We’re back at the restaurant where we first met for our blind date, where I took her into the manager’s office and knocked her up, and where I eventually dragged her through the parking lot and kidnapped her. We’re even sitting at the same table, the one with the view, except this time I made us a reservation so we didn’t have to kick anyone out of the spot.

We’re working on dessert in a happy kind of quiet. We’ve talked of inconsequential things throughout the dinner, but there have been more quiet moments than moments of conversation, more meaningful bursts of eye contact and subtle facial expressions that say more than words could. We’re both shutting out what’s coming, and what might happen so that we can enjoy this moment.

It’s the first time things have felt anywhere close to right, like they could actually work between us. Except of course, there’s the looming knowledge that I’m almost certainly going to prison right along with my father, as soon as the informant’s case goes through trial. I didn’t tell Neela this, but I made a testimony with her father, taking the blame for everything I know my men could’ve been implicated for. The mole they got may still try to implicate some of them with his testimony, but my own admission of guilt should carry more weight than his accusations. The only people taking the fall should be myself and my father’s side of the crew.

“It doesn’t feel fair,” she says after we’ve finished dessert. She looks beautiful in a black dress with her hair let down, large eyes glistening in the candlelight. “I finally feel like things could really work out between us, and they’re probably going to take you away from us.”

I can see now that she’s been holding back emotion, because her last few words falter and tears well up in her eyes.

"We'll get through it." I may have done the honorable thing by covering for my men and taking the path that led away from bloodshed, but I'm still no saint. I also made sure the FBI's witness knew how much money would find its way into his accounts if he shifted the blame for anything myself and my men were involved into my father. I was also careful in my own wording to Neela's father so that I wasn't actually admitting anything explicitly, just accepting blame for anything that might be admitted. It was a delicate dance of words, and I’ll have to hope I pulled it off. I’ll also have to hope the witness can be bought. Everyone has a price, and I made sure to pick a price no one would refuse.

She nods, smiling sadly. “You never did tell me why they call you The Beast,” she says.

“Because I’m not proud of how I earned the name. I never was.”

She lowers her eyes, seeming to understand all too well. “I won’t keep asking you. I’m sorry.”

“No. You deserve to know the truth. All the truths I’ve kept from you. Like the fact that I lied about never speaking to your father when I kidnapped you four months ago. I did. I blackmailed him into stalling the case because I knew my father would come back for your sister as a last-ditch effort if he heard of any progress, no matter how much I convinced him your father had refused to help us when we kidnapped you.”

“Why lie about that?” she asks, looking wounded.

“I didn’t want you to worry, to realize how much pressure was on your father to keep you safe from mine. But you deserve to know, and I’m sorry I kept it from you.”

She nods slowly. “It’s okay, Enzo. You haven’t exactly been in the world’s easiest position, here. Honestly, my role is a whole lot easier. I just have to sit around and let my knight in shining armor keep me safe. You’re the one making all the sacrifices and taking risks.”

I give her a half-smile. “That’s how it should be. I don’t want you to feel any more stress than we can avoid. I’d never forgive myself if something happened with the pregnancy.”

She’s about to say something but I silence her with a raised hand. “I need to finish. I need to tell you what I did. The reason they call me that....”

She closes her mouth and swallows audibly.

“Despite what you might think about the mafia, murder isn’t taken lightly. There are usually one or two guys in an entire family who are responsible for that kind of work, guys who have nothing to lose and no conscience. All the other muscle may end up doing a lot of gun-waving, making threats, and using intimidation, but the vast majority of the guys have never even shot their guns at someone.

“Bribery can cover up scuffles and brawls and all kinds of corruption, but it’s hard as hell to cover up a body, no matter how much money you have to throw around, especially when you’re the first place cops will start sniffing around.

“That’s why the guy I killed made an impression,” I say, watching her reaction. I haven’t admitted to killing anyone in front of her before, and I expect to see a kind of light go out, like she’s turning away from me once and for all, casting me off because she knows how deep my corruption went. Instead, I see only sympathetic interest and pain, so I continue telling the story.

“He was a Toretti. Even though there has always been a rivalry between our families, it had gone on long enough without any serious blow-ups that it wasn’t unusual for our guys to talk to their guys, give them shit, fuck around, that kind of thing. I was young back then, eighteen and hot-headed, but I had big ideas. I wanted to turn the family legit even back then. I saw all the money we took in and how we wasted it, just letting it sit in dusty briefcases hidden in stashes and in safes. I knew we could invest it and turn a profitable business into an explosive one. I figured if we did well enough, we could all leave the crime behind us and just enjoy it.

“That’s where Adrian Toretti came in. He had been talking shit about my ideas. Thought I was a pussy for wanting out of the hard life. He made it his mission to convince as many people as he could that I was soft. I ignored it for a while. Then my own guys started giving me shit, too. They were calling me soft.

“There is no favoritism when it comes to my father. Whether you are blood or a recruit, you have to earn your place in the family. A big part of that is by reputation. So trashing my reputation was trashing my spot in the family, chipping away at it bit by bit until I was slipping farther down the social ladder.

“I got drunk one night and ended up walking into this dive bar most of the Toretti’s used as a kind of hangout. I was just planning on kicking the shit out of Adrian, but it got out of hand. Once I had landed a few good punches on him, half his crew jumped in and started trying to fuck me up. I felt one of them going for my gun, so I flipped. I don’t even remember deciding to do it. All I know is my gun was in my hand and there were holes in Adrian that didn’t used to be there, blood splattering the wall behind him.” I pause, looking down at the table as I’m overcome by the memory, the smell of the smoke in my nose and the ringing in my ears.

“Oh, Enzo,” Neela says softly. I’m surprised to hear sympathy in her voice instead of condemnation.

“The story that made it back to my guys was that I’d marched straight into a Toretti hangout, gunned down one of their most promising young captains, and somehow walked out of there with just some cuts and scrapes. They got even more crazy for the story when no cops ever came asking about me. Turned out, the diner was loaded with drugs and dirty money, so the Toretti covered up the murder to protect themselves.

“So I got a reputation as a cold-blooded killer because I was a dumb kid with a temper.”

“It sounds like you regret it, though,” she says.

"I do. The only good that came of it was the way it made me more sure I wanted to find a way to get the family out of the old ways. If I had a son someday, I wanted to raise him better, so he wouldn't be a loose cannon."

“I think you will,” she says. “You made mistakes, and you’ve done terrible things, but you’ve learned from them. If we couldn’t make amends for our past, then what would be the point of living on once we’ve made a mistake?”

I grin. “I don’t deserve you.”

She quirks an eyebrow. “Who said I was yours?”

“You want proof?” I ask. “You have five minutes,” I say with a smirk. “Follow me into the manager’s office within five minutes, or I walk out of here.”

I stand up, leaving her gaping at me in amused astonishment as I walk toward the manager’s office, tracing the same steps I took four months ago but with an entirely different set of thoughts rumbling around my skull this time.

This time, no part of me hopes she’ll run. I want her to follow me into the office with every fiber of my being.