But he was loyal to Luca.
“Let’s go,” he sighed.
We strolled into the dark passage, and a chill spread down my arms, goosebumps dotting my flesh. My nose turned up at the earthy scent mixed with the saltiness of the sea. I covered my nose and mouth, sneezing several times as Marcello guided the way.
Stupid allergies.
“We’re almost there,” Marcello said after the fifth time I sneezed.
I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there. Between the darkness and my allergies, I was seriously regretting this trip. But at least I was leaving the house. Until now, I’d felt like a prisoner.
The Salvatores didn’t share their secrets with anyone. Marcello was trusting me, which gave me hope he would tell me about Aiden. I just had to play the game and make him think I’d accepted my fate.
The passage dumped us out at the far end of the beach, closer to Wellington Manor. I could see my grandfather’s estate looming above us. Founders Way only had five houses on the entire block. Of course, the Salvatore Estate was at the dead center and reminded me of a medieval castle, complete with towers and parapets with armed guards.
Wellington Manor was to my left. Next to the Salvatores house, my family’s property looked like an old Southern plantation with tons of painted shutters and fruit trees. Then there was the Cormac compound on my right. Sonny’s family lived in a stone monstrosity that looked like something you would see in Coastal Living.
Drake Battle’s estate was beside Sonny’s. Made mostly of glass, it reminded me of Tony Stark’s Razor Point mansion in the Iron Man movies. And at the far end of the street, at the edge of the cliff, stood Fort Marshall. Everyone called it that because the Marshalls were an old money military family who ran York Military Academy.
“Why didn’t you attend York Military Academy?” I asked Marcello as we walked down the beach. “You seem like you would have fit right in at a military school.”
He laughed. “I wanted to go. Instead, I went to Astor Prep with my brothers. My dad didn’t want me to leave Devil’s Creek until after graduation.”
“So he could control you,” I guessed.
He nodded.
“What was it like growing up here?”
Marcello twisted the cap off his water bottle and gulped down half of it before turning his gaze on me. “It was like you’d expect.”
“Give me something, Marcello.”
He rolled his broad shoulders and pointed at the massive bolder we were approaching. “This is Finnegan’s Rock. When I was in high school, everyone came here to get high and drunk.”
“What about you?”
“Yeah. Even me.” He gave me a sinister look. “I’m not the uptight asshole you think.”
I sipped from my water bottle and smiled. “Never said that.”
He reached over and tugged on a loose curl falling from my hairband. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“Until recently, I knew little about any of you,” I confessed. “I know more about your mother than all of you combined.”
He sighed. “My mom wasn’t like us.”
“Obviously,” I quipped. “She was so full of life and carefree.”
“She wasn’t like that all the time,” he said in a hushed tone, his mood shifting as he spoke. “Some months, she would fall into such a deep depression we couldn’t get her out of bed. My father would beg her to get up. He’d try almost anything to get her back to normal… but even he couldn’t help her. We learned how to ride out the waves of her moods.”
“I guess she was more like me than I thought.”
He bobbed his head. “You have no idea.”
“That’s why you’re so patient with me,” I assumed.
His blue eyes found mine. “Yeah, I suppose so.”
“And that’s why Luca detaches from me. He pushes me away, especially when I’m not… myself.”
There was no nice way to say it.
“Luca couldn’t handle seeing her like that. My brother acted out more when she had manic episodes. The little asshole even stole my dad’s car, thinking he would get my mom’s attention.” Marcello laughed. “The shit Luca would do… He couldn’t process her illness. It was like the worse she got, the more he would push the limits of my father’s patience.”
“Was she bipolar?”
“Yes.”
“Did she need to be hospitalized?”
“Sometimes,” he admitted. “Your grandfather was a huge help. He treated her in private and prescribed all of her medications under an alias.”
“Why was her illness a secret? Plenty of artists struggle with mental health issues. I read an article that over seventy percent of all artists have a mental illness.”
“She wanted to maintain her legacy without people thinking she was crazy like van Gogh.”
I laughed. “She wouldn’t have cut her ear off.”
He snorted. “Some days, I honestly didn’t know if she was coming or going. She was unpredictable.” He glanced down at me. “Kinda like you.”