Chapter 36
As calm as I can keep my voice, I say, “Sounds unlikely.”
My timing doesn’t falter and and I’m amazed that I get the right tone in my voice, but I feel like I’ve stumbled in the dark. Trying to recover, I rib him. “And you didn’t talk about me at all?”
He looks at me for a cool second. Of all three brothers, Carlo is the one I’m least likely to fool. My heart judders in the fraction of a second that he searches my eyes.
After a slow blink, he says, “But you said, ‘no.’ Why?”
I pull closer to him, relieved that the moment passed. “Because that’s not why I wanted to stay with you.” I hold his face as I look into his eyes. “Carlo, I gave myself to you. First. I’m yours, Carlo.” He begins to rise along my back.
I take hold of him. “That was my first time. I saved it for you, and I trusted you with it.”
“That wasn’t your first time for all the things we did.”
“Are we ready to open up and exchange all of our secrets, Carlo?”
He says, Yes. And he sounds utterly confident. But still I catch one tremor in his jaw.
“Alright, then,” I tell him. His eyes stay steady, but I can see he’s being evasive. There’s something he wants to keep hidden. What’s the secret he’s afraid to let out?
“We will,” I tell him. “We’ll share all of our secrets.” His eyes glow. “But not now.”
Reluctant, he nods. Then, “I want something with you that the other two don’t have. I know you’re going to share everything else with both of them. I know. It’s okay. Better than okay, in fact. But I want something that’s just mine.”
I know Carlo well enough to be sure that he’s not needy. He’s strategic. He wants something, apart from being the first and taking my virginity, he wants a bond between us. And I want it, too. I guess he’s right about that.
I already have a bond with Bruno. And in the ballroom we were comrades in battle.
With Alessio, although I wouldn’t say that we were bonded, we certainly have a strong connection.
I want something with Carlo. He may be the youngest, but he has a really special way of seeing things. Like he sees patterns in random events. And not like conspiracy theories. Carlo thinks so strategically, he’s practically a visionary. And he’s also the hardest to reach of all three men.
“Okay, Carlo. I love that idea, too. Sharing with you. Something that’s just special to us.” His head lowers and his eyes shine. I’m right. I read him right. “We’ll share some secrets. Family secrets. But it has to go both ways. I ask you a question, you ask me one.”
“Yes.”
“So.” I take a breath, “Where’s your mother?”
“OH!” His face is playful, but in a dangerous way. Like a cat who’s found a way to reach a nice, big fish. “No lube, right, no teasing massage or even some whispers? Hard as a nightstick and straight in. No protection.”
I try to suppress a laugh. I don’t do too well. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He disarms me with a kiss. Half sweet, half sinful. I really need to keep my wits about me, and he makes them ready to float off into the night. Gently, he says, “I just wasn’t ready.”
I realize that answering the question could be painful for him. And there is definitely something very strange about this family. I tell him, “You don’t have to answer.”
“She went away when I was ten. Mama has a fabulous villa on an island in the Bay of Naples. She lives in comfort and splendor, and keeps herself an unreachable distance away.”
“Have you been there?” Even as I ask him, I realize, he told me the story, and he threw me off the scent at the same time. She went away…
“I did go once. It was… difficult. Painful.” As he speaks, I feel it.
Carlo struggles when his emotions bubble up. My intense urge is to comfort him. To rescue him from the storm. But I hold myself back. I need to watch. To know him and understand this terrifyingly complex man. Maybe I’m learning that from him already.
His jaw works and his teeth rake inside his lip.
His eyes flash into mine as he says, “My turn.” I can almost see the emotion simmering in his eyes as he holds it back. “Your mom died, right? That’s what I heard. Do you remember how it happened?”
If his aim is to trade painful associations, then he knocked that one out of the park. I say ‘Yes,’ but no sound comes out.
“I’m sorry.” He reaches to stroke my hair, and he pulls me closer. “It’s okay. Really. You don’t have to say.”
This part is going to be hard. I pull back a little, knowing I need to be strong. I tell him, “I never talked about it before. I never told anyone. So I may crack, but it’s alright. It’s time I let it out.”
He nods, silently. It seems like he understands the difficulty I have talking about it, and he knows I need to take it at my own pace.
“Mom was seeing another man. He was an enforcer for the Romano family, and they’d been seeing each other for some time. They were driving back late one night from a motel in Pinewood Gap. The official story was that the car skidded on a high bend. A metal sign from a gas station had been blown on the wind and wound up in the middle of the road.”
“But that wasn’t true?”
“There was a loose sign from the gas station, that much was true. It was recovered with the wreckage.”
“But you said ‘the official story,’ like it wasn’t true.”
“Oh, it was all true. It just omitted the fact that three of the car’s tires were shot out.”
“A sniper?”
“It was a well planned and executed hit.”
“And the hitman?”
“Never found.”
“So nobody knows who it was that bought the hit?”
“Everyone knows, but no one has any way to prove it.”
“Your father never found himself another woman?”
“Never even looked at one. Not that anybody knows about. And, believe me, me and both of my brothers, we looked. We were mean, prying little brats even back then, and we were positively peeing ourselves trying to find proof that we could nail onto Daddy.”
“It’s understandable.”
“We were all too young to understand anything. What he was going through.” I take a breath. “I don’t know what your dad’s friends are like, but from what I heard, Daddy got his balls busted from morning till midnight about how he was being cucked.”
“So, you blame your daddy?”
“For what he did? Sure. Mom had a miserable life with that man. He was mean, he was cruel, he would slap her with the back of his knuckles — and he’s got a big fucking hand — just because she tried to do something nice but it wasn’t right or to his liking. I remember once when she was really trying and she was reaching her wits end, she bought him flowers to come home to. God, I swear, I thought he was going to kill her then. She had to go to the emergency room. Had stitches in the side of her forehead. They took months to heal.”
I hold back on the feelings as I’m telling the tale. Trying to learn from Carlo, to separate myself from the story. Observe what I’m saying without being immersed and lost in it, without feeling it all again. “It was after that she started seeing Stronzo.” I swallow. It gets easier. More manageable if I breathe deeper. “What I feel most bad about is, my brothers, they all took Daddy’s side. Said she didn’t know how lucky she was and she was no good and she should think where her bread was buttered, and I went along with them. I can’t quite forgive myself for that.”
God, I need a drink. But I keep still and I keep going. I see how Carlo is watching me as he listens, like they’re two things he can do at the same time, but as separate actions. “Then it all turned to shit, and she really was nasty to him. Made his life a hell on earth. They should have separated. Obviously. But you don’t do that. Not in the Life.”
He holds me. I feel like I’m going to start sobbing, but I don’t.
“Mom was made to marry Daddy, and there wasn’t a day went by when she didn’t remind him of the fact. And, even though she was my mom and she was the moon and the stars to me, damn, she made his life hell.” I feel a whole layer of that pain lift away from me.
“And he worshipped the ground she walked on. He’s a strong man, but she pushed him harder than he could take.”
Hugging Carlo close, being in his strong, masculine scent, stroking his muscles and feeling his mix of strength and aggression and tenderness, somehow makes me feel like I’m growing up.
After a very pleasant few moments, I say, “Show me where the shower is.”
“You want me to soap your back?”
“Way more than that.”