“No.Nooo.” The shock on Dani’s face would have been funny under other circumstances.
“Yes. Yes!” Vanessa said sarcastically. “At the start of our second year married, he was getting calls or texts from her when she was still in Boston in school. She said her parents had died in an accident, and she didn’t have other family. He insisted they’d never slept together, and they were close old friends. I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s okay, she’s in a rough spot, she wants comforting.’ Totally okay.”
Dani’s eyes were huge as she took another long sip of punch. “Nico and Gina did tell me Santino really hadn’t slept with Antoinette in high school. She was saving it for marriage.”
“Okay. But then she meets this guy and gets engaged in grad school and we don’t hear anything for a while. He was supposedly this rich Norwegian whose family lived in Manhattan. So, after graduation, she moves back to New Yorkwith homeboy and suddenly she’s calling Santino again at all hours of the day and late at night. Weird hours like three in the morning. Even if they hadn’t slept together in high school, it seemed off to me. I didn’t like it. I told him that, but he didn’t put a stop to it. I said I thought it was super disrespectful because he was married, but she was like whatever, she just needed a friendso mucheven though she was engaged.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t have liked that either. I’m with you,” Dani affirmed. “Okay, so what then? Did the fiancé get angry about her keeping in touch like that?”
“I have no idea. What I do know is, Santino comes home one night, two weeks after we’re back from San Gennaro. He cooks me dinner, which he never does, gives me three big juicy O’s, and then tells me Antoinette came to the station house the week prior. She said she was on the run from Scandi homeboy and needed Santino to help her get away from him.”
“The fuck?”
“Mm-hm. She overheard the fiancé talking on the phone about having somebody killed. Like a business competitor. Not killed like ‘crush his business’ but like ‘somebody’s dumping a body Upstate’ killed.”
“What did she want Santino to do? He’s a firefighter, not a cop,” Dani spluttered.
“That’s what I said. But you know about Uncle Paulie. Santino and that ratchet Dominic went to Uncle Paulie and got her a fake passport, and then set up a bank account under her new false name. Then he told me he was going to escort her ass down to Aruba to the resort we stayed in and said Nonno’s friend who owned the place would harbor her. He said the fiancé had resources, so he had to get her as far away as possible.”
“Shit…he went to the Badinellis,” Dani murmured. “Pop said never do that.”
“Right, exactly. I told him when we got together that I wouldn’t date him if he was involved in anything shady. Santino either didn’t know or didn’t care that procuring a fake passport was a federal offense which he could get jail time for. Same with the fake Social Security number and using it to open an account under a false identity. That’s bank fraud. But he brushed it off like it was nothing. At that time, I’d just passed the bar and was about to take my oath as an officer of the court. If anybody were to find out I’d known about a crime about to be committed, that would’ve been my ass too. So long, law license. And…”
Dani put her hand over hers on the table when Vanessa’s lip began to tremble. “And?”
“That guy could’ve found him and h-hurt him for helping her. Santino put himself in danger for her. He risked jail time for her. He took her overnight to the place where we got married, the place that was supposed to be ours. The fuck was I supposed to think except that he l-loved her?”
Dammit, she couldn’t control the wobble of her voice or the salt that prickled at the backs of her eyes.
“All I could assume was he’d been waiting for her to be ready for him and when the chance came, he took it, like someOf Human Bondageshit, which is not nearly as fun as what the title sounds like.” She laughed and sniffled. “I told him if he left with her, that he shouldn’t plan on coming back, but he did it anyway. He chose her. And that’s all I needed to know about what he felt for me and our marriage. He ended it, not me.”
Dani’s shoulders slumped, air rushing out between her pursed lips. “Alright, that shit was outlandish. I can’t even fucking find a word that describes how over the top that was for him to do all that. But…”
“Oh, Lord, no. Please. please, please, Dani, don’t. Don’t make excuses for him.” Vanessa put her fingertips to her face and shook her head with her eyes shut.
“I’m just saying. Santino goes hard for his family and his friends. Too hard, yeah, maybe,” she allowed when Vanessa scoffed. “But that’s who he is. If he believes someone needs his help, he’s there. Either way, I have zero doubt how much he loved you and still does. We don’t talk about him, so you don’t know, but you leaving hurt him, deeply. Nico told me —”
“I knew this would be your response. I shouldn’t have said anything,” Vanessa interrupted, swiping away an angry tear as Dani’s gaze saddened.
She didn’t want to hear about Santino’s pain, not when it was self-induced, not when it couldn’t compare to how he’d crushed her heart. She hiccupped, then suddenly laughed.
Putting her hands together as if in prayer, she pleaded, “Can we stop talking about him? Let’s get more punch. Oh look, there’s Jade after all. Hey, girl!”
She waved, ignoring Dani’s attempts to stay on that dreadful topic with a, “But, Santino…”
Vanessa beckoned Jade over, who grinned at them as she trudged across the lawn.
“Van, he loves you. You know that, right?” Dani asked softly, staring at her with sorrow and sympathy in her expressive dark eyes.
“Ha ha, no. Fort Knox, remember?” Vanessa put her finger to her lips. Then she clapped her hands twice like a royal. “Let the fun commence!”
7
PANIC
SANTINO
Afast and furious “selfie” hand job in the shower after he’d forced himself to leave that elevator hadn’t been enough. Santino had used the same hand that had been coated in Vanessa’s sticky honey, imagining it was the velvet vise of her pussy. Every sigh, every moan that had escaped the real deal had been absolutely sweet, even if she had stopped him before he could wring more out of her.
