Bella settled in at a booth at The Treble Club during the day hours when the restaurant was being cleaned and restocked.  She'd sent Linval to retrieve the young man Aurelio.  It was time for that conversation the kid was wanting to have.  She hoped that she could give him some sense of the man he did not know and do right by William.  And, with luck, forge a bond with the boy who was the last bit left of the second most important man in her life.

In the past, the appearance of someone like Linval would have meant that he'd screwed up royally by either stepping onto the turf of a much more powerful criminal or by being seen at something he probably shouldn't have been doing in the first place. Usually a death threat would be delivered and always, always a beating would commence. So it was that Aurelio had cringed a little at first instinct when he saw the muscled man approach while he'd been perusing the new opportunities available to him in this fine city.

Fortunately, Linval made clear his purpose and the jitters faded. So far the people here had been nothing but understanding, in spite of his jarring approach. What reason would they have to change that now? He followed Linval to a waiting vehicle and rode along to a club that was ostensibly closed, but of course nothing was ever closed for the kind of people he was now associating with. Isabella Byrne was one of the chief among these to have such privileges. Aurelio followed Linval to her booth and bowed his head to her in respect.

"You called for me ma'am?"

He waited for her response stock still, not wanting to once again overstep his bounds as he had in their first interaction.

Bella smiled.  "Would you like a drink?  I'm having tea today, but I've got other fares just over the bar?"

Once Aurelio was settled with a drink and seated at her table she dismissed Linval and the two of them were alone at long last.  She stared at Aurelio for a time and then smiled.  "You have your mother's look in so many ways... but I do see your father there too."

Bella blinked and shook her head.  "Forgive me.  I forget that you know so little about him and your opinions on him aren't based on the same experiences as mine.  In truth, I suppose you feel like you're chasing ghosts.  Well... I hope I can help with that."

She drew a breath, knowing this was a very big topic for both of them, "I wanted to give you a little time here in Philly to settle in before we had this talk - both out of a desire to be kind to you and for my own selfish reasons.  You see, you represent a huge omission on the part of my dearest friend in all the world and that doesn't square well with a man who saved my life repeatedly, a man who loved me, and whom I suppose I still loved in return.  As you can imagine that isn't something I'd care for you to repeat."

She sighed.

"I saw William Bowden as one of the most honorable and good men I've ever met - bar none."

She shook her head. 

"He tried to tell me there were things about him, things I didn't know and wouldn't care for - but I'm afraid he never told me the specifics.  In truth I was a poor friend.  I never pushed him to tell me.  There is a fair chance that your life might have been different if I had made different choices and so you see... you're not just here in my protection because of who your mother and father were, though that is part of it... but you're also here because I fear that part of how you lived your life was due to the choices I made in mine." 

Aurelio accepted his host's offer to take a seat, but kept to water alone. If this was a business call, it would pay to remain clear headed and aware, and if it was a personal call then even more so. He didn't want to let the combination of drink and emotion to get in the way of finding what he'd come to this city for in the first place.

The departure of the bodyguard took him by surprise though. Either she trusted him far more than he had any right to expect, or she felt like he wasn't enough of a threat to warrant that kind of protection. If the latter, she'd be absolutely correct as much as he hated to admit it. He'd been able to do enough learning in the last few days to understand the kind of people he was mingling with and that they were out of his league. He silently listened to her words about his parents and gradually came to the decision that it was more of the former. Of course, she was right to think he was no threat to her regardless, particularly with the wealth of information she possessed, but that was besides the point.

Aurelio searched for the words to respond to her admissions to him. While he had his doubts about his father's nature, he certainly hadn't considered that he ought to blame the person in front of him for what had happened. Hell, if his mother hadn't found him until she did, Isabella probably hadn't even known his father until Aurelio was half grown already and getting his feet wet on the wrong side of the law.

"I appreciate your sentiment ma'am, but out of the three folks who had a say in what my life has been, two of them are gone and the last one is on the other side of the table from you. Maybe you could have found out if...well, if things had gone a different route, but the ship had probably already sailed."

Aurelio paused and thought about it for a moment. His father had admitted to her that there were things in his life that were unpleasant, even for someone in her line of work. Tends to suggest something personal. Maybe he'd had a heart about things after all?

"For what it's worth, you sound an awful lot like my mother when she'd talk about him. She used to tell me about what a big heart he had, though from the sounds of it he might have had a little rougher edges in those days. I tried to find other folks back home that knew him, but he didn't seem to have a lot of friends in New York. Or at least not the kind that'd talk about him much. My grandparents," The words felt odd to say about people he'd never known in his life, "Were already dead by the time I was old enough to look for them so that was a dead end too. Right now, the way I figure it, you and your family are just about the only place I got left to look."

His throat was beginning to tighten and he found himself gulping from the glass in front of him in an effort to force both that feeling and the lump of anger and regret back down. They'd have no place here tonight.

"Maybe he did keep a secret from you out of worry. If he did, then he obviously wasn't worried enough to do something about it though. Then again, maybe I wasn't the only loose end in his life. It could be that there are angles I don't know about either and that was what he meant. I might not have even registered compared to whatever that was."

"But what if she's right?" Aurelio thought to himself, "What if he really was a decent guy? Why would he have left and never come back?" The thought was a hard one alongside his old grudges, but he'd have to accept all possibilities unless he could prove them wrong. His mother and Isabella both had the same fondness for the old man and while he'd met the kind of man's men that could pull off tricking women like that, he couldn't help but doubt that it was the case here. The kind of women who fell for that usually weren't the sort to move in these circles and either way they don't usually stay fooled long, especially when the meet one another.

"It could be that I've got a lot to learn about the old man too. If he half the man you say he is, and that my mother told me stories about, then maybe he had a good reason for leaving us. For now, I'd be happy to hear more about why you think the way you did about him. I've got nothing but time."

"Well, then I'll tell you a story or three and we'll see where that leads.  Before we go a step further into this, I need one thing from you and one thing only.  I want your word that this stays between us.  If I put my heart on this table, and you ever find a reason to use it against me, I will send you to sleep with the fishes out in that bay.  Am I clear?"

Only after Aurelio agreed, she drew a breath and got a faraway look in her brown eyes.  

"How do I begin?"  

Her question almost seemed sincere, as if she expected someone to tell her how to explain all that had happened to Aurelio.  As if some unseen spirit could give her guidance on how to navigate a tale as complex as any human life had ever been.

"Our meeting wasn't our beginning really.  I'm a Catholic, and not just in name as so many of our friends are.  I believe that God guides us and that there is a plan to how we move through this fucked up and crazy world.  I've seen too much not to believe it now - but when I met you father, I wasn't so sure.  He's one of the reasons I know that God is betting on me.  William and I, we weren't just chance, it was in the stars that we were meant to meet.  What we did with that... now, that was on us."

She looked down into her tea, her brow furrowed.

"We grew up in the same damn neighborhood, but my mother sent me away to a boarding school so we never crossed paths.  The boarding school was my mother's way of trying to keep me away from the life that my father lived.  I know that by now you must have heard who my father was... the Godfather Salvatore Luciano.  The Cosa Nostra isn't just my heritage - it's my legacy, but your father didn't come up in that.  He had a hard father of his own.  It's a common theme among those of us here in this thing of ours... rough fathers."

Her voice was far away, seemingly deep in her own thoughts.

"Will was small growing up.  He told me that his dad didn't think too much of him - even when he hit his first big growth spurt.  He met your uncle Conor when he was a young teen.  Conor taught him about fighting.  Helped him to stand up for himself on the streets.  I know he and Conor were close - even at the end of their days - but back then Conor was hard on him.  He beat street smarts into William and your mother, she played nursemaid to your kind-hearted father who hadn't yet become the man I'd later know and love."

"The way he told the story, and please forgive me, it was some time ago when I heard the tale - Connor helped him learn how to fight and he eventually had a showdown with a street gang.  Your father stood his ground and won their respect.  And then, he kept growing and growing until he was the biggest fellow among them.  And being the biggest and strongest, David had transformed into Goliath.  Based on what I know... it must have been during that last summer in New York that you were conceived."

She looked up to Aurelio.  

"From there I think that Will traveled out to the West Coast.  For someone to run so far, I always figured he'd done something really bad... a crime he couldn't stick around for, the sort of thing you don't ask a man about.  I know he eventually landed in LA.  He joined up with a crew run by a fellow named Elyan.  He's dead nearly a decade ago now."

"The crew your father had been a part of in LA was called 'The Skinwalkers' and when Will and I stood in the same neighborhood again for the second time in our lives - we were on opposite sides of a brutal war.  My side won, if you can call it that.  We didn't just kill men and women that night... we salted the damn earth.  There are few folks who lived in those cities who can tell you the story left and those who can... well, like your father I'm sure they're not happy to revisit the memories.  We left him with nothing, not even a eulogy of loyalty to hang his hat on."

She closed her eyes speaking softly, "But William did what William always had done..."  She opened her eyes, "Despite the shit, no matter how deep, he pushed forward unwilling to accept the universe's final word on anything.  And, he came to Philidelphia.  To Jack Mezzo of Race Street.  Then, this third time we found ourselves in the same neighborhood, as they say it was the charm."

"Nothing we talk about leaves this room."

Easy thing to say really, considering his personal stake in the whole thing as well. Besides, he'd have to explain how he got here and nobody really need to know about him inheriting that drawing. Ever. So he gave his agreement and listened to the story.

A Catholic? He supposed he'd believe it when he saw it but for now no reason to challenge it. Too many that say the words without the heart in them these days. It was also something his mother had warned him off mentioning if he ever followed her to his father. Strange that a man that averse to it would fall in with a good Catholic woman.

Well, seemingly a devoted one at least. Not sure if anyone in the mafia was a good Catholic.

And she's another New Yorker? Hell of a lot of coincidences there. Even though he'd always been a small time criminal back home, he'd certainly heard of the woman's father. He was a damned celebrity in their circles and half the folks on the legitimate side of the line probably knew him. With that in mind, he was absolutely sure that his father shouldn't have had anything to do with her. Trust fund brats don't mix with street nobodies.

Aurelio almost chuckled at Isabella's mention of the shared problem with fathers among those in this thing. At least he'd dodged a bullet there.

The old man left New York over a crime? That's a start at least. The rest of the New York part of the story matched the rumors he'd heard on the streets and the whispers he'd gotten out of Connor as a kid. Small kid, big dreams. Took what he learned and ran head first into danger. Acted before he'd think. Then his mother would stop the story. The parts after were new, but not terribly revealing. Another little crew, another little disaster. The fact that this woman was on the other side of the disaster was a piece of interest though. Usually men don't get involved with the folks that shoot their people. If he hadn't seen that drawing and had that letter from his mother inviting him to Philadelphia he would have thought that Mrs. Byrne was lying to his face but the evidence was clear enough.

He took a few moments to compose himself before speaking to try to avoid any missteps.

"Sounds like you two had a real Romeo and Juliet situation on your hands. Two real different families, at war with one another, things never quite lining up. At least it seems to have ended on better terms than they did."

But that had to have been when the Lucianos were still a powerhouse in Michigan. How would his father being in Philadelphia make a difference?

"Please excuse me for interrupting, but wasn't your father a big shot in Detroit? Doesn't seem real conducive to being in the neighborhood with a guy who lives in Philly. I suppose at least it was before your husband though, considering the reaction he had last time I met him."

"Well... you see that's why weren't not having this discussion in front of my husband.  But I'll get to that.  When I met your father it was in New York, not Philly.  He was at a casino and I had wandered in... deep in a depression.  I was a crew leader in Detroit.  A Don.  One of the youngest in all the States.  I had just lost my fiancee and I was in a bad place.  I'd been working up the courage all day to eat my gun..."

She let that hang a moment.  

"But I couldn't.  So, there I was at a bar in the casino thinking about how I could die without having to do the deed myself.  I cooked up this plan to go pick a fight with a man I knew wouldn't hesitate.  And if that failed I'd get into the ring at his fight club and let one of his goons beat on me in a way I figured I deserved.  You see, I believed that my fiancee had been beaten to death by members of the FBN.  He'd told me to run and he'd meet up with me later... only he never came and I couldn't get past it."

"Your father was drinking and trying not to think about the Skinwalkers and both of us sincerely considered losing our sorrows in a bed together... but... my depression got the better of us and so instead of sleeping with your father that night I dragged him to Tyler Durden's Fight Club."

She sighed.

"When he realized what I was doing, your dad had himself put on the fight roster to try and stop me.  Durden - sick fuck that he is - put your dad and me in the ring together.  We fought.  Yeah... I beat the hell out of him but your old man he kept taking it, letting me just... empty my guilt and heart onto his face.  Eventually, I got tired out.  I collapsed into his arm and with a face that looked a bit like hamburger, he picked me up and told every bastard in the room that the fight was done and we were leaving.  It was the bravest and most loving thing he could have done for me that night.  Unfortunately, Durden wasn't one for shows of love and kindness... he wanted his pound of flesh."

"Durden wouldn't let us leave.  Said we had to fight until it was over.  So one of us had to be unconscious to leave.  Your father refused and I was too weak to take out a professional fighter like your dad.  So Durden got into the ring with your father.  A godfather and a wise guy... the room went nuts.  It was ... terrifying.  Durden's men held me back and I watched as your father was beaten in the same nightmareish way I dreamed that my Elias had been.  Your father went down so hard I was sure he was dead."

Bella sighed.    

"I realized I didn't want to die like that... and I didn't want your father to die either.  I was scared and I wanted to live and it was because of Will Bowden I found that out.  He saved my life that night for the first time.  An act he repeated several times in his life - but again, I'm getting ahead of myself."

She smiled.

"I begged for William's life.  Durden granted it, hoping to use what he'd got out of us that night to orchestrate chaos in the cities... to destroy the great peace that my parents and Will's Godfather were responsible for.  I took him out of the club all on my own, past all Durden's jeering men and I sat up with him all night.  I was worried he'd die... but he was a tough fucker.  The only person I know who could take a beating better... is my husband.  Will and Gavin are cut from the same cloth I think - probably why we got into the trouble we did."

She chuckled looking thoughtful for a moment, giving Aurelio a chance to speak.

That was a hell of a lot of trust she was putting in him.

Dons don't just talk about things like offing themselves. That sort of weakness can get a person in deep shit and very likely resting somewhere out in the bay if the wrong person hears. That she'd offer that kind of information was the kind of vouch that men wait a lifetime for. It rankled a bit that it was at least in part because of his father, and not just his own actions, but as the rest of the story went on he could begin to really understand the why. His old man had given an awful lot towards her finding herself where she was now. Alive and whole, and in her own happily ever after.

But the old man was dead and she wasn't. At some point he'd drawn the short straw, probably on something just as nuts as what she was describing. Not many men would pull that kind of thing these days, not least of which because most men who did ended up getting torn to pieces by the sort of guys like the Durdens who only looked out for themselves. That those scum balls still managed to dip their fingers into the seven cities was a testament to just how persistent they could be.

"I'm starting to see why you and Mr. Byrne reacted the way you did when I walked into the picture. If you don't mind me being candid, the two of you sound like you were a couple of folks drowning in the bay trying to push each other out of the water. Damnedest thing is it sounds like it must of worked at least a little. You both ended up in Philly after all."

Only it didn't work out as well for one of you as it did for the other. Then again the old man did seem to have an awful lot going for him here and that was nothing to look down on. He just hated that the man's decisions had cost so much for the boy he'd left behind. Hearing that the older man had spent time back in New York was an extra frustration as well. It meant he'd missed more opportunities to find the life he'd been denied. The family that had always been just out of reach. It was almost like fate enjoyed dangling the world just out of his reach and watching him bat at it like a cat.

"Forgive me again if I'm out of place, but when a wise guy gets into that kind of trouble for a Don, gets beat half to death and keeps them alive at great personal expense, doesn't that normally end with the wise guy finding favor with the Don's people and falling in with them and not the other way around? Seems like things were backwards. Then again, I suppose it's not a normal situation that has a guy that low on the totem pole fist fighting Godfathers either."

My God the old man was a nutjob. Was he as suicidal as she was? A guy without his button making passes at a Don from another city and trying to lay hands on a Godfather wasn't just unheard of it was unthinkable! It was a miracle he'd lived as long as he did.

Aurelio took a big gulp of water from his glass to stifle the thoughts passing through his mind. He knew he wasn't an objective opinion on these matters and it would be better if he tried not to let his own feelings creep in. So far, the story had told him that his father was both brave and impulsive. The sort that make a name for themselves, both in the business and in the obituaries.

It also told him that his father could care about other people, which continued to make his own history more of a mystery.

"Your husband seems to come up an awful lot when my father gets talked about. I'm guessing that there's some history there too. You all took me in like one of your own though, which I'm still having trouble reconciling with what I know. I mean, most guys wouldn't be too keen on seeing their wife talk like this about another guy especially if there was a history between them. I'd probably flip my lid if I were him and some kid came along who was..."

Aurelio paused. What was he to her? He was nothing really, not by any ordinary standards. He was an old friend's child. At best he was the sort of connection that might call a person "aunt" or "uncle" just because it was easier than explaining to your kid why someone was around so much who wasn't related by blood. It wasn't what he was though that made this strange. It was what he almost was.

His thoughts found the words he'd nearly let slip. Who was almost your step-son. The words rolled and metamorphosed before leaving his mouth.

"Who was a reminder of an old flame."

Bella shook her head trying to erase the image of the black wolf in the water, snapping his jaws at her as they were pulled one another down into the black depths of the nightmarish waters of her dreams.  She tried not to think of the bay that he really did rest in, if only for a short time before they had fished out his body... and his hat.  A hat which now had a treasured place in a house in Port Huron, MI. on a shelf with a dozen other items that she shared with no one else.  A thing that no one was likely to see until her children, Gavin, or Tara found it after her own death.

"Not just an old flame."  Bella whispered sadly, clearly caught up in the thoughts of her past.  "Calling William an old flame over-simplifies what he was to me and what we were to each other."

A small smile grew.  "He should have been rewarded, but my father wasn't the usual Godfather and maybe because of my own mistakes he felt he needed to put his anger over my life being in danger somewhere.  We told him and Will's Godfather about the fight, about Will putting hands on me and drawing my blood... by rights my father had the ability to ask for your Father's life but as fate would have it, he wanted your father to rise to his potential and offer to marry me.  So, instead of killing him for shedding the blood of a Don, my father beat the hell out of your dad.  So for the second time inside a month your father endured a Godfather's wrath while pursuing me."

She smiled.

"I came to Philly hoping to find him, to see what my father had done to him.  To tell him that my father was already planning our lives together and to see how that sat with him... and instead, I was found by a member of his crew, another wise guy named Gavin Byrne."

"Gavin had a keen eye for women who were in pain.  Also a strange proclivity for wanting to play the hero despite his confirmed bachelor status.  His reputation for drinking, gambling, and womanizing proceeded him.  He was exactly the sort of man my father would have shot for looking sideways at me.  And I suppose I was still feeling reckless, albeit not suicidal.  So when Gavin asked me to hop a plane, mere hours after meeting him, and fly out of the country for a wild night to forget my troubles... I supposed maybe this was the way to forget my fiancee so I could have a future with William.  So I committed to a course in my head.  I'd fly out of the country where no eyes could see - literally burn away the memory of my love for a dead man in the arms of someone I had zero investment in... and come home to being planning my life with Will Bowden."

She smiled meekly.  "Gavin and I could never have known that neither of us would survive the other unchanged.  When we came home I still believed I'd had a much needed weekend of talking about my love for a dead man and," she smirked, "a good time."

She sighed.  "William and I began seeing each other.  The art you have shows how serious we became - almost overnight.  William was highly favored by his Don and Godfather for putting his neck out to save me.  We both knew his future was bright.  We made connections with people far outside our circles who saw in us a power couple, a dream team of mafia legacy and blood combined with the fire of youth and ambition.  Everything we touched for that short period of time turned to gold.  Your father was ... in a word... perfect."

She smiled.  "Of course, what I learned much later, was that as I was planning my perfect life with the golden boy William Bowden... he and Gavin ended up having a night out drinking in which their shared ties to me emerged and ... as I understand it, they fought.  Legend has it the bar fight ended with your dad on the ground in my name for a third time.  After the fight the guys made peace, seeming to agree that neither could make my choices for me and that they, regardless of their emotional investment were Family.  I don't think your dad much cared for Gavin in that moment... but at the time he seemed to put aside the urge to want to kill him over me."

Bella drew a breath.

"Anyway, I had begun planning ways for securing Will's proposal of marriage.  I had spent my whole life wanting my father's involvement in my life and now I had it.  This marriage, one worthy of his approval, was my ticket to that and I worked doggedly on the task.  I anticipated my father offering him a position in Detroit and buying him out of Don Mezzo's crew.  Will and I couldn't have been happier.  Gavin and I still spoke but we hadn't been together since Montreal... so it seemed all that I'd laid out in preparation for a new chapter in my life was in place.  Everything was going just as it should... until, my dead Fiancee showed up at my headquarters, alive."

Bella wet her lips. 

"Elias had been tortured and kept locked up as a prisoner by a zealot working outside of the knowledge of his employer: the FBN.  He'd hoped that getting Elias to flip on my operation and my father's would be the lynchpin to bringing down the Luciano and Lucania crime families.  The man, Garrett, meant to make his name on my parents' downfall.  To do it, he was willing to spill the blood of a man who had very little to do with either person... he just had the misfortune to be marrying into the family.  Were it not for a young man in Garrett's operation having a weak stomach for the sort of hell he put Elias through for six months, Elias would have been as dead as I thought him to be."

She shook her head.

"Well, as you might guess, I was beside myself.  Elias revealed to me I had a rat in my operations - there were still people feeding Garrett information.  I had no one I could trust.  And I had two men in my life I'd been seeing - one I had hoped to marry.  I knew if I ran to my dad he'd kill Elias to eliminate the risk.  I couldn't trust my crew to help me, I didn't know who the rat was.  I was scared to call William who I knew was in love with me, who I still wanted a future with.  He would be crushed to learn my fiancee was alive and so... I called the only person with no pony in the race that I trusted.  I called Gavin."

She shrugged.

"In many ways, the decision to call Gavin instead of Will that night was a choice that changed the course of my entire life.  It's weird to look at it all now with perfect vision.  Had I trusted Will's love of me the whole thing would have gone another way.  Maybe I'd be dead... or your step-mother, but regardless... a choice was made."

"I wasn't sure Gavin would come to be honest.  He might have been out drinking or with another woman.  We had no promises to each other, that was the nature of what we were to one another.  Just friends at best, and I needed a friend.  We fly to Chicago.  I had a small break down.  Gavin helped me refocus.  We began breaking down the problem, making a plan to deal with it.  I felt better.  And before I knew it ... he was kissing me."

Bella almost felt like she should blush.  It was stupid, of course, Gavin had been her husband for many years now so the smile on her face had to be laughable to the boy in front of her, "My head spun as I observed the situation playing out between us.  Gavin was all wrong.  I'd worked my whole life to get my father involved with my existence, to get that fucker to show one ounce of concern and real love for me and being with William had finally started to make that happen.  Gavin was the sort of man who could ruin all that and worst of all I was sure he would only be with me so long as it was fun and interesting to do so.  The moment I bored him he'd be on to his next conquest."  

She looked down.  "Which was why, when we parted ways at dawn to go back to our lives, that I knew I had to pretend as nothing had happened.  That I felt nothing for Gavin.  Chasing men like Gavin was the thing foolish teen girls did and I was a Mafia Don.  I told myself I'd done no different than any man in my position would have done.  I had a hard night.  I called a friend.  I got laid... got my head on right and went home to take care of business.  That was it.  Nothing more.  No reason for anything to change.  Only... that night HAD changed something... rather, it changed someONE.  It had changed Gavin.  Of course, I didn't know it yet.  That was a landmine I wasn't going to step on for another two weeks - and your father, well, he'd be standing on ground zero where he always seemed to be... right beside me."

The whole things sounded absolutely bonkers. Some nobody wise guy taking on two Godfathers and a killer like the man who'd had him at gunpoint when he'd first arrived in town? Nobody does that kind of thing and walks away. That miracle aside, who does that much for someone they barely know? He'd been wrong about the old man being crazy. A crazy person does something dumb and moves on. The old man was a straight psychopath. He did something dumb and stuck to it. It was the only possible way to look at this whole thing. Either that or it was all a big story to see how gullible he actually was.

That kind of tenacity and attitude was the complete opposite of the man who'd walked away from him and his mother too. How could he reconcile what he was hearing with what he'd been through? It was like they were two completely different men. The man she described was one who would face anything as many times as it took for someone he cared for and his mother had always been sure of what she meant to him. Had she been wrong after all?

"I'm gonna just stop apologizing for myself, because I figure you know exactly how crazy all this sounds to somebody who wasn't there."

Aurelio stopped for a moment and gave a mirthless chuckle, shaking his head with a look of incredulity.

"You're telling me my father was indulging in ever greater feats of masochism to win you over, in spite of the fact that he ought to have been dead so many times over it isn't even funny. And then on top of that you ran off with a troublemaker that just happened to wander into your path who you turned into an honest man? And the old fiance coming back from the grave to uncover betrayals among your most trusted? You've gotta be joking. I've heard of dime store novels that weren't as wild as all that."

Aurelio's expression softened a bit and he looked Isabella dead in the eyes. He'd seen enough since he'd been in Philly to completely throw out her word. The way that everyone had treated him once he'd started asking his questions was enough to show that they truly cared about the man he'd been looking for. He couldn't discount the possibility that this roller coaster of a story was true.

"But let's just say for a moment that I believe this whole messed up thing. Let's look over a few things and try to make sense of it all. The old man ain't here to figure out so I'll have to work with the only part of the story I can for the moment."

He shifted in his seat and squinted a bit at her like he was dealing with a blurry picture and wanted to bring it into focus.

"You settled down with a man who doesn't seem the sort to overlook dalliance of any sort so you aren't the kind to play the field too hard. You've managed to be a Don in two different cities, which means you tend to commit to what you do. You said yourself that the old man helped smooth over the trouble with your father and it was painfully clear that he'd follow you into a shallow grave if he couldn't pull you out of it first. Yet you did what even you admit was the sort of thing a teenager would do? That's a tough sell. Something would have had to be awful broken to make that shift. The fiance from the dead might qualify, but if it was that you'd be with him and not your husband. So what exactly snapped to turn you around?"

Aurelio stopped squinting and sat back in his seat, his mind shifting to another piece of the puzzle.

"Generally, in my experience, the sort that you make your husband out to have been don't change. They make it look that way pretty often if it gets the girl, but I've yet to see one actually do it. Again though, he's here and you don't seem the sort who'd handle that kind of thing well if he did try to step out. So something gave out there. But how could he have got through my father sitting in the background and come out as cheerful as he did about it all?"

"With certainty, there is only one person's thoughts and emotions I can speak to.. my own.  So let me try to see if I can explain this to you.  You want to know what broke in me... why I'd act like a teen that night and call Gavin not Will?"

"Well,"  She looked thoughtful a moment.  "I didn't bury an empty coffin when I buried my fiancee Elias.  The FBN agent who took Elias, did leave me with something ... a brutalized dead body of a man who was his height and build.  I was the one they called in to identified it.  Elias had no other family, you see.  As his Don and future bride, there really was no one else."

She gets a distant look in her eyes. 

"I saw what I thought was the man I loved more than anything in the world, laying on a cold steel slab in a morgue, beaten to death so badly that it was beyond my ability to know he wasn't the man I loved.  Can you understand what that might do to a 21-year-old mind?"

She narrowed her eyes.

"I don't think I was right after that for a very long while.  When I finally did start coming back to my senses, Elias returned to me.  Not as the large jovial enforcer he'd been... but this shell of a man.  One-hundred pounds lighter... near death.  Barely able to lift his head to speak... he was made of loose & transparent skin, visible bones, and a story he'd made about us for himself to survive on."

Bella's eyes, despite the years between her and the event, began to mist up.  "It was like seeing the dead walking.  Worse than that was the knowledge that he'd clung to his loyalty and faith in me... and in the last weeks before he returns, I'd slept with not one but two different men.  I felt as though I'd betrayed him willingly.  While he suffered and clung to what we had, I turned my back on it all.  Of course, that wasn't the whole truth but how could I not feel that way at that moment?  Run to Will?  The man who I was planning to marry?"

She shook her head.

"Run to Will and tell him what?  The man I knew, that good and noble man would have thrown in the towel to give me the chance at happiness he knew I wanted more than anything in the world.  I just knew in my heart William would do 'the right thing' and leave me.  As much as I didn't want to hurt Elias... I wasn't ready to walk away from William either!  He'd become a fixture in my life and had done for my relationship with my father what Elias never did  & I never could.  It wasn't just about how William improved that either."

She looked up to meet Aurelio's eyes.

"My life was better in so many ways!  How could I be sure that forgetting William and embracing the life I thought I lost was even the right thing?  How could anyone make that decision in a matter of minutes or hours?  If I ran to William I'd have to know what I wanted to do, because if I told him... I knew in my heart the kind of man he really was and..."

Bella's words caught in her throat.

"I wanted to fight for us." 

'...What we get isn't always what we think it should have been, but it's what we've got.'

She swallowed the lump forming there.

"I wanted him to fight for me."  She said very softly, the tone of her words sounding a mix of sad and surprised.  As if she'd not considered it before.

Her eyes fell back to her cup.

"I love him."

His hand found its way to her face, first lifting her chin to look him in the eye, then caressing her cheek.  William couldn't help himself. He leaned forward and tenderly kissed Isabella as he had before. 

"Immensely."  She whispered and made a breathy guffaw.  

'... When you thought about what the future might look like on that stairwell you realized that you couldn't be happy in a future without me. You said so yourself. That has to mean something.'

Love.  Not loved.

"The son of a bitch really was right..." The words held dark humor.  They were the punchline to a joke Aurelio didn't hear.  An admission, this time not in the heat of animalistic terror, but enlightenment from perfect hindsight.  Walking through her own thinking with a completely detached party... so many years after it mattered anymore.  It was the truth long yearned for by a man, who even if fate hadn't cruelly stolen him away, it would no longer benefit.  A truth owed to a man who it probably would no longer hurt.  

A tear, brought on by a variety of emotions, leaked from the corner of her eye.  Her chin wrinkled as it held back the sob that threatened to overtake her.  A hand went to her mouth and she looked up to Aurelio.  She stared at him and she could feel Will's eyes.  Her body shuddered as she wondered how she dared to feel this way now? 

How many times had he sat silent and looking at her - burying his truth for her happiness?  How many times had he sat in the same room with her family smiling when he had every reason to feel the raw emotion she was remembering now.  The echo of what was and what could have been.  This wasn't just a knife she carried still in her own heart, it was one Will shouldered the burden of to.  But what could he have done?  Runaway?  Gone to another city?  This was his home.  These people were his before they were hers. 

Will had made a new truth, just as she had.  

'Love... is a choice.'

'Are you sure you know what you want? I never forced you to choose me- to choose anything. So be honest. Who do you want? One of us? Both of us? I know what you just said. I'm telling you that if you want out, just say so. Now.'

Gavin had known too.  He'd never been deluded by a pretty lie constructed the night of her and Will's last kiss.  He must have known the words were spoken to make her choice more palatable.  Gavin could see people in a way that stripped away all the pretty things meant to distract from the truth.  Like a wolf, he had a nose for the weakness in people... maybe most of all in her.  And if somehow she had fooled anyone other than herself that night - it proved that she was the only weakness which she'd ever known Gavin to have. 

No.  Gavin and Will knew that she'd loved them both, and neither of them ever forgot it.  In the end, they knew she had chosen Gavin.  She'd made the definitive choice to let William go, to bury the past and pretend it had less of a hold on her than it did.  Until she didn't hurt so much from it anymore.  Just as Gavin had done with Stella and Madeline.  Sacrifices, precious and beautiful ones, were made and done so without regret.  

'The greatest treasures in life, require the most supreme sacrifices.  No one escapes unscathed.  Be ready to bleed for what you desire, always.'

And yet...

'Stories bring us comfort.'  

"There are only two men in this whole world who have a right to hear that admission made outside of a moment wrapped in my own selfish terror or rage.  One is dead.  The other might send you to meet your father for making him hear it."  She wiped her tear away.  "And I may yet burn in hell for keeping it from them both... and myself."

She looked up to Aurelio.

"To you, this is a strange story you know you can never safely share with anyone.  A fantastic impossibility that a man you didn't even know was involved in... but make no mistake this *IS* my life.  These people, these events, shaped the city ... the world you're standing in.  The Cosa Nostra quivers with the aftermath of such great tragedies as we three endured ... as your father rose above."

Bella shook her head.  "Your father is one of the greatest loves of my life and assuming you can suspend your disbelief a little longer, maybe you and I will cut through the fog of time and the necessities of my past to find the truth about who we all were back then... somewhere along the way."  She waited to see some sign on his face that he understood.

"Shall I continue?"

There was a time once in his childhood, back home in New York when he'd still been Ryan and not Aurelio, that he'd been playing and bumped into a hollow metal post. The reverberations had disturbed a hive of bees that had been building inside and in moments the buzzing had wrapped around him and held him prisoner as surely as any ropes or handcuffs could have. He felt the little monsters crawl around him and knew that any move, any sound that he'd make would surely spell a thousand little daggers plunged into his flesh. So he'd held stock still until enough of the little steps had left his skin that he was confident he could run and make it out more or less intact.

As Aurelio listened to Mrs. Byrne speak of her torturous suffering from the fiance ripped away from her, and then the husk that had been returned he could almost feel the the same sensation of danger being roused. But the crawling sensation of little steps started to rise on his skin as she confessed her love for his father, love that still persisted to this day in spite of the man's long absence and love that was powerful enough to resist all that she had felt for both the man she thought she had buried and the husband and family that she now called her own. He could see the way it affected her and knew that to even show the barest hint of that knowledge outside this room would be to invite his own death from several sources, and at least one he'd seen from the wrong end of a gun barrel once before. All he could do was to hold still and wait, just as he had so long ago.

Any doubts about her story faded away with her words, not because of what she said but that look in her eye. Aurelio had known some talented deceivers and while they could go through the motions, the sobs, and the postures their feelings never quite seemed to get to their eyes in the same way. Isabella showed her suffering so pointedly there that it was obvious the kind of twisting it was doing to her spirit to say what she did out loud. Whatever his reservations, she believed everything she was saying to her core.

And it terrified him just as much as the physical risk of this knowledge because it reminded him of the way his mother spoke of William.

The water that sat in front of him suddenly seemed all too inadequate to the task of pushing down whatever was choking his words before they reached his tongue. He tried to force himself to speak and agree to continue, but the only thing he could manage was a sad, silent nod of his head. He hadn't expected it, but it seemed that both of them had an awful lot still to sort out about his father.

"Where was I?  Oh... Chicago."   she smiled softly.  "Well, I went home and tried to be a Dragon but my heart was broken as I realized that nothing was going to be as simple as Gavin hoped.  I decided I had to do the right thing.  I had to end my relationship with William and ... I had to focus on Elias.  I loved him.  He'd survived hell for me.  I had to give him a fair shot.  So... there would be no more nights like Chicago with Gavin... or Atlantic City trips with your father.  I had to end it.  So I got a plane to Philly.  I was supposed to meet your dad the next day for a weekend get-a-way.  But I was dragging my feet, not wanting to tell him it was over."

She drew a steadying breath.  "So I told myself I'd let fate decide which man I broke the news to first.  The playboy who wouldn't care so much or the man who had been planning a future with me.  When it came up heads I was relieved.  And I went to Gavin.  I didn't know he'd spent two weeks on a drunken, sex-crazed bender with half the women in Chicago... all trying to make himself stop thinking about me.  So when he came into my hotel room that night and I told him that I was ending things... well, I was shocked when he confessed not knowing much about love but wanting me to teach him."

She shook her head.  "I was suddenly faced with the worst thing I could imagine.  I'd come to get rid of lovers, not pick one up."  She chuckled in spite of herself.

"Needless to say I didn't leave the hotel that night... nor did I lie to Gavin.  I told him about my conflicts and I bore my soul to him again.  I told him about the impossible nature of the loyalty & love I had for a memory of someone who I'd left behind me, my devotion and affection for William, and the lust that he blinded me with.  I told him I didn't know what to do and Gavin gave me the best advice of my life - do nothing.  Sometimes, he said, that's a choice too.  And if it was a choice none of the men in my life could accept... then that would make my choices all the less difficult.  And during that discussion, I realized who it was who had been holding Elias captive, the mastermind behind it all... an old rival who'd I'd crossed as a younger gangster: Agent Garret."

She shrugged.  

"So, I was a coward.  I told myself I needed to race back and warn my father that the man he thought he had on a leash was a dangerous traitor... but the truth was, I could have told your father to his face.  Instead, I called him and told him I had a crisis in Michigan.  I couldn't explain it over the phone but I wouldn't be going away for the weekend with him.  Your father, ever the hero, hopped the first plane to Michigan and found me at my Ivory Tower with Gavin Byrne and Elias and so it was that my three lovers were all living under one roof for several very strained days."

She shook her head.  "Gavin and William had a friendly rivalry but... I could tell it wasn't going to stay that way forever.  They'd put their shit on a back burner to help me avenge Elias... a guy who wanted nothing more than to see them both die horrible deaths for taking me from him.  After all he'd been through, he couldn't forgive me.  He was sending me out of his life... and so that choice was made for me."  Her voice was soft then, dark with the seriousness of the subject.

"I can't blame him for his hurt.  He'd been loyal to me and the family through so much... of course, it felt like I'd whored around on him.  I couldn't lie to him, I couldn't make myself forget six months of my life or the bonds I'd made to your father and Gavin.  I couldn't undo what Garret had done... but I could get revenge.  So... the three of us made a pact and one by one we hunted down the men who held Elias and we killed them.  It was a brutal thing we did.  Butcher's work.  We left messages that Garret knew all too well, we were coming for him.  While the FBN watched my father close, I and my wolves slipped up to his back door."

"He'd turned his house into a fortress to be penetrated.  In there we only let one man survive... the guy who set Elias free.  A fact I'd later come to regret... but that's another story."

She shook her head dismissing the thoughts of Jamaica.

"We spilled rivers of blood that night.  Suburbia was never the same I'm sure..."  She smiled.  "All I could think about was killing Garret and then, we were at the base the stairs leading up to their last hold out spot.  They'd barricaded it with furniture.  They had the high ground.  We were fish in a barrel.  If we waited the cops would be there soon.  They had all the advantage."

She drew a breath.  "The guys laid out two plans for me.  One would involve sending your father up the stairs like a bull to burst through the barricade while Gavin and I laid down cover fire.  A sound plan as Gavin and I were superior with guns, but Will would have been an open target to shoot at.  The second would be Gavin rushing up and vaulting over the side of the furniture while your dad and I laid down cover - speed and surprise being the key to this plan.  Again, one of the guys would be open to take fire.  Neither man was willing to discuss a plan where I was key and open to the fire - fearing my father no doubt and also selfishly wanting to not lose me."

She shook her head.  "If there is one truth of my life that bears sharing, this is it: Nothing is so clear to you, as it will be in the moment before you lose it all.  Only when the world is about to end... can you see what matters with a clarity that cannot be second-guessed."

She wet her lips.  "It probably took a few seconds but felt like an eternity to realize what I felt.  I thought about my life with Will, if Gavin died.  And I thought about my life with Gavin, if Will had died.  Some part of me knew I could make a life with your dad if I lost Gavin.  It would have crushed my soul... but I'd made that life in my head already - out of nothing.  I knew I could see the plan through.  But that was it... I was going to follow a road map, a game plan, not a desire of my heart.  And when I thought about my life with Gavin, if Will should die, I realized... I could never forgive myself for protecting the man I really wanted to be with and sacrificing a good man to just to have him.  I would have always wondered if I sent Will up those stairs not because the plan was more sound... but because I wasn't willing to risk the man I loved."

She shrugged.  "And when I heard my own thoughts... I knew.  I'd chosen.  Just like that, I'd picked Gavin.  And so, I looked him in the eyes and I wanted to tell him I loved him.  I could see him saying the same thing, without words.  All that came out of my mouth was, 'get me up those stairs' and Gavin made some joke... and he was gone."

She took a drink.

"You can't know what that moment was like.  Thunder indoors.  Fire.  Lightening.  Death.  So much blood... and when it was it was silent I expected Gavin to pop up and take a jab at Will for not getting up the stairs as fast or skilled as he had.  But, Gavin didn't get up.  Your dad plowed up the stairs while I stood there in shock.  I just knew he was dead.  Your father was screaming for me... Angel, that's what he called me then, he's hit bad."

Bella's gaze is glassy and far away for a moment before she shakes her head and looks to Aurelio.  "And he was.  He was dead.  No life.  I... broke a moment.  I was having a moment like I never got with Elias.  I screamed, I think, and I hit him on the chest as hard as I could.  I wailed every bit of pain inside me - why would God do that to me twice?"

Her lip quivered, remembering the pain as clearly as if it were yesterday.

"When I hit his chest, his eyes flew open and he sucked a wet breath.  It was ... a terrible and wonderful noise.  I picked up my gun, and I went to end it knowing Gavin had less time with that chest wound than we had before the cops showed up.  Your father was on my heels and thank God he was.  Your father took a bullet.  I did too."  She points to her shoulder.  "But we dropped the bastard and then dragged our sorry asses out of that hell hole to a street doc who worked for my dad.  A vet of the Great War, he knew a lot about patching up men in situations that no one should reasonably be able to survive... but we did.  All of us."

"While your father watched me keeping vigil over Gavin's bedside... he was called back to Philly.  I didn't tell him yet that I'd made a choice, but somehow I think he knew.  I think that's why when the Godfather of Philly offered him the title Don, he didn't hesitate.  He knew he'd lost.  He didn't want to... and he quit his fight yet, but he made a choice that made mine even easier.  Aptly he named his crew what we had hoped to name our joint business venture, a name that fit our states of mind when we met and really all through our relationship, he named his crew Purgatory."

She stood up to go refill her glass.

"You need some more?"

"I could use something with a kick. I think we've moved well past water territory at this point."

Aurelio sat and thought while she was getting the drinks. The kinds of shit this woman had been through was on a scale he couldn't even frame in his mind and he wasn't even sure how to reply to most of it. It was like trying to untangle a knot that had been tied fifty years ago and was so fixed that you wondered if a knife was the only way forward. But people just didn't work like that and he had to find something to work with. For himself or for her.

The answers to his questions weren't going to come out of this, but maybe he would be able to look at the past in a different light.

"It sounds to me like all three of you were fighting for what you wanted and what you needed. It just happened that the two weren't always the same thing. At least you all seemed to stay on good terms in spite of it. Most folks that end up fighting over love don't ever see eye to eye after. You sound like all that blood you spilled together mixed up a little and left you all a family one way or another."

Aurelio looked down at his hands. They weren't clean of trouble by any means but they were yet to be tested in the sorts of ways that the woman before him had been. Hers had been tempered in fire, and blood, and suffering and in the end they'd built the exact kind of thing he'd always been missing in his life. What if he'd been putting himself to something the way she had? Could he have made something worthwhile instead of the aimless wandering that he'd been doing? Maybe he should let go of a dead man's ghost and make his way forward instead.

If only it was that easy.

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry you had to face all of that. Even with the other two there it still sounds like you had some things you had to face alone. Maybe even because of the other two. As for Purgatory, that seems to be a place we all find ourselves in when we walk this path in life. I've been there ever since I was a kid and I think that's why I want to know why my father wasn't around. It feels like if I only knew why I could step out from behind him, but the more I hear the more I wonder if I even knew what I was talking about. Maybe Purgatory is the real legacy left behind for me."

He chuckled and shook his head before raising it up to look Isabella in the eyes.

"The place, not the crew."

A deep breath and a sigh let the melancholy of the moment flow out and draw a sense of normalcy back to settle the brief outburst. Aurelio was starting to grow too comfortable here with his host. 

My almost step-mom. He thought to himself.

"I think I've got something of an idea from that point. You made a life with Gavin and my old man made a business instead. Things hummed along until someone came along and put a big exclamation point on the man who tied us together and left both of us with some unresolved issues in our lives. About right? I'm sure there's plenty of stories there too and if there's anything you want to get off your chest then I'm more than happy to listen, but it sounds like we're about hip deep in confusion on both sides when it comes to my father. Any ideas on where we might be able to find any answers on that front?"

"I could sum it up like that."  She admits handing him a glass.  "But then I'd be leaving out a very large part of why we're having this discussion."

She drew a breath.  "So... I sat in the back seat of a car watching William's authorization ceremony.  He never knew I was there.  I couldn't bring myself to even face him.  Even though I'd made my choice, I still feel like he made it first.  I was in denial.  But... I knew he'd never leave Philly and I could never see myself leaving Detroit.  So, in some ways, I began mourning then and there."

She took a drink.

"But I couldn't abandon William.  He never left me behind so... I wasn't leaving him without help.  So I hopped a plane and flew to New York and started calling every old contact I had until I ended up in your mother's living room and the two of us had a very serious talk about William - not too much different than the one you're having with me now.  Though, I suppose I didn't admit to as much to her... perhaps I didn't need to."

She wet her lips.  

"I offered her a lot of money, her brother too, but they wouldn't take it.  They both packed their bags and got on a plane for Philly just two hours after they met me.  They knew how much Will needed them.  They probably knew it better than me and despite all the time and water under the bridge they didn't hesitate."

She looked down at her glass.  "THAT.  That's what I meant by how I fucked up your life a bit.  That my choices impacted you... you see, I'm the reason your parents reconnected.  I knew that I couldn't be who Will needed but I hoped that the woman who got away could be.  I hoped she would be there for him in ways I couldn't be... even if I wanted to be for a long while after.  And ... I did.  I thought of Will and what might have been for a long time after we agreed to never touch in that way again."

Disgusted with her admission she reached for something stronger, she knew she shouldn't but the demons in her mind were stronger than the angels on her shoulders.  She ran a hand up into her hair.  "Your father took good care of her and your uncle... they took good care of him, but it wasn't like it had been that summer of their youth when you came into being.  I could see the way they leaned on each other, but I don't think they rekindled the old flame based on my interactions with him and later... my sister-in-law's ... but that's not my story to tell."

"Will and I kept our business relationship and bloodshed does make families out of the strangest of bedfellows, so yeah, you're right about that.  I suppose that's the only real thing I can tell you about him for sure, your father never let anyone tell him when the fight was done.  Your father forged ahead in life, always moving forward, and until I saw that picture I thought he never spent a lot of time looking back."

She looked up to meet Aurelio's eyes.  "But in truth, I was wrong about that too.  I mean, there we were, falling in love and he was telling me about how he left his heart & the greatest of his joy in life with your mother.  We met while he was grieving a crew he couldn't say goodbye to.  He ... loved me & tried to make me admit I still loved him... even though he knew it could cost him his life."

She shook her head. "Purgatory was an apt name for our business together.  The way we both were, the way I am, I suppose we both love our misery and our lives had enough of it for any two men."

She picked up her glass and nearly drank it before pausing, looking at the glass, and putting it down.  Bella pushed it away.

"I'm sorry you couldn't come here and find them alive and ready to embrace you, Kid."  She looked at him.  "But for what it's worth to you, and maybe it's not much; I mean I can't imagine how it could be, seeing how you don't know me from Job, but you're my family.  You're not my blood.  You're not even related by the benefit of marriage to me or my sister-in-law which... might have happened if he'd not died saving her life."

Bella's voice cracked.

"The last moment..."  she forced a smile.  "... that son of a bitch saw me he was, carrying a beautiful woman he loved out of a burning building, a building ever sane man in Philly refused to go anywhere near even though they knew she was trapped within.  And he was..."

She swallowed the lump in her throat. 

"Perfect.  Just like he always was.  I begged him to stay awake, to stay put while I went to get us a car and a thousand things kept me from getting back there before the rogue found him and the Godmother.  Will, as my husband tells it, must have thrown himself on top of her."  She bit her lower lip.

"Gavin found his sister on that pier, covered in..."  She couldn't say it.  "Screaming and Tara hasn't been the same since.  None of us have been.  And then you walk in the door and it's like some small bit of him has blown back into our lives.  Some small echo that I can get to know, help, and if you'll let me ... care for.  If not for your father, then for your mother's sake... a woman who I drug back into things.  A woman whose blood I feel on my hands so much right now as I look into your eyes."

She reached a hand across the bar and attempted to touch Aurelio's hand.

"I know you're not him... you didn't even know him... but I can't help but love you none the less."  She said softly.  "You might have been my son... in another life, we would have known each other years ago.  I'd have pressed Will for the truth of his past.  I would have talked Kenzie more and the truth would have been unearthed.  We all would have been close, but they're gone and we're still here.  The way I see it, we can either struggle alone or stand together like the very unconventional family I feel we are."

She exhaled.

"I hope you stick around South Philly, Aurelio... I really loved your father, but I'd love to get to know the man standing in front of me too."

The world stopped for Aurelio and while he was vaguely aware of the rest of Isabella's words, he was fixated on one thing. She had been the one that brought his mother to Philadelphia. She had been the reason he'd received that letter urging him to make amends with his father. Her actions had left the only family he had left in the sights of a madman with a gun and finished the job his father started so long ago. He jerked his hand back from her own on reflex.

No, he thought to himself, Isabella hadn't been the real root cause. That had once again been the old man who had drawn her in and twisted up the heart of another woman badly enough that she couldn't let him go even in the arms of the man she belonged with.

He'd made her pull in the only other woman who'd fallen for him just as badly and hoped that he'd be anything other than what he'd been before. If nothing else that Mrs. Byrne had said about the man had made sense, then at least this was familiar. His mother had jumped in head first and Uncle Connor had chased after to try to protect his sister as he always had and just like last time it had cost them both everything.

Cost them all everything.

Now Isabella was suffering in the guilt she felt and looking to make it up to him for the sake of the man who'd put them both through all this pain and for his mother who'd been no different than herself in the end. She blamed herself and she saw him as an opportunity to make it right. It was frustrating and all the same he couldn't blame her for wanting to find a way to pull herself from the place she found herself in.

His voice was a bit rough when it came out, partially from anger and partially from a sense of weariness. He wasn't sure if today had been more for his benefit or hers, but if nothing else he'd learned just how much pain a man can leave in his wake and how many people got caught up in it. He wasn't alone in his search for answers and that was troubling and reassuring in equal measure.

"I've got no plans to leave. I've got too many fires to tend to here and too much unfinished business, so as long as you all still have a place I'll be there. Just do me a favor."

He paused long enough to take a deep pull from the glass she'd put in front of him. The burn helped to focus him and steel his resolve.

"Don't give me an easy route. Make me earn every last cent and step I take. You don't need to make anything up to me, and if you try then it's just going to cause trouble for us both. You do that, and I'll make sure you know anything I find out about my father."

He held his hand out to her, his expression neutral. He knew that she'd be searching for something more, and he knew that she deserved it after all she'd been through but he just didn't have it in him. Not now. Not thinking about all that had happened. For now they'd both have to make due with a chance to keep moving.

"Deal?"

Bella took his hand and shook it.  "Deal."  She said quietly and then took her hand back.

"I should get back.  Stay as long as you like... finish the drink.  Hell, the cook will make you lunch if you like, my treat ... this once."  She forced a smile.

"Next time I come to see you though, I'll have work for you.  You have my word."  Bella picked up her purse.

"See ya around, Kid."  Bella gave him a polite nod and then, emotions barely contained, she made her way out the door.