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“Not like you anymore? Are you kidding me?”
I risk looking into his face. Instead of judgement, I see compassion.
“Tilly. Forget like. I love you. We all do. And whatever you’ve done to get here… I understand. More than most. Maybe more than the other two.”
A wave of relief so powerful it brings tears to my eyes sweeps over me.
“Really? You don’t… you don’t think I’m terrible.”
“If you had someone killed, I’m sure it was for good reason.” He means it too. He’s not telling me a lie.
I have never had this kind of understanding in my entire life. I can’t believe how lucky I am. Mark opens his arms, and I surge into them.
He wraps himself around me, and I feel his care holding me. There’s no need for forgiveness from him. He never judged me in the first place. He saw me as a perfect innocent before, and he still does.
I bury my face in his neck. He and I have never been intimate. I’ve never felt him inside me. But he’s more connected to me than anybody else in this house. He has been from the very first moment we met. I guess I was wrong, thinking that I’m a Vitali and don’t fit with him. I am a Vitali, and I do fit with Angelo and Bobby. But I also fit with Mark. All three of them fit me too.
“You’ve been hiding this from me, Tilly. I don’t ever want you to hide from me. I don’t want any part of you to have to be kept from me.”
I sit back a little, still held in his arms, but far enough away to look into his eyes.
“There’s more,” I tell him.
“I want to hear it.”
“My father hurt me, Mark. He hurt my mother. He killed her. He…” My throat tightens and the words stop, but he can see the truth in my gaze. “It’s why I went for Angelo when he caned you. It’s why I couldn’t stop myself.”
He’s quietly with me, listening to everything I have to say. Most of these things, I've never told anybody. I’ve never had anybody who could be trusted to listen.
“My father murdered my mother when I was five. Three weeks later, I went to boarding school.”
“At five?”
“You can go to boarding school at three in some schools in England. Half of my classmates barely knew their parents.”
“That’s…”
“That’s what made doing what I did easy. My father didn’t know, but my mother had an inheritance put away for me for when I came of age. I had five million pounds, and I wasn’t allowed to leave my family home. So…” I shrug. “I did what I had to do. I got revenge for my mother. I waited almost fifteen years to do it. And I don’t know what would have happened to me after it was done, but then Angelo was just there. He came and he saved me from myself.”
Mark smiles. “He has a way of doing that.”
“I really like you, Mark,” I say, keeping the honesty train rolling. “And I don’t know… Angelo beat Bobby pretty bad for being with me, but I don’t think of myself as just Angelo’s wife. I think of myself, like, belonging to all of you.”
Mark puts his forehead against mine. “You’re mine, Tilly. You have been since the moment I first laid eyes on you, looking so pale and so scared, trying so hard to hold it together, just a slip of a thing next to Angelo.”
“You’ve tried to protect me this whole time, and all I could give you were lies.”
“It’s okay,” he reassures me. “When you’ve lived a harsh life, sometimes lies are all you have. But you’ve told the truth now, and you won't have to suffer anymore wondering if the truth will ruin everything. Because it won’t.”
I’ve lived my whole life guarding my truth closely. It’s not out of the ordinary to have people tell me that I can trust them. What is truly extraordinary when it comes to Mark, is that I can finally believe someone when they tell me they love me no matter what.
“You’re the best,” I tell him.
“I’m not. I’m a fugitive living on borrowed time, but I’m going to do my best to make sure your life with us is happier than the one you lived before you met us.”
Chapter 20
An indeterminate number of days later, more than seven, less than thirty, I don't know, I lose track…
* * *
Tilly
Angelo opens the door, waking me up. I must have fallen asleep in Mark’s arms. It’s morning, or maybe afternoon. Or lunch time. I don’t know. I’m hungry.
“Where is Bobby?” Angelo snaps the question as if we’re supposed to know.
“I don’t know, Angelo. I’ve been asleep,” Mark yawns.
“Let me rephrase,” Angelo says, before rattling off a series of sentences which sound fairly trite, but have the compounding cumulative effect of demonstrating a serious problem. “Bobby is missing. Bobby is gone. Bobby is not here. Bobby is somewhere not on this property. Bobby could be mingling with general society by now. Unsuspecting humans are being exposed to Bobby…”
