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“I have no idea. I don’t know his name or where he lives, or even what he looks like. He always wore a mask. Like a masquerade ball-type mask. His eyes and hair changed color all the time. Clearly, he wore colored contacts and dyed his hair.” She went on to tell him everything she knew of The Foreman.
“I will find him,” Roman vowed. “I promise you.”
Angela swallowed hard, nodding silently. The thought of The Foreman finally getting his comeuppance both thrilled and terrified her. He would be an older man by now, given she estimated him to be in his forties twenty years ago. “Thank you.”
Roman leaned forward to kiss her chastely on the lips. She chased his lips, extending the kiss but not deepening the contact. “Do you want to hear the rest?” she asked him. When he nodded, so did she.
“My parents had the audacity to pretend that they didn’t know what happened to me. They acted as if I had been away at school, just like they told everyone I was. But they couldn’t look me in the eye. They knew,” she said flatly, her heart breaking a little bit more. “They knew, but they didn’t want to. I couldn’t stay there. I packed a bag, and I left. I only had a few clothes, but I had memorized the details on that envelope. That was better than clothes or money.”
She stared straight ahead now, not seeing Roman’s bedroom but the glass house on the hill. “He was in Vermont. It took days for me to get there. But when I did, I found a party in full swing. There were so many people there. At least twenty. Men and women. When I saw two girls stumble outside and turn on the hose, something in me snapped. Jedidiah would make us wash off outside. I picked up a rock and smashed it against the head of the one guard. Over and over, even when he was no longer moving. The girls didn’t scream, thankfully. I shoved my bag at them and told them to run. They listened.”
“Do you know who they are?” Roman asked quietly, picking up her hand and holding it tightly.
Angela shook her head. “I never saw them again. But I like to think they’re okay—that they made it. Anyway, I searched the guard, hoping for a weapon. I was going to go inside and shoot as many of them as I could. But I found a lighter instead. Jedidiah had a private gas pump, so he could fuel up his cars whenever he wanted. It was on the side of the house, away from the crowd. I knew it was there because I saw it when he fucked me against one of his convertibles. I used it to douse the house as much as I could, along with the grounds. I snuck around to the front and barricaded the doors by knocking over a statue. Then I used the lighter.”
Angela blinked at Roman’s soft-gray walls, seeing glass and flames instead. “The house went up quicker than I thought it would. Flames reached from the ground to the roof in seconds. When I heard the first screams, I smiled. I should have left, but I stayed. I stayed to watch the place burn. And I stayed to watch the people burn. No one escaped.”
“Thank fuck for that.”
She turned back to Roman. “There were innocent people there, Roman. Employees who didn’t take part in Jedidiah’s games. Cleaners, cooks... And I killed them all.”
“Do you really think they didn’t know what was going on?!” he questioned loudly. Roman snapped his mouth shut, taking a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell. They knew, baby. They knew, and they did nothing. Don’t feel bad about anyone who died in that hellhole.”
Angela nodded but wasn’t sure she could take his advice. “So, there you have it. I’m an arsonist and a mass murderer.”
“You’re fucking incredible, is what you are,” Roman corrected her with a growl. He lifted her hand, placing it over his chest. “Thank you for surviving. Thank you for surviving so you could make your way to me.”
Angela sobbed, her hand flying to her mouth. It was one of the only things in the world he could have said to make the cruelty in her life mean something. “Roman, thank you for waiting for me. Even since I met you, you’ve been waiting. It was exhausting, denying you—denying myself—for so long.”
“Mio angelo... my angel,” he repeated. “I would wait a lifetime for you.”
Angela half-laughed, half-cried. “That’s not going to be necessary.”
Roman held her while she cried, whispering to her in Italian and Sicilian the entire time. “Thank you for loving me,” she said when she had quietened down.
“I don’t have a choice,” Roman admitted, wiping her face with the sheet. “I don’t think I ever did.”
“That makes us even,” she told him, kissing him with passion this time. When she pulled back, she licked her lips. “I’m glad your cold feet didn’t last long.”
Roman looked surprised before he laughed. “Well, you can thank Sister Philomena for that.”
Angela frowned. She was confused. “Sister Pip?”
Roman looked adorably sheepish as he explained, “I went to her for advice.”
Angela laughed, ignoring the irritated growl that rumbled through Roman’s chest. “You, a mafia prince, went to a nun for advice about your love life?” Angela cackled. “That is gold.”
“Ex-mafia prince, thank you very much,” Roman told her with a light smack to her butt.
Angela jumped, finding the way her stomach quivered to be interesting. “That’s right. You’re a businessman now. Mafia for hire.”
“There’s a big difference,” Roman informed her with a sulky frown.
“Of course there is,” she soothed him.
Roman narrowed his peepers at her. “You’re placating me.”
“Of course I am,” she answered in the same tone.
