Page 33 of Marcus

Cella came to stand at the main sitting area, and quieted. Two leather couches rested upon a massive, imported rug facing one another, with a bucket chair at the end and a coffee table in the middle with his mother’s book still sitting atop a manila file. She glanced down, looking at the book and file but not touching it.

She did, however, say the name on it.

Marcus cleared his throat. “That would be a client of my mother’s … or a patient, depending on how you want to look at it.”

Cella quieted, gaze drawn downward, and while she couldn’t see anything about the patient given the file was closed and a book sat on top of it … he could still see something flashing in her eyes. That haunted look again—the same one he noticed when they met again at the penthouse weeks ago.

“I forgot for a minute.”

“Sorry?”

“That she’s also a therapist.”

Marcus stuffed his hands in his pockets and moved to lean against the wall. He figured, he might need some stability for this conversation and the wall seemed like as good of a place as any to use for it.

Cella smiled faintly, those painted-red lips of hers curving but it didn’t quite reach her eyes as she glanced up at him. “They said I should come see her, you know?”

“When?”

Her throat jumped. “After William died.”

He was sure that was the first time she’d said her dead husband’s name in his presence. And just like that, while the mention of the man didn’t make Marcus feel bad or guilty for what had happened between him and Cella that evening—so far—he did wonder if perhaps this had moved too fast for her.

Had he crossed a line?

Did he think before he acted?

Was he selfish?

“Can I just … say what I need to say? What I’m really avoiding and hiding from with you?” she asked softly.

Did she really need to ask that at all?

“Please, do. It’s what I want.”

How else would he know?

How else could he fix it?

“I never wanted to be involved with a made man,” she explained, shrugging those pretty shoulders of hers and making the light reflect on the sequins of her dress, “because I saw all around me what happened when women lost those men … when their whole lives became entangled with those men, and they had to pay for it. Sacrifice for it. So, I didn’t—I married a lawyer, he wasn’t even Italian. But it didn’t matter because I was who I was, and you can’t change who you are.”

Marcus said nothing.

He didn’t think he should.

“So, it didn’t matter that he wasn’t made … it didn’t matter that I married a man I thought the mafia couldn’t take from me because they did it anyway. I made a promise that I wasn’t going to do it again; I wasn’t going to be in that position again.”

Her gaze met his again.

He stared back, waiting.

“I want to tell you this can’t be something,” she said, her words clear but still full of uncertainty all the same time. “That we can’t be something, Marcus. Like that’s fair, right? I keep my promise, I don’t break my one rule for myself, and nothing else has to matter.”

“But?”

“Should I?”

Marcus chuckled, seriously considering her words because he didn’t think she meant for him to make a joke out of it. Nor did he want to, honestly. “It’s okay to break the rules occasionally … my whole life is about control, Cella. From the way I look, to how I present myself to the rest of the world. It’s all I know. So when people aren’t looking, I break those rules I made for myself. Otherwise, it would all just suffocate me.”