He’s half-Italian, just like me. Widened brown eyes stare at me, his nose making terrified, sniffing sounds. I grasp his shoulder, feeling nothing but the hollow beat of my heart.
“I don’t know what the fuck to do anymore.”
A series of muffled words bulge under the duct tape. He’s probably trying to convince me not to kill him, but I’m not having a crisis of conscience over that.
I want her.
“Even this has lost its fun.”
I sink the blade under his flesh, waiting for that beautiful, red color to spill from his wound. He screams into the tape and I feel my chest shake.
This is how far I’ve fallen. Spilling my guts to a man I’m about to kill.
Blood slips down the blade and around my fingers. I yank it out of him and watch him bleed, expecting to feel something other than crushing despair. I have to make a choice—and soon.
“She told me she wanted more,” I say to him with a small smile. “With me, of all people.”
Thinking about it like that makes me laugh, but I can’t forget the high I felt when she told me that. She dragged me into the bathroom at a charity gala ball so that I could fuck her brains out.
I can’t just let her go.
To be wanted by someone like her is a greater thrill than taking someone’s life. I’ve never felt it before.
“I’m not the type to second-guess myself. I don’t get attached to people, period, but this one—this one’s gotten deep under my skin.”
I clutch the broad kitchen knife, sighing when I catch my troubled expression on the flat of the blade. Then I look at his face, desperately seeking an answer from him, but all I see is terror and pain.
No, I can’t throw everything I’ve worked for away. She’s just a woman. I’ll find another one.
But it’s not just about finding another one anymore, it’s about the guilt poisoning my stomach and the joy I feel when I hold her to my chest. No one ever gave that to me—no one ever even came close. She told me that she wanted to be with me. Was it real, or is she too fucked up from her captivity to realize that I’m completely wrong for her?
Doesn’t fucking matter. I want her, and I’ll have her.
“I always get what I want. Maybe this is no different.”
The man screams into his duct tape and yanks against his restraints, tears leaking out of his eyes.
I’ve really lost it.
The blade thick in my hand, I reach out and quickly slice through his carotid artery. What the fuck ever. This is a complete waste of my time. I slam the blade on the table, not even waiting to watch him die as I storm out of the metal cage where I watched so many of them die, and laughed when they struggled. I reach out for the taps and wash the blood from my hands, gritting my teeth as I scour my flesh.
I need to commit to it.
The boss waits for me in the back of the room, his reading glasses propped on his nose as he examines some paperwork. He looks older with them on and not as threatening. It’s just the two of us, and somehow that makes it easier.
“Jack.”
He raises his head and peers at me, perhaps sensing some of my desperation. “What’s wrong, Tommy-boy?”
“I want her alive.”
A heavy sigh leaves his chest as he drops the glasses on the table and stands up, looking more and more like the boss who intimidated me as a child.
“Why?”
Because I need her.
My hands shake at my sides from suppressed rage. I can already tell what he thinks of my request, and I won’t be able to control my outburst.
“This isn’t enough for me anymore.” I swallow hard as I look into his lined face, which softens when he hears my response.
“Tommy, Tommy, Tommy.”
The fatherly tone in his voice suddenly burns my mouth with acid. “Don’t do that. Don’t fucking patronize me—”
He gives me a sharp look. “You know that I can’t let her live. What kind of example does it set if I just let her walk?”
I know, but I don’t care.
“She’ll never talk to anyone, Jack. I made sure of that. There’s no fucking need to kill her, and you know it.”
“If Vinny’s wife talked to the feds, what do you think would happen to her? I would expect him, and any one of my guys to follow through with the same orders. The famiglia matters more than our wives, even our children. It definitely matters more than some bitch who testified against us.”
Not to me it doesn’t. The realization of that makes me swallow hard.
Why should I kill her when the problem will resolve itself? Revenge? I don’t give a fuck about the other guys she ratted on.
“I need your word that nothing’s going to happen to her.”
“I won’t give you that,” he says in a gritty voice.
“Then we’re going to have a fucking problem.”
He stares at me incredulously for a moment and then laughs. “Of all the guys, I never would have expected you to do this.” He jabs me in the chest, snarling. “You never gave a fuck about any of the assholes you tortured in that room. You spend a couple weeks sinking your dick into a fucking rat, and you think that means something? You think that girl gives a shit about you? She’s just biding her time. She’s a cunt, Tommy. She deserves to die, and she will.”
A lightning bolt strikes directly into my chest, burning every surface of skin. My vision blurs and my hand suddenly reaches out, grabbing Jack’s collar.
Fuck. You.
“You made me like this, Jack. You put that knife in my hands, remember?”
Light-blue eyes harden like shards of ice. “Take your fucking hands off me. I’m the boss of this family—”
The grit rolling from my voice surprises me. “A boss without any captains facing at least twenty years in the can.”
“Is that a threat? I’ll fucking kill you, you half-mick mezzo-fanook.”
Somewhere behind my rage, my world comes crashing down as I stare into those perfectly indifferent blue eyes. I fought for him. Would have killed for him. The one favor I ask of him, he turns me down. Then he calls me a mick, as if I’m just any regular jerkoff.
“Touch her, and I’ll make her sing to the feds. She does whatever I tell her to. If anyone else has a problem with that, they know where I live.”
The eyes stare back at me defiantly and then his mouth pulls into a bitter smile.
Then I know I’ve won.
MELANIE
I’ve spent the better part of three weeks wondering if I’m going insane, and every morning I wake up in a distinctly confused fog. Is this all a dream? It seems like one. I was stolen from the life I hated, and he handed me a new one that I initially rebelled against.
Pain and pleasure.
My legs stretch on the blue satin sheets, which are pleasantly cool to the touch, and I slip from his bed. The cold floor immediately makes my toes curl, and I open the huge walk-in closet, inhaling the smell of Tommy’s suits. I touch the cuff of one of them and a pleasant squirm moves inside my stomach. Then I grab a fluffy blue bathrobe and descend the stairs.
The smell of coffee roasting burns the air. Suddenly I’m pitched forward into memory and I recall the FBI agents clutching their mugs of coffee. My heart gallops forward, and I remember that today I’m supposed to meet with them. The staircase squeaks and cracks as I descend, somehow adding to my anxiety.
He sits in the kitchen, still dressed in last night’s clothes with his face buried in his hands. Concern tightens around my heart and I approach his broad back, laying a hand on the back of his neck. I’m afraid he’ll throw the hand off, but the tension in his muscles seems to relax a little.
“Tommy?”
He finally perks up, moving his head out of his hands to look at me through bloodshot eyes.
“Sit down.”
Refusing to look away from him, I pull out my chair, my chest starting to shake from my hammering heart.
“What’s wrong?”
His
fingers make a scratching sound from the stubble on his face as he runs them across his chin. “Do you still want to go to college?”
I sit down next to him, surprised by the question. Yes, that deep-seated yearning is still there. It’s not going anywhere, anytime soon. “Yeah, ’course I do. I just can’t imagine how it’ll be possible, after everything.”
“I could have given you whatever you wanted, Mel. I would have.”
Curious, I glance at his profile. His lips are turned down and his eyes are glassy.
What the hell?
I take his hand in mine and he turns my palm around, bringing it to his lips. “What—what’s going on?”
“You need to go,” he says in an urgent tone. “You need to get the fuck out of here while you still can.”
My breath catches in my chest. “Why?”
“You’ve got to get away from me before I get you killed.”
I snatch my hands away from him. “What the hell are you talking about? I’m not leaving!”
“I’m going to do something crazy that’s probably going to get me killed, and I don’t want you caught in the crossfire. When you meet with the feds—” he breaks off, suddenly biting into his closed fist, “make a deal with them.”
“What?” I’m on my feet, blood racing through my veins. “Is this some kind of sick joke? You spent weeks trying to get me to throw out my testimony. Now that I’m finally willing, you change your goddamn mind?”
“Melanie, it’s not like that.” He stands up, hands circling around my arms. He gazes down at me with a desperate look on his face. “You think I want this? I’ve spent my whole life in the mob, trying to become someone I’ll never be. At least, not anymore.”
My body feels strangely numb as he pulls me into his chest, giving me a fierce hug. “You need to leave here and never come back. You deserve to follow your dreams without someone like me in your life.”
Tears spring in my eyes as heat billows in my chest. “No, I’m not leaving—”
Fingers caressing my cheeks cut off my words. “You have to, sweetheart.”
“I haven’t had a say in anything these last few weeks, but this is a choice I’m making. I want to be with you.” My voice trembles as a tear slips down my face.
His face turns as if he’s just heard something unpleasant. “Please go. Just get the fuck out of here, and save yourself.”
“No.”
“Damn it, Melanie. Don’t make me hurt you.” A menacing look flashes over his face, reminding me of when he first kidnapped me—the knives on the table.
“You destroyed everything I was, and now you’re just throwing me away?”
“I’m not! I’m giving your life back to you. I’m giving you a chance to survive. Isn’t that the right thing?”
He looks like he no longer knows what’s right and wrong.
Everything he says makes sense, I know that. The logical part of my brain wants me to listen to him. Flee. My heart breaks at the thought of leaving him, of never being able to feel his hands on my hips and his lips on my face, and never hearing his voice again.
“You made me fall for you. I can’t go on with my life as if you don’t exist.”
He pulls me into a fierce hug as my body shakes with sobs.
“I love you.”
I hear his sharp intake of breath, and suddenly his embrace feels frozen. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Stop doing that. I know how I feel.”
He disengages his arms from my back and looks at me with a pained expression. He rakes his hand through his hair and stares at me, looking quite terrified at the very idea of love.
“Melanie, just ask yourself this: Why the fuck would I love someone who kidnapped and tortured me?”
The apartment rings with my sobs as I collapse into his arms. I don’t know why. Love doesn’t always make sense.
“You gave me something I never felt before. You protected me from Jack.”
“Melanie,” he says in a raw voice. “The whole time, I was prepared to end your life. That was the plan all along. I lied to you.”
Something cold spears through my chest as I stare into his eyes, which are creased with misery. I search them for any indication that he might be lying, but I don’t see anything but the painful, raw truth. Nausea rises in the back of my throat. I suspected what he was going to do, but I trusted him when he told me it wouldn’t come to that.
“When?” It sounds like a harsh growl.
“I don’t—”
“When did you decide that you weren’t going to kill me?”
His eyes lower from my heated gaze. “I don’t know, exactly. It doesn’t matter, Melanie. I don’t love you. I never will.”
I stumble backward from him, somehow struck by the force of his words. If he stabbed me in the stomach, it would be less painful. Shameful tears invade my eyes as that dark look descends over his face again.
I feel like such an idiot.
“Don’t come back.”
“You’re the worst thing that ever happened to me.”
I hurl the words at him, determined to hurt him as much as he hurt me, but a small, apologetic smile appears on his face.
“You never broke. If you did, you wouldn’t be able to talk to me like that. If there’s one thing I’m happy about, it’s that.”
“Fuck you.”
Pain momentarily flashes over his face before he turns around, and I feel a stab of guilt.
“Goodbye.”
* * *
Where should I go?
What should I do?
My feet wander the streets of New York, crunching over the hard-packed snow as I stare around my surroundings, bewildered. Where else is there to go, but home?
I suspect my parents are already there, probably worried sick. Thinking of them brings along a fresh wave of misery. I can’t face them and explain everything that happened. They would never understand.
I told him I loved him, and he returned the favor by throwing me out into the street. For weeks I knew nothing but him. He brought me to highs I never knew existed and inflicted pain on me. He broke me down until I couldn’t dream of living without him. Everything was so that I’d retract the testimony and those scumbags would get off the hook. I would’ve done it for him.
He doesn’t feel the same.
He never will.
I feel like a bird without wings. The world doesn’t make sense anymore. He bound me so tightly to him that I couldn’t see a future without him. Now he wants me to fend for myself?
And how am I supposed to get over this pain that’s racking my soul? I’m beyond tears. He reached in and tore out all my guts. I can’t even walk with a straight back, because everything feels like it’s caving in.
Why do I love him?
I ask myself that because he’s right. It’s an important fucking question, but I just can’t answer it. I just know that I need him.
Before him, there was nothing but darkness clouding my future. No end in sight. I hated my life.
Then he kidnapped me, and I was so pissed off. Most of the anger was directed toward myself. I was angry with myself for the choices I’d made that led me in that basement. My parents deserve a little bit of that blame, too.
Tommy fucked the anger out of me. He took my pride and crushed it into dust. Then I learned to trust in him completely, to surrender myself, to look at him for comfort.
My eyes burn.
Why would he say such terrible things to me?
Hardly realizing where I’m going, I bump into someone. A woman, from a brief look at her long blonde hair. She’s dressed in a wool coat.
“Sorry,” I whisper into the air, not even bothering to meet her gaze. I know it’s rude, but I don’t fucking care. There’s a lot on my mind. Still, I glance over my shoulder to look at a young, pretty face that I recognize. A face that makes my skin ice-cold.
“Melanie.”
She grabs my shoulders before I can twist away, and su
rprisingly, she pulls me into a hug.
“Where have you been? I’ve been so worried.”
Her voice cracks as she holds me to her chest. My arms are pinned to my sides as Michelle hugs me, discomfort billowing inside my head until I finally place both palms on her shoulders and shove her—hard.
Michelle falls backward with a cry and lands hard on the sidewalk, the dirty snow melting into her wool coat.
“Don’t touch me.”
She springs to her feet, a hurt look souring her face. “Melanie, I’m so sorry for what happened at the motel—I know you were taken—”
“You were more worried about your career than you were about me. You’re so full of shit.”
“That’s not true. I was trying to help you.”
“Help me?” I repeat in outrage. “You better get away from me before I smash my fist into your mouth.”
Looking taken aback, she raises her palms. “Melanie, you need to come in.”
I turn my back on her. “I’ll talk to one of them, not you, and they need to come to my house. I’m not going anywhere.”
I’m exhausted and fed up with being dragged to places I have no desire to be. My feet climb the steps of my brownstone, a worried Michelle hanging nearby.
“It’s not safe for you here.”
I ignore her as I unlock the door to my house and step inside, slamming it shut on her face. The door rattles with her knocking as I remove my boots. The bitch can stand in the snow for eternity, for all I care.
The apartment looks just how I left it. An abandoned coffee mug sits on the counter, still half filled with the dark liquid. My feet move soundlessly to my bedroom, once a place I felt safe. The sheets are still tousled from restless sleep, and it occurs to me that since I’ve been with Tommy, I’ve never slept so well. Standing in the too-small bedroom feels wrong. This place doesn’t feel like home anymore.
A harder series of knocks jars me from my thoughts.
“FBI! Open the door, Ms. Ronaldo.”
I recognize the voice of Agent Palmer, the balding man who intimidated me into talking to them—ruining my life in the process. Calm stills my limbs.
There’s something about Tommy’s kidnapping that made me impervious to all other threats. When your life is on the line, little else matters. They don’t scare me anymore.
His Witness Page 19
