Page 55 of Unhinged Little Angel

I let out a slow breath and fling the folder away. Papers flutter haphazardly to the floor around our feet, and I toss back the rest of my scotch, guzzling it down in a few quick gulps before wiping the back of my hand across my mouth. Images of what he described to the police dance in my mind, making my head spin and my pulse thunder in my ears. I rear back my hand and throw my empty glass at the wall, taking satisfaction in the sound of it shattering, of the glass raining down on the wood floor and the last few drops of scotch staining my white wall with brown streaks that trickle down garishly.

The small act of destruction doesn’t feel like nearly enough. After what I just read, I want to tear the entire goddamn world apart with my bare hands. I slide my hand underneath his shirt to ground myself with the feeling of his warm skin. I drag in another shuddering breath and Dante cups my cheek with his good hand, brushing the pad of his thumb against the grain of my stubble.

“Shh,” he murmurs, leaning in slowly. “I’m okay.” His words are barely a whisper, but they’re the only thing that could possibly get through the drumbeat of my pulse in my ears.

He bumps his nose against mine and tilts his chin just a fraction of an inch, wordlessly begging for a kiss. I’ve never denied my Angioletto anything, and this is something I need even more than he does. A few seconds to remember that the only thing that’s real is what’s right in front of us, not the ghosts of the past.

I didn’t notice him crying, but as soon as our lips touch, I can taste the salt of his tears. I growl softly against his mouth and tease my tongue along the seam of his lips, lapping up every one of his tears that reach them. And when that’s not enough, I break the kiss and lick them straight off of his cheeks.

“You’re such a fucking weirdo, Sal,” he says around a laugh and then a sniffle.

“It’s weird to be obsessed with my husband?” I say, kissing away the last few stray tears. A dazed look flickers through his eyes and his breath hitches. Dante gives a quick shake of his head. I don’t know if he’s answering my question or clearing his thoughts, but when he doesn’t say anything else, I tug him back into place, resting against me, and I kiss the side of his throat. “Explain this to me, Angioletto, before I drive to the prison and kill that fucker right now.”

“All the stuff I told the police is true, just not about me.” He takes a deep breath. “That summer, my cousin Luis came to me one night crying so hard he could barely breathe. He was seventeen and I was almost twenty, but I always felt protective of him. There was just something, I don’t know, small and vulnerable about him, I guess. When I finally got him calmed down enough to tell me what was wrong…” Dante shakes his head, and a dark cloud descends over his expression.

I rub soothing circles on his back and wait for him to go on, but I’ve already put the pieces together now. I understand what happened and it all makes complete sense. It’s exactly the Dante I know, to stand between someone who can’t fight for themselves and a monster, swinging blindly without any regard for his own safety.

He clears his throat and goes on. “You read the report, so you know what he did. Luis told me all of it and I held him while he cried through it. He said Don promised it was the last time, but he said it every time and Luis stopped believing it. He just wanted it to stop. I told him he should report it, I even offered to go with him to the police station. I put on my shoes and practically dragged him to my car, but he turned into a sobbing mess again. He said he couldn’t do it, he didn’t want to do it, he couldn’t tell anyone else what he’d told me, let alone a room fullof cops or a courtroom full of people. Then, he made me promise I wouldn’t tell anyone what happened to him either.”

“Some promises are better broken, Angioletto,” I point out.

“I know, I just… You didn’t see him. He’d already been hurt so much, he was so broken and humiliated, I couldn’t do that to him. So, after I convinced him to at least spend the rest of the summer at my apartment instead of going home, I told him I’d go get his stuff and I made up a bed for him on my couch.” There’s a faraway look in Dante’s eyes, like he’s reliving that night, seeing the shadows of it right in front of him. “I felt like I was on autopilot driving to his house, I wasn’t thinking about anything, but I could feel myself getting angrier and angrier, replaying all of the disgusting, fucked up shit Luis told me. And by the time Don opened the door, I just… snapped. I’d never laid a hand on anyone before that, other than the regular roughhousing shit kids do. But it was like I was possessed, I just fucking jumped on him and started beating the ever-living fuck out of him. I wish I’d just killed him then.”

“If you had, you’d still be locked up now. It’s better this way. He’s not going to get away with any of this, Angel. You know that, right?”

Dante nods.

“Anyway, you know the rest.” He gestures at the papers scattered around the floor, half-crumpled and in disarray. “I didn’t try to fight it when he brought charges against me, but I couldn’t let him get away with what he did to Luis either, so I just said that all of it happened to me. I wasn’t sure they’d even put him away on my word alone, but the cops found pictures too. I guess he’d been saving them over the years. He was stupid enough to think that as long as Luis’s face wasn’t in them, he’d be safe. So, I just said those were of me too, and they couldn’t really prove they weren’t. He got a pathetic ten-year sentence, and here we are.”

“What happened to your cousin?”

“He was pissed that I told his secrets, even though I pretended they were mine. My whole family turned on me. They said I was a liar, that I was just trying to cause problems, that obviously I was the crazy, unhinged, violent one if I could do all that to Don and still have the nerve to accuse him of touching me.”

I tighten my arms around him and press my face into the crook of his neck.

“I’m so sorry. You did the right thing, even if none of them could see it.”

He nods again. “I know.” His words are steel, unemotional and firm.

“I wish things were different back then, Angioletto, but you’re a Moretti now, and we take care of family. Always.”

DANTE

Salvatore’s words hit places deep inside me. They reverberate and release another torrent of all of those chaotic, confusing feelings that have been chasing me for days no matter how hard I try to outrun them.

I never regretted what I did because I knew it was the right thing. Through five years behind bars and dozens of returned letters that my own parents refused to even open, I knew that if I could go back in time and take any of it back, I wouldn’t. No one else was going to protect Luis, not even Luis himself, so I did what I had to. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

Overnight I went from an idealistic teenager looking at the world through rose colored glasses to a jaded convict who saw things the way they really are. People do ugly, disgusting things and others sweep it under the rug because it’s easier to disown their own son than it is to believe the world could be such a nasty place. Or maybe on some level they already knew what washappening and the fact that I did something about it made it too hard to face themselves, so they just… didn’t.

But that’s not Salvatore.

No matter how hard I’ve tried over the years, he refuses to become one of the dark things. Sure, he kills people, he makes money in illegal ways, and his morals are calibrated to a different scale, but that’s only because he sees the world the way it is, the same way I do. I’ve taunted him in front of Lorenzo and the others, drugged him, held him at gunpoint, and demanded he marry me soIcould feel safe, and even then, I acted like he was the one trying to force me into things I didn’t want. But here he is, with his thumb drawing little circles on the back of my neck to calm me down, looking at me like… likethat… like I’m something special and precious. Like these warm, vulnerable, terrifying feelings building inside my chest might be okay.

“When we were at that diner on our way to Los Vespar, you didn’t mean sex, did you? You said the marriage had to berealand I thought you meant that you’d only do it if I let you fuck me. But that’s not what you meant, was it?”

He lets out a huff of laughter and kisses the top of my head, his breath ruffling my hair. “No, Angioletto, it’s not. Not that it hasn’t been an enjoyable benefit.”

I tilt my head, and he keeps peppering kisses down the side of my face. My heart beats even faster now than it did while I was telling him the truth about what happened. I swallow around a lump in my throat and try to breathe around the too-big feeling in my chest, shifting on his lap so I can see him better. I straddle his legs and bring my hand to his face again, resting it there and searching his eyes for any sign that he’s lying, that this is some kind of trick I’ll only feel stupid and betrayed over later. But he’s still just looking at me like I’m more than a stripper with an anger problem and a bad habit of breaking bones.

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