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“I am the danger,” I bluntly said. “You know exactly why you shouldn’t be on this plane. You’re looking at the reason.”
“What I’m looking at is a man who thinks he’s not worthy of love. That he doesn’t have a full heart to give because he lost his twin sister. Lost his other half,” she softly said, and her words had my chest tightening. “But that man does deserve it. And your sister would want that for you.” She unbuckled. “Now, excuse me while I use the restroom.” Shit, were those tears in her eyes?
I snatched her wrist once she was in the aisle, and her gaze flashed to where I held her, but I reluctantly released her.
My eyes closed, and I sat back, trying to dismantle the intrusive thoughts that warred with each other. Like always. The good and the bad. The dark and the light. Without Bianca, I’d lost sight of the other side for so long.
I hadn’t always been like this. After the first life I took in the army, it’d been Bianca there for me. Helping me get a handle on my guilt. We’d spent hours on the phone that night. And I’d had to convince myself the boy I’d killed had been eighteen, because if he’d been younger, I would’ve totally broken the fuck down.
Unsure how long I’d been lost in my thoughts of the past, I finally opened my eyes, discovering Maria back in her seat. There were questions she wanted to ask me, I could feel it. And why wouldn’t there be? I’d kept so much of myself from her. I’d thought it was to protect her from the ugliness of my past, but maybe I was just scared she’d see me differently, and I’d lose her forever.
“Will you tell me the truth now?” Maria’s soft request had me surrendering a deep breath. “Or you could give it to me in three acts,” she suggested while I continued to contemplate what to do. “You know, like the beginning, middle, and end of a book. Tell me the first part now. Reveal the rest when you’re ready?”
“Or when you’re ready, you mean? Because maybe you’re not prepared to hear how truly messed up I am.”
She fidgeted with the seat belt, taking her time to respond. “The prologue for right now is fine,” was all she said.
“You really want me to go that far back? All the way to Italy?” After her hesitant nod, I crossed my ankle over my knee, holding it while looking toward the window. I thought back to the story my parents had told us when we were old enough to understand, not too long before I’d given up my dream of culinary school at Dad’s insistence to join the army. “It all starts with my father.”
“And?” That tentative little word drew my eyes back to her.
“An organization was created in Europe to fight crime. Off-the-books stuff. My father was part of the Italian division, which is how he met my mom.” I didn’t need to get into the details, but she’d get the idea. “And her father was in the mafia. Well, not just in it. The head of the crime family.”
“Oh, so a Romeo and Juliet thing?”
“I guess you could say that, and this kind of love story between rivals is more common than anyone cares to admit.” Well, so my parents always told us. “When my mom was only twenty, a criminal organization kidnapped her. And before her family could pay the ransom to get her back, my dad rescued her. Her family didn’t know they’d been secretly dating for months.”
“I take it that her family wasn’t a fan of him.”
“No, they didn’t make it easy for her to walk away, but my father and the organization he worked for didn’t give them a choice once my parents announced their marriage.”
“What happened after that?” she softly asked.
“The mafia feared my father and his organization, and with good reason. My dad had earned a reputation. He was known as Il Santo, the Saint.”
“A savior?”
“Not exactly,” I admitted. “More like a man prepared to take your soul to hell if you crossed the line.”
“So why’d your parents leave Italy?”
“Mom had four kids. Was pregnant with her fifth. She told my father it was time to change. Start over. And then Izzy was born once they were in New York, and my dad worked on building his business empire, saying goodbye to his old life.”
“He did it for love,” she whispered.
A surprising smile met my lips, and it softened her full mouth into one as well. “And then my mother’s cousin, Giovanni, moved to New York to run the Sicilian division of the Italian mafia.” Based on her confused look, I figured I’d better elaborate a bit more. “Things have changed over the years, but usually there are about five main families within the Italian American mafia.”
“Like a gangs-of-New-York-type thing? And no, I don’t mean like the movie. Although, I did watch a few episodes of The Sopranos. I want to say I vaguely remember something about mafia families being mentioned. But overall, my knowledge is limited.”
I smothered a smile with my hand at her rambling, which I found adorable. I wished we weren’t talking about reality. My fucking reality. “The families all have much less control now than they did in the old days, but I suppose all you need to know is when my mother’s cousin came to New York, my father threatened him. If he wanted to stay stateside, he’d have to run his crime syndicate differently than the other mafia families. No trafficking of any kind. Drugs, people, animals. No murdering or hurting innocents.”
“And he behaved?” she asked in shock.
“As far as I know. Giovanni claims his organization is more like a company, and their insignia a business logo.” My gaze fell to my arm where good and evil warred there, the same as it did internally. “But I guess you could say all this shit is in my blood. It’s who I was destined to be.”
“No.” She leaned forward and set her hand on my knee, and my gaze lingered there for a quiet moment before returning to her face as she added, “You’re your own person. You can do and be whatever you want.”
I wanted to believe that, but she only knew the beginning act, the start to my story, and I wasn’t sure if she’d still believe that once I gave her all the hideous details from the middle.
