I get a vibe from the girls like maybe they know what really happened because they and a lot of other people saw what went down just before Tom had me taken but no one’s talking to me about anything. The kiss Tom planted on me at his welcome home party before he abducted me was never mentioned by any of them. I could be wrong but I get the impression they’re just burying it. It seems like we’re all just working at healing. They don’t treat Tommy with anger or push him away. If anything, the wedding seemed like everyone was closer, tighter than ever. Moods were quiet and somber when they came for the wedding but there was love and well wishes at the ceremony and reception that’s what mattered to us the most.
Here, we’re Tommy and Tia but on our passports we’re Tommaso and Valentina Caruso, names I picked. I chose the surname for Rose’s parents. He says we don’t have to worry about money, he’s got enough put away to look after us for a few years and once the company’s taken all apart and sold we’ll never have to worry about money again. He tells me that to comfort me but money probably can’t buy my husband what he needs the most --- peace.
In an argument we had a few days after the wedding when he was being moody and broody and refusing to leave the house Tommy said he wished he could turn back the clock to the day he first saw me and leave me behind that ice cream counter untainted by his poison. I slapped him in the face when he said that to me. In reaction to my slap he pinned me against a wall with my arms held over my head and scowled at me but I screamed in his face that poison or not, his love is mine and how dare he wish that away. It turned my blood to acid to think that he’d wish what we have away for even a second. What we have is everything to me. It’s all I have.
That heated argument resulted in my getting a wicked spanking in retaliation for slapping his face and then sex so ro
ugh and so totally amazing that I limped the next day, my body feeling like I’d run a marathon. Sex is a common argument ender for us. It’s a common way to share joy, deal with frustration or fear, it’s what we do. Sometimes he gets wound so tight that I know it’s what he needs. So I push his buttons until he takes what he needs. I’ve changed. I don’t know that I’m stronger but I do know that I find ways to deal with my anger and frustration now. But it’s usually through sex.
A few days after that argument we had another when I wanted to go for a walk and he made an excuse about waiting for a phone call. I waited like two hours but then told him I’d just go and be gone half an hour. He wouldn’t let me and refused to bring his phone on the walk with him, mumbling about bad reception and missing the call. So I told him off and left the house anyway. I saw him come out behind me and I said, “I’m going for a thirty minute walk. Just let me go!” He grabbed me and threw me over the shoulder and carried me back and when we got back in the house he snarled, “Don’t you ever do that again!”
I stuck my tongue out at him and took off back out the door toward the water and he followed me so I started running and of course he chased me and tackled me to the sand and I started pushing and shoving and swearing at him and told him I couldn’t spend 24/7 with him without losing my freaking mind and that I just wanted a fucking half an hour walk on the beach to myself and he responded by apologizing for being so overprotective but then he fucked me hard down in the sand, telling me he loved me more than anything, begging me to be patient with him.
I’d often said it was a fantasy of mine to have sex on a beach but it’s really not all it’s cracked up to be. First, there’s the sand. It gets … everywhere. E-v-e-r-y where!
I had sand in my vajayjay, up my fanny, everywhere. We were kissing and there was sand getting in our mouths. There were freaking bugs on us, too. It was not as sexy as Hollywood makes it out to be, especially when it’s as rough and tumble as it is with Tommy.
But that release of frustration helped us both that day and fortunately or maybe unfortunately, that plus the spanking after the slap in the face meant the start of a cycle of me goading him into rough sex whenever he got moody or broody.
After the beach sex he took a two hour walk with me. But during that walk we didn’t talk. We just held hands and walked, the air heavy with all we were both feeling.
Tommy Ferrano
She’s irritating the fuck out of me. She’s walking on eggshells with me and mothering me one minute and trying to tell me what to do the next. I fucking hate it. When she gets particularly bitchy it turns me into a fucking animal and I know it’s turned into a cycle. She senses that I need release and she knows I hesitate because I worry about hurting her and then she purposely pushes me over the edge so I’ll take what I need from her. I know it isn’t healthy. Since marrying me and promising before God and my family to obey me and be mine forever it’s given me an even more dark and possessive sense of entitlement to her body but the depth of my love for her makes me feel guilty about it. I’m twisted in knots all the time.
It’s like we’re both uncomfortable in our own skin or something. Sometimes I don’t know how she can look at me after all I’ve done to her. I have a hard time looking at myself. I thank God that she survived everything I put her through but now that I’m not Tommy Ferrano, heir to the Ferrano family business, I don’t know who I am. And her? She’s mine. She’s my woman, my lifeline, my life. I’m so obsessed with her that it borders on insanity and I too frequently breach that border.
We arrived in Costa Rica and Tia loves the house I rented. It’s got a billion dollar view, it’s 5000 square feet, it’s private with ocean views and a pool on top of the roof, and it’s got every basic amenity we need just a two minute drive or ten minute walk away. It has a long dock that she can sit and fish from and we often sit out back around the outdoor fireplace while she cooks campfire concoctions. There’s no one but us. No one here knows who we are. I finally have her all to myself and there’s no reason why another drama should put her in danger again but I know better than to become complacent. And I can’t handle having her out of my sight yet. I tried. I let her go to a fruit vendor while I was on a patio of a restaurant the day after the family all left to go back home and five minutes later I had to find her. I was physically ill with anxiety about her being vulnerable.
She wants to explore and shop and try local restaurants and go deep sea fishing and do yoga and take dance classes and live life to the fullest but I don’t want her out of my sight for the stuff I wouldn’t do and half the time I can’t be bothered with the stuff I would do. I go along with her when I can’t find excuses not to keep us home. She keeps looking at me with sad eyes and when I catch her she tries to paint on a smile, a fake smile. It makes me wanna put my fist through a wall.
I’m doing therapy over the webcam. I’d rather just forget it all instead of talking about it. I need distance from home, from the business, from ex associates and ex enemies. I need distance from myself, my urges, my needs, my nightmares. That’s why we’re here. We don’t know if I’m in danger, if Tia’s in danger, we don’t want questions from the cops about any loose ends back home. I don’t know if I’ll eventually take us back or make a life here or somewhere else but right now we’re supposed to be taking time to breathe, be newlyweds. But I can’t just breathe.
Every day brings breaking news of shit Pop was into that we were oblivious about. I have a standing weekly appointment with the fucking shrink, which I don’t wanna do but which I do because Tia needs me to do it so we both can hang onto hope that I’m not a lost cause. The shrink specializes in helping men like me. Is it helping me? I don’t fucking know.
Yeah I shot my father when he turned a gun on her in order to punish me. But in hindsight the time between when my father raised his gun to Tia and the time I fired my weapon I wasn’t sure but thought I saw something in his face that told me he wanted to die. I don’t know if it’s hindsight or just my nightmares haunting me.
I have alternating dreams where his expression changes. Did he raise that gun so I’d kill him with no intention of shooting her or me? Did I save her life and my own life by killing the man who gave me life? Did I pass or fail the ultimate Tom Ferrano test? The fact that I’d killed my own father, did it mean I really was no better than he was or did I just protect what was mine? His face haunts my dreams. The blood-covered wedding dress he had someone leave on the balcony outside my bedroom just before he died taunts me, tells me he intended to kill her or at least wanted me to fear that he would. I was relieved it looked nothing like the dress she actually wore and I never told her about the bloody dress or a bunch of other shit that went down because she had enough to cope with. That dress continues to haunt my nightmares. Most of getting her out of that dress on our wedding night was about my desire, yeah, but some of that was probably about those fears and getting her safely out of it while it was still white, rather than stained scarlet.
Dare’s doing good back home, really stepping up. He’d always been an asset to the business, mature for his age, serious about being successful, and he and I were on the exact same page about the company and about what we did and didn’t want in our lives. He was making my life a helluva lot less complicated and without him dealing with shit back home I don’t know how I’d be coping.
Then again, maybe if I was busy sorting that shit out myself I would have something to focus on to take my mind off what I did, to take my mind off the fact that I’m cracked, damaged, probably irrevocably. But if I go back and that puts my wife in danger…the idea of doing anything to make her vulnerable, therefore allowing anything to hurt her? It’s unthinkable to me.
A few days after they got home from our wedding I sat down at the computer to check emails and saw a Skype notification from my brother asking me to get ahold of him as soon as possible. Finding out about the latest? Shit. The mess Pop left us just keeps getting messier.
Chapter 1
Dare
8.5 years earlier:
“Truth, dare, double dare, or promise to repeat?”
“Double dare,” I answered her and leaned over and ran my nose from her chin, along her jawline, to the spot behind her ear.
She giggled and squirmed away, pink tinting her cheeks.
“I double dare you to…” she looked around and then whispered, “kiss someone you have a crush on.”