CHAPTER 2
Roxanne / Marcello
Roxanne
ONE WEEK BEFORE
Istormed onto the terrace. “I’m going to kill her.”
“Slow down, amore,” Marcello said calmly.
I found him there, stealing a smoke. He’d tried quitting after Romano was born. But when things slipped out of his control, he reached for a cigarette again.
I paced the terrace while forcing myself to stay composed. It was a habit I’d learned years ago—letting my body panic so my voice wouldn’t have to.
Marcello carried my chaos without complaint, but I had no map to guide him through the fog in my head.
Smiling was easier than explaining.
Easier than admitting I was still splintering in places nobody could see. And every time he believed it, guilt hollowed me out.
Some days, it had been my safest disguise. I wouldn’t disappoint him. Silence felt kinder than admitting how much of me was still in pieces.
“Talk to me,” he said gently, holding my waist.
My muscles loosened before I could stop them.
His touch was warm, solid, real. It dragged me back into my body whether I wanted to return or not. Physical touch grounded me when my mind tried to leave. In his arms, I felt wanted instead of broken.
“Let’s sit,” he murmured.
We moved to the covered seating area overlooking the sea. The sea stretched endlessly below us, dark and restless. Waves folded over themselves in a slow, relentless rhythm.
From a distance, it looked calm. Up close, it was chaos disguised as stillness.
My fingers twisted the hem of my shirt, wrinkling the fabric between my fists.
“Sahil’s going on paternity leave. Priya is due any day now,” I said evenly. “Ritu wants me in Ireland. For a whole month.”
He watched me in the same calm way he always did when he expected the inevitable.
“I had anticipated it.”
“What? How? I’m the one who was supposed to—”
I shook my head.
“Forget it,” I said simply. “I’ll just ask someone from the Mumbai office to go.”
“You’ll do no such thing. You’ve been running it since day one,” he said. “You know the site. The contractors trust you. And she wants someone who won’t let them cut corners.”
I bit my lip.
“It’s a month. And the kids—a month is a long time, Marci.”
“Kyra’s school just started. Alessia can manage; I’ve already discussed this with her,” he said. “Plus, Kyra has Sophie and Matteo. It’ll feel like the holidays for them.”
My brows narrowed and I let out a huff.
“What about Romano?” I asked.
“He stays with me.”
“But you have the meeting with Ronnie.”
“I know,” he said, firm but not sharp. “That’s why I’ve called your mother. Once I leave, she’ll join Kyra in Palma.”
He pulled me closer to him, kissing the top of my head.
“I’ve got this, amore. You needn’t worry.”
Marcello liked control. Not the suffocating kind—never that. His control felt like structure. Like the certainty that someone stronger than you was already watching the door.
Work was my territory. Always had been. But the rest of the world—the dangerous parts, the unpredictable ones—I was more than happy to let him handle.
For a man belonging to a mafia empire, Marcello didn’t cage me. He made sure nothing else could.
“I don’t want hawks,” I insisted. “I don’t want to feel watched.”
“I know,” he replied. “I’ll arrange somewhere private. And before you say something else, I promise I won’t buy it, just a rental.”
He had never made me feel trapped. Never treated me like something he owned. And yet…
There were still parts of me he would never see. Things I kept buried so deep even love couldn’t reach them. Because some part of me still believed that if he ever saw everything—the anger, the shadows, the things I’d survived—he might decide I was too much. He might be ashamed of me.
The way he looked at me now might change.
And worse of all, he might stop loving me enough to stay.
“You make it sound so simple.”
“It is,” he said, brushing a strand of hair from my cheek. “Because you don’t have to do it alone. You love your work,” he said. “Don’t let us hold you back.”
I leaned into him then, forehead against his shoulder. He wrapped his arm around me and held me until my weight settled fully, until his breathing matched mine. The silence between us felt peaceful.
“I didn’t mean to wake you last night,” I said, fixing my gaze on the horizon.
“You didn’t wake me,” he replied. “I’ll always reach for you. And when you fall, I’ll be there—every time. Even when you disappear, I’ll be reaching.”
He kissed me, slow, deep, letting his tongue brush against mine. He tasted of mint and smoke.
“You’re mine,” he murmured once, brushing his thumb across my jaw.
“Your fears are mine. Your burdens are mine. You don’t carry them alone.”
“I love you,” I murmured.
The words were true, but something inside me still tightened.
I loved him. God, I did. But I’ve always wondered, would he love me the same if he knew what I’ve hidden away?
Would he still be here if he saw all of me?
The shadows.
The rage.
The parts of me I’d buried just to survive.
Packing for Ireland felt strangely unreal. Like I was preparing for someone else’s life. The suitcase lay open on the bed while I folded clothes with careful precision. Neat lines. Order. Control.
Marcello watched from the doorway.
“Done packing?”
I nodded.
“Ritu will be happy you’re coming.”
“I know.”
The truth was simpler. Work was easier than thinking. It didn’t ask questions or dig through memories I’d buried.
Julian would have said avoidance was a coping mechanism.
I called it survival.
Marcello stepped closer. His hands settled on my waist.
“You’ll be fine,” he murmured.
“I know.”
“You’ll call if you need anything.”
“Of course.”
He studied my face like he was trying to read something written beneath my skin.
Sometimes I wondered if he could. Sometimes I was terrified he might.
“Stop worrying,” I said.
“I’m not worried.”
He was lying. Marcello always worried. He just hid it better than most men. He pulled me closer and held me there, kissing the top of my head like a promise. Like protection. Something I still wasn’t sure I deserved.
A month away in Ireland. A different house. A different life for a while. Maybe distance would calm the noise in my head. Maybe not. Who knew.
I listened to the steady thumping of Marcello’s heart as I hugged him and wondered if Julian was right.
Some wounds didn’t disappear.
They stayed hidden until something dragged them back to life.
Marcello
I watched her sleep, chest rising and falling beneath the sheets, dark lashes resting against her cheeks, mouth parted in sleep like she had forgotten to guard herself. She never looked fragile when she was awake. Only here. Only with me.
Everywhere else, she moved through the world with her guard sharpened beneath her skin. I knew that too well.
Men like me built empires around it.
I slid my hand down her back to the delicate hollow above her hip, drawing her closer until her body settled against mine with instinctive familiarity. She sighed, seeking warmth, her forehead brushing my collarbone, pressing into me.
Unease settled heavily in my chest. Fear and I had never been well acquainted. Roxanne changed that.
She had given me her love, her body, her heart. Yet sometimes her silence hollowed me out.
Sometimes her smile didn’t reach her eyes.
Sometimes I watched her like she existed behind glass—close enough to see her smile, too far away to reach whatever was hurting her. As if she lived in a world I couldn’t enter—a dark place carved long before me.
I saw it when her smile slipped. In the way she withdrew afterwards. And I hated it.
Because men like me were taught early that if something mattered, you secured it. Protected it and buried anyone stupid enough to threaten it.
Yet sometimes, when I held her, I felt it—the fracture. The part of her that belonged to the shadows.
I told myself it didn’t matter. That whatever haunted her could be managed like everything else in my life.
I was wrong. Because deep down I knew—some ghosts don’t stay buried. They lie in wait. Some claw their way back through dirt wearing familiar faces—taking pieces of her with them. And they’d always choose the worst moment to rise.
I kissed her temple and she sighed against me. I closed my eyes with her heat against me and allowed myself to drift to sleep.
She began to tremble with sweat in the middle of the night.At first it was subtle—tightening of her legs, a restless sound caught in her throat. Then came the heat, her skin damp against mine, her brows pinched tight as though pain lived there.
She mumbled unintelligibly before thrashing violently against the sheets, caught in whatever nightmare held her, her heart hammering against my ribs like it wanted out. I tightened my arms around her, locking her against me.
“Roxy,” I murmured into her hair. “Amore, you’re safe.”
She did not wake.
“You’re with me, mia metà,” I whispered. “No one can hurt you.”
Her breath hitched. I pressed my mouth to her temple.
“Safe,” I repeated, steady and unwavering, until the tremor eased.
But the weight in my chest did not. It never did.
The dreams had started about two years ago. I remembered the first time clearly. She’d been curled into herself, breath coming out wrong, fingers clawing at the sheets like she was trying to escape something that had already found her.
I’d said her name again and again until she’d woken with a gasp and buried her face into my chest—trembling, refusing to speak.
At first, she brushed them off—new mothers don’t sleep, nightmares are normal. But I’d seen her shake in her sleep, whisper things she didn’t remember, lock her body like a door bolted from the inside.
Julian once said her wounds were old, older than me, but something had triggered them again. I believed him.
These weren’t ordinary dreams. They were echoes of battles she’d fought long before I touched her. And wounds didn’t need fresh blood to reopen.
I couldn’t heal them. That wasn’t my role.
My role was simpler. Make sure nothing touched her or the family we built while she bled through it. To keep her steady when the ground shifted beneath her. To make sure she never carried the weight alone.
I didn’t push. I didn’t ask. Interrogation worked on enemies, never on people you loved.
I’d learned long ago that truth came when it was ready—or not at all. Forcing only taught people how to hide better.
Later, when she slept—truly slept—I stepped onto the terrace and dialled a number I rarely needed twice.
The call was answered on the second ring.
“Any luck?” I asked.
Silence stretched. Then: “No.”
I exhaled slowly.
“You know him better than I do,” Martin said. “If he wants to be found, he’ll step into the light.”
I rubbed the bridge of my nose, a headache blooming behind my eyes.
“What else?”
“Someone thought they spotted him here, in Sicily.”
My jaw tightened. “And?”
“Dead end,” Martin said. “Ghost. Disappeared without a trace.”
I stared into the dark, waves of the sea lashing below.That wasn’t like him. Men like that didn’t disappear unless they wanted the world blind.
“Keep looking,” I said.
I went back in and slept beside her. Roxanne shifted in her sleep, reaching for me without waking.
Her fingers curled into my shirt like instinct—like my presence was an anchor her body recognised even when her mind let go.
I kissed her temple once, slowly, anchoring us both to the present. Her breathing evened. Warm. Real.
Whatever had left scars this deep didn’t vanish. It waited.
I stayed awake, watching the rise and fall of her chest. Guarding the silence she disappeared into when the world became too loud.
Some battles she still fought by herself. But whatever haunted her in the dark would have to come through me first.