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I shook my head, roughly wiped my tears away even though more sprang up in their place. “It was me. He admitted it was me he was scared she might tell.”
“And that you would come to me for help, and I would end the man who as good as killed my lover’s father.”
“Is that what I am? Your lover?” I said shakily.
“Aren’t you?”
Was I? Didn’t lover implylove? And we had no love.
But suddenly I felt terribly guilty for even contemplating that Marco could have been involved in Dolly’s murder.
On shaky legs, I went over to the bed to sit beside him, suddenly feeling that we were in this together. Neither of us was innocent in Dolly’s death.
I wanted to tell him I was sorry for thinking he might have been a murderer. But I had told the truth earlier. I didn’t trust him.
I so desperately wanted to, but how could I ask for trust when I myself couldn’t be honest with him? I could never tell him this all started with me seducing him for my own purposes. Maybe if I had not done that, Dolly would still be alive.
He touched my hand, but I snatched it away.
“You’re afraid of me,” he said.
“No.” But I really didn’t know.
“It’s because of my father, isn’t it?” he said a touch harshly. “Because I killed his murderer?”
Stricken, I looked at him sharply, my heart pounding. He really had done it. He had admitted it with his own lips.
“Did you?” I asked, my mouth dry.
If Toby had heard me say this, he would sneer at how stupid I was. Because no one in their right minds wanted to know a mobster’s dirty secrets.
And yet I did. I desperately needed to understand.
He nodded, his eyes glazed, a faraway look in them. “I killed him, and I would do it over and over again if I had to.”
I should have flinched, but I did not. I watched him with my breath held, waiting.
“He was a monster,” Marco said, his breath ragged, his eyes full of pain. “The filthy piece of crap. The man had molested one of Chiara’s little friends.”
I gasped, horrified.
“My father found out. He would have killed him for it. But that scum must have realised Dad was coming for him, and he gunned Dad down first. Shot him in the back. Like a coward.”
White rage had come onto Marco’s face. His fist was clenched hard on his knee. I put my hand gently over it, and said softly, “I’m sorry, Marco.”
“I killed him,” said Marco. “The first man I ever killed, and the last. Ihadto kill him.”
You could have gone to the police, I almost said, before realising that someone like Marco could never go to the police.
But maybe he saw that accusation on my face.
Bitterness crossed his. “You don’t understand. My father was powerful. Respected. And then he was gunned down by some scum on the streets. As if he was nothing. It left my family wide open, my mother, my sister, my brothers. I was twenty-one, and they were all younger. Too young. If I had done nothing, we would have been deemed cowards. Easy pickings amongst our kind. I took my vengeance to protect our family, and I have never regretted it.”
His jaw was clenched, a defiant look on his face. I should have been terrified, but I sat there with my hand still on top of his fist. Because I understood what it was to fight to protect what remained of your family when you had lost its strongest member to violence. And I could not blame him for what he had done.
“Maybe I would have done it too,” I said in a quiet voice.
And I thought of my mother, so tired from all she had been through, so vulnerable to any monsters who wanted to pick over her as if she was just a carcass. Would I have killed to protect her? Damn right I would.
