“I need you for the rest of my life, Mariposa. I need all of you to belong to me only. Ossa delle mie ossa; carne della mia carne; la mia bella donna; mia moglie.” Bone of my bone; flesh of my flesh; my beautiful woman; my wife.
“So you didn’t have to make something up?” I blinked at him. “You had the heart all along?”
“Yeah, I did. You. You’re the heart.” He took my hands and moved them to his neck, right over his scar. “If this didn’t exist. The voice. How could I tell you, Mariposa? If words no longer existed, if someone stole them, how would we communicate? Actions. Actions speak louder than words. You don’t need words to make this real.”
“Actions,” I whispered. “Your life. You sacrificed yours for mine.”
He leaned his head against mine. “Nel mio mondo l'amore ti farà solo uccidere. Sono un uomo morto dalla notte in cui ti ho lasciato alle spalle.”
The translation of his words was a bit loose, but his point was as sharp as a sword out to slay for love.
In my world love will only get you killed. I have been a dead man since the night I left you behind.
I pulled back to see him better, but he only pulled me closer, so close that I couldn’t breathe. So close that my breath was his and his was mine.
Non servono più parole. No more words were needed, as he let me in for a peaceful swim.
26
Mariposa
I had somehow, a miracle, convinced my husband to take the day off. Not only the day, but the night, too. After Harrison’s house had been sprayed with bullets, it was hard to be apart from him.
My nightmares were only getting worse.
It was the same one over and over, except the blood would increase each time. I’d look down and the slow crawl of it would inch closer and closer to my feet. I still couldn’t move. Only scream out.
In reality, not dreams, he sometimes stood close to me. At other times, he did his thing. Seeking vengeance on the Scarpone family was a job to him. One he loved very much. When he admitted to me that he didn’t kill them because it would be over, I understood right away.
It would end his reign of torture on them. When he fucked with them in life, playing the game, he got a thrill out of it. Once they were dead, it would all be over, and he’d be left to deal with…himself.
What worried me the most was, would he get to them first? Or would they finally succeed and end his life?
It was a game with mighty high stakes.
The life tumbling in my stomach drove the point home.
I ran a hand over my stomach. In the last week my belly seemed to explode. I wore a tight navy dress that had stretch but was form fitting, and from all angles, you could tell I was pregnant.
“Mariposa.”
It took a minute for me to realize Capo had said something to me. After my doctor’s appointment, where the ultrasound confirmed the baby was a boy, he took me out to eat at Mamma’s Pizzeria. We sat in the front, on stools, turned to one another.
“Yeah?”
He grinned at me and then picked up the ultrasound picture I’d placed between us, leaning against a dessert menu. He flashed it at me.
“I want him to have your nose.”
“Your eyes and my nose?” I grinned.
He set the picture back, ran a finger down the slope of my nose, and then kissed me on the end of it. His hands came around my stomach, cradling the bump like a ball. “It pleases me that everyone knows I did this to you.”
I almost spit my drink out. “You like that everyone knows you got me pregnant?”
He leaned in even closer, keeping his hands around my stomach. My knee was close to his crotch. “No, that everyone knows it’s me that fucks you.”
My eyes closed and the breath escaped my mouth in a rush. “Forget the pizza. Let’s go home.”
“Why home? They have a backroom.”
I pulled away from him, trying to gauge his face. He was dead serious.
The waitress set our salads down with a loud clink! against the old counter. A second later, a man with an apron tied around his waist slid our pizza between the two bowls.
“Good enough,” the waitress said, and then she hustled in the opposite direction to take more orders.
Their customer service lacked finesse, but hey, the food was amazing. It was like having an asshole doctor with no bedside manners, but he was the best asshole doctor with no bedside manners.
My eyes went back and forth between the meal in front of me—the man—and the actual meal in front of me—the pizza and the salads.
He sat back, roaring with laughter. “You just busted my balls.”
Not waiting around, I took a stab at my salad. Sometimes I liked to put lettuce on top of my pizza and roll it up. Mamma’s had the best Italian dressing. “I didn’t touch your balls, Capo.”
“Exactly. You picked this—” he waved his hand toward the table “—over me. You wounded my balls without even touchin’ ’em.”
“I didn’t pick one over the other.” I took a bite of pizza, almost moaning. “You’re dessert.”
He leaned in very slow, and the bite of salad I’d just stabbed was in route to make it to my mouth. Slowly, oh so slowly, he licked my bottom lip, removing some leftover dressing. “Everything tastes better from your mouth.”
It was hard for me to find excitement in the food again, but after a minute or two, when he started eating, my hunger came back even stronger. He didn’t even ask. He ordered another pizza, noticing how much I was eating.
“The salad here is really good, too,” I said.
He ordered another.
“That’s how I met old man Gianelli.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin. We still faced each other, and he reached out and wiped my face, too. “I came here for pizza.”
“You bonded over pizza?”
He reached over and grabbed a standup menu. He pointed to a spot at the bottom.
“‘All ingredients are locally grown or imported from Italy,’” I read aloud.
“Old man Gianelli used to supply their garlic from his garden. The old owners were friends with him. My grandfather came down from Italy, and I brought him here. They met. Hit it off. For the longest time they played correspondence chess by mail. They stopped talking after I left you with them. It wasn’t safe to keep in contact.”
“Nonno trusted Pops?”
“Yeah.” He took a drink of his water. “He’d gotten to know them well. That’s how I knew about all of Jocelyn’s troubles. You were wanted. Maybe even needed in their lives.”
I picked apart my pizza. “Do I...do I look like my mother?”
Sometimes I felt guilty about it, but my father rarely crossed my mind. I blamed him for getting my mother killed. He knew what kind of people the Scarpones were, and he still tried to take them over. Even when he was running, he was still plotting.
What hit me the hardest was the picture I found of him leaving the courthouse after the Scarpones had gotten him out of trouble, when they were still on good terms.
My mother, though—nothing came up when I searched for her.
Corrado’s bad behavior made front-page news. For Maria, my mother, her goodness, her love, had landed her in a shallow grave.