20. Santino
— ? —
Santino
The phone rings at seven in the morning.
I’m standing in my kitchen, coffee half-made, replaying last night in the sunflower field like a man who’s lost his grip on reality. The way she laughed. The way she said my name. The way she fell asleep against my shoulder on the walk home, trusting me to guide her steps.
Then I see the caller ID.
Papà.
My father hasn’t called me directly in two years. Every communication goes through assistants, lawyers, the carefully maintained buffer zone that keeps us from having to acknowledge each other as human beings. For him to call now, at this hour -
Trouble, then.
I answer on reflex. “Pronto?”
“Tesoro.” My mother’s voice slides through the speaker like honey laced with arsenic. “Finally. I was beginning to think you’d forgotten how to answer a telephone.”
The coffee cup in my hand freezes halfway to the counter.
“Why are you on Papà’s phone?”
“Because you’ve been ignoring mine, obviously. Call after call, Santino. That’s excessive, even for you.”
“There’s a reason I’ve been ignoring them.”
“Yes, well.” A delicate sigh. “I’ve heard the most extraordinary rumors. Rumors of you being in America? Chasing after that little girl who ran away?”
My grip tightens on the cup. “Her name is Melanie.”
“Mm. So it’s true.” A pause. “Tesoro, this is becoming embarrassing. The family is asking questions. The board is asking questions. How long do you intend to stay in that backwater playing house with someone who clearly doesn’t want you?”
“She’s my wife.”
“She was your wife. Before she abandoned you. Before she humiliated you in front of everyone who matters.” My mother’s voice sharpens. “Really, Santino. Haven’t you degraded yourself enough? Come home. Resume your responsibilities. Stop this ridiculous-”
“I know what you did.”
Silence.
Complete, crystalline silence.
“I’m sorry?” My mother’s voice is careful now. Measured.
“The divorce papers.” I set my coffee down because my hand is starting to shake, not with fear, with rage. “The forged signatures. The fake photos of me and Allegra. The lies you told her about the pregnancy-”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You knew she was pregnant before she did - you had her tested behind my back.” My voice is rising. I can’t stop it. “You threatened to take her children. You called her a puttana to her face while she was carrying my babies, and you never once considered that she might understand every word-”
“That girl has been filling your head with-”
“THAT GIRL IS THE MOTHER OF MY CHILDREN!” I’m shouting now. Actually shouting, which I haven’t done since I was a teenager. “And you tried to destroy her! You tried to destroy US! For what? Your fucking PRIDE?”
“For the FAMILY!” My mother’s composure cracks, desperation bleeding through. “For the name! For everything we’ve built over generations! You think I was going to let some American harvest worker - some NOBODY - dilute the Bianchi bloodline?”
“Her blood is in my children’s veins. Her blood is the only reason those children EXIST.”
“Children you didn’t even know about! Children she HID from you! And you’re defending HER?”
“She hid them because of YOU!” I’m pacing now, burning off the fury that’s threatening to eat me alive. “Because you made her believe I didn’t want them! Because you manipulated and lied and schemed until she had no choice but to run!”
“I was SAVING you from-”
“From what? From being happy?” I stop pacing. Take a breath. When I speak again, my voice is cold. “I’m done.”
“What?”
“I’m done with you. With Papà. With all of it.” The words come out flat and final. “I’m cutting every tie there is to cut. The money, the name, the whole gilded life you built your entire self around - I don’t want any of it if it comes with you attached.”
“You can’t-”
“Watch me.” My voice doesn’t rise. It doesn’t need to.
“Santino, you’re not thinking clearly. The money alone-”
“I don’t care about the money.”
“The FAMILY-”
“You’re not my family.” My voice breaks slightly on the word. “Not anymore. Maybe you never were.”
“I gave you LIFE, Santino-”
“And I spent thirty years as a piece on your board for it.” I close my eyes. “That’s the only thing you ever wanted from either of us. Well, I’m off the board. Go play against someone else.”
Silence stretches. I can hear her breathing, rapid, ragged, nothing like her usual composure.
“Allegra’s been asking about you.” Her voice shifts tactics, goes soft and coaxing. “She misses you, tesoro. She’s always cared for you, you know. If you’d just give her a chance-”
I hang up.
Stand there in my kitchen, phone in hand, vibrating with the aftermath of it. My whole body wants to hit a wall. Wants to put a fist through the wall, through the counter, through whatever’s closest -
The doorbell rings.
I yank it open ready to commit murder, and Mel is standing on my porch with a pie.
“Hey,” she says, then stops. Looks at my face. “What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Try again.”
“My mother called.”
“Oh.” Her expression shifts through several stages, surprise, understanding, a flash of protectiveness that makes my chest hurt. “What did she want?”
“Me. Back. Apparently I’m embarrassing the family by existing in America.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That I’m cutting all ties. The money, the name, all of it - I’m done.” I laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “That went over well.”
Mel looks at the pie in her hands. Then at me. Then at the pie again.
“Chiara,” she calls over her shoulder.
Chiara appears from somewhere behind her, she must have been waiting in the car. “What?”
“Take the pie.”
“What pie? Oh, that pie. Why am I taking the pie?”
“Because I need to borrow your brother.”
Chiara takes the pie, looking between us with obvious curiosity. “For how long?”
“However long it takes.” Mel grabs my hand. Her palm is warm and certain against mine. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“You look like you need to hit things.”
“I really do.”
“Then drive.”
***
The boxing gym is in the next town over, a converted warehouse that smells like sweat and determination. Mel knows where the spare key is hidden (under a brick by the back door), knows which lights to flip, knows which bags are hung right and which ones swing crooked.
“How do you know this place?” I ask as she leads me inside.
“I come here sometimes. When I need to… process things.”
“You box?”
“I flail. There’s a difference.” She gestures at the row of heavy bags. “Wraps are in the cabinet. Gloves on the shelf. Hit until it’s out.”
I wrap my hands in silence. Pull on the gloves. Face the bag.
The first punch feels like nothing. A tap. An insult to the rage burning through me.
The second is harder.
By the fifth, I’m finding a rhythm.
By the tenth, I’m thinking about my mother’s voice. The casual cruelty of it. The way she said that little girl who ran away like Mel was nothing. Like the years we had together were nothing. Like our children were inconveniences to be managed.
I hit harder.
I think about Mel in that clinic. Alone. Pregnant. Being told by my own mother that I didn’t want her. That I was starting a family with someone else. That our baby was an embarrassment.
Harder.
I think about Leo and Junie. Two years of their lives I’ll never get back. Every morning I wasn’t there to be climbed on. Every fever I didn’t sit up through.
Harder.
I think about Mel running. Mel hiding. Mel doing the hardest job in the world alone because my family convinced her she had no other choice.
The bag swings wildly. I chase it. Punish it. Pour everything into leather and sand until my shoulders burn and my lungs scream and the rage finally, finally, starts to ebb.
I don’t know how long I go. Long enough for my shirt to soak through, for the shaking to stop, for the red to clear from my vision.
When I finally step back, breathing hard, Mel is sitting on a bench against the wall. Watching me, quiet in a way I’m too spent to name.
“Better?” she asks.
“Getting there.”
“Your form is terrible, by the way. You drop your shoulder.”
“I’ll work on it.”
“You should. It’s embarrassing.”
I strip off the gloves. Unwrap my hands. Walk toward her.
She doesn’t move. Just watches me approach with those green eyes that see everything.
“Thank you,” I say.
“For what?”
“For knowing what I needed. For bringing me here. For-” I stop in front of her. “For being you.”
“That’s a low bar.”
“It’s the only bar that matters.”
I kiss her.
There’s no plan behind it, no strategy. Just my mouth finding hers because I can’t not, because she saved me tonight in a way I didn’t know I needed saving, and I need her to feel what that means.
She makes a sound against my lips. Soft and surprised and then not surprised at all, her hands coming up to grip my sweat-soaked shirt, pulling me closer.
“You’re disgusting,” she murmurs between kisses.
“Covered in sweat.”
“Like a gym sock.”
“Sexy gym sock.”
“That’s not a thing.” She’s laughing against my jaw.
“It should be.”
She laughs into my mouth, and my chest cracks open. The last of the rage, draining away. Replaced by warmth. By home.
“We should go,” she says, but she doesn’t stop kissing me.
“Probably.”
“The twins-”
“Chiara’s got them.”
“Still-”
“You’re right.” I pull back. “Let’s go.”
***
The drive home is torture.
My hand finds her thigh without conscious thought. Just rests there, warm through the fabric of her jeans. She doesn’t push it away.
Three minutes in, her hand covers mine.
Five minutes in, she moves it higher.
My breath catches. “Mel-”
“Keep driving.”
“I’m trying.”
“Try harder.”
My fingers brush the seam of her jeans and she makes a sound that goes straight to my spine. I press harder. She arches into my hand.
“Pull over.”
“We’re almost-”
“Pull. Over.”
I swing into the lot of a shuttered hardware store. It’s empty, just us and one streetlight and the dark bulk of the building.
Before I can think, she’s climbing over the console.
“What are you-”
“Shut up.” She straddles my lap, her knees bracketing my thighs, and I have to grab the seat adjustment to shove it back because there’s not enough room, there’s never enough room with her -
“This is insane,” I manage.
“Completely.”
“We’re in a parking lot.”
“Astute observation.”
“Anyone could-”
She kisses me hard enough to silence the objection. Her hands are in my hair, on my neck, shoving my shirt up. I reach for her jeans, fumble with the button, and she laughs against my mouth.
“Smooth.”
“You try undressing someone in a Honda.”
“I AM trying to undress someone in a Honda.”
She gets my belt open while I’m still fighting with her zipper, and there’s a lecture I should be giving, about doing this right, about slow, about not taking her in a Honda in a hardware-store parking lot like we’re seventeen, and I forget every word of it the second I finally shove her jeans and underwear down and get my hand on her.
“Christ.” She’s soaked, hot and slick against my fingers, and my whole brain whites out. “You’re already-”
“Whose fault is that?”
“Mine.” I drag my fingers through her and she shudders. “Definitely mine.”
“So fix it.”
I push two fingers into her and she gasps, her head falling back against the steering wheel. The horn honks, a brief, startled bleat, and we both freeze.
Then we’re laughing. Actually laughing, the absurdity of it cutting through the heat.
“That was-”
“Incredibly subtle,” she manages.
“Very covert.”
“We’re criminal masterminds.”
I curl my fingers against the spot that makes her spine bow and the laughter breaks into a moan. “What was that?”
“Nothing-”
“Didn’t sound like nothing.” I do it again, drag my thumb over her clit, and watch her fight to stay quiet, watch her bite her own lip, watch her thighs shake around my hand. Two years without this face and I still know it better than my own. “That’s the one. That’s the one I’m keeping.”
She pulls me out of my pants with hands that aren’t quite steady, wraps her fingers around me and strokes, and I have to drop my forehead to her shoulder and breathe through it or embarrass myself.
“Now,” she says.
“Demanding.”
“You love it.”
“I love YOU.” I mean it as a joke and it comes out like a confession.
She climbs over the console and sinks down onto me in one slow slide, taking all of me, and we both stop breathing.
For one suspended moment there’s just this, the unbearable tight heat of her, the way her thighs grip my hips, the little broken sound she makes against my jaw like it’s too much and not enough at once.
“Fuck,” I grind out. My hands find her hips, her ass, hauling her down harder. “You feel - every time, you undo me every single time-”
Then she rolls her hips and thought evaporates.
“Harder,” she demands.
“The horn-”
“I don’t care about the horn.”
I plant my feet and thrust up into her and the horn blares and neither of us cares now. She rides me in the fogged-up dark, nails dug into my shoulders, and I get a hand between us and work her clit while she fucks herself on me, and she’s chanting yes, there, right there against my mouth.
“Ruin the upholstery,” I growl, past any pretense of control. “I don’t care. Wreck the whole car. Just don’t you dare stop - not when I’ve got you back, not when you’re finally taking what you want out of me instead of what I decide to give-”
She sinks her teeth into my shoulder hard enough to leave a mark, choking off her own cry, and clamps down around me so tight it drags me over the edge with no warning at all.
I haul her down flush and let go into her, jaw locked, the whole car groaning on its springs while the windows drip and neither of us can remember how to breathe.
We stay like that.
Forehead to forehead. Breathing each other’s air. The windows completely opaque.
“That was-” she starts.
“Yeah.”
“We should-”
“Yeah.”
Neither of us moves.
Finally, she kisses me. Soft this time. Tender in a way that wasn’t there before. A kiss that isn’t about passion or desperation or making a point.
A kiss that feels like forgiveness.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
“You said that already.”
“That was for the gym.” She presses her mouth to the mark she left on my shoulder. “This one’s for coming when I call. Every time.”
“That’s the whole job,” I say.
She climbs back into her seat. I adjust my clothes. We drive the rest of the way in comfortable silence.
But the ground moved in that parking lot.
Not much, but it moved.
And we both know it.