Make Me: Manhattan Mafia - Book Two Read online

  “Listen to me.” He whispers so softly I have no choice but to listen. “I’m trying to tell you I don’t love her. You have to believe me.”

  “No,” I say in the same low whisper, then raise my voice just enough to speak firmly. “I don’t have to believe you. You’re not my husband. You lied to me. I don’t want to want you, but I do. I accept that. I’m not who I was, and I’ll never be again. I was innocent before you came, and I can’t ever have that back. Those rules about obeying you and serving you… those are gone because you broke them. Whatever way I am now, you made me.”

  He digs my left hand from under my right and presses on the tender line at the base of my middle finger. “These scars, they’re forever. They’re not meaningless to me. Blood was drawn. Our names are cut into each other’s bodies.”

  “Sweet words.” I let him caress my hand, but not responding in kind. There’s no lying left in me. I’m not obfuscating to protect myself from him anymore.

  “I don’t expect you to trust me, but you need to.” He looks at me when he says it, and since we’re at a dead stop, he can hold my gaze. “We’re at war. We’re being hunted. I can’t let them find you, and when you run, you turn your back. Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?”

  I turn away to look out the front. “You want to face them.”

  Them.

  Sonny was a them and now his throat is opened up into a bloody smile. I have very few memories of him. He was just there. He said hello and asked me if I was having a good day. He drove me places sometimes. I can’t even remember where I went.

  “I have to.” He puts my hand in his lap. “But if you trust me, I can show you… teach you the things you need to know.” In the stopped traffic, he faces me again. “I can fight knowing you can live without me.”

  “What do you mean, ‘live without you’?”

  “War is a risky business. People die. Husbands leave wives behind.”

  Arguing about whether or not we’re married seems beside the point. He’s talking about murdering and getting murdered.

  “I don’t want that.”

  “Let me worry about it then. You just get to learning.”

  “I don’t want to learn how to kill someone the way you did.”

  The traffic opens up, and he speeds ahead. He’s concentrating. Pensive. One hand rests on the bottom of the wheel, the other on my thigh.

  The last time I rode in the front seat was the first time. Armistice Night. I didn’t even appreciate it at the time, but now I like being able to know what’s in front of me.

  “I’m sorry you had to see that.” He changes lanes.

  “You didn’t have to do it. We could have just run.”

  “They need to know I’ll kill for you.”

  “I won’t kill for you, Dario, so don’t teach me how.”

  There’s an island in the river, between us and Queens. It flicks by at a constantly shifting angle.

  Am I a liar? Would I kill for him? Will I ever find out?

  The sounds of the world are shut out. Even the engine and the tires under us are muffled. We pass two women jogging abreast in the fog, ponytails swinging. They’re a flash in my sight, then they’re gone.

  “What do you want most in the world, Sarah? Not a thing. Any object you want, I’ll get you. That’s a given. Tell me what you want to do. Where you want to go. Who you want to be.”

  “No one’s ever asked me that before.”

  “I’m asking, and I know you can’t answer.” He slides his hand over mine. “Not yet. But you will when I’m through with you. I’ll teach you everything.”

  “But will you?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Because then I can leave you.”

  “I will.” He slides his hand from mine and drapes it over the steering wheel. “And you won’t. But if I ever leave you, you’ll know how to decide what to do and who to be. You’ll be strong enough to save yourself when I can’t.”

  He’s not threatening to leave me. He’s not threatening anything. He’s sharing his reality in all it’s brevity and intensity.

  I don’t want him to die, or leave, or break himself off from my love, ever. I squeeze my eyes shut as if that will keep out the pain of the separations I imagine. He didn’t have to touch me to brush away my anger. It wasn’t his dominance or the contrast of his more soothing charms.

  He’s placated me with the promise of an education.

  Chapter 7

  SARAH

  We leave the waterfront and drive inland. The feeling of being stopped in time wears off with the needs of my body. I’m thirsty and I have to pee. He won’t stop for food or a bathroom break or anything until we’re “out of NYSD jurisdiction.”

  I don’t know what that means, but it seems important. I can hold it.

  Without being reminded of my increasingly urgent situation, Dario gets off the highway, makes a few turns into a neighborhood that’s quieter and grassier than the one we left, and pulls into a strip mall.

  “Stay close.” He puts the car into park. “We’re not safe yet.”

  He walks around to my side, eyes everywhere in a heightened state of alertness, waving to an old guy sitting at one of the little tables outside Tommy’s Pizzeria, then he opens my door to help me out.

  “You hungry?” Dario checks over his shoulder when a car creeps up behind us.

  “I could eat.”

  “Good,” he says before greeting the man at the table, who’s stood up. “Tommy!”

  They shake hands and fold each other into a back-slapping hug.

  “Dario, it’s been too long.”

  Tommy is in his fifties with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair, a ruddy, clean-shaven face, and thick, gray eyebrows.

  “Been busy.” Dario takes my hand, pauses with his eyes on our hands. Maybe it’s the scars, or the snowflake ring, but he takes a moment before turning back to Tommy. “This is my wife, Sarah.”

  He and I can argue about the technical truth of that statement, but not about my immediate reaction. My heart doesn’t resist it, nor does my mind shout out against it. Willa or no, for now, I am his wife or something close enough to it. I am comforted. I am accepted.

  “Signora Lucari.” Tommy takes my hands and kisses my cheeks. “Piacere mio! Come in, come in.” We follow him into the little restaurant. “Junior’s making up his specialty. Sarah, you like pizza bianco?”

  I don’t know what he’s saying, so I look at Dario. He speaks to Tommy in Italian, and Tommy says something back. They laugh, and we sit in a booth.

  “What was that about?” I ask Dario when Tommy’s gone.

  “It’s nothing.” His eyes are on the windows and door. “You should have the bianco.”

  “Don’t tell me it’s nothing.”

  He turns back to me, head cocked. “I’ll tell you what I like.”

  Direct confrontation is not even a consideration, but I offer the same tilted head and add a raised eyebrow. The same expression Grandma made when she was daring me to keep up whatever behavior would lead to a Correction.

  Dario’s concession is quick enough to surprise me. “He asked if you were the Sarah from second blood.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Most people won’t say the Colonia name in public. It’s like speaking of the devil will summon him. So, they use second blood, for the church.”

  “Precious Blood?” I like the way questions feel in my mouth. The way they flick over the tongue. Even more, I love the way my mind opens in the expectation of an answer.

  “It was built second. After the one Downtown. Secondo sangue.”

  “And we’re too scary to mention out loud.”

  “You are.”

  “Then why were you both laughing?”

  “You ask a lot of fucking questions.”

  I shrug, and he fills in the blanks.

  “You never had a bianco because you—your people—pretend you’re American. You don’t learn the language, the culture. Nothing. I can’t speak great. But my dad spoke it in the house, and I learned enough to do business. You people? Nothing but red, white, and blue.”

  “We’ve been in New York since it was New Amsterdam.”

  Tommy comes over with water that I immediately gulp. “Junior’s coming with the pie in a minute.” He sits himself at the end of the table. “Where you headed? Anything you need?”

  “A bathroom?” I answer even though I wasn’t the one he asked.

  “Of course. It’s right down—”

  “I’ll take her.”

  With his hand between my shoulder blades, Dario walks me to a narrow back passage and opens a door marked Donne in a carved plastic rectangle. He flicks on the light, checks behind the door, the corners, and inside the cabinet. He makes sure the window is locked and peers up at the vent.

  Satisfied, he steps into the hall. “I’ll wait here for you.”

  I check what every woman does when she enters a bathroom.

  “Toilet paper.” I open the cabinet under the sink and take out a fresh roll, holding it up for him.

  He’s already distracted by something in the parking lot. I close the door and do my business.

  When I get out, our booth is empty, and a white circle of pizza sits in the center of the table.

  I am actually very hungry.

  Before I can slide off a slice, a man approaches.

  “Let me get that.” He’s handsome, about my age, with forearms stretching the rolled cuffs of his chef’s coat. “I’m Tommy Junior.” He pulls the triangle-shaped spatula from under the crust. “Everybody calls me Junior.”

  “Nice to meet you. Do you know where Dario went?”

  “Outside for a minute. The trick to this pie,” he says withou
t pause as he slips the spatula under a slice, “is you put a little pesto under the mozzarella.”

  Right around the word “pesto,” I spot Dario on the far side of the parking lot, next to a black and white police car, talking to two cops. One smokes a cigarette. The other has his hand on his holster.

  “Go ahead,” Junior says, getting into the seat across from me and folding his hands on the table.

  I take a bite, burning my mouth.

  “It’s hot,” he says, handing me my water.

  “Clearly.” I polish off the water.

  “Try again.” He refills my glass and leans forward, observing me carefully.

  I blow on the pizza’s surface, then gingerly bite into it. No burn. Either the pie’s cooler or I’ve killed the nerve endings in my mouth.

  My taste buds work fine though.

  “Oh, it’s good.”

  “It bursts like a pop of brightness on your tongue and lets the ricotta blossom.”

  Still talking to the cops, Dario looks in my direction. I’m not sure if he can see through the window’s reflection, but I wave to him and take another bite.

  “Something is crunching,” I say on my third bite.

  “Ah, pignoli. I don’t grind all of it into the paste. I take out maybe ten percent while there are still pieces, then put it back. Keeps it from being mush. Here, have another piece.”

  I start on the second slice like a starving animal.

  “Did you know,” he says, “Afghanistan is the third biggest exporter of pignoli?”

  “Mm-mm.” I tell him I don’t while chewing.

  “I was stationed there. Army. Made E-6.”

  I don’t know what that means.

  “Were you an army cook?” I say around my third bite.

  He shows me a tattoo inside his forearm. Two snakes curling around a rifle, set over a red cross in the background. The word COMBAT above, and MEDIC below.

  “Where did you learn to cook?”

  “My mother. She always said, ‘Junior, a woman might cook for you one day, but if you know how to cook for yourself, she’ll be one less woman who’s gonna have to.’”

  I laugh around a bite. “Do you clean the bathroom too?”

  “Nah, nah,” he says, leaning over the table to get closer to me. “And my wife’s not gonna either. When I marry a woman, she’s gonna be a queen, because I’ll be a king. Big house. Servants. A full staff. All she’s gonna have to do is sit on the couch and watch TV.”

  “What if she wants to do something more?”

  “Like what?”

  “Be productive? I don’t know actually.”

  “There’s gonna be kids!”

  Dario shakes hands with one of the cops and heads toward us in big strides, his gaze melting the window glass between us.

  “Well, I’m going to make this for—” For a split second, I have to consider if I should call him my husband. I decide not to get used to it. “Dario, because he can’t cook for himself.”

  “I got printouts of the recipe.” Junior gets out of the booth with all the energy of a man who’s found his purpose in life. “One second!”

  The bell rings when Dario comes in.

  “Hey, this is really good,” I tell Dario. “You’re lucky I saved you half.”

  “Finish it.” He heads for Junior, who’s coming around the counter with a piece of paper.

  Dario snaps it away. Junior stands there with his mouth open and his hands out. He starts a reply, then claps his jaw shut. Dario stands too close to him, legs apart, knees bent, fists clenched. He’s too tight. Too menacing.

  Whatever this is, it’s dangerous.

  Dario isn’t hurting another person today. None. Zero.

  I swallow whatever I’d bitten off and run between them, taking the paper away from Dario.

  “It’s a recipe.” I hold it up, but he can’t see or hear me through his focus on Junior.

  “You.” Over my shoulder, Dario jabs a finger at the quaking younger man. “Don’t talk to her.”

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “Hey, hey!” Tommy comes out from the back. “Cosa c'è?”

  Dario seems to wake up with a subtle relaxing of his posture and an exhale.

  “Nothing.” He focuses on me, taking the paper. He reads it and looks past me at Junior. “Thank you. We’ll pack it up to go.”

  I count this as a victory, but I don’t know what I’ve won.

  Chapter 8

  SARAH

  The pizza box is in the back. My hands are in my lap, thumbs tapping. I wait for Dario to explain what just happened, but he doesn’t make a sound. This is my silence to break.

  “What did those cops say?”

  He shoots me a look before turning back to the road. I give him a look right back. He might not be used to life after rule one, but I’m starting to like it.

  “The sheriff’s department let the Colonia in. They figured out they had the right place from something you left in the greenhouse. A garter.”

  “I didn’t leave that. You did.”

  “Touché.” He turns the corner, knowing exactly where he’s going, which must be nice. “The sheriff’s department left and let the Colonia file in like a bunch of fucking ghouls. They’re probably trashing the place while the NYSD sits outside—hiding like cowards as if I can’t see them—watching for us. Fuckers think we’re going back.”

  “Aren’t we?”

  “No.” His clipped denial hurts me more than it should. That building was the only home we ever had together.

  “What about when the sheriff leaves?”

  “We go back when I say it’s safe.”

  Nothing will ever be safe to him, and I’ll never be able to judge for myself.

  Dario turns. The pizza box slides from one side of the back seat to the other. I check to make sure it’s still upright. It’s fine. I’m not.

  “If you didn’t want me to make you pizza,” I say, “you could have just told me instead of threatening Junior.”

  “It’s not about the pizza,” he grumbles in profile.

  “I know I’m sheltered and I don’t know a lot of things, but I’m not stupid.” I get more and more angry with every second that passes without his response. “You’re an experienced person who knows me pretty well. So, whatever this is… you being angry… it obviously couldn’t be about me talking to a man about pesto, so I’m going to assume it’s about the garter.”

  “No.” He holds his hand up like a crossing guard in an intersection. “Until you know how to live—how to work and pay a bill—you don’t talk to anyone. Anyone. Especially not a man. What if he decided he wanted you? You couldn’t even read a map to find your way home. You can’t call me. You can’t use a phone unless it’s connected to a wall.”

  “That has nothing to do with you acting like that.”

  “It has everything to do with it.”

  We pass a red brick church with a sign that says FIND PEACE! He puts his blinker on and makes a left—functioning just fine when we’re fighting, which makes me want to push his buttons just a little more.

  “It was just a recipe.”

  He pulls into a gas station, slaps the car into park, and leans into me. “It’s never just a recipe. Never.”

  I can’t even look at him, but I can hear him, feel him near me, smell him every time I breathe. When he gets out, I’m thankful and disappointed at the same time. He’ll pump his car with gas, pay with his money, and drive his marital property to another piece of his real estate.

  But I’m not even marital property. The interior of the car clatters thickly when he puts the pump into the tank. The numbers on the pump flip.

  How am I letting this happen?

  I’m not. I get out of the car. We lock eyes over the roof.

  “Get in the car, Sarah.”

  I slam the door closed and walk around to him, leaving the black gas line between us. He waits for me to speak, but he’s bursting at the seams to answer.

  “If you want me to be independent, I need to be able to talk to people.”

  “A man I do not know—who I haven’t vetted—does not need to talk to my wife.”

  “I’m not your wife.”

  “I told you…” He holds up his hand so I can see his scars.

  “You told me nothing.” I growl for the first time in my life, and it feels good. Now I know why he does it. “You used me. And I knew you were using me because you told me what you were using me for… but after things changed, you could have told me you were married, and you didn’t. So you’re still using me. The only thing that changed is what you’re using me for.”