TEN

home, it was past ten at night. I was in the middle of a bubble bath in his en-suite when he burst into the room.

"Jesus, you could have knocked!" I held my hand over my pounding heart. I always felt on edge when he wasn't home.

Arturo strode over to the sink but when he heard my voice he froze and turned slowly around. "I didn't realise you were in here."

"What happened to your face?" Through the steamy air I could only just make out a trail of red - it ran down from his nose and stained his shirt. "Arturo, what happened?"

He rubbed his eyes. "Don't worry about it. It's nothing."

"It isn't nothing," I insisted. "Come here."

"I'm fine."

"Come here." With a sigh he finally assented and walked over to the bath tub. "Kneel down." He did. There was a dark welt of a bruise forming on his cheekbone and shadowy circles under his eyes. I shook my head, cupping his face in my damp hands. "What happened to you," I whispered again, but it was less of a question and more of a sad breath.

He closed his eyes when my thumbs circled over his stubble. "I don't want to talk about it."

I wanted to tell him well I do, but he already looked exhausted. I didn't want to add to his pain. "Okay," I nodded. "Okay. But let me clean you up."

From beneath the foamy water I pulled the face cloth. I wrung it out and watched as water poured from it, sending a puff of steam into the air. Arturo's eyes remained closed until I pressed it to his forehead. Then they flew open and locked onto mine. He let out a sharp breath. "Does it hurt?" I wondered, conscious of how bad his injuries were.

"I've had worse."

I lightly brushed the cloth down the side of his face. "I didn't ask if you'd had worse."

Pink water dribbled down his chin and neck, darkening his crisp white shirt. "Yes," he said, voice strained. "It hurts."

A sharp hiss of air left Arturo's lips when I dabbed beneath his bloodied nose. "I made dinner for you," I told him. "I'll heat it up when I'm done."

He brought a hand up and stroked my hair softly. "What did I do to deserve you?"

I smirked. "God knows."

"God has no time for men like me."

"I have time for you." I frowned.

"Because you are my saint."

His eyes closed and I traced the tired hollows beneath them. "You know I'm not."

"And yet I love you."

I halted with my damp hands against his warm face. "You do?"

His eyes opened and he said without hesitation, "more than breathing."

"I love you too," I whispered. Suddenly I felt lightheaded. "Despite everything."

Without another word we leaned into one another. His arms circled around my naked, wet body and mine around his clothed torso. I could feel the material of his shirt sticking to me. "Are you staying?" he mumbled into my neck.

I pulled back slightly. "For how long?"

"Indefinitely."

"I have one condition." Arturo frowned and I smirked, rubbing the crease from his forehead with the pad of my finger. "I'm getting a job."

"You don't need to work, I can afford-"

"Yes," I cut him off, "I do. I refuse to be your housewife who just sits around cooking for you and waiting for you to come home. That isn't me, Arturo."

We both stood up and he handed me a towel. "Work for me, then."

"No. Absolutely not."

"Why?" Could he really not see?

"Because I want a proper job. I have a degree in law, and I'm going to use it." I wrapped the towel around my body and stepped out of the bath. "It isn't much to ask."

He set his jaw. "And how do you think that is going to look? The girlfriend of a mafia boss sending people to jail?"

"I don't give a damn how it looks." And I certainly wasn't going to acknowledge that he had just referred to me as his girlfriend. I was fighting a battle here, and that would be a catastrophic move, as happy as it made me.

"You are not doing this, Florence." Arturo folded his arms.

I pushed past him and strode into the bedroom. "Watch me." He followed me in and his eyes burned a hole in my back as I dropped the towel and slipped on one of his shirts. "I'll do what I want."

"Relationships don't work like that."

I turned around abruptly and glared. "What do you know about relationships? You can come home with broken bones and bruises and you don't want to talk about it with me, yet I can't get a job?"

"Florence," he sighed.

I shook my head. "I'm not being unreasonable. This is all I've ever wanted, Arturo."

His shoulders seemed to sag as he took a few steps closer. I didn't back off. I held my ground. He reached an arm out as if to touch me, then dropped it back down. "What happens when they start asking you to take down my men, Florence?" he sighed. "What if it's me they want to put behind bars?"

"I wouldn't do that-"

"You might not have a choice."

I massaged my forehead and tried not to think about how frustrated I felt. "There's always a choice."

"And if they tell you it's either your job or me, which would you choose?"

"You, obviously!" I rolled my eyes and stormed out of the room, silently seething. It hurt that he even felt the need to ask that question. The answer should have been obvious.

I made it to the kitchen when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I span around. "What?"

His hands held my shoulders, eyes searching mine as if he could implore me to understand. "You must see that I can't agree to this."

"No, actually, I don't see that," I said between clenched teeth.

"You would be working against me."

"Of course I wouldn't."

"It would only be a matter of time," he muttered, releasing me.

I took a step back and frowned. "Until what?"

"Until they turned you against me."

My expression softened and I reached for Arturo's hands. "Nobody is ever going to turn me against you," I told him softly. "I promise."

"It wouldn't be the first time."

"They won't." I turned the microwave on and it started humming in the background. "That's my condition. You're just going to have to trust me."

"I do trust you," he sighed, sitting down and pouring himself a whiskey.

"Not enough to tell me what happened to you." I pointed at his injuries.

"I don't want you to worry about something you don't need to."

"Not knowing makes me worry even more!"

"Florence-"

The microwave beeped loudly, cutting Arturo off. I pulled the plate of food out of it and set it down in front of him. "Fine, then tell me something else: after you, your parents had no more children. Just Sofia, then you. Why?"

He threw the whiskey down his throat. "Why does it matter?"

"Why can't you answer any questions?" I countered angrily.

"They wanted a male heir. If Sofia had been born a boy, I probably wouldn't have existed."

I folded my arms. "Why?"

"What do you mean why?" His jaw clenched, fingers twitching. I knew that pushing him like this wasn't fair but after what Sofia had said I couldn't help it.

"Why didn't they have any more children?"

Arturo sighed heavily and met my gaze. "Because more often than not children in this life die. They are targets. And they are only ever born to serve a purpose. Why are you asking, what is this about?"

I opened my mouth but no words came out. My jaw hung open loosely. Sofia had told me as much, but coming from Arturo the words carried more weight, somehow. I slumped into the chair opposite his. "You mean they exist only to carry on the reign."

Arturo stared down at his empty tumbler. "Yes."

"Born and bred to be killers?"

There was a hesitation. "Yes."

"Like you."

Silence. Then, quietly, "Yes."

"I'm sorry," I whispered, though I wasn't sure what I was apologising for. Perhaps for the life he had been given. Or perhaps for bringing it up at all. I wasn't all that different than him; I was the daughter of a mobster, and my father seemed to despise the fact that I was a girl. After all, that was one of the reasons Antonio had taken over after my grandfather died.

Arturo poured some more whiskey. "Are you going to run for the hills now?"

I reached my hands out wrapped them around his. "Do you see me running?"

He smirked. "Never."

We sat in a pleasant silence as Arturo ate the food I had prepared for him. When he finished, he put his plate in the dishwasher and pulled me up by my hands. "So this job," he said.

I bit my lip. "Yes."

"You have to promise me something?" His hands grazed down my sides and I shivered. They came to rest at the bottom of the shirt, where his fingers could skim my bare thighs. "No more Hensons. I won't be so kind next time."

I couldn't help the beaming smile that erupted across my face. "You mean it's okay for me to work?" Arturo nodded and I threw my arms around him excitedly. He hoisted me up so my legs were wrapped around his hips, hands resting against my ass. "Thank you," I breathed, kissing the corner of his mouth as he carried me upstairs. "You have no idea how much this means to me."

Arturo laid me down on his double bed and crawled over me so that his legs rested between mine, while his hands held him up off my body. I was hyper aware that every part of him was so close to me. He stared down at me through the dim light with that crooked smile on his handsome face, and I realised I had forgotten to breathe. Slowly he pressed his hips down against mine. My breath came out sharply. "You know I'd never let you leave," he whispered, pulling away again.

My hands were pressed to the planes of his chest - it was hard and muscular beneath my fingertips. "I don't want you to," I mumbled, raising my hips to meet his. He pressed me down again, harder this time, and a quiet moan escaped me.

"Wrap your legs around me," Arturo commanded. I did. There was only his trousers between us; I was bare against the material that rubbed my sensitive skin causing me to shudder. When the ice cold metal of his belt buckle pressed into my lower abdomen a sharp breath escaped me. He pulled back. "Okay?"

I bit my lip. "I don't know."

Arturo frowned and rolled off me while I quickly pulled the bottom of his shirt down. In the semi-darkness I felt as though I couldn't breathe, but then I realised that that was how I had felt from the moment I returned to New York. Suffocating.

"What do you mean?"

When he looked at me I had to look away. "I don't know," I said again, but that wasn't enough. I knew it wasn't. "I just - I don't see how you can trust me. How can you love me after everything?"

"I have told you that I do." He pulled me into his arms. "Isn't that enough?"

Wasn't it? After all that we had been through? Maybe it should have been. Maybe my own insecurities were getting the better of me, but I was losing this battle with them. "No," I said, "it's not."

"Love and trust are different things."

"So you don't trust me?"

"Do you trust me? After I pulled a gun on you? After I almost killed you?" Arturo's breathing had picked up just a hitch. "And I did, Florence. I was so close to pulling the trigger."

I remembered. If I thought about it - and sometimes I did, though I tried not to - memories of the sourmetal gun taste in my mouth flooded back, and my breathing would become shaky, and my chest would cave in, and I would curl up in a ball and have a panic attack. Sometimes I made it to the bathroom. Other times not. It happened at random times - at work, at home, on the bus. It happened and then it gripped me like the hand of a monster.

I shook my head slowly. "No. Not entirely. Not yet."

Arturo nodded. "It will take time."

"But you forgive me? After everything you said about Romeo and Juliet?"

His answer took a beat too long. "Yes."