It was not the same when Fianna entered.
She'd grown up here her whole life—the Kensington flat with all the books and paintings and the strong, smoky smell of her father's pipe tobacco. It had always been a sanctuary, a place of safety and love. But this afternoon, when she entered the house, she felt something in the air. Something heavy. Something menacing.
Her dad was in the living room, where he had been waiting for her, by the window in his armchair. He seemed older than she had recalled, with lines on his face from worry and something else, something that seemed like guilt.
"Fianna," he said, rising to meet her. "Sit down."
She sat across from him, Dante's letter still clutched in her hand. The sunlight streaming through the curtains illuminated the room with shadows that writhed and shifted like ghosts.
"Dad," she said. "You know Dante. How do you know Dante?"
Giovanni gazed at her for a long time, and she saw the war in his eyes—his daughter's love fighting the secrets he had kept all those years.
"I know him because he was sent to kill me," he finally spoke.
The words hung between them like a death sentence. Fianna's heart skipped a beat, then hammered away like a caged bird.
"What?"
"Dante Valerio Inferni," Giovanni said, his voice unwavering but his hands shaking. "He's your cousin. And he was sent here by his father to kill me."
Fianna stared at him, her head reeling from what he'd revealed. Attempting to grasp the man she loved being involved in death and violence.
"I don't know," she gasped.
Giovanni stood and walked over to the window and gazed out upon the street below. When he spoke, he did so in a whisper, as if addressing ghosts.
"I was born into a crime syndicate, Fianna. The Inferni clan. Your great-grandfather ran the Italian underworld with an iron fist. He had two kids—a son and a daughter. The son inherited the empire. My mother, the daughter, fled to Ireland to escape the shadows."
He turned to her again, and she could see the hurt in his eyes.
"I grew up in Ireland, outside of the family business. But I was found, as a boy, by my uncle—Dante's grandfather. He drew me into the family business, money and power. And I was its hero, temporarily."
Fianna's head reeled, everything she ever knew shattering beneath her feet.
"You were a criminal?" she accused.
"I was. For years. I did things I'm ashamed of. Things that still haunt me." He collapsed back in the chair, shaking with his hands. "But then I met your mother. She taught me there was more to life than blood and death. She taught me what it meant to love."
He looked at her, and she could see love in his eyes—the love that had pulled him back from the depths.
"I left the clan. Abandoned all my affiliations. The violence, the riches, the power. I chose love over contempt. Life over nothing."
"And they never forgave you," Fianna whispered.
"No. They never forgave me. And now Dante's father—my cousin—sent his son to kill me. To remind everyone the Inferni don't forget."
Fianna gazed, still looking at the letter in her hand, the words that had broken her heart. Now she knew. Now she understood why he'd left, why he'd said there were things he couldn't tell her.
"But he didn't kill you," she said.
"No. He didn't. Because he loved you."
She'd been hit in the gut. She remembered Dante—his smile, his laugh, the way he'd looked at her like she was the most gorgeous thing he'd ever seen. And she knew now that he was her cousin. That he was present to kill her father. That all she'd believed about him had been lies.
And she loved him.
"How can I love a man who was sent to kill you?" she asked.
Giovanni's fingers wrapped around hers, his palm warm and comforting.
"Because he didn't. Because he broke his duty. Because he broke his training and chose love. Because he chose you over all he'd ever been taught."
"But he's my cousin," she said. "That's. that's wrong."
"It's forbidden," Giovanni agreed. "But love doesn't always obey. Sometimes it hits us in the most unexpected place we'd ever dreamed of being. Sometimes it spins things around."
Fianna recalled the painting she'd done—the rose with the dagger stuck in its middle. Beauty and danger, side by side. Just like their affair.
"Where is he now?" she inquired.
"Scotland. Refuge. He had to escape because his father's guards are hunting him. Because he betrayed the clan for you."
Fianna's eyes welled with tears. "Will I ever get to see him again?"
"I don't know," Giovanni said honestly. "But I do know this—he loves you. And he's willing to die for you. That's not nothing."
She read the letter once more, reading it with a new grasp. She now knew what he meant when he was talking about things in his own history that would be painful for her. She knew now why he'd had to leave.
"I love him too," she whispered.
"I know you do. And I see. But you have to see something else, Fianna. This world—the world that I am from—is not a safe world. It's full of people who have no use for love or hope or beauty. People who care for nothing but power and blood."
"Like Dante's father."
"Like Dante's father. And if you're going to be with Dante, if you're going to love Dante, you're choosing to enter that world. You're choosing to confront the darkness that hangs over it."
She remembered the way Dante had looked at her, spoken to her, stirred something inside of her that made her alive and human and hopeful. She remembered the way he'd kissed her cheek, the way he'd said he'd return to visit her.
And she knew, no matter what the cost, no matter what the danger, that she would do it. That she would choose love.
"I choose him," she said.
Giovanni moved slowly, as though he had anticipated that this would occur. "Then you'd better be ready. For what is coming. For the darkness that is coming for us all."
"What do you mean?"
"Dante's father will not let this pass unpunished. He will not watch his son betray the family and escape. And he will not watch you—the daughter of the man who deserted the family—stand in his way and thwart his vengeance."
Fianna shivered at the cruelty, though the sun burned fiercely in the late afternoon.
"What do you mean?"
"I'm telling you, you're not safe. We're not safe. The dead are coming for us."
He stood up and pulled back his chair and walked over to a bookshelf, taking out an old photo. He extended it to Fianna, and she examined it—a large house in the background behind a cluster of figures in black, all of them serious-looking and threatening.
"Your great-grandfather, that fellow," Giovanni indicated the man in the center. "The one who started it all. And his son—Dante's grandfather. The one who brought me into the darkness."
Fianna looked at the photograph, observing the faces of these men who had decided her destiny without even her knowledge. Men who had established the world that had led Dante to her.
"And that's me," Giovanni declared, pointing to a younger man who stood on the edge of the group. "Before I knew better. Before I chose love over hate."
He replaced the photo and stashed it away.
"The past has a way of finding us, Fianna. We can run as far as we can, work as hard as we can at being different, but the ghosts always overtake us."
"What do we do?" she asked.
"We fight," Giovanni replied. "We fight for love. We fight for hope. We fight for the future we want to make."
He looked at her, and she could see the determination there—the same determination she'd ever noticed in Dante's eyes when he'd looked at her.
"We fight together."
Fianna nodded, and something within her shifted. Something that tasted of strength. Of determination. Of beginnings.
"Together," she said.
And sitting beside him in the still living room, haunted by the specters of what had been lost and the promise of what was to be gained, Fianna knew that no matter how it went, no matter what darkness pursued her, she was irrevocably transformed from the woman who had loved a stranger in an art studio.
She had loved.
And she was willing to fight for it.
Even if it meant facing ghosts of the past.
Even if it meant loving her more than anything.
Even if it meant being on the wrong side of her own flesh and blood.