Marco Rosetti

The butcher who employs Fenris, loses everything for it, and works out who he is without ever asking.

The shop

Three generations: his own thirty years, his father's before that, and his grandfather's before that (ch. 82). Weathered face, a grin, and stories about his grandmother's recipes told over lunch.

He values Fenris for the work rather than the strength, and says so:

RST: You're a natural at this, you know [...] Got a real understanding of the craft.

Fenris ducks his head "almost bashfully" at it. It is the only compliment in the arc that lands on him without a cost attached.

What it costs him

Ch. 82. The shop is wrecked overnight in reprisal for a rescue Fenris carried out three streets away, and a note is knifed to the doorframe. Marco is unhurt and sitting on the floor of it in tears.

His question is the one the whole arc is built to ask:

RST: This was my father's business. And his father's before him. Three generations, Fenris. Gone because you... because you what? Did the right thing?

Fenris answers with one word and leaves. Marco is left "with the terrible understanding that the gentle giant he had come to trust was something far more dangerous than he had ever imagined."

He does not ask

Ch. 89 is the repair, and it is mostly Marco choosing not to press.

The shop is rebuilt better than it was, thirty or forty thousand dollars of new cases and equipment, paid for by a part-time employee. He raises it once and gets "I had a good investment strategy", and lets it go.

Then the news names the Caruso organisation as dismantled, and he watches Fenris not react.

RST: Funny thing about heroes. Sometimes they're hiding in plain sight.

He nearly places him, and the thought is left unfinished on the page:

Reminds me of someone who fought alongside Icarus during the war. Same build, same attitude. But that was years ago, and that guy had a different aura...

The narration closes it: "Some questions were better left unasked."

That is the arc's answer to ch. 82. Marco does not get an explanation and stops needing one, and the man who ruined his shop keeps the job.

Open questions

• What the different aura is. Marco is comparing a soldier from the war to the butcher in front of him and cannot make them match. Nothing in Acts 4 and 5 says what changed.
• How he knows what Icarus's people looked like.