Page 66 of Marcus

“The floor turned out good, huh?”

Cella, who was currently standing in the middle of the room with her hands on her hips, turned to face him with a nod. “Yeah, it really did. I’m wondering if it was the right choice now, though, or if I am just thinking crazy things about this space.”

He had no idea what she just said.

None at all.

“I’m pretty sure anything you decide to do with this place is something my mother will love for no other reason than you designed it, Cella.”

Cella laughed. “Right, you mean even if I take her old master bedroom, because it’s literally the largest space in this penthouse, and turn it into a playroom with everything and anything a kid could want to go crazy … she would love that?”

Marcus thought about it for all of a second. “Yeah, absolutely.”

“Convince me of why, then.”

“For a couple of reasons—one, she loves her grandkids, and there’s gonna be more in this family, so it’ll be put to use for a long time. And two, because we almost died in this room. Me and her, I mean. She’s never been able to sleep in it since then, or that’s what my father always told me. I know she wanted to change it, but she just got used to using another bedroom whenever she was here. Something like this would really help with replacing those bad memories with something to make new ones.”

Cella just stared at him.

Marcus wasn’t sure why.

“You almost died in this room?”

Oh.

Yeah, that.

“Don’t think I’m being blasé about this,” Marcus said, “but it happened when I was a very young—still basically brand new, so I don’t remember anything about it, and I only know what happened through my father’s story. My mother has never told me the events through her perspective, and it’s an unspoken rule between my father and me that I will never ask her because it was traumatic. It’s not something she wants to keep revisiting, and I’m more than good with keeping my mother happy.”

Cella swallowed hard, the lump in her throat growing painfully. It nearly kept her quiet, but still, she managed to say, “Sure, okay. I’ll keep it in mind.”

“My father was married before my mother came along to a woman who had manipulated him into the marriage with lies and a false pregnancy that she later said she miscarried. She had her reasons, apparently, for needing a marriage. Basically, to get away from her situation at home, and she thought using my father would work for that. After they married, she left … for all purposes, my father was separated from his wife for quite a while before my mother came along.”

“Except, there’s no such thing as divorce in Cosa Nostra, Marcus.”

“My mother didn’t know he was married.”

Cella dragged in a heavy breath. “Ouch.”

“Anyway,” he said thickly, standing straighter in the doorway and shoving his hands loosely into the pockets of his slacks, “that’s their story … but the wife came back into the picture because my father took over the family, and circumstances brought her back into the fold. His wife became involved with someone in the family—sexually and otherwise—while my mother was pregnant with me. She then committed suicide but not before making this man believe it was entirely my mother and father’s fault. Oh, she was pregnant with the man’s child, too, when she did this.”

God.

He was wrong.

Marcus thought he would sound indifferent or unbothered but he came off as the exact opposite. Clearly hurt by a past that he didn’t even remember and had only heard through other parties involved, it was obvious that it affected him. Or maybe it was the fact that it was something that hurt his parents, and that was why he showed emotion talking about it.

Either way, it killed her.

Cella stayed quiet and let him keep talking.

“The man attacked my mother in this room—I was in a thing that she used for me to sleep on the bed as he beat her and tried to strangle her. He intended to kill me, too. Clearly, he didn’t succeed because we’re all still here, but that’s the story.”

The only thing she felt was okay to say?

“I’m sorry.”

Marcus shook his head, lifting those broad shoulders of his even as he offered her a thin smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes like it usually would. “We’ve all got a story—our family’s is just a little darker sometimes.”