Chapter 6 - THE YEARS THAT WERE MINE
Marco served thirty-one months of the thirty-eight after standard credit and programming.
No secret release.
No pardon.
No special wing.
I knew only what he told me later.
At first, nothing.
I did not write for four months.
Why?
Because I did not know what we were.
Because prison correspondence felt intimate.
Because I was tired of men whose names changed my life.
Good.
Then Christmas came.
Golden Rose sent employee cards.
My manager wrote:
Stop checking invoices on your days off.
Owen sent a photo of his dog wearing antlers.
Fine.
And I thought about Marco.
Annoying.
So I wrote.
No romance.
Marco,
The coffee at Golden Rose is still terrible.
I finished bookkeeping certification.
My shoulder clicks when it rains.
I hope fluorescent lighting has humbled you.
—Tessa
His reply came three weeks later.
Tessa,
Congratulations.
The lighting has not humbled me. It has radicalized me.
I am sorry your shoulder still hurts.
—Marco
Good.
Letters continued.
Slow.
No pressure.
Sometimes six weeks.
Sometimes two months.
He wrote about books.
Legal history.
A prison cooking class he refused because he believed “boiling pasta should not require certification.”
I wrote back:
You ran organized crime and this is where you draw line at regulation?
He replied:
Excellent point.
Good.
He did not mentor everyone.
Did not become prison saint.
He mostly worked library inventory.
Fine.
He wrote about restitution.
Several business owners accepted payments.
One refused contact.
Good.
Marco asked through counsel once whether the owner wanted a written apology.
No.
Marco did not send.
Good.
A no.
Learned.
Then my career moved.
Golden Rose’s owner promoted me to finance coordinator.
Salary.
Benefits.
No tips.
At first I missed cash.
Then loved predictable deposits.
Good.
I went back to school part-time for accounting.
Community college.
Night classes.
No scholarship from Marco.
I used employer tuition reimbursement and loans.
Good.
I was thirty-four.
Older than most students.
Fine.
I liked it.
Numbers stayed still when people lied.
Good.
Eventually I became assistant controller for the restaurant group.
Not because bullet.
Because work.
Good.
Owen got married.
I was maid of honor.
Marco sent no gift.
Why would he?
Good.
My shoulder scar faded.
Nightmares less.
Not gone.
Therapy helped.
Workers’ comp had covered some.
Civil settlement covered rest.
Good.
Then Marco wrote:
I may be eligible for residential reentry in five months.
I stared.
Did not know how I felt.
Good.
He added:
No response needed.
Of course.
I wrote:
Let me know when you’re actually out.
There.
Good.
He did.
Two years and seven months after surrender, Marco returned to Chicago under supervised release after completing a period in residential reentry.
He rented a condo in River North.
No Castellano compound.
Good.
His legitimate holdings had independent management.
Security business largely sold/dissolved.
Trucking/real estate remained under compliance monitors.
Good.
No direct operational authority initially.
He had one board advisory role approved.
Fine.
He texted me:
I’m out.
Coffee whenever you want.
If never, understood.
I stared.
Then waited three weeks.
My choice.
Coffee at a public cafe.
I arrived first.
Good.
Marco came alone.
No visible security.
He looked older.
Silver more obvious.
Thinner.
Still Marco.
He stopped at table.
“May I?”
Chair.
“Yes.”
Good.
He sat.
We both ordered.
I paid for mine.
He did not argue.
Excellent.
First ten minutes awkward.
Then he said:
“You changed your hair.”
“I did that two years ago.”
“Prison has limitations.”
I laughed.
Good.
Then:
“How’s shoulder?”
“Better.”
“Good.”
No touching scar.
No guilt performance.
Then:
“How’s accounting?”
“I like it.”
“You always liked records.”
“The order pad was not accounting.”
“Primitive ledger.”
I glared.
Good.
Then silence.
I asked:
“Are you still dangerous?”
There.
Direct.
Marco considered.
“Yes.”
Interesting.
I waited.
“I still know dangerous people. I still have money and influence. I still have instincts I do not like.”
Good.
“And criminal?”
“Not if I can help it.”
Not perfect wording.
He corrected.
“I am not participating in criminal operations.”
Good.
Better.
“Supervision?”
“Yes.”
“Therapy?”
He looked offended.
“Yes.”
Good.
I smiled.
Then:
“Why coffee?”
“Because I missed you.”
There.
My heart moved.
Annoying.
“And because I want to know you outside a restaurant, a hospital, a courthouse, and letters.”
Good.
“What do you want from me?”
“Nothing you don’t choose.”
There.
Good.
I believed enough to stay twenty more minutes.
Not enough to fall into his arms.
Good.
We met again a month later.
Then two months.
No schedule.
No gifts.
No driver.
Fine.
Then one night he asked:
“Dinner?”
I said:
“No.”
He nodded.
Why no?
I wanted him to react.
Bad test.
Still.
He did not.
Good.
A week later I texted:
Dinner Friday?
He replied:
Yes.
No comment about changed mind.
Important.
At dinner, he said:
“I once called you my queen.”
I covered face.
“Please don’t.”
“I am apologizing.”
“Good.”
“I thought the highest respect I could offer was elevation into my world.”
There.
Interesting.
“And now?”
“I think the highest respect is not assuming you want my world.”
There.
Good.
“Better.”
He smiled.
Then:
“Can I kiss you?”
I froze.
Three years of distance.
No employment.
No case dependency.
My own salary.
My own apartment.
My own lawyer if needed.
Choice.
“Yes.”
Brief.
Good.
Not fate.
Not reward.
When I went home, I still had my keys.
That mattered.
The next morning, nothing had changed except I wanted to do it again.
Marco’s letters never came on a schedule, which helped.
I did not wait by the mailbox.
At least not often.
Good.
One month he wrote nothing.
I noticed.
Hated that I noticed.
Then a letter arrived.
He had been placed on mail restriction temporarily after another inmate tried to pass contraband through shared library materials.
Not his violation.
Still affected.
There.
Systems can restrict innocent people inside them too.
He wrote:
Do not make this poetic.
It was mostly annoying.
I laughed.
Good.
So I did not turn prison into a cleansing ritual.
It was punishment.
Confinement.
Boredom.
Loss of control.
Sometimes danger.
Sometimes bureaucracy.
It did not automatically make Marco wise.
Therapy, restitution, consequences, and repeated choices mattered more.
Good.
My own life grew wider at the same time.
I took a solo trip to New Orleans after finishing my accounting certificate.
Three days.
Cheap hotel.
Too much food.
No Marco.
No Owen.
No trauma purpose.
Good.
I realized I had spent years making every decision around work, recovery, court, or someone else’s schedule.
Traveling because I wanted to hear music felt almost rebellious.
I sent Marco one postcard.
Front:
A brass band.
Back:
Coffee still better here.
He replied a month later:
Unfair comparison.
Good.
That trip mattered more to me than our first kiss later.
Not romantically.
Personally.
It proved my life could expand without waiting for any man to return.
My accounting program changed the way I thought about the shooting.
Not emotionally.
Structurally.
Controls.
Segregation of duties.
Audit trails.
Review.
The language was dry.
I loved it.
One professor said:
“Fraud thrives where one person can initiate, approve, and conceal.”
I wrote that down.
Then thought of Vincent.
Access to schedules.
Security staff.
Operational authority.
Marco’s trust.
Too much concentrated in one person.
There.
Good.
No accounting textbook would call that mafia governance.
It was still a control failure.
At Golden Rose, I started noticing smaller versions.
Managers who approved their own comps.
Supervisors who edited timecards they also reviewed.
One person controlling both cash drawer and reconciliation.
Nothing necessarily criminal.
Still risky.
I raised it.
The controller looked at me.
“You are annoying.”
“Thank you.”
Good.
We changed procedures.
Not because of Marco.
Because controls make honest people’s jobs easier too.
That became my favorite lesson.
Systems are not only for catching villains.
They reduce temptation, mistakes, and accusations.
Good.
By the time Marco came home, I had stopped seeing my order pad as the strange object that exposed betrayal.
It had become what it always was.
A record.
Records matter because memory changes.
Power argues.
People forget.
Paper waits.
That was why I liked accounting.
Not because numbers never lie.
People can make numbers lie beautifully.
But numbers leave trails if someone bothers to look.
By the time I finished the accounting program, I had one more thing I had never possessed when I first met Marco.
A retirement account.
Tiny.
Still.
Mine.
I opened it through work and laughed at the first balance.
Three hundred dollars.
Then six hundred.
Then more.
Good.
Money did not make me fearless.
It made options less theoretical.
That mattered.
When Marco later asked why I insisted on paying for my own coffee, I told him:
“Because small financial habits are how I remind myself I still have exits.”
He did not argue.
Good.
By then I also had one thing I had never possessed at the Golden Rose: paid vacation I could actually afford to use.
That mattered.
May you like
Time off stopped being lost wages.
Choice expanded in small financial ways before it expanded anywhere else.
