Chapter 99

Layla

I leaned against the marble countertop of the kitchen, watching as Vanessa diced vegetables with growing ease. The aroma of garlic and herbs filled the air, giving the kitchen a warmth I couldn’t feel reflected inside.

My conversation with Ethan still sat heavy in my bones, in my heart, in my very lungs, like a weight I couldn’t throw off. It didn’t help that I hadn’t seen Aldo except in passing since our less-than-amicable conversation in the den.

Not that I suspected either of us was truly or intentionally avoiding the other. But when life got busy, which it certainly had, it seemed our communication was the first thing to suffer.

“You’re quiet today.” Vanessa’s knife ceased its staccato chop, and the quiet rang in my ears. “You okay?”

I forced a smile. “A lot on my mind.”

This house feels like a gilded cage, I didn’t say.

“You want to talk about it?” Vanessa set down the knife and wiped her hands on a towel. Behind her, the stove crackled and popped merrily as a red sauce simmered away.

I hesitated.

I’d grown so used to keeping my feelings, my thoughts and worries, bottled up. It was the way of the Mafia wife, was it not? Be strong, never let them know your doubts. But there was something about the way Vanessa looked at me now …

Or maybe it was the way she’d cried on my shoulder, let me hold her together while she broke, that made me feel safe with her. That made me think she understood me in a way no one else had. Would.

In the weeks since that brutal attack, Vanessa had become so much more than a helper around the house. She’d become a friend. Family.

“I don’t know where to start,” I admitted.

“How about,” Vanessa pulled out a bar stool, “with sitting?”

I shifted sideways, pulled out the second stool. “Only if you join me.”

She sat. I sat.

And I realized, I didn’t know where to begin. Aldo? Ethan? My son’s future? My life in general?

I started with a question instead. “How much do you know about my husband?”

Vanessa’s gaze tilted down to her hands, folded atop the counter. And when she spoke, her voice was a murmur. “I know he’s not just a businessman. And I know … I know it can’t be easy for you—a doctor and a good, kind, compassionate person—to be married to him.”

“No,” I huffed the saddest little laugh. “My parents were killed by mobsters. I became a doctor in my father’s honor. And then, when I was faced with the same choice—to save a killer or let him fall to his wounds—I chose the opposite.”

It had all been downhill from there, hadn’t it?

“You chose to save a life,” Vanessa said, her voice a whisper. “Because it’s not our job to play God.”

“No.” But how many times had I done it since that day? How many times had I chosen my life, my family’s lives, over the lives of others? “It feels like a betrayal to my father, marrying into the Mafia.”

My words hung between us, sharp and bitter and so very sad. Heavy. A weight in the air, a truth I couldn’t unspeak, couldn’t take back.

“I never thought I’d have to choose between love and safety. Between my son having a father or a future.”

“Those are terrible choices.” Vanessa reached across the counter to squeeze my hand, and in response, my throat squeezed, too. “Choices no one person should have to make. Especially not alone.”

“And Ethan …” I sighed. “I know he just wants to help. He wants to offer me an out—a way to escape. But I don’t want to escape. I love Aldo. I—”

Another truth choked at the back of my esophagus, one I’d known, always known, but had never dated to speak aloud.

But now, here, with this newfound friend of mine, I thought the time might just be right. “I think I might be made for this life.”

Vanessa’s fingers squeezed mine again, but she said nothing. Didn’t argue, didn’t agree. Was she, too, thinking of the night I’d saved her? How I’d reacted with such seamless movement, no hesitation, no doubt?

I’d taken out a man nearly twice my size without so much as breaking a sweat.

“I’ve had dealings with gangs, too.” Vanessa’s words were so low, I almost thought I’d imagined them. “Not with a husband, but … with family. My brother was caught up in gangs when we were younger. I tried to pull him out, but he wouldn’t leave that life behind. Eventually, it destroyed him.”

“I’m so sorry.” My chest constricted painfully around my heart. “Being here must be so challenging for you—”

“That’s just it.” Vanessa’s green eyes lifted to mine. “It doesn’t. Being here feels … right. Seeing you, Eli, Aldo, Melissa … you’re all just people. Good people. It’s confusing as hell.”

I nodded. “Trust me, I know the feeling.”

“We’ve both had the Mafia take things from us,” Vanessa said. “And now we’re both being forced to view the thing we thought we hated through another lens.”

“Yes.” I nodded. How beautifully, how simply, she’d put it. “Doesn’t help when the whole world's viewing it through the hate-lens still.”

“It certainly doesn’t. People like Ethan, who just think they’re helping when they’re really making everything worse.” She shook her head. “They can never understand what it feels like to be trapped between love and duty.”

“That’s exactly it,” I sighed, folded my arms atop the counter, and set my head down on them. “I feel like I’m constantly torn. I love Aldo, but I worry about Eli growing up in this world. And Ethan … he thinks he’s protecting us, but he doesn’t see the man Aldo is when he’s with us. He only sees the criminal.”

“You’re not alone.” Vanessa wrapped her arm around my shoulders and leaned in to hug me. “Neither of us is, not now that we have each other.”

A sob caught in my throat. A single tear leaked out the corner of my eye. “I’ve been so alone for so long. I love Aldo, but he can’t understand.”

“But I can.” Vanessa squeezed, and when I reached for her hand, I squeezed back. “Just consider me your sister from another mister.”

I chuckled. But she was right. This felt like more than friendship. It felt like something bigger, something forced not by blood, but by shared pain and understanding.

It felt like, in Vanessa, I’d found someone who saw me—not for what I was or what I’d done, not for what I believed or who I married or where I lived.

Vanessa saw me, and a friendship like that was something I’d never had before.

That conversation in the kitchen … it was only to be the first of many. Our conversations grew to include cooking, wine, late nights in Vanessa’s room. Quiet moments where we could simply be two women trying to navigate a world that seemed determined to break us.

When the hospital days were long, when Aldo was gone for too long or came home with bruised knuckles, when Eli spent too long in the training arena, refused to come in for dinner … Vanessa was the one who listened. Who understood.

And little by little, she opened up to me, too. So I learned little pieces of her life—how her single mother had always struggled to support her and her brother. How her brother had turned to gang violence. How she’d begged him to get out—and it had driven them apart.

How she’d never forgiven herself.

How she’d been running ever since.

And just as she understood me, I understood her. Like two halves to the same whole. Two sides, one coin.