TWENTY-SIX

the door slammed behind me than Marco was reaching it, walking up the path from the garage. My vision was streaked by tears and I was too panicked to even notice; I barrelled straight into him.

"Woah, fiore," he said, catching me firmly when I nearly toppled over from the impact. His hands settled on my shoulders as he held me at arms length to look at me. His brow furrowed. "Did something happen?"

"I just..." words failed me as I shook my head noiselessly, trying to pull out of Marco's grip. "I need to go."

"Go where?" he asked, concerned.

"I don't know," I admitted, finally stopping struggling against his grip. Tears had flooded my cheeks but I didn't bother to wipe them away as Marco watched me. "I just need to go," I mumbled.

His eyes swept down to my right hand which clutched my car keys and he shook his head. "You can't drive like this, fiore."

"I need to."

"And where would you go?"

"Well..." I trailed off. "Marco, please."

For a second he glanced behind me towards the house, probably wondering what Arturo thought about all of this. Then, he gently removed the keys from my fist and said, "let me drive you. You can crash at my house tonight, and if you still want to leave tomorrow morning then you can go."

"But-"

"You want to get into an accident? You can't drive while you're feeling like this," he reminded me. He was right; I could barely see for the moisture in my eyes. "Come on."

As much as I wanted space from Arturo and this life, I knew I had no hope of achieving that tonight. He was right: I had nowhere else to go. I had some money to my name, but I was too emotional to be able to drive to a hotel. For tonight, I'd have to accept Marco's kindness.

I climbed into the sleek interior of his sports car while he walked around and got into the driver's side. The engine purred when he switched it on, and I realised how strange it felt to actually be sitting next to Marco while he drove; I'd usually be in the back of an SUV when I was with him.

The drive seemed to drag on, but Marco kept quiet for the most part which came as a relief. I knew he was giving me space, or at least as much space as was possible in a small car.

"You hungry?" he asked as a McDonald's sign appeared down the road. I glanced at Marco but his eyes were already on me, watching curiously. I wanted to shake my head, but under his gaze I couldn't lie. I was starving.

"Prison food was pretty crap," I said quietly and he smiled. We pulled into the Drive-Thru and joined the queue of cars, all of which paled in comparison to the ostentatious grandeur of Marco's. When a few people who were milling around outside the restaurant stopped to stare he smirked.

Slowly, the line went down as we got closer and closer to the little window. It somehow felt awkward now that we were stationary; we'd hardly said a word. Then again, I didn't know what to say, and I suspected Marco didn't either.

"You know," Marco began as the car in front had a large brown bag of fast-food goodness handed through the window, "he loves you, fiore."

"I know."

We moved forward at last and pulled up in front of the window to make our order. Marco asked for two Big Macs with extra fries, not even asking if that was what I wanted. When he handed me the brown paper bag he shot me a grin, "it's no Italian cooking, but it's pretty good. You need to eat."

There was a brightness behind Marco's eyes that reminded me of when Sofia had cooked her 'famous' pizza. Suddenly, I was very curious about the two of them. Clearly they had a history, and I wanted to know what exactly that history was. Equally, it wasn't my place to ask, and I wasn't sure how much personal information Marco might be willing to reveal.

I opened my burger and took a bite. My stomach jolted in response to its first real food in days; I really had been starving. "This is good," I mumbled around a large mouthful. "But not as good as Sofia's pizza." I glanced at Marco to gauge his reaction but his face remained impassive.

"No," he agreed, "it's not."

"Hmm." I took another bite. I could hear the catch in his voice when he spoke about her, and I'd seen the way they looked at each other. "You two like each other?" I probed, pretending to pick at my fries.

"Yes."

"I mean-"

"I know what you meant," he cut me off. He didn't sound angry, just like that was the end of the conversation. But I wasn't done.

"So do you?"

He sighed, "it's complicated."

"She's married," I inputted. "That makes it very complicated."

"Hmm."

"So, she was the one who got away?" It was a stab in the dark but really, what did I have to go on?

Marco turned to look at me then, with a smile on his face. "You really are a damn lawyer, aren't you? Too many annoying questions."

I grinned back and stole a sachet of ketchup from his meal. "Yep." I tore the top off the sachet with my teeth and busied myself with putting the sauce all over my fries. "So was she?"

"No."

"Are you going to tell me anything?" I sighed exasperatedly. His whole demeanour was entirely nonchalant, but I knew I just needed to hit a nerve.

"Some things are better left in the past, fiore," he said flatly.

"How are you ever going to fix the problem if you won't even talk about it?"

"There is no fixing the problem."

"But-"

"Sofia is married to Salvo," Marco snapped, ice entering his voice for the first time, "nothing is going to change that."

I pursed my lips, momentarily spurned by the sharpness of his words. I didn't want to upset Marco, but I wanted to know. I wanted to know that if Arturo kept his word and killed Salvo when he took over the whole business, Sofia would have a chance at happiness. I needed to know.

"You two were in love then Arturo's father married her off to Slavadore," I guessed quietly. "You're still in love."

Marco's hands tightened around the wheel and he let out a long, slow breath. "Close," he said hoarsely, "but not quite."

"So what am I missing?" I demanded, all thoughts of my burger abandoned. "Just tell me what I'm not understanding."

He finished off the last of his meal and then screwed the brown paper bag up and threw it out of the window forcefully. We were still driving so I was terrified when he took both hands off the wheel, but we didn't veer off the road. Marco was quiet for a while, staring intensely into the distance. Then he spoke. "Sofia and I, we had...difficult childhoods."

"You grew up together?"

"Si." We pulled into a driveway—presumably of Marco's house—but neither of us got out. "My family, we were always under the Luccheses. My father worked very closely with Arturo's father, but he was never a strong man. We weren't respected, and it was my older brother who was supposed to work with Arturo when we grew up anyway. That was how things were."

I nodded along. "You were ignored because you weren't the eldest? I didn't know you have a brother."

"I don't," Marco said flatly. "He died when he was seventeen."

"Oh..."

"But Sofia—Sofia and I were the same. We were both useless by-products of our families; she a girl, and me the younger sibling. So we grew close. As friends—nothing more. We understood each other."

"I don't understand how my original theory was wrong," I admitted.

Marco held up a hand as if to silence me. "When we got older, that understanding and respect turned to something more. But I was still young and stupid, we'd known each other such a long time..." He broke off for a moment, a frown on his face. "One night I got drunk—stupid drunk, can't remember my own name drunk—"

"Oh, Marco..."

"—and there was this other girl I'd known my whole life, she wasn't mine to have, but that night I wanted her..." there was another pregnant pause, "...we slept together once—twice—and then I never saw her again. None of us did. Of course, Sofia put two and two together. She knew me better than I knew myself, and by that point her father had started finding suitors for her...by the time Salvo came into the picture she wasn't willing to fight anymore. And I was too much of a coward."

I stared down at my hands and swallowed back the lump in my throat. The pain of Marco's mistake seemed to reach me across the car as we sat in silence. Now that I knew the truth about him and Sofia, I understood how complicated everything was. Not just between the two of them, but between the whole Lucchese mafia and other families.

"Has...has she forgiven you?" I asked hopefully.

Marco locked eyes with me. "Would you have forgiven Arturo?" He didn't wait for an answer. He climbed out of the car and slammed the door behind him, leaving me to follow. I climbed much less elegantly out, throwing the rubbish from my meal into a nearby dustbin and following Marco into the house.

As soon as I walked inside I got the impression that the place was barely lived in. It could have been a show home, the way everything was neatly organised with no clutter in sight.

"I thought you lived at Arturo's," I admitted, standing in the doorway and folding my arms.

Marco filled up the kettle and flipped the switch. "I do," he said, "most of the time. But everybody needs their space from time to time where Art's concerned. Tea?"

I bit my lip, the truth of Marco's words striking a nerve. "Please."

"Smile, fiore," he advised with a chuckle. "It will be alright."

"Not this time." Tears were dangerously close to betraying me. I couldn't hold it together much longer. "Is there a bathroom I can use?"

The kettle made a loud click as it finished boiling, causing me to jump. Marco noticed but kept quiet, pouring the liquid into two mugs. "Upstairs on the right," he directed.

The second I made it to the bathroom I locked the door behind me and pressed my back against it, finally allowing tears to flow freely down my cheeks. So much had happened in the past few days, so many of my beliefs had been altered, it was too much for me to process. And now, as I slid down onto the floor, cradling my knees, it all came crashing down.

My whole perception of Arturo had been thrown into question. I loved him, and I knew he loved me, but was that enough anymore? Had it ever been?

The images of those girls in the folder swam behind my eyes, their battered bodies barely recognisable after the mafia had chewed them up and spat them out. Girls just like me – girls who believed what they had been told, and paid the price. One of them dead at the hands of my own uncle. My family. Flesh and blood. I felt sick.

Hauling myself closer to the toilet bowl, I lifted the lid and retched, unable to bring anything substantial up. Still, the feeling wouldn't leave me.

I was in exactly the same position as those girls right before they were murdered. I had no friends, no support, no money, no belongings, nowhere to go with no one to turn to. Even if Arturo had no intention of ever hurting me, how could I be sure he'd never been implicated in a similar death? He and I hadn't even got around to the most basic discussions – our dating history and our family lives. The only information I'd managed to acquire had been accidental.

"Fuck," I whispered, hands tugging at my hair as panic overtook me.

Downstairs, I heard a sharp knock on the door followed by the sound of it banging against the wall as it was thrown open. Immediately I checked the bathroom door was locked and pressed my weight against it, knowing it was Arturo who had just burst into the house.

"Easy, easy," I faintly heard Marco say at the bottom of the stairs. Arturo's angry response was too muffled for me to make out. "She needs time," Marco explained, "give her time."

At that point I tuned out, too exhausted to listen any more. Eventually, I heard the door close again, signalling that for once in his life, Arturo had listened.

I let out a shaky breath.

"Florence?" Marco called from downstairs. "Everything okay?"

I wanted to reply yes, I'll be down in a minute, but I couldn't bring myself to speak. The lump in my throat wouldn't budge.

All that I managed was a squeaky, "no."

Apparently, Marco heard, because five minutes later I heard him set two mugs down outside the door as he slumped down. "Are you going to come out?" he asked.

I shook my head though he couldn't see me, more tears tracking down my cheeks. Only last week I'd felt like everything was finally falling into place, like it was Arturo and I against the world.

Now I was struggling to see how we'd ever be right again.

Marco shifted by the door, "there's a cup of tea out here for you."

I couldn't bring myself to open the door just yet. I needed time to process everything that had happened.

Some parts of life with the mafia were hard – parts where I'd almost get kidnapped and have to shoot someone, parts where I faced a gun to the head – but all of that I could deal with. I could deal with the danger and the risks and the near-misses. I didn't care about it. As long as I was with Arturo, I'd weather any storm.

The part of that life I couldn't face was the lies and deceit. When the man who loved me looked me in the eyes but didn't tell me the truth, when he robbed me of my own independence...that crossed a line.

Arturo and I had love, but how would we ever acquire trust when we had destroyed one another's so completely?

Outside the bathroom, I heard Marco audibly sigh. "I'm not going to tell you he'll never hurt you, you know." There was a pause. "You're both going to hurt each other. You already have."

"I know," I whispered hoarsely, leaning my head back against the door.

"This life of Arturo's, it isn't easy. It's damn complicated."

"I know."

"But I've never seen him want to share it with anyone as much as– well, I've never seen him want to share it with anyone other than you."

My eyes fell closed. I knew what Marco was saying was true, but that didn't change the fact that Arturo and I had serious problems.

"Relationships are about compromise," I said flatly.

"Normal relationships, yes," he assented. "But you are not in a normal relationship."

"I sure as hell don't want to be in one that doesn't involve compromise."

Marco was quiet for a long time. So long that I began to wonder if he had fallen asleep, until finally his voice came through the door once again.

"But answer me this one question," he proposed, "you want to be with Arturo, right? Everything else aside, you love him. You want to spend your life with him."

I sighed. "Yes. But–"

"Then you compromise."

"It isn't me who's not willing to compromise!" I growled frustratedly. "He's the one following me around every hour of the day, setting up jobs for me, keeping tabs, never letting me do anything off my own back!"

"That must be rough," Marco agreed. "But have you ever looked at it from Arturo's perspective? I'm not saying that him lying to you about tracking your phone and setting up your job was okay. But what I am saying is that his motives might not be as bad as you think."

"Right," I scoffed, "because he's not a total control freak."

"No, he is that," Marco chuckled. "But you knew that before any of this got serious. What he is is someone who cares about you probably more than he's ever cared about anyone in his life." There was another clink of the cups as he took another sip of tea. "I grew up with Arturo in Italy, I've known his family my whole life, and trust me, they're a messed up bunch. He hasn't exactly had healthy models of love to follow by example. This is all new to him, and Arturo hates not being ahead of the game."

"So?" I spat, not wanting to admit that what Marco was saying made a lot of sense. "That doesn't give him a free pass to behave like a bastard."

"I'm getting to that." I could hear the smile behind his voice. "Look Florence, I like you – I consider you part of the family – which is why I'm going to be honest with you. You were the first woman Arturo ever fully trusted, and believe me when I say, it took a lot for him to trust you. When he found out who you were, when you broke that trust...it did something to him. The way he was for those years when you were away..." Marco took a deep breath. "Let's just say I never thought you and I would be sitting here having this conversation today."

"But we are," I pointed out.

"Yes," he agreed, "because the man without a heart somehow managed to fall so in love that he learned how to forgive. But his trust...you must understand his trust is something you can't just demand."

"I...I know," I admitted, guilt and shame rising in my chest at the thought of what I did in the past.

"Florence?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm not telling you that Arturo lying to you was right. It wasn't, and he's an ass. But I'm trying to show you why he does what he does. You've both broken each other's trust, but if you keep playing this backward and forward game with each other where you never sit and talk things out like adults, you'll end up like..."

"You and Sophia," I filled in.

"Yes," he breathed, the sadness evident in his tone.

"I'm so sorry, Marco."

"Don't be. Just don't make the same mistakes I did. And drink this tea, it's going cold."

Slowly getting up off the ground, I unlocked the door with a watery smile on my face. Arturo and I had serious problems to face, and I was a long way from forgiving him, but Marco was right.

We'd both hurt each other, badly. And we'd never get over that hurt if we kept on in this self destructive cycle.

Maybe we just weren't good for one another.

Maybe our violent delights would always have violent ends.

Were our problems a product of who we were? Could either of us really change... Or would we kiss and consume parts of one another until there was nothing left?

Even if the answer was yes, was I willing to stop? Were either of us?

Never. Not for the world.