If Luca Tangorello wanted to marry me, we'd have been married by now. It's for the best we aren't, because he's brought home a bruised prostitute. What does he expects me, his fiancée of four years, to do? Roll out the red carpet for them?

The girl sits on the edge of the couch and watches me like I'm the devil incarnate. Her eyes are pansy-like. They peek innocently from her face, despite her being used six ways from Sunday, then beaten up. Or in the process. I frankly don't care to interview her. The problem is that my fiancé did. He'd spotted her crying in his place of business and brought her to our sort-of love-nest. For years, I knew he sought love everywhere he went, but he never dragged the evidence to me with a proud look of a cat displaying a killed bird.

"Let me guess. She's a new item for our couples' counseling." I twist the engagement ring around my finger. The golden band is getting a bit loose.

She shoots furtive glances at the rug and the paintings on the walls. Yes, bitch, we picked all these beautiful things with Luca when we had such hopes for our future.

"Well, Luca? What do you want from me?" If he'd asked me to finish her off, I'd help him. I wouldn't like it, but I would help him. That's how I was raised in the mafia: bratva sticks for their own and all that.

"Kamila," Luca pleads, "be a human for once. The girl needs a place to stay until we can press charges."

"When you say 'we', do you mean the three of us?" I ask sweetly. "Because to me, three is a crowd."

"Stop it. Stop it or I'll-"

"Do what? Hit me? After fuming about men who lift their hand at defenseless flowers?"

Luca's lips curl into a snarl. This is the only hints so far that the son of a bitch is a scion of the bulldogs and hell hounds, not poodles.

"You're not a defenseless flower, Mila," he says. "You're a steel flytrap."

"And so, I can be threatened with physical violence? Or told to pucker up and host your whore?" I love how cold I sound. His breathing turns rugged. It used to be that his hitching, labored breaths made me moan. Not anymore.

"That's not what I meant. Just look at her, for God's sake." The girl straightens the pleats of her tartan skirt as if on a cue, harmless, terrified, unfortunate. "Isn't there a shred of compassion left in you?"

I blow hair out of my eyes. "In the old country-my old country, not yours-we say, don't humiliate a man with pity. And when I say, a man, I mean women too, Luca."

"Compassion isn't the same as pity."

"Fine, let's split hairs." I survey his prize, like he asks me to, because four years together is a long time, and some habits die hard.

On her own, this troubled young woman who likely lives with an asshole pimp would move me. I'm sure Pansy didn't have someone kind to turn to. Police wouldn't do anything, no matter how black-and-blue her tormentor paints her tummy, how many pricks he sticks inside her, and how loud he makes her cry. The shelters are losing funding because screw socialism is our government's motto. I know how the cruel world works. Sure, on her own, she deserves compassion.

But she didn't come to me with her grievances.

Oh, no. She came to my house glued to Luca's strong arm.

He deposited her onto our couch, because she did that thing available to her-batted her eyelashes-and a defender stepped right up. Some women prefer to get a man to rip the throat of their abusers. They seek shelter with the biggest bruisers, until they batter them too. Then the cycle repeats till their youth is smashed.

It's a true-and-tried strategy, but Pansy missed her target. My fiancé is a son of a mafioso and a grandson of one. He's clever and powerful, but he's a mafia lawyer. In a fight he's as good as a tissue-paper airplane.

My pedigree is also full of the colorful underworld characters, but unlike Luca, I'm no auxiliary in the Nazarevich crime family. I'm made of the same stuff my great-grandma Sonya was made of when she'd stepped off the boat to discover that the American dream was a lie.

So, really, Pansy should have kissed my ring, not Luca's, but that would imply her having an ounce of street smarts. Or any smarts for that matter.

"Did you drop out of high school for your pimp?" I ask her.

She twists her skirt into a knot between her slim thighs and sobs. Luca's gaze travels to her fingers. They flex and unflex, kneading the fabric next to her money-maker. I don't think he's even aware that his eyes glisten with lust. Or how his tongue pushes on his upper lip from the inside.

Pansy is. She has a grace to blush when she notices that I see it too. Like she has no clue why the world keeps doing mean things to her. Maybe she's not beyond saving yet. But she doesn't look at me, another woman. The woman who asked her the hard questions. She looks to Luca for guidance. She looks at him in a way that makes his nostrils flare in outrage, as if he isn't hard in response to the flash of her panties. It's not for nothing that they say one should be careful of what they wish for. My fiancé would be tired of her in two months.

Today, however, his brown eyes melt like popsicles when their gazes meet. She nearly drools when that happens. Can't blame her. Luca is a gorgeous man, like most in the Tangorello family.

They sprout tall, long-limbed, flexible at the waist. Their complexion takes on the tan easily. The hair and eyes fall anywhere between the softer brown and the stark black of a raven's wing.

Luca's variant is smoother and warmer than any cappuccino. He's as gorgeous as the day we went to bed together. It was good at first. Unbidden sigh of regret lifts my chest. Truly, it was good! Plus, there were solid business reasons behind our engagement. We made sense together. We did. We almost made it to the altar.

But it all rotted away piece by piece, and Pansy grew out of the compost of my relationship with Luca. Which leaves me with no choice.

Nobody, nobody walks over me! I have too much wild Tatar blood in my veins to forgive the slights. I don't lie to myself, even when lies are more soothing than chamomile tea. Three's a crowd, and I'm out.

"Stay or go. Do whatever you wish, my darling. But without me." I've called him my darling. Darling! How old-fashioned and what a fucking joke! It's for the last time, I swear.

I turn on the stiletto heel until my nose points at the master-bedroom. As in a dream, I walk there to drag a suitcase from the walk-in closet. There are few mementos in this house, but some things I don't care to buy again.

Three pairs of stiletto heels.

A Magnum pistol.

There's also a rifle in a golf-bag, but that's a separate piece of luggage.

Luca follows me into the bedroom, leans against the window, arms crossed on his chest. Heavy silence thickens between us. Next to his thigh, on a low stand, lingers our only pet. It's a money tree in a too-small pot. The dirt is cracking, it's so dry. Shit... shit... shit...Leave it to Luca to kill everything! Of course, I live here too-lived-but it was his job to water the thing.

I kick his leg out of the way harder than I have to and grab the symbol of our relationship.

He cocks an eyebrow. "What are you-" and follows me to the en-suite. "No way, Mila. Please, don't act so dramatic."

"Yes, way!" I twist the faucet to the max, letting cold water splash into the sink. I'm tempted to splash it into my face because it flushes. "Someone has to water it, and you're obviously far more interested in watering bushes."

The jet splatters more than fills my cupped hands, it gushes so hard, but I drop whatever I catch on the thirsty dirt. The leaves seem to plump up instantly.

"There, there," I mumble through quivering lips. "You won't die on my watch."

I carry the dripping tree out of the bathroom. Luca trails us to the bedroom. He runs his hand through his hair again and again. "Mila, stop. You're overreacting. There's nothing between this poor girl and me. How could you think that I've broken my word for her... Mila!"

Even watered, the tree seems forlorn on its dinky stand. I wish I could do more for it, but I must go. With a shaking hand, I pick lipstick lingering on the Louis the XIV-th (-ish) dresser and refresh the carmine layer on my lips. Then kiss the air to even out the color. It's a good shade on me and it wouldn't do Pansy any favors. So, I toss the tube into my suitcase too.

Luca's bewildered gaze follows my every move.

"Do you remember this anecdote about a housewife who beats a servant before the servant breaks a tea-cup?" I ask him.

"What?" He looks perplexed. If there's one thing he hates, it's being perplexed.

"Maybe you've never heard of it." I shrug. "Grandma used to tell it to me."

"Another one of your charming Russki fables?"

I let the insult slide. "You know what I've come to realize after all these years?"

"What?" He's like a broken record, I swear.

"I realized that only morons laugh at the 'silly' housewife."

"Mila, I love-"

How can he look at me with the same melting gaze as he's just looked at Pansy? It doesn't matter how. He can. He did this before. And he would do it again if I don't do what the housewife did. Well, in my case, I don't have to beat someone. Just leave...

I forbid my ears to hear his impossibly soft you on the end of I love you. The worst lies are quiet. So damn quiet. Still lies.

"Ta-ta." I brush a kiss on his cheek on my way out. The lipstick leaves a carmine trace. I should leave, but my heart cracks and breaks. There must be something worth salvaging in this relationship, something for me. Luca already has Pansy. He'll do good by her, if only to prove me wrong. But how do I fill the empty void forming in my soul where love and laughs of the four years has been?

I run back into the bedroom, zip past the king-sized bed and grab the baby tree.

"Really?" Luca calls. "The plant?"

"Really," I reply. "I'll be damned, if I leave it behind to die." Bratva takes care of its own, and this tiny tree deserves better than Luca. And so do I.