31. Salvatore
31
SALVATORE
“Marisol?” I call out before I poke my head around the corner. I know there’s a gun inside, and I’m not trying to get my head blown off. The thought that Junior might still be in there with her, hurting her, drowns me in terror.
Dom stands behind me with his gun out.
“Sal!”
Frantic scrambling comes from the other side before Marisol opens the door. I rush past her to do a quick sweep of the bathroom as she bursts into a jumble of speech, “Sal, Junior came while you were gone—he came after me—I don’t know what he did with the others. He destroyed your bedroom, and he turned off the power. He has a knife, but—I-I don’t know if he has a gun.”
“My men are sweeping the house now. There’s no sign of him,” I say. “Camillo’s being rushed to Dr. Macaluso now. Nola and Giordana are shaken up, but they’re fine. What happened to you, passerotta?”
Her white dress is smeared with blood, and her feet are completely covered in gauze. She’s sitting on the edge of the bathroom counter—that was the sound I heard—she was shuffling along the counter on her ass. After seeing the glass outside, it doesn’t take a genius to guess what that piece of shit bastard put her through. Burning, suffocating fury rises in my throat.
Distantly, I hear my men calling out, “Cessato pericolo!” throughout the house. All clear .
A corrosive shame burns through my lungs. I didn’t protect her. I didn’t kill Junior. I let this happen to her.
“Dom,” I say numbly. “What’s the ETA on Dr. Macaluso?”
“Hours, Turi. He can’t come by until this evening at least. And the new doctor’s still out in the field.”
“I’m taking Marisol to the hospital.”
Dom and Marisol both start speaking at the same time.
“She’s stable. She can wait until the doctor comes by.”
“Are you going to get in trouble? I can wait, Sal. I got most of the glass out.”
I got most of the glass out . Thunderous rage buzzes in my ears. I sweep Marisol into my arms.
“Sal!” she shouts. “Don’t you dare! Set me down right now!”
Dom watches me warily from the doorway as I stop before him. He’d win in a fight. But not if I shoot him first.
“Dom, is he going to get in trouble if he takes me to the hospital?” she asks.
Dom rubs his jaw with the hand that isn’t in a sling. “I’m not sure. It’s a risk, especially after tonight’s events. It’s ill-advisable… but you’ll need a radiograph to detect all the glass. So the hospital might be your best bet in either case.”
Marisol tilts her beautiful face toward me. “Leave me here, Sal. I can wait for the doctor. It’s not an emergency. I’m okay.”
A maelstrom of emotion roils through me. Only once have I felt like this, and I swore I never would again. I can barely breathe.
“Ritirati,” I tell Dom. Stand down.
Dom steps to the side without a word. I’ll deal with whatever complaints he has later. I stride toward the door, stop, and then wade back through the wreckage of my bedroom to my closet to pull a clean shirt and a coat off my coat hangers. I don’t want a civilian giving me a second look while we’re at the hospital, and I don’t want Marisol getting cold.
“Sal.” Marisol sounds exasperated. “You can help me take the shards out. Just wait for the doctor.”
“I can take the shards out, but you risk infection if they stay or if Macaluso misses something. And we don’t know if Junior’s poisoned the glass.”
“What if you get in trouble?” she asks.
“I’m always in trouble, passerotta.”
I’m driving back from the hospital in broad daylight when my phone rings.
I glance toward Marisol. Her eyes are glassy with exhaustion and pain as she stares straight ahead. She wouldn’t take the painkillers no matter what I threatened. The doctor gave her thirty-two stitches. Her gaze drifts to me, and she quirks that wicked smile I love so much—but instead of reassuring me, it drops my stomach into icy depths.
I answer my phone.
Worm chimes in through the speaker, “Guess who’s in the hospital right now?”
“ Worm ,” I growl. I’m not in the mood for games.
“Rekhson. Someone gave Two-Fingers the green light, and he shot her and her husband. They’re at Northwestern right now where the husband’s getting surgery for a bullet to the lung. But check this, Ms. Rekhson? She’s doing just fine. Bullet grazed her.”
Marisol and I share a look.
“Where’s Two-Fingers now?”
Worm laughs, and the clicking sound of a keyboard is faintly audible. “Wouldn’t you know it? He’s missing.”
Fucking great.
“I want this under wraps until we have more information.”
Worm hisses. “Sooo, about that. Aldo already knows. Junior went home and told him. They’re driving over to Barbara’s now.”
I squeeze the steering wheel until my arms feel like they’re going to burst. “Who do I have that’s closest?”
“Davide, but he’s a half hour away. And there’s no need, because they’re coming straight to you. They all think Rekhson’s about to kick the bucket, so Aldo wants to congratulate you on a job well done.”
After Davide’s eye was destroyed, he’s been cycling closer and closer to Junior, looking for his revenge. He might get it tonight.
“Let me know when they move,” I say.
“Will do, boss.” Worm hangs up.
Junior’s doing his damnedest to keep me on my toes, but tonight, we’ll be ready for him. I told him the next time I saw him, I’d kill him, and it’s time to finally make good on that promise. Anticipation crackles through me, then deadens the second I glance over at Marisol.
I dial Dom’s number next.
“Your cousin does drywall—have him take a look… Hey, boss,” Dom says. He’s still neck-deep in assessing all the damage Junior did to the house.
“I want you to message my pilot and have him get his plane ready,” I say in Italian. I can practically feel Marisol’s gaze burning into the side of my face. She sits upright like a cat who’s spotted a bird.
Dom switches to Italian as well. “What am I telling him?”
I relay what Worm told me. “I want every man at their station. Have the house staff cover up what they can of Junior’s mess downstairs and send them home after. I’m bringing my wife home, and then I want you to take her to the pilot. I’ve already worked out the details. There’s a safe house in Germany. Talk to Worm. I want you to go with her and stay with her until this all gets settled.”
Dom pauses for a long time while my heartbeat thunders in my ears. Marisol whispers my name, but I don’t look at her.
“You’re telling me Junior’s coming right now, and you want to send me off—” Dom starts.
“You’re the only man I trust for the job.” I lower my voice, speaking quickly. We’re only a few minutes from the house now.
He exhales. “You said they’re coming to celebrate? Will Serafina be there?”
“I don’t know. Most likely.”
“Alright. I’ll take Marisol. But promise me Serafina will be okay. And… promise me you won’t let her marry Aldo. She’s just a girl, Turi.”
Dom the Butcher, savior of child brides. “I promise.”
“I’ll go have Giordana help me pack her stuff.”
“We’ll be there in a few seconds.”
I resist the urge to take a breath or to signal in any way what I have planned. She’s going to be furious, but she’ll live.
Dom curses and hangs up.
“What was that about?” Marisol asks, her voice laced with suspicion.
“I’m sending you to a safe house while Junior visits.” Technically not a lie, but it still burns the same. I focus hard on the road in front of me as it fractures into my driveway.
I’m going to kill Junior tonight. And that casts everything else into uncertainty. If Aldo or the Commission retaliate or, hell, any of the other capos, Marisol’s a prime target. I’ll send her to live in the middle of a fortress in Antarctica before I let any of those bastards touch her again.
“Where is it?” she asks.
Dom’s already waiting at the front door. As we pull up, Giordana passes him a big black suitcase that he carries toward one of my SUVs. I didn’t give him enough time to get a beater.
“The safe house, Sal. Where is it?”
I can tell her the truth. It’s not like she can run or fight now. “It’s in Germany.”
Dom approaches her side of the vehicle. Marisol locks the car and clutches her seatbelt.
“I’m not going to fucking Germany. I’m staying here. With you.”
I wave Dom off. We don’t have much time, but I can spare a little for this. He shrugs and walks back to his car.
I start to take her hand in mine, but she tears it away. When she gets mad like this, her sweet face sharpens into something lethal—even with her fleece pajamas and matching slippers that say “Chicago!” from the hospital gift shop and her hair pulled back into a messy bun. She looks exhausted and beautiful. She’s been everything I could’ve dreamed of.
“You can’t walk,” I say. “Can’t shoot. You’ll be a sitting duck. You know what I told Junior. Next time I see him, I’m going to kill him. There’s going to be an aftermath for this, and I want you as far away as possible.”
Her gaze darts to Dom and then back to me, narrowing. “I want to stay here with you.”
Even as that fills me with affection, I shake my head. I wish she’d let me touch her before she leaves. “You can’t. It’s too dangerous.”
“You said I could set the terms. I’m staying.”
Words I’ve never regretted more in my life.
“And you can…” I agree, “up to the point you reject common sense.”
Her eyes flare. “You think it’s ‘common sense’ for me to escape the country at the slightest hint of a problem, but I say I’m at much higher risk being so far away from you. We’ve been trying to pin Junior down for months—unsuccessfully—and now Worm overhears his plans? That doesn’t strike you as suspicious? Junior orchestrated that fight with the Irish, knowing you’d throw yourself at it, and then he came here, and he cut me up. You weren’t there, Sal. I thought I was going to die. I thought you were dead.” Her eyes fill with tears. I touch her cheek and memorize the feel of her, softer than any rose. She leans into my palm even as she shakes her head. “I’m never going through that again. Either we go together, or we stay together.”
“You know I can’t do that. If I go, all of the people who depend on me will suffer. I won’t be able to provide for you. We’ll be hunted the rest of our lives. I need you somewhere safe so I can focus and finish this all out. It won’t take long—a few months, a year at most.”
She twists her face out of my hand. “Have you even found out how Junior tracked me to that hotel?”
Shame burns through my chest. I’ve searched and had Worm do the same, but we’ve had to prioritize everything else lately. Another fucking failure to add to the list.
“I think we might have a rat.” It’s my only theory, for all the good it does. The wider the net, the bigger the holes. I track everyone all the time, but that doesn’t mean people don’t know how to evade me. Junior’s escaped me plenty of times.
She scoffs, shaking her head with a bitter smile. “A rat? That’s the best you got? It could have been one of the dozen trackers you put on me, or someone trailing me, but really, you have no idea and neither do I. Junior could use the same resource to find me again, and then how’ll you ‘focus and finish this out’ while he’s sending you little sawed-off pieces of me? Let me stay. I can help you.”
The image she’s painting fills me with rage. And no small part of terror. My hand twitches against the center console.
“How would you help?” I ask with scorn. “By getting caught? Getting my men’s eye taken? Making a website that crashes in the first few hours? I found you before he… before that… that fucking piece of shit hurt you the first time, and you barely escaped the second time. How many times do we have to get lucky before you realize this is a bad fucking idea? I’m not going to keep you here just so I can have someone to warm my bed. I’ve made my decision, Marisol. If I have to drug you and drop you on a plane to the middle of fucking nowhere, I will.”
Her mouth drops open while I talk. Silent tears stream down her face—I’ve fucked up. I can’t stop fucking up.
She has to know I’d never let anyone touch her. That there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her.
She angrily swipes the back of her hand across her face. “Is that what I am to you? Just some dumb damsel in distress you have to keep from falling into someone else’s hands? An idiot you let play pretend on the computer? If you just needed a warm hole to fuck, you should’ve paid a prostitute and left me home. What you did, taking me and making me feel special until the chips are down and your true feelings come out, that’s fucked up.”
She takes a shuddering breath and meets my gaze with her angry, tear-filled eyes.
“You don’t mean it,” she says in a near-whisper. I don’t know if the words are aimed at me or her.
A fist crushes my heart. I’m hurting her.
Then I sit up in a flash of complete clarity.
This is what I want. She has to let me go so she’ll leave. I need her gone. I need her safe.
“I mean every word,” I say, leaning in until I’m crowding her in her seat. She turns her face from me, but I capture her jaw in my fingers and point her toward me. Her dark eyes are already so full of anger. I swallow back the poison in my throat and arrange my expression into one of utter contempt. “I took you because I wanted to see if I could. And now that I’m this close to finally taking over the Family, I’m done with you. I want you out of the house and out of my life, but I fucked myself because I let you know too much. You just couldn’t help yourself from prying into places you weren’t welcome. So now you’re going to take that plane and lay low until I decide I need my dick sucked again, or I’ll have Dom take you to the basement and shoot you in the back of the head.”
An angry sound tears out of her mouth as she cries, and something hot and sick settles low in my stomach.
“ Fuck you ,” she pronounces with absolute conviction.
She wipes her arm across her face and struggles with her seatbelt before launching herself out of the car and slamming the door shut.
I sit for a moment, letting the silence roar in my ears. I did the right thing. I need her gone, and if she isn’t going to listen to reason, she’ll listen to lies. It’ll be better this way. If I die, she won’t mourn me, but if I live, she’ll be alive for me to beg forgiveness.
Dom’s boots crunch across the gravel to her side. I can barely stand to look. My stomach churns—when was the last time I ate? Slept? Will I ever see my wife again?
Dom bends down to help her up, and a poisonous jealousy swells in my chest. That’s still my job.
I step out of the car.
Marisol’s already standing, wavering on her sliced feet, clutching onto Dom’s arm for support. When she meets my eyes over the hood of the car, wrath flashes across her face like a strike of lightning. She throws herself off Dom and scrabbles at the car, pouring her weight into her wrists, and stumbling toward me like a broken, fallen goddess.
“Stop,” I demand, striding over to her, stopping just before touching her. I harden my face into stone. She can’t pierce me.
She lifts herself to her full height and jabs a finger hard into my chest, looking wild and beautiful and furious. “We are not fucking done with this conversation. And I don’t ever want to hear you say such stupid shit to me again in my life , do you understand? You are not putting me anywhere near a plane, because if you do, I will break out and come back to you, and I will ruin you!” She pulls off her wedding ring with a few tugs and throws it at my chest where it bounces into the gravel. “You can give that back to me when I’ve decided you’ve apologized enough. We don’t ever hide secrets or keep the other in the dark, remember? That cuts both ways. Now, I’m going into the house to take a shower, and then I’m going to get dressed for dinner because we are a team, Salvatore Luporini. I brought Caruso over to your side, I proved Mad Dog was conspiring with Junior, and it was my cell phone proposal that you used to bring the entire fucking Commission to heel. You do need me, and you will sooner get rid of your fucking liver than you will me. Do. You. Understand.”
She can’t stay. She has to leave.
This is what I asked for.
I coveted her, and I stole her because I thought I had finally found a woman who was loyal enough and strong enough to stand at my side and wicked enough to enjoy it.
Something in my chest cracks open, raw and charged with vulnerability, and the truth of it all seizes me with a cold horror.
I have to succeed.
There’s no other option. I have to finish this, and I have to keep Marisol safe and at my side because even though she still hasn’t said the words, no other woman in the world will love me as much as she does, and because she’s right, no one will fight to keep her safe like I will.
I’m better off trapping a tsunami in a bottle than I am forcing my wife to do something she doesn’t want to.
I am a wretched fucking fool.
I drop to my knees heavily. “Marisol…” I say, voice thick.
“I don’t want to hear it. You have a lot to think about before you apologize to me.” Her voice is harsh, but she laces a gentle hand through my hair. I shiver at the faint touch. “Don’t ever say anything like that to me again.”
I nod and press my forehead to her belly.
“I’m so?—”
“I know,” she cuts in softly. “And I can’t wait to see how you make up for this.”
She leans forward and cups my face in her hands, peering down at me.
My beautiful, brave Marisol. The one true love of my life.
She might look exhausted, but she’s strong. As strong as I knew she’d be, even from the start.
“We are going to get through this,” she whispers, and I nod into her palms. She drops her hands away and throws Dom a withering look. “Help me into the house.”
“Yes, boss.” Dom wraps an arm around her waist and guides her inside.
I stay there on my knees for a long time, collecting my thoughts and dragging them into some semblance of order. Then I search through the gravel for Marisol’s wedding ring and follow her inside.