Alessandra Torre - Masked Innocence

“Okay.”

He laughed at my easy surrender, and wrapped an arm around me, kissing my neck. “You want to try them on?”

“Better, just to be safe.”

Fifteen minutes later we left Neiman’s and headed to the food court. We decided on P.F. Chang’s, and lucked out with an immediate table, though it was crammed into a tight corner. Brad studied the small table with apprehension, then sat, his large body dwarfing the minute table. Add the ridiculously large bag that Neiman’s had put my shoe box into, and we were short on foot, arm and table room. I stifled a laugh and smiled at Brad, the discomfort visible in his eyes.

“Want to wait for a bigger table?”

“No, I’ll suffer through,” he said, picking up the menu and looking it over.

We ordered, and once the waiter left I met Brad’s eyes across the table.

“Uh-oh,” he said, watching me carefully.

“What?” I asked innocently.

“That look. What is it?”

“I just have a lot to ask you—and this is the first time in a while we’ve been alone, undistracted...”

“I can think of something to distract us.” He grinned, deviously at me, a dimple showing, and reached under the table, his hand grabbing my leg.

“Stop that!” I whispered, tossing the crispy noodle I had in my hand at him.

“Fine. As much as I will regret this—what do you want to ask me?”

“I know you hit the main points this morning, but explain to me again your relationship to your family.” I stared at the menu, certain that he would be glaring at me from the other side of the table.

“You would pick a crowded restaurant to have this discussion in.”

“Skim over things. I don’t need to know where the bodies are buried.”

“Fine. My father, Dom Magiano, is the head of the family. I was groomed to take over, but early on didn’t...conform as expected.”

“It’s hard for me to imagine you conforming to anything.”

“Well, imagine me as a rebellious teenager. At seventeen, I had a big argument with my father and I moved out, lived with my aunt’s family for a few months, then found an apartment. I applied to college, and from then on was estranged from my family. Not estranged in a typical American sense—the Italian family structure will allow for some disassociation, but only within reason. I still attend family events, weddings, birthdays, as well as the major holidays. But as far as the family business goes, which is everything to my family, I have no part of it.”

“Do you like your family?”

He looked at me quizzically—and in that moment, the waiter reappeared, setting our soups and appetizer on the already crowded table. When we were alone again, I tried to rephrase the question.

“Do you respect them, enjoy their company, have fun when you are with them?”

“With my family there is always respect. To not respect is to disonore, or dishonor both yourself and the other party. But I understand what you mean, though it will take a while to answer the question. Our family, I respect. They are extremely tight-knit and extremely loyal. There is great love in our family, and we are family first, business associates second and friends third. But I do not respect what they do. I understand why they do it—the need for violence in that business—but feel that the business structure could change to reduce the violent aspects. The big argument with my father, when I was young, was over legitimizing the businesses. I feel that he could remove the ‘mob’ aspect of our holdings, while still remaining profitable. He disagrees with that transition for several reasons, many of which are valid, and some of which actually reduce violence instead of feed it. But my father’s motives are not identical to his sons’.”

“How many sons?”

“I have three siblings. Two brothers and Maria.”

“I interrupted you. Please go on.”

“I always enjoy spending time with my family—and in true Italian form, it is a large one. I have over twenty cousins, and they are as close to me as my brothers. We all grew up together, a ‘pack of wolves’ my mother called us, and we were inseparable. I was the only one who left, and while I don’t harbor anger toward any of them, there is a group of relatives who has great bitterness for me.”

“Why?”

“For my independence, my life of freedom without fear of arrest or death. My wealth, though money has never been a problem for any of them. They feel slighted—rejected—like I have been disloyal, which I understand, though I have never crossed or harmed them by my independence. There are also some of them who have a streak of mean, of evil, if you prefer to think of it that way. They enjoy the brutality of the business. Unfortunately, the business, the money, the contacts—it all equals an environment where hatred and sadism can grow and expand, like kudzu, taking over anything good. Leo is part of that group, the angry, mean ones.”

“Leo?”

“The man who came to your house.”

“To kill me.”

Darkness flickered in his eyes, and he nodded. “Yes.”

“If family is so important, so sacred, why would they not leave me alone, as a favor to you?”

“Because of business. You are not part of our family. You are an outsider, a loose end. Someone who threatens the freedom and way of life of our entire family structure. They don’t know you—they only know me. And my track record with women is...” He shrugged.

“Crappy.”

The response brought a smile to his face. “If you want to put it so eloquently. Crappy. So, they assume that what typically happens with my other relationships will happen here—that I will grow tired of you, dump you—and in response you will do everything in your power to—what was the phrase my father used?—make me bleed.”

I didn’t like the idea of his family carelessly discussing our relationship and its certain demise when they didn’t even know me. Clearly, I had already been judged and found wanting, therefore condemned to death. It felt like the fucking Middle Ages.

I slumped in my seat. “Unfortunately, I see their rationale. I wouldn’t put much stock in you keeping me happy and unscorned either.”

He laughed and grabbed my limp, depressed hand, bringing it to his lips. “Don’t worry. I have a plan that will supersede all of their rational thinking.”

“What is it?”

He started eating his soup, nonchalantly shrugging at me over the bowl. “Can’t tell you yet. But it’s a good one.”

“What if it doesn’t work—what if you can’t convince them?” A little bit of panic had entered my voice.

He met my eyes over the spoon. “I’m an attorney. Convincing people is my job.”

And, as far as I knew, he was extremely good at it. It was the only positive thought I could find, so I latched on to it with a death grip.

“Plus,” he added, watching me, “they won’t have an option. My father will know that when I speak to him.”

* * *

I DISTRACTED MYSELF with eating, and we both gorged ourselves, finishing off beef and broccoli, honey chicken and lettuce wraps by the time we left. We wandered through a few more shops, but were both dragging our feet, and we finally headed back to the red-vested valet.

“What next?” he asked, when we were back in the leather-wrapped comfort of the car.

“Home,” I mumbled, leaning back into the seat and stretching out my full stomach.

He pulled out of the mall and gunned the engine, heading for the interstate, and the car lowered itself, hugging the pavement as we flew along.

“Shit,” I said, ten minutes later, as we came in the back door.

“What?” he asked, shutting the door behind him.

“I totally forgot about the movie!” I said, disgusted with myself.

“Why don’t we watch one here instead—use the theater room?” Brad suggested, grabbing a bottled water from the fridge.

I frowned at him. “You have a theater room? Where?” I really needed to do a better job of snooping. Apparently there were entire sections of the house I had yet to explore.

He laughed, tossing me a cold bottle of water. “Yes, oh young one. Come on, I’ll show you.”

“What movies do you have?” I asked.

“You can look through them and see. If you don’t see a movie you like, we can head back out, catch a later one.”

I unscrewed the water’s cap, nodding my agreement. Two minutes later, I was standing in the theater room, mouth agape.

To say that Brad had a movie collection would be a gross understatement. Imagine an entire video store—back when those still existed. That would be close to the selection that the damn man possessed. The walls of the theater room—walls that I had dismissed in my initial glance—were spring loaded. If you pressed the edges they popped open slightly, and you could then slide them to the side, revealing floor-to-ceiling shelves, all the height of a Blu-ray disc case. I rolled my eyes, amazed at the wealth of movies in a format that was relatively new. Brad handed me a large binder that was a catalog, the movies organized by genre, with small images of the covers and brief descriptions for every film, along with a notation of where they were housed. I quickly realized it would take hours to peruse the damn thing, and instead flipped to the index, scrolling down the titles.

The first two I suggested—Bruce Almighty and Collateral—Brad rejected, but the third he agreed to, and I followed the indicated shelf/section notation and pulled out Good Will Hunting, handing it to him.

We settled in, side by side, in the love seat–style theater seating, and I tilted my head toward the wall, now closed, the cases hidden from view once again. “You know that’s OCD at its finest.”

“That’s called organization. Can you imagine trying to find a movie without a system in place?”

I squinted at him, trying to imagine the big man painstakingly organizing the thousands of movies, cataloging them in proper order. That didn’t mesh with the Brad I knew—the Brad who couldn’t sit still for five minutes without his leg jiggling, or pulling out his cell phone. “And you organized it?”

“Do you think I organized it? You know me better than that.” He turned up the volume, the previews beginning, and put his arm around me, pulling me to him. “One of the interior designers handled it all. I told her I like movies, to get me a big collection. They kind of went overboard, but I don’t mind.”

“I just can’t believe we were about to pay to watch a movie when you have so many choices here.”

He laughed, and squeezed my arm affectionately. “God, you have issues.”

I looked up, kissing him on the neck. “I can only see one issue that I have right now. One big issue.” I poked his side.

He looked wounded. “Not me!”

“Shhh—we’re missing the movie,” I whispered laughingly, and snuggled close to him, pulling a soft fleece blanket over my body. Brad pressed a button on the remote, dimming the lights, and we settled in, forgetting for a brief moment the danger hanging over my head.

Brad sat across from the two girls, his expression pained.

“Let me get this right,” the brunette said, her intelligent eyes peering at him with distrust. “You are proposing to Julia tonight. You haven’t bought a ring, you don’t have anything romantic planned and you have dated her for a grand total of, what, three weeks?”

“It’s been almost two months—”

“No, no, no,” she interrupted him, waving her hand. “I’m not counting all the time where you were chasing her, and you were both single, and you were probably fucking half the town at the same time. I’m talking about committed relationship time.”

Three weeks was probably overstating that qualifier, but Brad wasn’t going to bother pointing that out.

The other one, a petite beauty with breast implants, a nose job and, in Brad’s opinion, entirely too much makeup, slapped the girl’s arm, interjecting herself into the conversation. “Well, I think this is the most romantic thing ever! Do you have any friends—single friends? I need to find a guy like you, one who is ready to settle down.”

“Becca, he is not ready to settle down. That’s the whole problem!” The aggressive one, who he thought was named Olivia, whipped out a finger, pointing it at Brad. “Why? Why propose now? Why not wait, get to know her a bit?”

He wanted to leave, to say “screw this” to the two spoiled brats in front of him, get up and continue on his way. But these were Julia’s friends, her best friends, and he needed to stack the deck with every card he had if he wanted Julia to accept. He weighed how to communicate his intentions without bringing up the predicament they had found themselves in. The attorney in him looked at the angles available, the weaknesses of the jury. Reason might work with the pit bull; emotion would win the Barbie’s heart. The problem was, all he had was emotion. A foreign tool in his belt. He spread his hands in a helpless gesture and tried his best pitiful look. “Because I love her. And I don’t want to wait. I know, unequivocally, that she is the one for me.” The word love rolled off his tongue, convincing and believable, so smoothly that he almost missed its significance and weight. Love. A concept he had avoided for so long, and which now felt so right in his heart. Expanding, pushy, it took up unnecessary space, crowding out so many hostile emotions—anger at his mother’s abandonment, at his family’s business, at his own stubborn independence—he had harbored for so long.