Page 53 of Possession

“We’re half Italian. My … mother.”

Because he’s lying over top of me, I can feel that his heartrate is speeding up. I can feel, too, that he’s losing his arousal.

Part of me thinks that I shouldn’t push, but I want to know. The peace is broken anyway. The outside world has already intruded. Besides, being in this house, I think that Ishouldknow.

When did I become so bold?

“Tell me,” I say. “Please, Roman.”

He draws in a heavy breath. He pulls back from me to sit up. He sits cross legged beside me. His hands are in his lap, so I don’t reach for them, but I edge closer so that my arm is touching his knee. I want to turn on a lamp so I can see his face, but something tells me that he might say more in the dimness.

“The Constantine family is Greek. Mafia only in the general sense of the word.”

“Constantine?”

“My … last name.”

“Huh.”

It’s so strange that in some ways I know Roman so well. In other ways, not at all.

“Your parents,” I prompt vaguely. I’m not sure what I want to know. Just something, I guess. Anything.

What I get is, “Dead.”

The word is so final that it briefly stalls me, but I think past it to his tone. For all his silence, Roman doesn’t hide things. So I voice my guess. “You were young.”

“Somewhat. I guess. Fifteen. Vitali was seventeen.”

“That’s young,” I tell him, finding it odd that he seems unsure. Losing both parents at fifteen? Of course that’s young. It’s awful. I point out, “I was older than either you or Vitali when my mother died.”

“Yes, but—” Roman cuts himself off sharply. He climbs from the bed and goes stalking to the curtains over the sliding glassdoors. He throws them open. Distantly, beyond him, I glimpse trees and sky, but mostly I focus on his nude form. Something I said upset him, but I don’t know what.

We’ve talked about this once before. I told him how my mother overdosed when I was eighteen, how Frank kicked me out, how I spent the end of my senior year on my wrestling coach’s couch. I eventually left because my coach had his own family. I was in the way. He didn’t say that, but I could tell. So I just left one night without a word. I never saw him again.

When I told Roman about that, he got up then too. He started hitting the punching bag. He wouldn’t tell me why he was upset then either. At that time, I think he couldn’t. He had just barely started talking to me then.

Slowly, I get out of the bed. Slowly, I approach.

He looks over his shoulder at me. He says, “Come here.”

I’m slow about it because I feel like I’m in trouble somehow, but I do what he says. When I’m close, he pulls me in, my back to his front. He has me facing out, looking at more green and blue than I’ve seen in weeks. Months. Maybe years. But I barely see it. I’m too focused on Roman behind me. He’s angry.

But not, I realize, with me.

Arms around me, he drops his face against the top of my head. I feel his warm exhalation.

He says, “I’m going to kill him.”

“Who?” I ask, startled.

“Your stepfather. For what he did. Forallthe things he did. And didn’t do.”

My throat tightens. My eyes sting.

Maybe his words should horrify me, but all they really make me feel is seen. Like my life matters.

“You’re mine,” he tells me. “You belong to me, and that means I’ll kill anyone who harms you or tries to take you fromme. The only reason I let you kill Briggs instead of doing it myself was because you needed it.”

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