I would’ve won. No doubt about it. If my wife had been hurt, he would be in his grave and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
“Does it always come down to the woman?” he said.
He could’ve called me her puppet and I wouldn’t have blinked an eye. Words were meaningless to me, especially coming from someone I didn’t trust.
“Yes, it does,” I said.
He knew it as well as I did. It was more thancoming down to the woman. It was what his actions—or non-actions—meant, what it proved about his character, and whether or not my brothers and I could support a man like him.
We refused, just as we had denied Ettore.
Marzio was fond of saying that if a man didn’t have an impenetrable line, he was no man, but a land to be trampled on and claimed by someone else. He had denied his brothers when he didn’t feel as though their beliefs were in line with his. Marzio was a man of integrity, a man who had clear lines, who created his own country, and laid down the law when others attempted to encroach on his territory.
He was a man I had looked up to, and, under different circumstances, I would’ve followed and backed him in any war, as long as his beliefs continued to align with my own. We’d only had one disagreement during the time that he was alive. That had to do with my wife and her contract with Nemours. But that was another day and what felt like long ago. My attention needed to be on the man before me.
The shield that Lothario armed himself with came down, showing what made a Fausti a Fausti. Pure strength and determination—a cold-blooded need to rule and destroy if the occasion called for it.
This man could look another man in the eye, slit his chest open, stick his hand in, and rip out the beating heart. Then send it to the man’s family with a note.
Personal.
He took a step closer. I held my ground. No man would make me move. Not even if he stuck a dull knife in my heart. The same blood pumped through my veins, and I felt it, hot against the cold air, causing the cold to surrender to its hotter competitor.
“Codardo.” He spit on the ground near my shoe.
I grinned at him. He’d called me a coward. “Was it you that came to me? Or me that came to you?”
“Answer me,” he demanded. “Here. Now.”
I didn’t even have to look at my brothers. We had all made the decision. “Our answer is no,” I said. “If you must face our father, your brother, you will do it alone.”
“Very well. But you will be sorry, mark my words. If your hot-tempered wife pulls a gun on him, he will remove it from her hands and turn it on an innocent, then force her to watch while he blows the head from his shoulders. If you try to stop him? You will have to challenge him or face his punishment.”
This time I took a step closer. Our chests almost touched. Our faces were a deadly kiss apart. “Go in peace,” I said. Then refused to say another word.
He blinked and the shield came back up.
“Very well,” he said again.
He turned to leave, his men guarding his back on the way out, but stopped, waiting for Cesare.
Cesare watched me. He had been watching the entire time. Judging, studying, feeling me out.
The smug look had fallen from his face. His eyes were even darker in the shadows, void of emotion, but in their depths, I still found the truth. This wasn’t over between us. It seemed like he had sought me out for a reason. Maybe after hearing what Lothario had been saying about me, or even my brothers. And the timing? Too fucking perfect. His actions—calling attention to himself in the way that he had—proved that he wasn’t trying to blend in with the scenery.
He had my fucking attention, as I had his.
Again, his gaze landed on my wife before he turned his eyes back to mine.
A challenge, even though he already knew my greatest strength and my greatest weakness: the woman I called wife, and now my daughter.
Forget wanting to conquer the throne through Lothario; Cesare was another ruthless bastard who’d try to use my wife to get to me. Even though some men wanted her for her truth, some men just wanted to use my truth to breach the perimeters I’d set around my life—in a way that they knew would be torturous to me. Using my wife as a pawn.
I’d find out soon enough where Cesare was going with this.
This time, though, I wouldn’t wait to find out. I was taking a proactive stance, but before I could get a word out, Lothario cleared his throat and said one word. “Ludi.”
This word elicited a different reaction from each man privy to this meeting.
