Chapter Twenty-Five
Twenty-Five
Nico
I hadn’t slept for shit. I’d scribbled that note for JJ, then caught the red-eye from LA to New York. My brother picked me up from the airport and we went back to his place and talked into the wee hours of the morning, formulating a plan, until we both crashed for a little bit.
We’d gone back and forth between beating the shit out of our dad to give him a taste of his own medicine, to killing him and making it look like a suicide, to threatening him with the loss of his dick if he ever touched our mother again. In the end, cooler heads prevailed, and we’d come up with a loose plan that got us what we wanted, which was to get our mother away from him and to end this nightmare. We also knew that our father wasn’t a rich man, but he had enough, plus he was a vain motherfucker when it came to his work circles, so we had to cash in that chip.
So, we were going to call him on his bullshit and give him the option of playing nice and filing for divorce and giving Mom a generous alimony and apology or we’d make sure he still lost her, then after we hired a kick-ass attorney, he’d lose all his money plus his career and any public image he might still have once we got done with the most savage public smear campaign in history. Because we. Gave. No. Fucks. Not anymore.
After the sun was bright in the sky, chasing away the gray of the morning, Ang finally appeared from his bedroom, looking groggy as he padded to the kitchen and started the coffee. He turned to me with bleary eyes. “Have you checked on Mom yet today?”
I shook my head. I didn’t have the heart to call. Not with how I’d left things with JJ.
He nodded, seeming to understand, and picked up his phone. “I will.”
Grateful, I waited for the coffee while he called our mother, half listening while he asked how she was and if she was sleeping okay at my place.
“Yes, he’s here,” he said. “He’s staying with me.” He listened to her for a moment, then his eyes swung to mine. “What? When?”
Slowly, I set down the mug in my hand. “Is she alright?” I whispered.
“Are you sure she went—?” He dropped his head, his face pale as he listened to her response. Slowly, he looked back up at me, covering the mouthpiece to speak directly to me. “JJ left Mom with someone named Priscilla and flew to New York early this morning, bro. She went to Dad’s to look for you.”
To Dad’s.
Those two words echoed over and over like a gong, crashing in my skull. She was there and I was here. That did not compute.
All the blood drained from my head. Suddenly, I couldn’t hear. Couldn’t see. My knees became jelly.
“Nico?” Angelo’s voice was far away, then suddenly his arms were under my arms, propping me up. “I gotta call you back, Ma,” I heard him say just before he guided me to sit in a chair. “Take a deep breath, bro. Breathe.”
I tried to do that, but I couldn’t.
I was shaking. “JJ,” I murmured. “I need to...”
“I know,” he said. “Take a breath. We’ll go get her.”
I scrambled for my phone on the kitchen counter, dialing with fat fingers, but her phone rolled straight to voicemail.
“Come on,” he said, grabbing his keys and yanking on his jacket.
My faculties returning to me, I ran for the door, forgoing my coat and grabbing my boots to put on in the car.
As my brother drove, I put on my boots and tried JJ again. Still nothing. What the hell was she thinking?
“If he touches her, I’ll kill him, Ang. I swear to God, I will.”
He shot me a look, not bothering to try and say otherwise. He knew me too well.
Fifteen long minutes later, we pulled up to the house and I jumped out of the car before he had it in park and sprinted for the front. It was locked so I pounded on the door.
“Open up!”
Ang was behind me a few seconds later just as the door swung open and our father stood there with a slimy smirk on his face. “Well, isn’t this just a cozy little family reunion?”
I wanted to punch him in his pompous face, but I needed to make sure JJ was there and unharmed first. “JJ?” I called, shoving past him bodily as he tried to block the doorway.
“Nico?”
I found her in the dining room with an untouched glass of water. She looked pale and a bit frightened, but thankfully unharmed as she rushed into my arms.
“Are you okay, baby?” I asked, letting myself be calmed by the familiar scent of her shampoo.
She nodded and looked up into my eyes. “Are you?”
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said instead of answering her. “You’ve seen what he’s capable of,” I added, my voice low.
“I’m not afraid of your father.”
“Why should she be afraid of me?” my father demanded behind us, his voice a cutting reminder of every single thing I hated about him. About myself.
Slowly, I spun around, making sure I put myself between them. “Maybe because you’re a woman beater, Dad.”
His face didn’t change. Didn’t acknowledge in any way that I’d hit a nerve or that I spoke the truth. I might as well have told him we were having bagels for breakfast. “And you’re a good-for-nothing, ungrateful son of a bitch. Guess we can’t choose our family, eh?”
JJ gasped behind me, shocked.
“Dad,” Ang stepped in, trying to keep some semblance of peace. “Let’s talk, yeah?”
Dad’s eyes shot his way. “What’s there to talk about?”
“You told me Ma went on a girls’ trip,” Ang said, his voice accusing. “Why’d you lie?”
Dad huffed, reaching for JJ’s water and chugging it back in one big gulp. “What happens between two married people is personal. What’s it to you?”
“You beat our mother,” I bit out. “That’s fucking personal to us.”
His face became an angry mottled red, like a kettle about to pop, and he slammed the glass on the table nearly hard enough to break it. “And you bring that fucking tramp here to discuss our family business?” He pointed an accusing finger at JJ. “Who is she, Nico? Your latest whore? You buying them diamonds now when they warm your bed?”
“Dad!” Ang yelled as I lunged for him.
By the sadistic gleam in his eye, this was the reaction he wanted, as if he only wanted to prove I was a heathen—no better than him. But I was not about to let him talk about my wife that way.
My weight pushed him into the wall, and I shoved my forearm into his throat, making him have to work for air. His face turned a meaty purple as he stared at me, his eyes daring me to finish the job.
“You’re pathetic,” he whispered.
“I hate you,” I whispered back, shoving harder.
“Nico!” Angelo shouted. “Enough!” He used all his strength to pull me off and my dad wilted, sucking in a breath.
Before I could form another coherent though, JJ moved and was in my dad’s face, shoving her own arm into his throat, much like I had done. She didn’t have the strength I did to keep the choke hold, so she kept him locked in place with her knee at his balls and the element of surprise as he stared at her in shock.
“Just so we’re clear, Mr. Santorini ,” she hissed. “I’m no pretty little thing or whore that warms his bed. I am your son’s wife and proud of it, and it’s your loss if you can’t be proud of him too.” She looked him up and down like he was pond scum. “The way I see it? There’s only one good-for-nothing son of a bitch in this room.” She stepped back and looked down on him like a queen staring at a peasant she was about to send to the gallows. “I almost feel sorry for you because you’re about to lose your entire family... but you know what they say about making your own bed.”
She spun to me, her blue eyes brilliant with triumph, but before she could say anything, he leaped, his face a mask of pure rage I’d only seen on him a handful of times when he was at his worst.
“You fucking cunt!” he screamed, grabbing a handful of her hair and yanking her backward until she slammed into the ground with a loud thunk .
She yelped in surprise, her arms automatically coming up to shield her face as he spun and fell on her to begin wailing.
Ang scrambled to intervene, yelling at my dad to stop being crazy.
In that moment, which felt like an eternity, I was frozen as an electric red haze filled not just my vision, but my entire body, igniting me like a fire from the pits of hell. I had literally never felt a fury so raw that it threatened to consume me alive like that, and before I combusted, I moved.
Tossing Ang halfway across the room, I clawed at my dad’s eyes, making him hiss and screech, but it was JJ’s cries that propelled me on.
I kneed him in the right kidney with all the strength of my thigh, throwing him off-balance, then I grabbed him in a choke hold and rolled him off JJ so we were grappling on the ground. Chairs fell around us and dishes hit the floor, crashing and splintering in shards, cutting my arm, but I ignored the pain as I shuffled around and went for his head, his neck, anything I could reach.
I was going to end him. Today. I was done. He was done.
He grabbed a chunk of broken glass and went for my throat, nicking my collarbone.
I hissed and lifted my hand to protect myself, earning myself a gashed finger.
JJ screamed.
Ang yelled again but stayed back, choosing to shield my wife like a good brother as our dad flailed the glass in her direction just before it arced back my way as he became more and more maniacal.
I rolled away when he went for my face with the jagged shard, just missing my eye, and pivoted to land on his back, my forearm to the back of his head. Breathing like a raging bull, I used all of my body weight to hold him down. He grunted and writhed beneath me, spitting and cursing and threatening to kill us all.
“Police department!” someone shouted with a loud bang at the door, making JJ cry with relief.
Ang ran to the front to let them in, and they raced inside, pulling me off my dad and separating us.
JJ sobbed and clung to me, screaming incoherently, even as they slapped handcuffs on me. They had to bodily pull her off of me and make her go with a separate female officer until they could determine what had happened.
A few minutes later, a middle-aged officer with a receding hairline, who reminded me a little bit of Lance, eyeballed my driver’s license in the living room, comparing it to my face. “Paramedics will be here in a minute to look at everyone,” he said, still studying my photo.
“Make sure they check on my wife first, okay?”
He tipped his head, noncommittal. “Nico Santorini? Why does that name sound familiar?”
I caught a glimpse of the wall of family photos behind him and my mother’s smiling face, which twisted my heart even further. “Not sure,” I said. “I’m in a band. You a rock fan?”
He squinted at me. “Zero Energy?”
I dabbed at my bloody lip and frowned down at my cut-up finger. “That’s the one.”
“Holy hell.” He handed me back my ID. “So, uh...” He shot a look toward the other room where my father was bellowing about his ‘motherfucking loser sons.’ “What happened here today?”
I gave him the nutshell version. My dad was an abusive asshole since the dawn of time. He beat my mom one too many times and she finally left. My brother and I came to confront him, but before we could talk to him, my wife showed up and he went after her. I stepped in, it got ugly.
He listened quietly to my story, making no comment, then his radio buzzed. “The medics are here. Someone will come see about those cuts, then we’ll figure things out, okay?”
“My wife?”
“Someone’s already with her.”
I nodded, not really caring about anything else at that moment.
Once I was patched up, the officer came back. “Your story checks out, Mr. Santorini. Your brother and your wife told us the same thing.”
“So, what happens now?”
“Your father is going to be arrested for aggravated assault for what he did here today. It will be up to your mother if she’d like to press further charges.”
“I’ll let her know.”
He acknowledged that then disappeared into the crowd, and I watched as my dad was taken away, surly and stone-faced in handcuffs, somehow emanating more hate in his glare than all the words he’d hurled at me in my lifetime had ever done.
“You okay?” my brother asked when he was allowed to rejoin me.
“I guess.” I didn’t know what else to say. My world felt like it was imploding, and I wanted nothing more than to run and jump into a dark hole with a gallon of booze and sink into oblivion because I was sure JJ would run from me now. How could she not?
“That didn’t exactly go to plan.” He ran a hand over his head, looking as shell-shocked as I felt.
“No.” I turned from the blue and red lights to watch as JJ nodded at whatever the officer said to her before starting our way.
“But it’s over,” he said.
I didn’t reply because it felt anything but over. The pain was still raw and real and nothing inside of me felt settled, especially because I couldn’t read the expression on JJ’s face... and I could always read those blue eyes. That spooked me more than anything.
“You okay, baby?” I asked, letting her have her distance, even though she looked like she was about to topple with an adrenaline crash.
She nodded, hugging herself around the waist. “I’m so sorry.”
“For what?”
Her wary gaze drifted between me and my brother. “For coming here. For causing a scene. I just wanted to be here to support you. I had no idea...”
“I know.” Of course she had no idea. How could she? A monster had spawned me and I’m sure she was wondering how far the apple had fallen from the tree and what kind of man she’d really married. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“Mr. Santorini?” one of the officers called.
“Yes?” both me and my brother said at the same time, making the officer quirk a confused brow.
“Uh,” he stammered, clearly not caring who answered. “I just thought I’d tell you that there’re some news trucks starting to park down the block. Not sure why but you might want to head out or close the house up for the night unless you want to talk to the press.” He shrugged and turned away, closing the door behind him.
Ang looked at me perplexed and JJ let out a growl of frustration.
“What’s he talking about?” Ang asked.
“Is there a back way out of here?” JJ said at the same time.
“What?” Ang looked at her. “No. What are you talking about?” He looked back to me. “What’s going on?” Then it dawned on him. His brother was famous. Of course someone in the news offices got the police calls and connected the dots with our last name. Of fucking course. Trolls.
“We could just wait them out,” my brother suggested, peering out the blinds.
“I’m not staying here another minute,” I bit out, glancing at JJ.
She nodded, some of her color and spunk coming back. “Let’s just go. Let them take their pictures and spin whatever story they want. His arrest will be public record, but we don’t have to comment, and your mom is safe at our place. It’ll eventually blow over.”
I glanced at Ang and he seemed uncertain, but there weren’t really any better options. Plus, we all just wanted the hell out of this shithole. So I took JJ’s hand, and the three of us walked out the door like it was any other normal day, ignoring the reporters who rushed us with their shouted questions and flashing cameras as we jogged out to Angelo’s car and sped away.
They tried to follow but Ang was faster and knew the side streets, so he was able to lose them and make his way back to his place without a tail.
Inside, I got my first really good look at JJ’s face as the bruises began to bloom on her cheek and around her temple, almost like she and my mom were a matching pair. Hot, acidic shame boiled deep in my gut. I could do nothing to fix it. I also couldn’t change where I’d come from. Who I was.
She seemed to sense the dark places I was going in my mind, and she lowered her voice for my ears only. “Let’s just go home, okay? We’ll talk about it there.”
I opened my mouth to say something, maybe beg her for reassurance about what would happen when we got there... that she’d at least stick out the rest of the six months, but my brother strolled in, interrupting us. “It’s been a long day. You guys are welcome to stay as long as you want.”
She saved me from answering and faced him with a tight smile. “Thank you, but we’re gonna head back to LA.” She held up her phone. “Already working on flights.”
His eyes darted back and forth between us as if he realized he’d interrupted something. “Sure thing.”
“I can come back anytime,” I reassured him, saying without the words that whatever he needed to deal with our dad, I’d help him with.
He gave me a tired, grateful nod.
We cleaned up and ate a quick bite, then Ang insisted on driving us to the airport.
JJ was quiet on the flight, her head on my shoulder as my mind spun back to the darkness. She claimed to love me, but was that enough? How could I expect her to move past what she saw today? Rationally, I knew she wouldn’t hold my past against me, but I still held it against myself.
Thankfully, Doc and my mom were sleeping when we got back to the condo. We let ourselves in quietly and Sunshine padded over to greet us with a lick and butt wiggle.
I picked her up, letting myself get lost in her innocent sweetness for a minute and grounding myself in something other than the ugliness of the past couple days.
JJ hadn’t spoken much since we left Angelo’s, and I hadn’t pushed her. Honestly, I didn’t know what to say to her. Was I doubting her too much? Did she just need space? Was I overthinking? Hell, it wasn’t that long ago I wouldn’t have thought at all and would’ve run for the substances and said fuck it all. That was still an option.
“I’m gonna get a shower,” she said softly, not waiting for my reply as she headed down the hall to our room.
I checked my phone and saw a few missed calls and texts. I ignored the social media notifications. With the news crews at my dad’s, there was no way any of that was going to be good.
Angelo: Let me know when you get home safe. Kiss Mama for me. We’ll talk more soon. Love you, bro.
Sebastian: Should I be worried? Call me.
And most ominous of all, a message from my father-in-law and PR guy.
Dave: JJ is not answering my calls or texts and I’ve just seen the news. One of you better call me no later than 8 a.m. or I’m calling the cops.
I tucked Sunshine back into her dog bed and closed myself in the bedroom, waiting for JJ to emerge from the bathroom.
A few minutes later, she stepped out in pajama shorts and one of my band t-shirts, her hair loose and damp around her shoulders, her face stark without any makeup, her bruises darker in the dim light of our room.
I held up my phone. “You need to call your dad before he goes ballistic.”
She bit her lip and nodded, reaching for her bottle of lotion to rub some on her arms. “I will.”
“Why have you been avoiding him?”
She glanced up. “Why do you think?”
I could think of a hundred reasons, none of them good. “Because you’re embarrassed that you married a loser whose father is an abusive prick?” I ventured.
She froze, her eyes going wide. “Is that what you think?”
“That’s what I know.”
“Let me guess...” She slowly set aside the lotion and faced me head-on, her arms crossed. “And you’re an addict who... what? Is ready to throw away all his hard work and go get high? Drunk? Fuck a groupie?”
Heat flushed my face in a furious rush. “I’d never cheat on you!”
“But you’re considering the drugs and alcohol?” she pushed, not backing down. “Why not a whore?” she kept on. “It’s what you do, isn’t it?”
I said nothing, gaping at her, the rage pulsing through me once again. But not at her, never at her, though she was certainly stoking the fire. Rage at this entire fucked-up situation.
“Isn’t it?” she demanded, her voice raised but not yelling since we were both acutely aware that there were other people in the house and why they were there. “Well, go ahead, Nico!” she spat, her bruised face flushed an angry pink. “Go do whatever self-destructive shit you want to because I can’t love you enough for the two of us and I can’t save you anymore!”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
She was stone-still. So frozen it was eerie. “I tried, Nico. I did. I’ve loved you as much as I can love anyone. But—”
“No...” The word was ripped from the depths of my crushed soul on a groan. I sounded like a wounded animal begging for mercy. I’d known this was coming yet somehow, I realized, I’d hoped I was wrong. That I could get the girl. That I could be enough.
She shook her head, her damp hair brushing across my t-shirt leaving dark arcs in its wake as she stared at me with wide, bruised eyes. Without another word, she stood up and rummaged around in the closet, pulling out her small duffel bag that she began to haphazardly toss clothes and underwear into.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m gonna go stay with Stassia for a while.”
“What? That’s crazy. This is your place.”
She shot me a look and grabbed her brush from the dresser. “But your mom is here and she’s comfortable. Stay here with her until you figure things out. I’ll be fine.”
“No.” I grabbed her hand, stilling her movements. “This is ridiculous.”
“Is it?” Tear-filled eyes met mine. “Because I just flew to New York to be with you for a hard thing—because a wife who loves her husband would do that—and all you can see is shame. I can’t compete with that.” She tugged her hand free and zipped her bag. “I was avoiding my dad because I was focused on you. Not as our client or any PR spin I could put on the situation. But you . My husband. The love of my life who just broke my heart.”