He cleared his throat. “How can I hate him for what he’s done? How can I send orders to avenge a man who doesn’t have my sympathy, only the regret that he ever fell in love in the first place?” He spoke to me in Italian. No emotion in his voice. His tone was as hard as his eyes.
“What?” I breathed, hardly able to even speak. Though I understood damn well what he had meant. I said it to buy time.
“You know me better than I know myself. No games.”
“I do,” I barely got out. “You’re telling me that if I ever—”
The look he gave made me look away for a moment, before I continued. “You would do the same thing Luca did. In front of me.”
“A heart for a heart,” he continued in Italian. “She is his. Aberto stole her from him. And you should know how serious the crime is against me—the murder you’d put me through by your hands touching another. You should see. A physical representation of what your treachery would do to me.”
“I see,” I said, feeling faint.
Maggie Beautiful was Luca’s heart, and in their eyes, Aberto had stolen Luca’s heart. So Luca stole his.Literally.This was not business. This was personal. Screw the family over for a dollar—perhaps a hand or a limb would go missing, a reminder. Screw them over personally, it would be the vital heart.
Brando had spoken to Aberto about all of this before in Positano, laying it on the table. No cards were hidden in this game.
I hadn’t wanted to be privy to that conversation, given the fact that I would’ve hated to hear Aberto agree to the rules, knowing the stakes. He paid the price for love with his life.
“Tell my wildflower that I will see her soon.”
Jesus.
Brando made a noise deep in his throat that sent my eyes back up to meet his. “I see the way men want my truth, even with my child in your womb,” he said in Italian. “I’d live the rest of my life at war to keep you. I’d steal every heart from every single thief.”
He was at war with himself. He wanted to feel sorrow for the loss, for what had happened to a man who didn’t live by the sword but died by it anyway, all for the touch of love, and for what his mother had witnessed, but he couldn’t summon it.
Brando was a truthful man with the world, and even more so with himself. To say that he felt pity or was sorry was to lie.
In the same situation, he’d commit an act of mortal sin to reclaim what he felt was his. Me. And the life we had promised each other.Our vows don’t run—and no man or force in this world comes between uswere words that meant something to him.
When we were first together, he had taken responsibility for me, and that meant something to him too—everything. He’d never expect or want pity if he died in my honor. It was what it was. He accepted the risks long ago. He’d die like a man.
Luca hadn’t promised a life to Maggie Beautiful, though, since he had been married to someone else. Or perhaps he had, and things went awry. Maggie Beautiful had secrets buried way down deep that I couldn’t even begin to fathom. If there ever was an enigma to behold in life, it was Margherita Granchio, Luca Fausti’s wildflower. She was the only woman who came close to taming him.
A surge of…intense passion seemed to burst through my husband. Scalding hot to the touch, he pressed me up against the wall, again pinning my wrists to each side of my head. He wasn’t hurting me, but the pressure communicated that he wasn’t letting go so easily. He wanted to take me, to remind me of who I belonged to, but he had to show restraint, given the circumstances.
He came in as close as he could, using his nose to trail up my neck, along my jaw, and to my mouth. Then he slipped back down again, a predator seeking a pulse point, and set his mouth there, feeling the frantic rhythm of my life throb against his lips.
“La mia vita,” he whispered.My life.He continued in Italian. “You are my heart. Your lifeblood sustains mine. Not my equal; you are more powerful than me.”
His hair was wild and black, as dark as the depths of his eyes, hanging in his face in strands. I longed to run my fingers through it, to make it right, but in this moment, it seemed fitting. It matched who he was and what he couldn’t control.
“La mia verità,” he said, his breath washing across my skin. “L'unica verità che abbia mai conosciuto.”My truth. The only truth I’ve ever known.
Gently, he bit the area around my pulse, sucking after. I squirmed, pinned, two centers of gravity keeping me a willing captive.
I craved to take him inside, to shield him from the war inside of himself, for my body to be one with his so we could slay the demons together. I’d crawl in with the monsters, soothing the ache, the rage, the sheer madness, while he swung the sword to defeat the enemy.
“Perhaps you won’t feel this way forever,” I whispered. “The intensity toward…me, I mean. It will lessen over time.”
As soon as the words were out, I knew they were a mistake. After the adrenaline surge had abated, condensed exhaustion seemed to encapsulate me. The world around me seemed to become an aquatic womb. Wherever the tide carried me, I’d follow. My eyelids were heavy. I had to keep blinking to keep awake.
My eyes sprang open when his teeth came down around my nipple, the flesh so sensitive that I felt it would tear. It didn’t hurt, just sent a jolt of pleasure so strong that my entire body convulsed. My lower stomach contracted, as though preparing to reach high climax. The slick wetness between my legs mingled with the shower water and humidity.
“Riprenditelo,” he ordered.Take it back.
“I do. I take it back. I—”
