Black Widow | 18+

28 | Healing Over Time

He hadn't killed Clementina in the end, but instead she had another daughter who Leandro cherished. His two kids were at the focus of his life, and for all that he and Clementina remained married, everything he did was for them. Leandro cared about Clementina, cared for her because she was the mother of his two children and she was raising them, and through the pain he had managed to get back in touch with their original connection, but he didn't love her. 

He loved Artemisia, and he always would. It was something Domenico and Luiz told their men would remain a fact and it was better not to question it after Romulo had exposed their affair. 

Romulo was married himself though, to another Italian girl and now had two kids, twins, one boy and one girl. His past with Leandro had been forgotten through a slow process of being forced into the same spaces and having to work together. They were back to normal, and superficially the fabric of the Cosa Nostra was as it should have been, how it would've been if Leandro never reunited with Artemisia in the first place. 

However, there was one thing that tended to surprise other organised crime groups, and that was the Italian-Russian partnership. 

Anton and Leandro had torn each other apart, but at their last showdown when they saw each other for the first time since Anton returned Rafaella Torromandi's chain, the two men got honest with each other. 

Maybe it was because they knew that Artemisia wouldn't want either of them dead, but they did acknowledge the facts. 

There had never been a problem between them before the Mexicans started pushing for more, and it was a battle that was fuelled by their love for the one woman who wasn't even in the picture. 

They came to an agreement after both admitting it, one that was strange, but also very clever. The two men would equally split New York whilst dividing other territories. 

Anton would receive 65% of Miami and Leandro the rest, while the reverse would happen in Los Angeles, and in their newly acquired Texas after pushing out the Mexicans they split the territory 50/50. 

It stunned people, but the two men had always respected one another hugely, and this silent respect had been brought to light in their partnership. But, it meant they needed to work together, and in the last five years they had made big deals with other people as a team, bringing them to be friends. 

In a way they were brothers, formerly like Romulus and Remus, but now like two siblings who had each other's back in the face of adversary. It brought them both wealth and success, and their partnership had brought their families close. 

Anton had a family of his own too, now married to Kira, the one other woman who he cared about in a meaningful way. She had given him a son who was four, a year younger than Leandro's first daughter, and the men had watched their kids grow up together. 

Anton had moments where he thought he loved Kira, but then he would think about Artemisia, and the feeling wasn't the same; but he stopped comparing the two because he knew he would never be able to be happy if he kept on comparing every feeling he had to the feelings he had when he was with Artemisia. Like Leandro, Anton cared for Kira in the way he had originally, but also because she was the mother of his son. 

The two men were very aware that they were in the same boat when it came to their marriages, and in a way it brought them closer, but they rarely spoke about Artemisia unless it was a specific time of year: September.