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Marco brushed me off whenever I asked him about it, telling me that when he learned anything I needed to know, he would tell me.
This nagged at the back of my mind, a ticking time bomb I could not switch off. Jonathan had killed Dolly, and as good as killed my father by sending him to prison. I could not bear the idea that the police might let him go.
Another thing that sometimes kept me up at nights was how Marco would never speak of his work to me, cutting me off any time I approached the subject.
Because I could not reconcile how I could build any sort of life with him if his business was illegal. If his business harmed anyone. And surely it must, given his family ties to the mob?
That was something I had never dared ask him about, though I’d googled it and found a frustrating lack of answers, as if all traces of his family had been wiped off the Internet.
The one time I brought up the topic with Marco, he became still and tense, and anger flashed in his eyes.
“Never ask me about that, carissima,” he said coldly. And then softened only a tad, adding, “For your own sake.”
All I could make of it was that he wanted to keep me safe. That the less I knew, the safer he thought I was.
But what kind of situation was that for me to consider raising a baby in?And why was Amara’s father, who had to be one of his brothers, never spoken of? Where was he? And what had happened to her mother?
And during all that time, I failed to make progress with Marco’s mother. It hurt that she never once asked me anything about myself or my mom, as if she was determined to not think of me as a real person.
I had invited her out to lunch several times, and even invited her to some of my art consultations that I thought she might find interesting.
She had refused them all, her body language stiffening every time I walked into a room she was in, letting me know I was an intruder in her home. She continued to coldly rebuff all my attempts at conversation, and the first time I had made lunch for Amara on a weekend, she had dumped the pasta salad into the bin, saying tersely that Amara’s nanny knew Amara’s preferences and I was not to interfere.
Like I wasn’t good enough to raise a child.
Part of me, the part that had fiercely fought for my independence all of these years, wanted to say, “Sod it,” and leave her house. My pride pricked at her refusal to treat me like a fellow human being just because I had worked at Bordello.
I wanted to tell her the girls I had met there were some of the most remarkable women you could meet. Smart, emotionally intelligent, talented, charming, funny, with their eyes wide open to the realities of the underbelly of life and the intricate beauties of this world. That they had good hearts.
I wanted to tell her how brilliant, how spectacular, Dolly had been.
I wanted to tell her that she, a mobster’s wife, should surely understand. That she might even admire them, given the chance.
But my pride would not let me speak, so we avoided each other, and suffered each other’s presence during our brief daily encounters at breakfast and in the hallways of the house.
“I should go home,” I suggested to Marco one evening after dinner. “What reason do those thugs have to come after me now? Surely they will back off now that Jonathan is in jail? He is in jail, isn’t he?”
“It is not safe, amore. Not yet. And I like having you here with me, in my home. I like sleeping with you in my arms, waking with your legs wrapped around me…”
And he kissed my objections away, make me forget the world for a while with his hands and mouth and body.
It was only when he had backed me against his bed, my skirt up around my hips and his hardness grinding me through his trousers, that I realised the door was open.
“Oh no!” I pushed him away, mortified because I had already been making noises that would let anyone know what we were up to. And Amara’s bedroom was only down the hallway. I prayed she was already fast asleep.
“Oh, please don’t let your mother have heard,” I whispered desperately, running to the door to check the hallway, Marco laughing behind me.
A scream from downstairs shocked me before I could shut the door. Marco’s mother calling his name in desperation.
I froze. Marco rushed past me and downstairs so fast I was sure he’d fall.
I followed him down, my heart pounding in my chest, terror making me shaky, the horror of that brute breaking into our apartment to attack me two weeks ago rising afresh.
“Marco?” I whispered, heading towards the lounge where his mother’s voice was coming from, rapidly talking in anguished Italian.
I pushed the door open a little to see. Jacob was in there with them, both men listening to what Vittoria was saying—or rather yelling—at Marco.
Tears streamed down her cheeks. She pounded her fists into his chest, while he held her, hushed her. I heard him say the word Amara, and that helped calm her down a little.
