Page 54 of The Virgin's Dance with the Devil
I know there is no chance of you coming back to me. I know I’ve treated you too badly and hurt you too deeply for that. As much as it kills me to think of you with someone else, it kills me more to think of you spending the rest of your life like a nun. Don’t let what I’ve done destroy what makes you so special. You have the purest heart and soul, and there are good men out there (your father is one) who will treat you with the love, care and respect you deserve.
I’m not a good man, but I’m trying to be. Whatever I do from now on, it will be with your conscience in my mind. That the Thomas sisters are alive and well is because of you. My father’s last instruction to me before he died was to take Niccolo’s girlfriend. It is the only instruction of his I have ignored. I called all my men back to Naples and then I contacted Georgia and told her of a safe house to hide in. I don’t know if Niccolo has found his way to her because I disconnected the tracking devices from their phones, but I have hope for them. My brothers are still wanting vengeance for our father, but I hope they will see sense once the funeral is over. They have enough fighting to do with each other over who takes over the family empire – they can’t fight a war that will remind the world of who we really are, too (although I’m not convinced either of them sees it in this way).
I don’t know which of my brothers will take our father’s place, but it won’t be me. I don’t want it. I can’t live this life anymore.
Did I ever tell you about the car we found in an old barn that came with the farmhouse my parents bought when I was a teenager? It was a 1922 Alfa Romeo, and it was falling to pieces. My father and I restored it together. It was our project, and it was the best time I spent with him. That what I want to do now. I’m going to buy myself a plot of land and restore old cars. I can onlyhope that one day, I will be able to restore my soul too.
I will love you for as long as the world turns and there are stars in the sky.
Goodbye, my angel.
Rico x
The letter was stained with Marisa’s tears when Luisa tapped on the door and let herself in without waiting for an answer. Silently, she sat beside her and read the letter for herself, and then she let out a sigh so long it sounded like she’d expelled all the air a body could hold and wrapped an arm around her.
Where they were sitting was directly in front of a full-length mirror on the opposite wall. The Rossellini sisters, heads pressed together, both of them crying, stared at their reflections.
“You know,” Luisa said quietly once she’d wiped her tears away, “I thought Gennaro was the coldest, cruellest bastard on this earth. And heisa bastard, but he’s so much more, too. He just never dared let me see it. I’ve had to forgive a lot to get to where we are now, and I’m so glad I did because the love I’ve found with him is like nothing in the world.”
Marisa stared dumbly at her sister’s reflection. “Why are you telling me this?”
“You know why.”
“But you hate Rico.”
“Yes, but I hated Gennaro too, and I know now that I would be as desperately unhappy as you are if I had to live without him.”
“You don’t know what he did,” she whispered.She hadn’t told them. She couldn’t.
Luisa squeezed her tighter. “I can make a good guess from that letter. He’s an entitled, selfish bastard who thought he could play with you for whatever nefarious reason, but he greatly underestimated your power.” At Marisa’s teary questioning stare, she smiled and kissed her temple. “Your beauty is as strong inside as it is outside. He didn’t stand a chance.”
“You think I should forgive him?”
Luisa shook her head with a sad smile. “Only you can decide if he deserves that, but whatever you decide, I will always have your back and I will always love and support you.”
Unable to sleep, Marisa slipped out of her room and silently padded down the stairs and out into the garden. The grass was wet from the earlier rain and squelched between her bare toes as she walked to the swing that had been attached to the apple tree in the centre of the lawn since she was a little girl.
It still took her weight, and she swung on it gently, staring up at the stars illuminating the night sky. In a few hours, they would be invisible to the eye but not gone. They would still be there, waiting for the Earth to complete another rotation to reveal themselves. And Rico would still love her.
He did love her. She felt it in her heart as deeply as she felt her love for him.
Closing her eyes, she thought back to that morning in the church when she’d prayed to God for help. He’d delivered Rico to her. Imperfectly perfect Rico. That’s what she’d believed.
Wasn’t it possible that God had delivered her tohim? Delivered them to each other?
She thought about what Rico said that time, about bad boys needing good girls to tame their worst instincts and good girls needing bad boys to bring out their suppressed desires.
Wasn’t that what they’d done for each other?
She could never hope to fully tame someone like Rico Esposito, but why would she want to do that when to fully tame him would stop himbeingRico? And Rico, the man who loved her, was wonderful. Considerate of her feelings and fiercely protective of those feelings and of her. Protective and considerate of her family because he saw them as an extension of her.
When Rico loved, it was without restraint, and he lovedherand was taming his worst instinctsforher. He might have brought the sexual side of her nature to the surface, but he didn’t want to change her. He loved her exactly as she was, and for as long as the world turned and the stars lit the skies, he would always love her. Just as she would always love him.
Swinging higher and higher, she gazed back up at the stars, letting all her thoughts and emotions coalesce until certainty solidified, and she jumped off the swing at the highest point of its arc, just as she’d done so many times as a child.
She landed perfectly.
Running back into the house, she flew up the stairs and knocked on her sister’s bedroom door. It was a few moments before the door opened, Luisa wrapping her robe around her. Behind her, fast asleep, Gennaro, who refused to sleep in a bed without his wife in it.
