Possessing Farrah ✔️

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐅𝐨𝐮𝐫 (IV)

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Farrah's POV.

My nineteenth birthday is nothing like my eighteenth. Last year, I woke to the sight of my steamed ballgown hanging up across the room. Today, I woke up to the smell of fresh cheese omelette and black coffee. Roza placed the tray on my bed, a wide smile on her face.

"Buon compleanno, bella."

She wished me a happy birthday in Italian and placed a small cupcake on my breakfast tray. She pressed her finger to her lips and told me to keep it our secret, the cupcake was not on Mr Ferrante's pre-approved diet plan.

The rest of the day is a sad affair. In the afternoon, my father calls me to ask how my day was. My mother speaks to me for a few minutes, expressing her regret that I am not at home to share some champagne with her. I'm more interested in the phone call after, from Layton.

He sings down the phone to me, managing to bring a smile to my face from thousands of miles away. He asked to send me a present, but when I checked with Maria, I'm not allowed personal deliveries. If I want to order something online, it has to be approved by Mr Ferrante first.

The day feels no different from the others. In a last-ditch attempt to celebrate, I put on a 'birthday' playlist in the evening and dance around my bedroom by myself to raise my spirits. It's sad and a little depressing, but it gets me through.

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In June, Layton turns nineteen. For his birthday, we arrange a night out during my two weeks that I have off in July. I book my flight home, eager for my first year to be over.

The days pass quickly after that and, before I know it, I'm back in England and out with Layton and his new university friends. We're a month late celebrating his birthday, but we drink like fishes to make up for it.

I find myself highly intoxicated and dancing with him in the early hours of the morning. Some EDM song is playing in the club and strobe lighting intermittently bathes us in a neon green. One minute I'm dancing with him, the next I'm kissing him. Layton swooped in and found my lips without warning. I'm too inebriated to react rationally, I kiss him back. It feels strange, kissing my best friend, but I go along with it. When he pulls away, he asks if I want another drink.

In the morning, I remember the kiss vividly despite the alcohol. If Layton remembers it, he doesn't mention it. We both act like nothing happened and he drives me to the airport without any awkwardness between us. I tear up as we share an extra-long hug in departures. He waves me goodbye and everything is normal again.

I think of the kiss as I sit in the window seat, watching the clouds below the plane. It felt weird at the time, but I don't know if that was just the setting. A raving nightclub is hardly the most romantic backdrop. Things are...odd between us. All our lives, we've spent the majority of our time together. This year without each other has been difficult for both of us.

Even during school, neither of us dated anyone seriously. We both had the excuse of dangerous fathers. We could easily be friends because our backgrounds are similar, but it's hard to explain to your new boyfriend/girlfriend that your parents are in the mafia.

I haven't been able to date at all in the year that I have been out here in Avellino. The surrounding villages are hardly hotbeds of appropriately-aged singles, and even if I met someone, I couldn't exactly invite them back to my father's employee's mob lair.

Layton however, he's in university, I always thought that you're supposed to be dating and exploring relationships during uni. He seems more focussed on his friends and degree. Obviously there is nothing wrong with that, in fact it's probably very healthy, but it does make me curious as to why. I always teased him about 'sowing his seeds' at uni, but it appears he is holding his seed bag close to his chest.

When I'm back at the compound, Roza sits down with me to discuss my new timetable for my second year. I get flashbacks of us doing the same thing not one year beforehand, I can't believe how fast time has passed.

"You will still have the same teachers, but you will be learning very different things this year."

There is a new physical session added to my timetable; combat. Davide has upped my training to seven times a week. On Wednesdays and Fridays, I have two physical sessions a day instead of one. There is one in the morning, one in the afternoon. Combat training, he explains, will cover everything from krav maga to simple defence to karate to any other kind of fighting style he feels like teaching me.

Professor York starts to tailor her business teaching to a mafia organisation. Instead of learning about the profit margins on normal consumer profits, I learn how to compare and barter pricing on 'products'. I can guess what products she means, undoubtedly weapons and drugs. She teaches me how to tell which sellers are legit and which are scamming you.

Professor Bene shows me how to hide money from the government. Tax evasion at its finest. What started as a normal business and finance course last year takes a notably shady turn. But the interest factor increases, I must confess.

I feel more like my father than ever when I am sprawled on my bed in the evenings, studying strategy and business plans. I am provided with pictures of cocaine to try and work out which is the purest simply from colour and texture. This becomes my new homework.

A new difficulty presents itself. When Layton calls me, we find it hard to relate to each other's lives. Where he is struggling to get by on student loans because his father wants him to learn to 'pay his own way', I am living in a luxurious mansion with all my meals made for me. Where he is constantly revising for exams and writing assignments, I am studying pictures of arsenals and drugs. While he has given up the gym and admits to letting himself go a little, I spend every day tracking what I eat and ensuring that I follow Davide's workout schedule.

We are in very different places, but we try as hard as we can to make it work. We listen to each other's grumbles and complaints, despite not having any decent advice for each other. We sympathise as much as we can and promise to meet up in December again. I realise my life for the next few years will revolve around waiting for July and December, the two times a year that I can go home.

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I'm training with Davide on Layton's birthday in June. After two years, Davide has seen me at my worst. He's caught me in varying states of distress. He has watched me throw-up after a particularly gruelling session. He's laughed at me for farting while making me deadlift my PB weights (I nearly died of embarrassment in that moment). He's seen nearly every mood I can possibly feel (except the naughty ones, of course) and has encouraged me each time I've wanted to cry and give up.

The air-con is blasting because it's swelteringly hot outside. It's not been this hot in June before, there's some kind of random heatwave going on. I'm wearing only a small pair of cycling shorts and my sports bra. My hair is scraped up in a bun, I'm sweating buckets and I'm bright red from the lack of make-up hiding it. We circle each other in the ring. He's wearing pads, I'm wearing the gloves.

"Again," he orders.

We circle and he tries to dodge my jabs while I try to land them on his pads. Boxing is his latest change-up in training, I've only been doing it for a few months. I like it, but it's damn tiring.

I land five hits in a row, and he drops the pads, letting out a whistle. "That was good, Farrah. That was good."

I grin at his praise and wipe my forehead with the back of my arm. Davide suddenly looks past me, over my shoulder.

"Impressed?" He asks someone.

I glance over my shoulder and gulp as I spot Mr Ferrante standing in the doorway. One ankle is crossed over the other and his arms are folded over his chest. This is one of the rare occasions that he is not in a suit. All of the times that I have seen him since coming in January, he has been in a suit. I mostly pass him in the corridors and he ignores me each time, even when I try to say hello.

Rude.

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