Page 219 of Marcello

But I didn’t.

And honestly, I couldn’t even comprehend that possibility. It was unthinkable to me. I might as well have shot him in the head while he slept. Not gonna happen.

I was a prisoner in my own home, yes –

But I was surrounded by luxury that had been purchased with blood money.

How would Romeo react if I told him the truth about my family?

What would he think of me?

Would he call me a monster?

In my own way, wasn’t I just as bad as Papa? I was certainly as bad as my mother.

What made it even worse was that – no matter how much I hated what my father did – I still loved him.

And no matter how much I hated Mama’s hypocrisy, I loved her, too.

How the fuck could I explain that to Romeo?

I was terrified he would dump me if he knew the truth.

More than that, I was afraid of him saying, You don’t have to turn them in! Why don’t you just LEAVE?

These last few weeks, I snuck out all the time to go see Romeo.

Why not just do it permanently? Why not walk away and never come back?

I told myself it was because I didn’t know any other life.

I told myself I was a helpless animal raised in captivity – that I wouldn’t survive in the wild.

But that wasn’t the truth.

The truth was… I was a coward.

I was terrified of how bone-crushingly difficult it might be out in the big, bad world…

So I chose the devil I knew.

All this sounds like I was super self-aware – but the truth is, I could barely even admit any of it to myself. Only in the dead of night when I couldn’t sleep and was alone with my thoughts in the darkness.

If I couldn’t admit it to myself, there was no way I was going to admit it to the man I loved.

And so, even though I wanted to know why he thought he deserved to go to hell…

I didn’t ask him, because I didn’t want him to start asking me questions.

I was afraid he might think I was the one who deserved to burn for eternity…

And decide there was no way he was sticking around for that.

68

During the three months we saw each other, other strange things happened.

With me, Romeo was so calm and gentle… but he had a dark side.