Spin

thirty-six.

"Antonio,” I said.

He didn’t answer, just kept his wrist on the top of the steering wheel.

“Capo.”

“Don’t call me that.”

My face got hot, and my loins tingled as if I’d been dropped off the first hill of a roller coaster. I wanted to look at him, but I couldn’t. I wanted to check his hands for bruises and accuse him of worse violence than I’d wanted to commit. I wanted to make excuses and demands. I looked at my own hands, free of blood or bruise, but they were shaking.

“Antonio, what’s wrong?”

He got off the freeway downtown. “It doesn’t matter.”

“I think it does.”

“We’ll still protect you.”

“What? Wait. I don’t understand. What happened to everything?”

“It’s just done, Theresa. Over.” He shook his head, eyes on the road and avoiding my gaze.

I blinked, and a tear fell. What had I done? How could I have done differently? How could he shut me out? “This was Paulie’s plan? That you’d hate me?”

He didn’t answer. He’d turned to stone right in front of me.

“Brilliant,” I muttered. “He’s a fucking genius.”

“Nice mouth.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I hit him on the arm.

He yanked the car over, screeching to the curb a few blocks from the loft. He drew his finger like a rod, rigid and forceful, as if he could kill me with it. “Do not hit me again.”

“What happened?”

“This is not what I want. I’m in the life. I’m damned, I know this. I cannot come home to a woman I’ll share hell with.” He slapped the car in park and turned away from me again, as if seeking answers in the half distance.

“You would have done the same to protect someone you cared about,” I said.

“I would have beaten him to death with the empty gun. That’s the point, isn’t it?”

“I’m not understanding the point.”

“Please just go. I don’t want to see you again.”

His words tightened in my gut, twisting my insides to jelly. “Antonio, please. Let’s talk—”

He sped the car forward and around a turn, barely stopping to drop me in front of my house. “Get out.”

I waited for him to change his mind. Maybe if I reached out to touch him, he would relent, but he seemed so radioactive that I couldn’t. I took the phone he’d given me from my bag and handed it to him.

“I don’t want it,” he said, still not looking at me. “Give it to the poor. Just go.”

I was a coward. I couldn’t fight for him. I didn’t know how. I got out, and though I didn’t look back, I didn’t hear him pull away until I was safely inside.

My house was empty. Every surface gleamed. The dishes were put away. The broken swans were gone.

I stepped out of my shoes and looked around for any sign of Katrina. She’d left a few old-style bobby pins, but everything else was gone. She’d always kept most of her stuff at her parents’, I reminded myself. I had a family. I could call any of them. And what would I say? They’d walked me through Daniel. Would they walk me through another man? One I couldn’t talk about?

I put the phone he’d given me by the charger, and it blooped with an auto update to the music library. Tapping and scrolling, I found he’d left me music ages ago, before I’d squeezed a trigger. Puccini, Verdi, Rossini. Antonio liked opera, and it didn’t matter that I liked it too.

I put on Ave Maria and shuffled the rest. Went to the refrigerator, didn’t open it. The sink, empty. Back around the kitchen.

I made a third and fourth circuit around the island, as if spooling my pain around it. Antonio, my beautiful, brutal capo. He wanted me to be clean, and I’d sullied myself, debased myself, not with sex but violence. I was supposed to be his escape, and I’d walked into a trap where I was empowered to commit murder. For all intents and purposes, I had.

And there were witnesses. People who didn’t like or trust me. They’d pat him on the back and tell him to move on to a woman who knew her place. To get cunning and hard and live, or stay gentle and die. A woman who knew the rules. A woman from his world. He’d whisper amore mio in her cheek while he held her. He’d make her eggs and protect her innocence with his life.

All of his sweetness would go to her. All of his brutality would stay at the job.