“You’re no different from him.”

 

It took me a while to realize what she was talking about; I wasn’t sure what I’d expected to come out of her mouth, but it certainly wasn’t that. I supposed I felt as though I was owed an explanation and that this wasn’t exactly it. I wondered how long she’d been sitting on that, how long she’d built that up inside her, because the words were so full of vitriol and genuine dislike that they felt as though they’d been coming for months.

 

“What do you mean?” I asked, taking a step back from her. She was pacing the floor, up and down, up and down, her footsteps squeaking slightly against the wooden floor. It would have been funny if she wasn’t so obviously and utterly mad at me. At the world. And it wasn’t as though I could pretend that I didn’t know what had brought this on. I knew damn well; I just didn’t want to face up to it. Still, this was odd—different. I’d expected her to go off on me for abandoning her with her father without a word, for picking them over her—all of which she’d have been completely justified getting mad over. But this…this was something entirely different.

 

“My father, you’re just like him,” she snapped, halting suddenly and turning to look at me. Her eyes were hard, her jaw set, and she had never looked more like her dad in her life.

 

“How?” I protested. “I’m not exactly some mafia boss—”

 

She clenched her fists, and for a split second I wondered if she was going to take a swing at me, even though I knew that wasn’t her style; violence would have put her in her father’s ballpark, and I knew that wasn’t what she wanted. Still, it shut me up. I closed my mouth and nodded to her to continue talking. I wanted to know where this was going.

 

“I heard what those men in there were talking about.” She waved her arm wildly in the direction of the door, and it took me a second to realize she was talking about the Stiches. I felt a cold flush rush over my body. Shit. That wasn’t a good start.

 

“What did you hear?” I pressed. Neither of us moved, just staring at each other, trying to figure out how we went on from here.

 

“I heard them talking about killing people,” she spat, lifting her fingers and counting off the offences one by one. “About hiring vulnerable guys, about women—”

 

“A lot of people talk like that,” I cut in. “It doesn’t mean anything. Trust me, the Stiches are about as different from your father as a group could possibly be.”

 

“Oh yeah?” She placed her hands on her hips. “How?”

 

“Well, um…” I’d never been put on the spot like this before, and found myself groping around for answers. “They’re there for people who can’t find other work can support themselves and their families—”

 

“How many of those guys in there had families?” she demanded. I opened my mouth before she added a qualifier. “That they actually see?”

 

I closed my mouth again, racking my brains. She was right. Even the guys who did have sons and daughters, most of the time there was a court order in place keeping them firmly away from their kids. Many of them were divorced, the break-ups coming after they became a part of the Stiches. She had me there.

 

“None of them, really,” I admitted. “But that doesn’t mean…I’m just saying, it’s a place for men who’ve got nobody else, to find something!”

 

“Yeah, and that something is doing shitty grunt work for assholes?” She raised her eyebrows at me. “Come on, I’m not a total idiot, Jasper.”

 

“It’s not what you think it is,” I protested. “A lot of us just do bodyguard gig. I wouldn’t have met you if that wasn’t the case.”

 

“Yeah, for people like my father,” she reminded me. “And that doesn’t exactly reflect well on you. And besides, that’s not what I heard a lot of them talking about.”

 

“What were they saying, then?” I demanded, growing frustrated as it became clear that I wasn’t going to be able to easily talk my way out of this one.

 

“They were talking about their men dying on drug runs, and about how they hoped someone who worked for them would be a junkie because it would make him easier to control,” she reiterated to me.

 

My scalp prickled hot and cold all at once; even though I’d overheard these kind of conversations myself, I’d convinced myself that they came with the territory and weren’t representative of the whole. But hearing those words come out of her mouth, an outsider who had nothing but naiveté for the Stiches, it brought it home—hard.

 

“You’ve got no idea what you’re talking about,” I spat, knowing that I was just groping around for something to cling on to, something that wouldn’t expose me as the monster that so many of those men were. Maybe I was just as bad? I had no idea, couldn’t even remember what the difference had been between us. Maria closed her eyes and let out a long sigh before she spoke again, as though what she was about to say had been on her mind for a long, long time.

 

“I know exactly what I’m talking about,” she said, sounding exhausted. “Because I’ve grown up around those kind of men. I’ve spent my life around those kinds of men.”

 

“Your father protects you from every little thing,” I reminded her. “He wouldn’t even let you go to a fucking coffee shop without me, remember? You really think he’d let you see even half—”

 

“Yeah, I do,” she cut across me, eyes wide. “And I’m not going to have another guy tell me what I have and haven’t experienced. I know what happens in these worlds, Jasper, I know it better than a lot of people—maybe even better than you. And you don’t have the right to tell me that isn’t the case.”

 

I closed my mouth, surprised. I didn’t really have any argument against that. I finally sat down, clasping my hands in front of me and balancing my elbows on my knees. I looked up at her, imploring her to go on. For once, I was ready to listen.

 

“My father really didn’t see anything wrong with bringing those kinds of men into our house when I was growing up, and parading me around like a favorite pet or something,” she went on, voice shaking. “And I knew they were part of his gang or whatever, but I didn’t really understand what he did. I couldn’t. He didn’t let me.”

 

She ran her fingers through her hair, and I could tell that this was difficult for her. I wondered if she’d ever spoken these words to anyone before now. I couldn’t imagine she had—who would she have told, the household staff?

 

“But I’m not stupid,” she declared, shaking her head. “I knew what I was seeing, eventually. I would hear little snippets of conversation and I would have to pretend that I hadn’t, because if I did I could never have looked my father in the eye again, knowing the kinds of things he did to people.”

 

She fell silent and stared briefly at the ceiling, stopping dead in her tracks, as though the memory of the things she had heard from her father had come flooding back all at once; the pained expression on her face seemed to speak to that being true. I didn’t even want to think about the shit she’d heard living in that house—Lucca D’Orazio was a boastful guy even at the best of times, and I couldn’t imagine he thought that his daughter would rat him out for anything. Why would he hide things from her?

 

“And?” I prompted her. She snapped out of her reverie and turned back to me.

 

“And that was what I heard from them,” she replied softly, her voice low. I almost couldn’t make out what she said; she was just so…subdued. I was used to seeing Maria in full flight, an enormous personality trapped in by her father’s intense possessiveness. But this…this was something different. She looked traumatized, stunned, as though the world had tipped on its axis and she didn’t know how to right it. She took a deep breath and forced herself to keep going.

 

“That kind of callousness, that kind of…awfulness,” she said, putting heavy emphasis on the final word, lifting her voice as she said it. “I’ve never seen it anywhere outside of my father and his world. I never thought I would. I guess I really thought that…that he was as bad as it got for these kinds of things. I didn’t think anyone as cruel or heartless as him existed outside of my father.”

 

“We’re not all like that,” I tried to soothe her, but there was an edge of desperation to my voice; she looked as though she was about to cry, and that was the last thing I wanted. “I’ve never done anything like that, I’ve never—”

 

“Yeah, but there are always lower-downs in the gang, aren’t there?” she pointed out. “The ones without any specific blood on their hands. The ones they use to bring in a bit of extra cash here and there. Is that not what you are?”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Are they getting a cut of your wages?” she asked bluntly. “The money you’re getting from looking after me, how much of that will they get?”

 

“A cut,” I replied. I didn’t want to tell her how much, because I was trying to pretend it wasn’t going to happen myself.

 

“Exactly.” She nodded, seemingly satisfied. “You’re just there to pull in some green because you’re good at what you do. Of course you don’t think it’s that bad, because you’ve not seen even the half of it. You don’t know.”

 

“I know better than you.” I knew I was just being childish, and she shook her head.

 

“I’ve seen enough to know when the people I’m looking at are the bad guys,” she explained sadly. The way she looked at me then, it made my heart ache for her, for her and everything she must have seen over the years. And, right then and there, I knew I had no right to argue with her anymore. I didn’t even want to; I just wanted to wrap my arms around her and try to convince her that everything was going to be okay, even though I knew there was no point.