Garden of Sins

42. Your world, my world, Carter

Isabelle

I am Isabelle Lucia Marino and I am eighteen years old. I love green gummy worms, but I usually eat food from a gourmet kitchen.

I love jeans and sneakers, but normally, I always wear sheath dresses and heels.

I am cocky and assertive, but in my world, a woman can’t say much and is certainly not listened to.

I laugh out loud, but in my world, a woman must always be modest and refined.

My parents are Massimo and Lucia Marino and I grew up in Chicago. My life was predestined when I was still a glint in my mother’s eye.

I question everything, but I never get the answers I need because I am not allowed to ask the questions out loud.

I am intelligent, but it doesn’t matter because, in my world, a woman only has to look beautiful and make her husband happy.

My family is large and my home is Palermo. This is where my home is because my parents say so. I was raised in wealth and luxury, but I love the filth of the gutters. I love life. I love to observe and analyze people. I love getting fucked up and a sticky ground under my feet. I love chewing gum loudly and driving people crazy.

I am not allowed to argue, so I deal with conflicts by simply turning around and walking out in the middle of them. I’m impulsive, loud, moody, and I can get fucking bitchy.

These are all qualities that make me who I am, but that doesn’t matter because there are rules and directives on how I have to behave and I have to follow them in my world.

My world is dark.

It consists of powerful, broad-shouldered men who puff cigars in back rooms and shoot people whose faces they don’t like. My world consists of drugs stored in basements and women sold on the streets. My world is perfect on the outside: sparkling, clean, and orderly, but behind its doors it is dirty. So dirty and godless.

Everyone in my world wears a cross around their neck, but no one is holy and free of sin.

The boys in my world are raised to be unscrupulous, cold-blooded, unemotional, single-minded, detail-oriented, and calculating.

The girls in my world are raised to make their men happy, to sit still, to be still, to be beautiful, to be perfect, and to be breathtaking. In essence, merely exist, not live.

With you, Carter, I live. Maybe that’s why I’m so attached to you. I can laugh with you until my belly hurts. I can roll my eyes without you freaking out because you assume I am insulting your honor. I can sit with you for hours in the bar at a sticky table and make out. With you, I can be who I want to be, not who I have to be.

In your world.

But I didn’t know you had one foot in mine as well.

When my father told me to marry Dorian de Luca, my world collapsed. Obviously, I knew I would not be spared marriage. And yes, my family and Dorian’s are deeply rooted and partnered with each other. Yes, we make marriages for alliances and business purposes. Love does not exist, at least, not for everyone. Naturally, there are always exceptions, but certainly not with a man like Dorian de Luca.

Dorian.

My personal nightmare.

My escape was rushed. I moved in with the de Lucas and I was already living in Dorian’s bedroom on the third floor of the infamous villa. It’s always like that with us. After the engagement, the woman naturally moves in with the man. Usually, several generations live under one roof, the father, the sons, the wives, and the grandchildren.

That’s all well and fine.

But I had had enough.

And after that one incident delivered that final blow, which I don’t want to think about now, I panicked and ran away that same night.

I’ve actually been to every corner of Chicago. Thanks to my father, I know how the neighborhoods are divided up and where which men hang out, so I have avoided all corners that have anything to do with the de Lucas. Besides, I used to go out on the town from time to time, never alone of course, and I know everything here rather well.

I knew Dorian would have someone searching for me, just like my father, of course. Neither is better than the other, so I truly ca

That’s why I’m actually always on the lookout. I don’t have time for romance, Carter, but you sucked me in so deep, it’s hard to leave you.

Yesterday, I finally realized that I have to do this. As much as I hate to leave you behind, I have to do it. I knew you were hiding something, but who knew our worlds were so close, baby. Who knew you were working for Dorian? Of course, thank God, you’re not one of the soldiers, but it’s enough that you’re even associated with him, even if you’re only doing street work for him.

Obviously, I was skeptical at first. Of course, I wondered where you came from, but then I began to trust you more and more and the thought that you might be one of Dorian’s people gradually faded.

I just can’t believe it. You are far too good for that disgusting world and I wish you would distance yourself from it. You are an angel whose wings have been broken, I noticed that several times. In this world, you will never fly again and that is the last thing I want for you.

I have not known you for long, merely six weeks. But during those six weeks, I have spent every day with you, every free minute. Now I realize you probably did some work for the de Lucas when you had to leave during the night. You’re in over your head, Carter, and I hope you can get out.

I also know the danger I’m putting you in. If you’re working for Dorian and you don’t tell him where I am, he’ll kill you. That can never come out. I have to distance myself from you and make you forget. Forget you even though I instinctively know that’s not possible because you are too deep under my skin.

And maybe I will never forget you, but that’s okay, I don’t want to forget you at all. You’ll just be my little secret, forever, and I’ll be yours.

The feeling I’ve had these last few days is growing stronger. I have a hunch Dorian will find me soon and I should start ru

As for you, nothing has ever been so difficult for me. It really hasn’t. Not even leaving the house that night was that hard and that means something because in that house, I also left some things behind that meant something to me.

But I don’t want to drag you down deeper. The fact that Dorian meets with you personally means you are in deep. Some men have never met any of the family even though they have been working for them for fifteen years.

I have to go.

Now.

I just have to.

I glance over my shoulder when I hear you coming out of the bathroom. The whole time I was standing here by the window lost in thought with a lit cigarette burning away between my fingers, so I flick it down.

You put on your leather jacket. And if I never see you again? I would never have believed that another person besides that one, who was before you, could take up so much space in my life. But you are different, you overshadow everything.

I think in another lifetime you could have been the one for me, that one they all talk about.

You look up and your turquoise eyes, which seem so deep, meet mine. God, I love your eyes. I do.

“I have to go,” you say and I refrain from laughing. My life haunts me, Carter. It haunts me. The men who stand at the door and say “I have to go” in the middle of the night haunt me, starting with my father when I was three.