You’re young and you still have a chance. Get out and have the life you’re meant to.”
The tears that follow give away everything she’s trying to hide. “Where will I go? And who will I go to? You?” She reaches out, huffing when she cups my groin and I wrench away from her. “No. This belongs to someone else, doesn’t it?”
Her stare returns to the mirror like she can see something beyond it. All that’s there is the shell she’s allowed herself to become, the one she paints in pretty colors, hoping Vin will still want to stroke it.
“You haven’t touched another woman since Aedry, have you?” she asks. “You haven’t let Vin’s whores blow you or get you off.”
No. I haven’t. That doesn’t mean I answer.
I edge from her reach. Donnie’s been asking about Aedry and I haven’t told her shit. But she knows I’m not over her and that I never will be.
“Did you love her?” she asks, her voice a shadow of what it once was. A tear streams down her face, cutting a line in all that makeup caking her skin. “Did you want to make babies with her? Did you see yourself growing old with her―being buried in the same damn grave as her?”
Again, I don’t respond, her words slicing me like razor blades. Everything she said is everything I wanted with Aedry, everything that’s tearing me up when I think of her. Two months of not waking up with her beside me―of not seeing that smile that made me whole―it’s a wonder I can still function.
That emptiness I feel deepens which each breath I take. I know Donnie’s messed up and wants to mess me up with her. I put it back on her. Unlike me, Donnie still has a chance.
“Leave, Donnie. Sell everything you have and get the hell out of here. I’ll give you some bills―enough to start fresh. But you have to leave. You hear me? You have to get out of this.”
Anger finds its way into her tone as another tear falls. “You tell me to go. You tell me to leave. But you won’t go yourself, because he won’t let you. No,” she says. “He won’t. He may not need me. But he sure as hell needs you. Doesn’t he, Salvatore?”
Again. She’s right. But again, I don’t tell her. No, I don’t have a choice. But she needs to believe she still does.
Before I can argue, her front door opens and a pair of feet stomp inside. “Sal?” Vin’s voice calls out.
I take one last look at Donnie. “It’s not too late for you,” I tell her, my voice whip sharp.
“You’re wrong,” she says, her odd tone halting me by the door. Her eyes glue to her worn reflection, agony practically aging her as I watch. “You’re so wrong, Salvatore.”
There are so many things I can tell Donnie―too many words to remind her of what she once was. But with Vin here, I can’t. Like I said, he’s ruined both of us.
I step out to of her room and around the corner into the living room. Vin and Lucca are standing by the white leather couches, Lucca’s expression tight. Vin meets me halfway, keeping his voice low. “Tomorrow night, we’re taking out Liberella.” He laughs when I just look at him. “What? Do you think I can continue to allow his disrespect?” His smile erases. “I want you at the house with Rita starting at dawn. No one gets in, you hear me?”
Just when I think Vin can’t dig h
is grave deeper into hell, he does this, target New York’s strongest boss. What’s the master plan this time? Storm his house―his business? Poison his damn food? Whatever it is, if he fails, it ends for all of us.
Our numbers are few, and most of his men are ready to jump ship to the other side, seeing how many he sent to war to die on his behalf. He’s thinking go big and go strong. I’m thinking he’s lost his damn mind. I don’t tell him. I don’t say anything that might spare his life―not after what he pulled on me and my family.
“You think the remaining bosses will come after Rita?” I’m not really asking, more like clarifying what I’ve wondered about. Family is supposed to be off limits. That’s the rule. But Vin has done too much shit and lost too much honor, and now, his wife is at risk. Hell, we all are.
When he doesn’t answer and reaches for a smoke, I ask, “What about Donnie?”
He takes a long drag and blows it out slowly. “She’s out. I already stopped paying for this place. She’s got maybe another two weeks here if that.”
Every muscle in my back tenses in time with my clenching fists. “Are you going to tell her?”
“She’ll find out when the eviction notices start piling up.” He shrugs. “The other one,” he adds, referencing Tina or whatever the hell her name is. “She’ll be your regular watch once I’m sure Rita’s safe.”
A small creak behind me tells me Donnie was at her bedroom door and that she heard every word. I don’t react. I can’t.
Vin doesn’t notice, edging toward Donnie’s bedroom as Lucca makes his way to my side. I shouldn’t be shocked that Vin’s here to fuck her, even though he’s already fucked her over.
“What?” Vin asks, laughing when he catches my glare. “She still gives the best head in the Tri-states.”
He’s saying that shit to look strong, not that he’ll deny Donnie when she falls to her knees.
I glance at Lucca when I hear Vin close the bedroom door behind him, realizing he’s watching my every move. Since the island, he kept trying to figure me out. I can’t shake the feeling there’s more to him. But, it’s what I catch in his dark stare when he shifts his focus in the direction of the bedroom that halts me in place.
