Trapped and terrified—who wouldn’t be after finding a dead body?—I reacted in the instinctual flight or fight way we’re programed to during danger.
My body chose fight.
One valuable lesson being the sibling routinely charged with breaking up brotherly scuffles has taught me, is how to get out of a death hold.
In a move I’d learned out of necessity I took a step forward instead of retreating like a person being held routinely would, bent my arms at the elbows, lifted them up and then twisted them inward. The front of my forearms collided with my captor’s and when they did I pressed outward with every ounce of force in me.
The hold broke.
Before the giant could draw breath and grab me again, I lifted my arms, gripped him by the ears and hauled his head down to meet the knee I’d raised.
A loud, guttural groan reverberated around us.
And then several things happened at once.
The orange smelling wall of a man sputtered, “Jesus Christ, Donna,” while he held his face in his hands.
My father’s furious “Madonna Violetta,” lifted to the ceiling at the same time Angelo Rocconova’s “Holy Shit,” competed with both of them. Another besuited man I didn’t know stood behind the trio, but he kept his mouth shut and simply stared at the guy I’d kneed.
Confused and breathing like I’d swam the length of the East River twice, my gaze bounced from my wide-eyed and worried father, to a shocked and nervous Ange and then to the bent-at-the-waist colossus in front of me.
My throat bobbed up and down and the moisture in my mouth evaporated when the hulk lifted back to his full height, his piercing and furious gaze mating with mine. As he’d stood tall I took a step backward, intent on running for the hills. The now closed steel refrigerator door barred me from making a quick exit.
Looking up at him, my pounding heart stopped cold in my chest.
I knew those eyes.
Intimately.
When they weren’t filled with anger and pain, like they were right now, I knew how captivating they could be. The palest of blue and heavily lashed, they tilted up a tiny bit at the corners. Jealousy ramped through me. How unfair was it a man was gifted eyes like this when I’d been cursed with the most dull and boring brown color ever blended?
Light hair, a mix of natural honey and wheat husks, straight and clipped short covered his head. Shoulders spanning almost as wide as the doorframe were covered by a dark tan sports jacket, the pants a deeper hue in the same color palette.
“Donna,” Angelo said, his voice thick with fear, “why’d you attack Detective Roma?”
“I didn’t attack…wait? Detective?”
I tried to lick some moisture back into my lips but my salivary glands had gone dormant during the flight or fight response. I glanced at each of the men standing in front me, stopping last on the one Ange had referred to as a detective.
With one hand still cupping his jaw where my knee had connected, the man pierced me with his gorgeous gaze and just like I had when I’d been seventeen and climbed into the back seat of his brand new Z8, I lost what little sanity I still had.
“Hey Donna,” Tony Roma said, shaking his head. “Long time and all. I see you’re still as sweet and mild mannered as ever.”
Two
Advice for surviving in a big Italian family: Actions always speak louder than words.
The next few minutes were a buzz of activity.
Once I snapped my shocked mouth closed at having the man I’d given my virginity to, who was now—apparently—a card carrying NYC detective, standing in front of me, a lifetime of ingrained Catholic confession made me blurt out, “I didn’t kill him. He was dead when I found him.”
The four men staring at me stared a little harder.
Before I could be hauled off to jail, an embarrassment my parents would never survive, I beckoned them into the refrigerator. Once they’d all seen who exactly it was I hadn’t killed, Tony Roma - the virginity taker - ordered everyone out.
Angelo escorted us back to our respective offices. When I asked why we couldn’t wait together, I was told we needed to be kept separated until we could give our statements.
To that I replied I’d just given my statement, namely, telling them I hadn’t killed Chico.
Angelo threw me a speaking glance, told me to stay off the phone then closed the door to my office on his way out. I got the distinct impression he would have locked me in if he could have.
What the heck had happened here last night?
Chico had, obviously, been murdered in the front of the deli, the blood giving every indication of it, and then hauled into the freezer and…stored.
I’d never get the image of him with the knife sticking in his chest out of my mind for the rest of my days.
I shuddered and wrapped my arms around myself.
Thoughts of how many health department codes we were in violation of from having a dead body around food we sold popped into my head. That notion led me to all the money we were going to spend to replace the food, and then the revenue we were going to lose because of the enforced shutdown.
When it dawned on me it all paled in comparison to a man loosing his life, I sent up a prayer of contrition for myself, and then a remembrance prayer for Chico’s soul.
Just as I was beginning to wonder how long I’d be held captive in my office, the door opened again and the man I’d been trying to forget for the past seventeen years peeked his head in.
“If I come in here, Donna, you gonna knee me again?”
Mortified doesn’t begin to do justice to the emotions shunting through me. I bit down on my lip and shook my head. For added measure, I shoved my fisted hands into the pockets of my cardigan to show him any further physical harm wasn’t in my plans.
He pushed the door open and stepped in. I wasn’t sure, because he’d tucked his chin down to his chest, but it looked like he was trying to hide a grin.
Tony Roma was without doubt the handsomest man I’d ever seen. Truly. He has what my mother calls movie star looks and bedroom charm, a description she only ever uses for her favorite actor, Paul Newman. Even when we’d been kids, Tony’d been a heartbreaker. All the old nonne in my neighborhood had loved to pinch his cheeks and ruffle his mop of unruly hair, my own grandmother included. The oldest of five boys, he’d inherited the lion’s share of looks from his parent's DNA, the remaining four sons good looking but nothing compared to Tony. Strangers – men and women alike- would stop on the street when he walked by.
I’m not kidding.
Time hadn’t done a blessed thing to mar or eradicate his God-given gorgeousness. If it were possible, he was more handsome than he’d been as a teenager.
“Are you really a detective?”
He closed the door behind him, turned to face me and pointed to my desk.
“Let’s sit down. I need to ask you a few things.”
“So that’s a yes?”
He pointed again.
Reluctantly, I took my chair. Tony planted himself in the one facing me.
“I’m sorry about your chin. If I’d known it was you standing behind the door I wouldn’t have, well, reacted like that. But after finding Chico, I was scared shitless.”
“You have quick reflexes, I’ll give you that.” He ran a finger along the curve of his jaw. “Honed, I imagine, from being forced to keep your brothers in line.”