The cop grinned at me.
I called Maggie Beautiful over, who eyed the cops with wariness.
“Calm her down,” I said as they urged me to my feet. “Don’t let them take her.”
“Do you have to take him?” Maggie Beautiful pleaded with the cop who asked me if my wife was that famous dancer. He seemed to be the one directing traffic. He was older, with a wise look about his face.
He sighed. “Yeah, we do.”
“NO!” Scarlett screamed. “NO!”
“Get him outta here, before we have to take two,” the cop said, stabbing a thumb toward the door. “We don’t need the press. Christ. She’s so damn different on stage. My wife and I even saw her on Broadway—just wonderful. That famous broadcast journalist—what’s her name? Ah, who can remember—even interviewed her when she was a kid!”
The struggle behind us was getting real after they hauled me up and walked me out. Maggie Beautiful kept Scarlett back, but Aberto stood outside of the door, watching as they pushed my head down and then sat me in a cruiser.
“Aberto, call my brother,” I said. “Rocco. And don’t leave my wife alone. Stay here and wait for one of the men.Assassini.” I spoke to him in Italian, hoping he’d understand.
Aberto nodded once before the door slammed, and I was taken in.
* * *
Sliding into the Range Rover felt as though I was entering into a new world. Clean. Luxurious. The leather seats clung to the scent of my wife; her essence floated around me in perfumed clouds when I sat. Cool, comfortable, and not hard enough to split the ass twice over. The benches behind bars were hard enough to stiffen a healthy man’s back. They kept it like a freezer, but my blood ran hot, so it just evened me out some.
Rocco took the driver’s seat, Romeo the passenger; Scarlett and I took the back. She was still in the same clothes. Romeo had whispered to me that she had refused to leave, insisting on being the one who bailed me out, not allowing Rocco or Romeo to contact men they knew. She’d sweet-talked the cop who saw her on Broadway to speed up the release process. Then she had stormed out of the building with me next to her, Ray-Bans on, chin lifted, coat open and flying in the breeze, like Superwoman.
She took my arm as the crowd of paparazzi snapped off what sounded like a million pictures in the span of a few minutes. They were screaming my name and then hers. It was rare that a Fausti was arrested—and I was attached to a famous name.
As Rocco journeyed through the slush-coated streets, I stared out of the window, mind blank and free of thoughts. Scarlett took my hand in hers and I moved it out of her grasp.
“Don’t touch me,” I said, voice low.
A moment of silence seemed to scream between us, and I turned to look. Tears streaked down her cheeks in a soundless torment of grief.
“Perdonami, mia moglie,” I whispered, moving her hair away from her shoulder. “Sono troppo sporco per toccare.”Forgive me, my wife. I’m too dirty to touch.
“I don’t effing care!” She unbuckled her seatbelt and threw herself at me. Her hands and lips were all over my face, neck, and chest.
Rocco and Romeo grinned in their seats.
“I’m all right,” I said, attempting to put her at ease. She was frantic, searching for something wrong with me, making sure I was whole. I held her tighter in my arms.
Violet had acted the same way once when Mary slipped away from her at the Audubon Zoo during an impromptu trip to New Orleans two summers ago. While our entire group searched in a panic for her, I found her at the spot where she had cried not long before, because she didn’t want to leave, talking to a statue of an alligator.
That was stage one of Violet’s behavior in reaction to Mary purposely wandering off in search of the place she hated to leave. She loved on her so much that Mick had to tell her to chill out.
“Baby.” I tried to coax her back on her seat. She wouldn’t budge. “You need to buckle up.”
“I’m fine.” She sniffed. “I’m safe here.”
“I’m touched that your faith in me is so strong, but I don’t think even my arms are strong enough to keep you from flying out of the window if Rocco decides to smash into that car in front of us.”
Rocco drove like an Italian. Romeo drove like an Italian cop. Dario drove with opera music the loudest it could go, waving at people he ran off the road.
“Hold me tighter then,” she whispered, sticking her head under my chin, resting her cheek against my heart.
We came to middle ground when I buckled her up in the middle of the back seat, right next to me. After she shut her eyes, head on my shoulder, Rocco and Romeo drilled me on what had happened at the bar. Scarlett had given them the gist, but I went into more detail.
“Donato is dealing with the owner,” Romeo said after I finished the story. “Just to be sure there is no lingering debt. The owner told Donato you gave him almost five thousand dollars.”
