I lifted her off of her feet, carrying her to the bed, gaining strength from the woman who owned my heart and would forever keep it safe.
* * *
Even though it was cold out, I didn’t dress warm. My blood ran hot, and I needed to be able to maneuver, even if I had no clue where fate was about to take me.
The path was unknown to me, but not to my brothers. They had been here before.
“This property belongs to Luca,” I said, staring out of the window as Donato drove past the gates.
No one said anything for a while until I turned to meet the first set of eyes that were willing to meet mine. Romeo’s.
“We all have a villa meant for each of us on the property,” he said. “This is a city in the middle of a city.”
It was.
A main villa stood front and center, which was a mansion by any standards. Deeper onto the property, smaller villas created a neighborhood. We passed the “residential” area, going even further, moving closer to the wilder parts of the land.
A grunt left my mouth. I should have known. I had refused to come here when my brothers invited me to ride bikes with them, after they told me who the owner was. Our father. I wasn’t here for a pleasure ride, though, but to spill blood on his land.
We became quiet after that. I looked ahead at all of the men who were going on foot to wherever we drove to, and at the different sections of the land we passed. Most of it was endless miles of forest. It didn’t take long for the land to open up, though, and for a crude colosseum to show itself.
It might not be up to Rome’s standards—it was half the size—or as old, but it was what it was meant to be—a place to fight to the death for entertainment, or in my situation, for honor.
“Different from the race track, ah?” Donato said to me after he parked behind the building.
We all filed out one by one, and the crowd parted to let us through, watching as we walked to the rooms built underneath the colosseum. None of us said anything as a woman walked toward us, the men giving her an even wider berth, as she accompanied a cage on wheels. A lion was behind the bars. She kept talking to the beast, saying soothing things to it.
“Naomi,” Rocco said, watching her. The woman had on a jacket that matched the lion’s mane. The hood covered her hair, but not the stern set of her face. It seemed like she was the lion’s keeper, daring any man to get too close to the animal.
“This is not good,” Donato said, watching as the woman and the lion came even closer.
“How fast can you run,fratello?” Romeo said, his eyes glued to the scene, like the rest of us.
“Not as fast as a fucking lion,” I said, watching as the beast leaned into the woman’s touch through the cage.
“That is not what I meant,” he said, nodding toward the men around us. “You are faster than them. They will not even see you go.”
“I agree,” Dario said.
Rocco cleared his throat. “If Naomi is here and so is the lion, that means one of you, or both, will stand against him. Without weapons.”
“Then we’ll both die,” I said.
Rocco shook his head. “Not if he goes after one man, leaving the other the chance to touch the doors. If you touch the doors before he attacks, they will open and you will be saved.”
“This particular lion is not truly wild,” Donato said, his eyes serious. “He was raised in captivity, by Naomi.”
“This is why Valerio and Naomi are not together,” Rocco said.
“A lion came between them,” I said, trying to be sarcastic but not.
Valerio was one of our many cousins, who was also considered royalty in Spain. His father was blood-related to us, but his mother was a princess. I didn’t have all the facts, and in the moment, I didn’t care about specifics. I was about to come face to face with the true King of Beasts. They might bring my remains to my wife in a plastic bag once this was over.
“Many,” Dario said, answering my remark but not.
“He is wild,” Rocco said, picking up on the thread. “Even if he no longer lives in the wild. And he does not like men, in particular. Especially when one gets too close to Naomi.”
Naomi and the beast went to pass, but she stopped, staring at me. The lion in the cage went berserk, stealing my attention for a second, before I met her eyes again. The men who were rolling the cage on wheels stopped at her command. The lion paced in his confines, watching us, roaring every couple of seconds.
