I’ve never cheated before. I never even thought about it, not really, but if someone had asked me, I would have said that I couldn’t cheat because I wouldn’t have been able to survive the guilt.
But there is no guilt.
Salvatore helps me redress, kissing and caressing my bare skin until it’s fully covered. And then he presses me against the heavy storeroom door and kisses my mouth one more time, exploring every inch of me with his tongue. What’s there to feel guilty about? How could I muster the energy for guilt in this moment?
I can’t.
He walks me through the back of the restaurant to the dining room and out the front door. He doesn’t kiss me again, and even though I’m disappointed, I remember that that’s a good thing when his wedding ring glints in the quickly waning sunlight. But he does cup the side of my face, running his thumb along my jaw, and I let him. I let him touch me like I’m his because I want to be, and I don’t care who sees us.
We stand outside his restaurant staring at one another for so long that the sky does actually begin to darken.
“I have to go,” I say after a while, not even certain if I’ve missed my train or not.
“I know,” he admits. “You know how to get to the train station?”
I do, and it’s close; just a short five-minute walk away, another reason I’d chosen this restaurant. A stroke of luck that gave me so much more time with Salvatore than I might have had otherwise. I’m grateful for that, and gratitude leaves no room for guilt.
I press the palms of both hands against Salvatore’s chest, just wanting to feel his hard body one more time under my fingertips. “Thank you,” I say, looking up into dark eyes that seem soft with emotion. Or maybe I just want to see emotion there, and so I imagine. And what’s the harm in that? I’ll never see this man again, and there’s no harm in indulging this fantasy.
He grabs my hands and brings them both to his mouth. “Thank you,” he mumbles, kissing each of my knuckles with a firm press. I want to kiss him goodbye, but I can’t, so I smile — or maybe just grimace — before I turn and walk away as quickly as my still-shaking legs will carry me.
I don’t check the time until I turn the corner into the main piazza. The train station is just past the square, and I cut through it as I pull my phone from my back pocket. I suck in a harsh breath when I see that I have nearly a dozen missed calls from Steve and a string of text messages that I don’t check. I don’t even unlock my phone. I simply see that I have twenty minutes before my train is set to leave, and I pick up the pace.
I ignore that my back and thighs are aching, and that I can still feel the pinch of Salvatore’s hands in my hair and around my neck. I don’t know if he’s left marks on me. I hope so, but I still pull my scarf from my bag and wrap it around my neck. When I get to the platform, my train is idling, and I breathe a sigh of relief, not because I particularly want to rush back to Rome, but because I feel exhausted. I’ve never had sex so good that it tires me out.
Another demerit in the mental ledger I’ve spent the day compiling about Steve.
I practically collapse into my seat and wonder how I’ll stay awake for the ride back to Rome, so I don’t miss my stop. I’m considering finding the food car and getting an espresso when someone plops into the seat across from me.
“There you are,” Steve exclaims. “I’ve been looking for you all day!”
My eyes widen in shock and terror, and I subconsciously tighten the scarf around my neck. “Steve. What are you doing here?”
He grins at me, and it’s like I’m seeing him for the first time; because he’s cute, but he’s not nearly cute enough for me to have wasted seven years of my life on him.
“I missed our original train, but I got help at the station. I got here only about twenty minutes after you. I thought you’d wait, but…”
“Why would I wait?” I blurt out.
His brows knit. I don’t know if he’s going to say something, but I don’t let him.
“You missed our train, even though you had plenty of time to make it back. I assumed you weren’t coming. Why would I derail my day for you?”
His face starts to turn red with anger, or embarrassment, or shame. Maybe all three? I don’t know. I don’t care. Because Salvatore was right. I deserve the best. But right now, what matters is that I know — and Steve will know — that I deserve better.
“Anyway, I need a coffee,” I say.
“I’ll come with you,” Steve offers, and I put a hand out to stop him.
“Don’t bother,” I say. “I can get around on my own.”
His lips thin at that obvious barb, and he falls back into his seat. I grab my purse and begin to walk away, not even sure where I’m heading because I’m riding high on the fact that for the first time ever, I told Steve how I feel.
I smile to myself as the conductor yells that the train will soon be departing from the platform. I smile to myself, knowing that once I return to Rome, things will change. I’m not sure exactly what or how, but I’m not the same woman who arrived in Naples this morning. Salvatore changed me, and as if my body wants to let me know just how much, I shiver as my sex clenches, and I feel his semen seep out of me.
It’s dirty. I feel used. But I also feel beautiful and confident.
Salvatore gave me more than I could have imagined.
***
The sun is almost set by the time I leave the restaurant, but it’s full dark by the time I pull into the driveway at the country house. Giulio comes out of the front door as soon as I pull up, and he rushes to my car to pull my door open.
“Everything alright?” I ask him, hardly knowing exactly what I’m referring to. My wife? Umberto? Or any of our other dirty endeavors, because I can’t focus on anything except the memory of Shae’s delicate figure getting smaller and smaller as she walked away from me. It took me so long to make it out here because I waited around the restaurant, desperately hoping that she would return. She didn’t.
“Everything’s fine, boss. Got her in the cellar.”
I nod and walk toward the front door.
In the house, I lead Giulio down to my wine cellar. As soon as I open the door, I can hear Flavia complaining — always complaining — but her voice is shaking. She’s putting on a good show, but I know that she knows what’s coming, and her voice cuts off when she hears my feet on the stairs.
The cellar is dark, damp. This room smells like earth and fear. I miss the musky brightness of my office at the restaurant, the scent I created with Shae. My hands flex just remembering the way her skin felt under my fingertips.
“You piece of shit,” she spits at me in Italian. “My father should have killed you when he had the chance.”
“But he didn’t,” I respond, my voice cold. “I wish he had tried, then I wouldn’t have been stuck with you for all this time.”
She recoils at my words.
Alfonso places a chair across from Flavia, and I sit. I take my time, crossing my legs, straightening the crease in my slacks since I had to change before I could come out here. I hadn’t wanted to, but I couldn’t show up at a meeting like this smelling like another woman’s cunt. I didn’t want to soil what Shae and I shared with the ugliness of this moment.
I cross my arms in my lap and look at Flavia. “I will admit,” I begin, “that I respect you much more than your father. At least you took a shot. That soft coward of a man didn’t have the balls. Apparently, you do.”
She sniffs and lifts her chin into the air. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I tsk at her and shake my head, smiling ruefully. She flinches at that. How long since I smiled at her? Years? Decades? Never? “Don’t insult me, especially not after I’ve paid you a compliment. We can do this the easy way, out of respect for all our time together. Or we can do this the hard way. The way I did with your father.”
She gulps and begins to shake.
“Which road would you like to travel, wife?”
***
Six Hours Later
I’m not a man who lives with regrets. My line of work doesn’t allow for that, and neither does my personality. If there was ever a time when I had a functioning conscience, I short-circuited it to get where I am today. I’m brutally honest, with myself, if no one else. I have to be, as a matter of safety. If I delude myself into thinking I’m better than I am, I won’t be able to fully understand who hates me, and why, and who hates me enough to want to kill me.
My moral code is simple because it has to be. I don’t do anything I can’t live with, and I don’t leave room for regrets, not normally.
I should have gotten Shae’s last name. And of all the things I’ve done in my life — all the people I’ve killed, had killed, betrayed, and stolen from — letting Shae walk away from me without a way to contact her is the first mistake I’ve made in so long. It makes even my disaster of a marriage pale in comparison in my chest. How can it not?
I’d married Flavia knowing full well who and what she was, and had planned accordingly. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’d always known that this was how it would end, so there’s no room to regret. But I hadn’t had any time to prepare for Shae, and every hour that’s passed since my last look at her, I’m more and more enraged at all the things I should have done.
So, when Flavia finally tells me what I want to hear, my response is maybe not completely in line with my feelings about her.
“It was The Greek,” she says. Her voice is shaking with fear and probably anger. If I were in a better mood, I might have been more grudgingly respectful that even at this moment — even with Giulio and Alfonso standing behind her, guns in hand — she still has the strength to be angry at me and not hide it. When her father was in this position, he was blubbering like a child, and he pissed himself. It was embarrassing.
But I’m not in a better mood, and her anger makes me indignant. If she hadn’t betrayed me, she could have continued draining my bank accounts with her useless designer acquisitions, living in a loveless marriage in style, and I could have continued running my empire, pretending that my personal life had no bearing on my work. And if she’d done that, then maybe today, when I met Shae, I could have done something I promised myself I’d never do; I could have taken a mistress. I could have kept her just a bit longer than an afternoon.
“Tell me everything,” I bite out, barely containing the rising rage coursing through my blood.
“What do I get in return?”
I take a deep breath trying to center myself. I want to yell, but that’s not who I am. Some people call me the Tin Man, because only a man without a heart could be so cold. I wonder if that’s why it’s taken Flavia so long to make this move; she’s taken my calm for weakness. Maybe she’s just as foolish as her father.
“If you tell me everything, I’ll make sure that you have the best doctors to nurse you back to health.”
She blanches, and I watch the blood drain from her face.
I extend my arm to Alfonso, and he steps forward to hand me his gun. I cross my legs at the knee and casually aim the barrel at her.
“If I think there’s even a chance you aren’t telling me everything I want to know…Well, there’s room next to your father’s grave. I’ve been saving it for you.”
The fire in her eyes returns for a brief moment. “Where…?” She stutters as her eyes begin to water. “Where is he?”
This makes me smile, at least. She asked me on our wedding night to tell her where I’d dumped her father’s body, not because she cared, but because her mother did. I imagine that she thinks I don’t know that she promised her mother on her deathbed that she’d find her father’s corpse and have him buried in their family cemetery. It’s given me decades of happiness to deny her that.
“If you want to find out sooner rather than later,” I say, breaking the anger I can see building inside her, “I’m more than happy to oblige.”
She swallows loudly, and her body begins to tremble. “The Greek gave me money to put together a petty gang to gun for you.”
“Their names,” I demand.
She nods and starts speaking.
I listen intently. With each word, a new part of my body ices over, not because any of the names matter but because I’m weary. No one stays in this position longer than they’re meant to; I firmly believe that. I don’t know how much longer I have here, but the twinge in my back and the vague ache of the still-healing gunshot wound let me know that it might be time to consider a retirement plan before someone decides for me. But if I want to step down on my own two legs, I need to put everyone gunning to take my spot six feet under one last time.
“What’s the plan, boss?” Alfonso asks as we ascend from the wine cellar.
“Take her south,” I say to him.
He nods and pulls his phone from his back pocket. I hear him arranging to secret my wife out of the city to a town she always hated.
“And me?” Giulio asks, his voice eager and vaguely deadly.
“You got the list. I want them all taken care of.”
“Need me to be discreet?” he asks, sounding disappointed at the prospect.
I smile vaguely. “Absolutely not. I want The Greek to know that I’m coming for him.”
Giulio smiles. “Sure thing, boss.”
He turns and practically runs toward the door. I used to be like that, eager to do my job because the big decisions weren’t mine to make. I miss that. The weight of responsibility has sucked all the joy from my job, and I envy Giulio his relative freedom. I call his name without thinking.
He stops, his hand on the doorknob, and turns to me. “Boss?”
I’m about to ask him about Shae, and that’s stupid. Giulio’s strengths don’t include surveillance, and besides, I still don’t know anything more about her than how wet and warm her cunt felt around my dick. Seeing him so mindlessly happy makes me think of her, but I can’t tell Giulio that. I can’t tell anyone that, for her sake and my own.
“When you’re done, take a break,” I tell him. “Get out of town.” It’s a sound security measure as well as a reward.
He smiles, “Got it, boss,” and then he turns and heads out into the night.
I’m standing alone in the kitchen to my country home, and I can practically hear my long-dead father-in-law’s voice in my head. We all pay a price for power.
At the time, I’d thought I’d paid the ultimate price; I’d married his daughter. For twenty years, I’ve confined myself to a loveless marriage and given up any fantasies I had of a family, but apparently, there was an outstanding debt. If I want to stay in power, I need to let go of any hope that I’ll see Shae again, and I need to bury the desire to look for her deeper than I buried Flavia’s father.
Weary isn’t a strong enough word.