Rule

by CD Reiss

  I didn’t know the layout of the house, so I followed because I didn’t want to lose her. I didn’t fear much, but I did fear having her too far from me, and if she went outside, I thought I’d never see her again. That was a reality to me. Her disappearing into a puff of smoke, or getting shot or taken when my back was turned. I’d let her see her brother for thirty minutes while I met with her sister, and she wound up getting dragged down a stairwell by Domenico Uvoli.

  I turned a corner in time to hear a door slam. She’d gone into a bathroom and closed the door without even turning on the light.

  I knocked. “Contessa? Open this now.”

  “Pounding on the door is not helpful.”

  Had I been pounding? I realized my fist hurt. “Let me in.”

  “No, please. Just leave me alone.”

  “I will break this door down.”

  “Go to hell. I’ll climb out the window.”

  A window? Was she botz? Was she trying to drive me to the edge of a cliff? Because jumping out the window and rolling down the scrub-brushed hill half naked was not all right. My blood got hot with the thought. My skin tingled and curled on itself. If she knew that I was sure she’d be picked up by some stronzo as soon as she was out of my reach, she would have come out of that fucking bathroom right then.

  “This is your last chance to come fucking out!”

  No answer, just the sound of her weeping on the other side.

  Fine. At least I knew she was in there.

  I checked the objects in the room. Nothing. Carpet. Blinds. Electrical outlets. Enough. That was enough.

  I tore down the blinds with my bare hands. She must have thought I was having a temper tantrum, and maybe I was. She’d separated herself from me by not telling me what I’d done, then again with that door that I could have torn off the hinges.

  The crossbar that held the blinds separated from the wall, tearing plaster. I yanked off a vertical blind, cracking it. I used the edge of a piece to start unscrewing the plate from an outlet.

  “Are you in there, Contessa?”

  I needed to keep her in the bathroom. If she crawled out the window, I would rip the mountains off the earth and fling them at heaven.

  “Are you there?” I shouted.

  She sniffed.

  “I don’t like too much talking,” I said. “Too much can get misunderstood. So if you say straight what I did, I can apologize and we can finish fucking. But you sit there behind that door, then we’re fighting, not fucking. That, I do not like.” I finally got the plate off.

  She mumbled something.

  “I can’t hear through the door.”

  I got the plate off the outlet. It left a nice hole in the wall that would work for leverage.

  I pulled up the blinds by the crossbar, extending them to their full length. I jammed one end in the hole in the wall the plate had covered, bending the outlet until I had room, then put the other end against the doorknob.

  “It’s too much. It’s just too much. I can’t… we can’t… this is wrong.”

  I bent the crossbar so it wouldn’t slide closed. Adjusted. “What’s wrong?”

  I felt a little less angry knowing she was inside and staying there.

  “You’re married. I can’t get past that.”

  I didn’t even address that concern. It was ridiculous. I went outside. The vegetation at the side of the house was overgrown, and I walked through the brush like a bulldozer, breaking any branch in my way, angry as the floodlights at the back of the house. The rear wall was five feet from a near-sheer drop into the oblivion of the canyon, and at the back wall, the bottom of the bathroom window was six inches over my head.

  I tucked my thumbs under the window. It was locked.

  “Open this window,” I shouted.

  “Are you nuts?”

  I could see the top of the bathroom door. Saw the geometry of it change then snap back into place. She was trying to open it.

  So eager to get away from me. Oh, this would not continue. Not for another second. I was going to make her understand that she was not to hide from me. Not to run. Not because of Valentina or anything. She was mine, and what was mine stayed in my sight until I decided it was safe to leave it.

  I knew how to break a window. I’d broken a few dozen. I didn’t want to scare her or cut her, but that window was getting broken or opened, and I was getting in there to explain to her what all this meant.

  Of course, no rocks in Los Angeles. You had to buy fucking rocks. Sick place, this, where you couldn’t find a rock to break a window. I lifted a flat flagstone from the path, exposing fat white grubs and a sprinkling of ants.

  I tapped the stone. I loved that woman. She was as much mine as a part of my body, and she was upset about Valentina. I understood that. Sure, who wouldn’t be upset? But my wife had nothing to do with her. With us. With the fact that I couldn’t think about what to do about Valentina, or the son I hadn’t known I had, or anything, with Theresa on the other side of a wall

  “Theresa,” I called as I put the stone on the windowsill and climbed up. I heard the shower running, and Theresa was nowhere to be seen. Good. I wouldn’t have to ask her to move to the back wall. Clinging to the siding and the wood window frame, I touched the rock to the top edge of the bottom window. Tap. Tap. Then something stronger, until the window cracked. I pressed the stone to the glass, and the crack widened into a poorly-defined web. A chunk popped onto the bathroom floor.

  She poked her head past the curtain. Her eyes were red and swollen, and her hair stuck to her face. “Antonio, just leave me alone.”

  I reached up and in, twisting the lock. “No. I’m not leaving you alone. Never.”

  I slid the window up and crawled into the bathroom. My shoes hit the floor when she turned off the water, and I snapped the curtain open. She faced me, skin textured in drops of water, and she covered herself, ashamed of her nakedness.

  “Put your hands down.”

  “I need space.”

  “You do not. You need to come back to me naked. That body you cover? It’s mine. Every centimeter of it.”

  She shook her head and looked down into the middle distance. “I saw her. When she came into the room. I was behind the mirror.”

  I took mental inventory again. The moment when I saw Valentina… what had I done? Had I kissed my wife? I didn’t think so. Had I held her? What had my expression been in that moment when all my grief and vengeance came to nothing?

  “I know. Did Brower do this? Did he make you watch? Because I’ll kill him.”

  “No,” she said. “I forced my way in. He tried to get me away. But I’m glad I saw. I wouldn’t have believed it otherwise.”

  “Believed what?”

  “Can I get dressed?”

  “No.”

  “She’s your fate. I’m just a distraction.” Her face dropped, fell apart, and she started crying. Her hands left her breasts and the space between her legs and covered her face.

  I wanted to punch whoever had made her cry. I wanted to avenge her every pain, but how could I take vengeance on myself?

  “Contessa…” I put my arms out for her.

  “Don't touch me!” she shouted as if I were a scorpion in her bed. “You don’t get it. You don’t belong to me. You never did. We didn’t know. All right, that’s fine. But I won’t be the one to break a marriage. That’s forever, Antonio. Forever. Until death. You really need to think about that.”

  “There’s nothing to think about.”

  She stepped out of the tub, and I stopped her.

  “Aspetta,” I said, looking around the floor. I pulled up the blue glass-coated rug and flipped it. The underside was safe. I put it in front of the tub and moved out of her way when everything in my body told me to get in her way. “Step on that.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  “Your feet are bare. There’s glass all over.”

  Her jaw jutted out, but she stepped on the upside-down bath mat. “You old
world guys… you think it’s fine to have a wife and fuck a mistress. Don’t think I haven’t been on the other side.” She held up her hand. “And before you even speak, I know this situation is different.” She dried herself off, apparently unaware of what her naked body did to me. “It’s crazy. Your dead wife shows up because she thinks you’re dead. There’s no precedent for this, I know. And its irony isn’t lost on me. But you’re not seeing this situation for what it is because you figure you can keep on sleeping with me while you figure out what the whole ‘Valentina and a son’ thing means. Well, I don’t figure it that way.”

  She poked her feet through her pants, and I watched her beautiful legs disappear into the fabric. My balls ached. My thoughts were disorganized. All I could think about was getting inside her, like an adolescent.

  “The way I figure it,” she continued, wrestling on her shirt, “you just had a priority shift, and you have to shift back to your wife.” Her head stretched through the neck of the shirt, and her red hair left wet splotches on it. “You belong with her. You speak the same language. Same country. Same community. Your dream to go back to Naples and live in peace? You can’t have it with me. You’ll never have it with me.”

  She tried to open the door to end the conversation but couldn’t. She pushed, but I’d wedged it closed very effectively. She yanked the door back and forth. “Damn it, Antonio!” She smacked the door so hard she had to cradle her aching hand.

  I took her injured hand and turned her back to the door. She had defiance in her face, and I wanted to wipe it away with a fuck so hard we’d both break.

  “You listen to me,” I said, getting close to her and putting up my finger so she knew I meant what I said. “I want what I love, and I love what I want. What I want is you. You came to me as a lady and now you are a queen. I’ve never met a woman like you. I don’t even deserve you, but I have you. And having you, I’m not giving you up. Not for an old promise I made when I was a boy. Not for a place that rejects me. Not for a family that won’t have you. Your world is my world. Our world.”

  “You have a child.”

  Her eyes blazed, and her words were the end to a story. She was right. I had a son who was a stranger. I would never shirk my responsibility to him, but I needed a minute’s peace to get my head around what that meant.

  “I’ll take care of him. Don’t worry. That’s outside all this.”

  She shook her head slowly. “It’s not enough.”

  “I don’t have anything else.”

  “I love you. But I won’t share you.”

  “I’m not asking you to share.”

  “In the eyes of God?”

  I pushed myself away from her. “You choose your sins like a woman.”

  “I’ll kill for you again, because I love you still. I’ll kill for you a hundred times. But I’m not touching you. Not like a lover.”

  I saw white hot. Did she think she was going to walk away from me? She was wrong.

  “No other man will lay his hands on you as long as you live.”

  She looked as if I’d slapped her, and I had a moment of regret. I’d only spoken the truth, but maybe I spoke it too soon. Or too hard.

  “Capo,” she said softly, “there will never be another. I’m ruined.”

  She blinked, and a tear fell. Then another. I wanted to kill the man who’d hurt her.

  seventeen.

  theresa

  d made every effort to keep Valentina in a little compartment in my head. To stick her in a box, mark it “LATER,” and keep it on the shelf. But when Antonio tried to fuck me in the safe house, the box rattled off the shelf and fell to the floor, breaking apart in a spray of unwanted news.

  He is taken.

  He has a son.

  He will never be happy with you.

  He made a promise.

  There was more, some more hurtful than others. Some had a comma and the phrase “and you love him,” following, as if to drive home the point that not only was all this true, all this mattered. In the bathroom, I stabbed myself with those phrases and tried to wash them from me in the shower.

  I knew he loved me. There was simply no question. I’d never been loved the way he loved me. With him, I felt important and whole. Without him, I was a piece of a person.

  How pathetic. How old world.

  “I’m ruined,” I repeated with my back to the door, not to sound pitiable but to shine another light on it. He’d ruined me with his love, branded me with an outmoded way of loving that I wanted more than anything in the world.

  “No.” He laid a hand on each side of my head and stretched his arms, looking at the floor between his feet. “I’m the one who’s ruined. I was left a widower of a wife I loved, and I fell in love again. I can’t leave the wife; we have a child together. And I can’t leave the woman I love. I can’t be with either.”

  “You can go back to her. It’s best for your family.”

  “No. I cannot.”

  “Why not? Because you feel sorry for me? That’s just—”

  “No!” He spoke so sharply I jumped. “No one should feel sorry for you. I pity the man who feels sorry for you. Do you feel sorry for a starving tiger today? Or the animal she rips apart tomorrow?” He stood straight and sliced the air with his hands. “No. You can’t get rid of me so easily. I’m not turning my back on you. You’re mine. You’ll always be mine. We live together, or we die together. There is nothing in between.”

  I shook my head, pressing my lips together as if tightening them against the words that wanted to come.

  “There isn’t a good end to this,” I said.

  “It’s decided.”

  He was out of his mind, but I didn’t know how to talk him back to reality. We didn’t both have to be miserable. A measure of happiness could be meted out if he’d just accept that he couldn’t, and shouldn’t, have me.

  But he seemed determined to let me drag him down. Then fine, he’d have his damned way. I’d be present at his side, and I’d protect him from harm, but no more.

  “There is no sex,” I said. “No kissing. No touching. I do not have affairs with married men, and I don’t play second fiddle. We’re partners. Business partners. Which means if you’re up shit’s creek with the Sicilians, I am too. It means however we decide to remedy that, I’m right there with you. You can’t put me in a box and lock it until it’s safe for me to come out. That’s not what this is.”

  “Nothing will happen to you,” he said, softening.

  “Well then”—I put my hands on my hips, feeling taller and more powerful than I had even ten minutes before—“nothing will happen to you either.”

  His lips were on me so fast, I didn’t have a second to turn away. He smelled so right, and the arches of his body on mine were such a tight fit, I forgot they were a wrong answer brought on by a flawed assumption.

  I pushed him away. “I mean it. Do not test me. The next time, I bite. Your tongue will go back in your mouth a bloody piece of meat.”

  He smirked, the asshole, and slinked closer without touching me. “I’ll die before I kiss you again.”

  In contrast to my voice, his was silken, as if he was saying the exact opposite, that he would kiss me. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but he would kiss me.

  My heart sank right into that thought. I wanted that kiss. Wanted it ready to be given when I was ready to take it. I turned my face a quarter of an inch, just enough to feel the heat of his cheek on my own.

  Did it matter? Since we were doomed anyway, did it matter if I kissed him or not? Logic cut both ways. If I couldn’t see further than the length of my arms, what was the difference? I had no future with him and no future without him. No future. What had I sold myself for? For this? A guy with a wife? Of all the ridiculous, irritating, miserable, shitty choices in men.

  “You know what?” I said. “Go to hell. You’re a piece of shit. And that’s not foreplay. I hate this. I hate everything about it. I hate feeling committed to you, because everything abo
ut it is wrong. I hate loving you. I hate myself for standing here right now, wanting you to fuck me.” I felt the muscles of his face change. He was smiling. I pushed him back. “That was not an invitation. I hate you for turning me into your side piece, and I don’t care if you meant it or not. I don’t care if you knew. You know what I care about? The damned facts. You made me a mistress, and I made myself a whore for loving you. And shut the hell up. Don’t defend yourself or what’s happening here. I’m mad, and I’m staying that way.”

  I took the doorknob in both hands and shook the door. It was wedged shut by something on the other side. I punched it, which was the very definition of ineffective, and it hurt my hand. I pressed my face against the painted wood.

  “Theresa,” Antonio whispered, putting his hand on my shoulder.

  I leaned into it, because I was soothed wherever we connected. “Don’t touch me.”

  “Get away from the door then.”

  He dropped his hands, and I stepped back onto the upside-down bath mat.

  Antonio kicked the doorknob once then again. It bent. One more kick, and it hung by half a screw. On the other side, something thupped to the carpet. He opened the door.

  I walked through the bedroom and swept up his phone, wielding it like a sword. “I’m using this.”

  “To do what?”

  “To call my sister.”

  His shirttail hung in fangs at his thighs. Hair stuck up in a sexy disaster. Pant cuffs an ombre of dirt. I’d never seen him look so helpless. I wanted to hug him and tell him everything would be all right.

  “Get out,” I said.

  He stood stock still. I didn’t know what to expect. He’d drag me to my knees and put his cock in my mouth, or he’d leave me alone. I half wished he’d take control of my body, force me to bend to him, so I didn’t have to be responsible for choosing him.

  He spun and strode out of the bedroom, snapping the door closed behind him.

  eighteen.

  theresa