by CD Reiss
But I’m already pulling up through the hole. His voice is lost in the wind. I’m standing on my seat with the edge of the car at my waist. I feel his arm around my legs, holding me still as he drives down the highway. With my arms out, I speed alone, unencumbered, unenclosed, unrestrained but held firm. Trees fly by in a blur of leaves. Their trunks seem to shift like a handful of thrown twigs. But they’re not moving, I am, and the broken yellow lines of the two-lane road are the only things guiding my direction. The world is frozen in place, and I move through it. I am the unstoppable force looking for the immovable object.
There’s only one way, and it’s forward.
This is not freedom. I will never be truly free.
But righteousness has infected grief, and the result is flowing through my veins.
It is power.
Santino pulls on my waistband, and I bend back into the car, sliding back into my seat with rosy cheeks and hair like a haystack.
“What was that?” he asks, closing the sunroof.
“Fun.”
“Don’t do it again.”
“You should try it.”
He laughs as he exits the highway, then he pulls me toward him and kisses my head as if he’s delighted that I’ve had a good time. I lean into his shoulder while he drives.
At the red light, he turns to stare deeply inside me. I am clothed, yet raw in his gaze.
“I’m going to pull over and fuck you blind.”
“Sorry. The doctor says I’m closed for business this week.”
The light turns green. He nods but not in agreement.
“You need more in your belly than that orange. The lawyers haven’t confirmed a time. We eat, then we go whether they confirm or not.”
I assume what we call “the city” where the lawyer’s office is located is tiny compared to New York or Chicago or even Cleveland, but to me, the stone buildings are huge, and the crowded sidewalks are overwhelming.
Santino takes me to a diner with parking in the back, but makes no move to get out of the car. He doesn’t even unlock the doors, so I do. He locks them again.
“What?” I ask.
“We need to talk about what it means when you say ‘closed for business.’”
“I think it’s pretty obvious.”
“You’re bleeding still?”
“Not really, but that’s not—”
“Open your legs.”
Glands that have been dormant for days awaken in a rush, sending signals to the rest of my body that it’s time to tingle. Time to turn my blood into an electrical current.
He taps the steering wheel, glances at my legs, then back at my face expectantly.
“Doctor’s orders,” I say.
He leans over and, with a hand on each knee, yanks them apart. Arousal hits my system so hard I can’t keep my eyes open.
“Did the doctor say I can’t touch you like this?” He presses his hand over the crotch of my pants and makes circles. “Answer.”
“She didn’t.”
He runs a nail down the length of my nub, then the tips of all his fingers.
“Did she say I can’t suck on your clit?” He taps it, and every time, it’s a mini explosion.
“No.” I’m gyrating against him. The fabric between us is damp and warm.
“Did she say your asshole is out of business?”
“No.” I grab his hand and push it down my pants.
His fingers flick my clit, pull it, and stroke it.
“This is out of business? It feels too wet for that.”
“It is. It…” I arch with pleasure and plateau before I come. “It wants you.”
“Remember this. You are always ready for me. If your cunt is busy, you open your mouth. You offer your ass. Your body belongs to my cock.”
“Yes.”
He strokes circles on just the tip. “Look at you. I’m barely touching you, and you’re pushing into me. And you’re going to let some doctor tell you to say no to me?”
“No. You’re right. Let me come. Please.”
“You’re so beautiful when you beg.”
“Ti prego. Please.”
“Look at me.”
I do it, but I’m too blind with pleasure to see. “My body is yours. Please. Ti prego. Let me come for you. Sono la tua puttanella.”
“Siamo d’accordo. Give me what you want.”
He gradually increases the speed and pressure on my clit until my ass rises from the seat and my hand is leveraged against the window. I scream his name, jerking my hips while he modulates his movements to extend the orgasm on and on and on.
But it’s all broken by a sharp pop, followed by the rumble of rocks grinding against each other. Someone screams. Before I know it, Santino’s pulled my head into his lap to get me out of the window.
“What’s going on?” I hiss.
I hear people running across the parking lot shouting “what the fuck” and “where was it?” I try to sit up, but Santino pushes me down. I can’t see anything but the top of the dumpster and the brick wall of the adjacent building.
“Hush.” He starts the car and reverses with a screech of rubber.
The view changes. The sky is nickel-gray, but there’s no rain or lightning to accompany the thunder.
Then the sirens. People running by, close enough to the car to touch it. Someone slams into the passenger side before going around.
“Santino!” I say sternly, trying to overpower him.
“Stay still!”
“Get off me!”
“This is not the time to show me you’re a modern woman.”
Maybe I’m a self-destructive, disobedient monster, but I have to see, so I fight my way up to look out the windows. A cop car passes us, lights flashing and siren set to eleven. A dark gray mushroom cap rises to the sky. Not gunshots. And I haven’t heard another pop.
“You’re being paranoid. It’s got nothing to do with us.”
“Stay down.” He pulls my head back into his lap, throws the car into drive, and takes off. “We’re going to pass it. I don’t want them to see you.”
The back of my head is thrust into his crotch when he whips around a turn.
“Can you tell me what’s going on, please?”
“I know why they didn’t confirm the appointment.”
I twist to look up at him—the curve of his chest, the underside of his chin, the bridge of his arms to the wheel. Even with the creeping smell of smoke and the increasing wail of sirens, is any woman safer?
“What does that have to do with it?”
He stops at a light and cranes his neck to look out the passenger window. “Shit.”
“What?” I try to get up, but he pushes me down. “Let me see!”
He’s strong but must see the futility of trying to keep me down again.
The block perpendicular to us is short, and it’s already being cleared. The stone building nearest to the corner is five stories, and black smoke is billowing out of the top two floors. The façade to the front lobby has collapsed, taking a crater of sidewalk with it. A woman with a blood-covered face stumbles out the front door, tips sideways, and is caught by firefighters before she hits the ground.
“Is that the lawyer’s office?” I ask.
In answer, Santino pulls me back into his lap.
“We lost the crown,” I say, looking up at his chin.
“We did.”
The inheritance is a distraction from what I really want—a life and family with him. I should be happy it’s out of our hands, but I’m not. I feel violated.
“It’s mine,” I say.
“And that’s why they’re going to try to kill you.” He looks down briefly before putting his attention back on the road. “They think they have power over me now.”
When I feel the car hit highway speeds, I sit up. He doesn’t stop me.
“Don’t they have power over you now?” I ask. “Over us?”
“My love is stronger than any crown. They’re going to
die before they lay a finger on you.”
His confidence wraps around me like a bulletproof blanket. It’s untested until I’m shot at, but I believe it will keep me safe.
13
VIOLETTA
He drives up the mountain in a silence so hard and thick, I’m afraid trying to break it will shatter me. We pass three checkpoints. The guards at the entrance to Torre Cavallo are more serious and more heavily armed than the last time I was up here. Even Santino can’t pass without having his car inspected.
He gets out and speaks to them in Italian. I hear relief. Success. He’s alive. Half the conversation is lost in the wind. I’m desperate to know all the details, yet I want to run out there and change the subject. Every brain cell needs to be on getting a crown I didn’t want to win a war we didn’t start.
We’re cleared, Santino returns to the car, and the gate opens. When we pass, it clangs closed.
“What’s the plan?” I ask in the short space between the gate and the house.
“Find Damiano. Find Gia.” Santino stops in front of the house. “Take what’s ours.”
“Then what?”
Then wipe them from the earth. That’s what I want him to say. Fuck the crown. But he doesn’t answer. He just gets out and crosses to my side, avoiding the question. He must think my “then what” requires a promise to be normal, but he has to know that’s over.
“If there’s going to be trouble,” I say, “I want to get my family and bring them up here. My Zio Guglielmo and Zia Madeline. Whoever’s at their house while this is going on. My Aunt Anna has to be there. All of them.”
“It will be done.” He helps me onto my feet, and in doing that, he’s the man who married me, not the one who promised the earth and stars. Who squeezed my face to get my mouth open wide enough to say my vows. Hard and cold. All business. Even when he kisses my forehead. “You go inside.”
He walks away from the grand mansion toward a row of smaller houses built into the side of the mountain. I’m not afraid he won’t wipe out the people who did this. I’m terrified of something much more real.
“Wait!”
He turns when I call out, standing ten feet tall with twenty feet worth of impatience.
“Is this…?” There are too many people here. I can’t say this halfway across a lawn, so I run to him. “Just tell me, is this going to be like it was? Where you show up in bed sometimes, but not always? Am I an afterthought again?”
“You were never an afterthought.”
“Then come home to me at night.”
“We’ll see.”
“You’ll do more than see. You’ll follow that rule, or you’ll win the world and lose me.”
Holding the side of my face, he pulls me into him. His lips are soft and yielding, and his tongue is tender. His kiss makes a lie of the stone he’s turned into.
“I will not lose you,” he whispers with his forehead touching mine. “L’amore
governa senza regole.”
Love rules without rules.
“Fuck you,” I whisper back, but he lets me go and walks to the little buildings, flanked by men I don’t know. “Fuck you,” I say to myself. “I love you.”
Naked. Alone. Wet. The doctor cleaned me out, so the bleeding is gone now, but disappointment will flow out of me until my heart decides it’s had enough.
Too drained to stand, I sit on the tile ledge that was built into the shower wall, then slide to the floor, putting the bench at my back.
“Damiano Orolio,” I say, watching the water spiral down the drain. “Dr. Farina. Gia Polito. Father Alfonso.” The bloody face of the woman stumbling out of the building had nothing to do with any of this. Revenge is for her too. “Cosimo Orolio,” I add, then start over. “Damiano Orolio, Dr. Farina…”
Without Santino here, it all hits me. The blood-soaked bedsheets. The violation of the drugs. The explosion. The crown I never wanted but now need. The impending war. And remnants of the old sorrows. The horrifying second wedding. The throat I slashed. Even leftover bits of grief from Santino’s death-that-wasn’t settle in the corners like dust bunnies.
I don’t know how long I sob in the shower, but I cry until my lungs hurt. I’m blind with it. My eyes are swollen. My jaw aches. My throat is sore. I’m thirsty. I’m wrapped in a towel and Loretta is on the toilet, bending at my feet with a pair of pad-lined underwear between her hands. She wants me to step in. She’s asked me to do this already, and I heard her, but the words skipped off the surface of my consciousness like flat rocks on a placid lake.
I step in, and she pulls the underpants up under the towel.
“Thank you,” I say. “I think…” I have to stop for a last hitching breath. “I think I can finish.”
She stands. I forgot how tall she is. How much a full woman. I feel short and girlish next to her.
“There are clothes here.” She puts her hand on a pile.
“I’ll do it, just…if you could give me a minute.”
“We’re downstairs in the kitchen.” She leaves, softly clicking the door closed behind her.
I stand still for a moment, waiting for the sobs to attack again. They don’t, but I haven’t beaten them or resisted their advance. My heart just ran out of tears. It is wrung out, swollen, drained, and broken.
Bringing the pile of clothes to the bedroom, I look out the window, over the lawn, and up into the scrub and rock of a mountainside. The sky is not visible without craning my neck.
I sit on the bed with my shoulders hunched and my hands between my knees, then I drop to my side. Exhausted. Trapped again and again. Freedom is a lie. It’s a promise without substance. A light that only casts shadows.
He put me on this side of the house because it’s safe from the world, but my heart has an IV drip of sadness and anger. When it is full again, the world will not be safe from me.
14
VIOLETTA
The dark hours of the morning are so dead quiet, I hear murmurs of conversation from the patio on the side of the house. The scrape of chairs. A laugh cut off before it’s finished.
At some point, I got under the covers naked. Now I’m wide awake. Most importantly, I am alone. Santino did not come.
I’m pretty sure the proverb “Love rules without rules” doesn’t mean he can break them like this.
After I dress and brush my teeth, I try the bedroom door, half expecting it to be locked. It isn’t.
Santino could be anywhere right now. All I know is he wasn’t next to me when I woke up.
I told him I didn’t want to be an afterthought—that he’d win the world and lose me.
But will he ever lose me?
No. He won’t.
I follow muffled voices to my right and wind up in the grand dining room.
The last time I saw the dining room, it was empty. Now the room has been opened into a large patio on the side of the house, and both have rows of tables and chairs. A scattering of men grab food from a long buffet and sit in small groups.
The kitchen was never homey, even when the lack of utensils and pots had been addressed. Now it has been transformed into a place to cook for an army, with a stock pot as big as a wine barrel. Celia isn’t here, but the door to the basement is open. I smell a hint of sulfur from the coal furnace and hear clanging from the cucina below.
Outside, the crickets are still grinding away. I step into the view from my window—the grassy field between the house and the buildings against the mountain wall, with the slash of blackened blue sky above. The windows in the buildings on the mountain end of the lawn are all dark except for one. A dim beam pulses from one side of the window to the other. I walk toward it. Maybe I’m looking for my husband. Maybe I just want something to do before the day begins, and I have to fight tooth and nail for what I deserve.
The building is one of the smallest on this side of the lawn. More of a one-car garage surrounded by narrow, weedy walkways between buildings. Voices reach me, but they’re muffled and unintelligible. Grippin
g the window’s edge on tiptoe, I avoid stepping on a tomato plant to look through the frosted glass.
The movement of the pulsing light has slowed. It’s a lamp swinging on the end of a chain like a pendulum running out of energy. Someone is weeping. There’s no energy behind it. It is a sob of resignation.
In the window, I discover the crack leading to a corner of the pane, and in that corner, a tiny rhombus of glass is missing. I bend a little to look through it and have to hold my breath against the stench coming from that little hole.
The weeping man has a ring of long, graying hair at the base of a bald head and sits on a metal folding chair, leaning to the right with so much weight, the yellow nylon rope that ties his hands behind the chair’s back and an ankle to each chair leg is the only thing holding him up. His white tank top is hitched halfway up his big belly, and the shoulder strap doesn’t lean with his body, revealing a delicate pink nipple.
It’s the tender vulnerability of the nipple that focuses me. The ring of hair is not long on both sides. Only the right side has been grown out so that it can be combed over the scalp.
It’s Santino’s Uncle Marco. Paola’s husband. Gia’s father. The man who reluctantly raised his nephew. The man who said he was driving me to the airport to meet Gia, then made up a story about the brooch so he could deliver me to Damiano and put Santino in the way of a bullet.
I can’t really see his face, but he doesn’t look like he deserves whatever’s happening to him. He looks like a sad old Italian guy alone in a room.
Except he’s not alone.
From a dark corner, a man appears. He seems to be made of shadows. The sleeves of his white shirt are rolled past his roped, tattooed forearms. Standing over Marco, he reaches up and stops the lamp from swinging. The light reveals brown hair with a lock over his forehead, arched eyebrows, and a profile cut into marble.
When the man made of shadows speaks, his tone is gentle, even if his words are not. “I don’t want to ruin another shirt, sir.”
“I told you.” Marco’s voice has no strength. “I haven’t spoken to her.”
