I liked him.
However, the jury was still out on Bonfilia. She seemed inconsequential, almost like a prop all of these years. She stood, having enough of me, and looked down. “Tell Marcelo that I will see him soon.” She slipped past me, but before she nudged Donato again, I stopped her.
“His name is Brando,” I said. “And it fits him. Luca gave him the perfect name.”
“You believe you are smart. We shall see.” She took off again, this time finding a spot with the wives of the uncles.
I gave Donato a hit to his hip with my middle finger knuckle. He shook with laughter.
“You could have warned me about that cuckoo bird!” I hissed at him.
“Cuckoo bird?” he repeated, sighing. “What is this?”
“She’s a bit…nutty.”
He laughed even harder but stopped a moment later when Ettore narrowed his eyes in our direction.
“Some things we must experience for ourselves,” Donato said, his tone suddenly serious. “Bonfilia is one of them.” He repeatedcuckoo bird, seemingly locking it away in his mind, in the department labeled “phrases from the non-Italian.”
“Still,” I said, but then said no more when Mick and Mitch started to make their way toward me. The race was about to begin, and all thoughts of Bonfilia were drowned out by the sudden racing of my heart.
“How is he?” I asked the two brothers as they scooted past Donato and took seats next to me. Mick was right beside me, Mitch a seat down.
“He knows what he’s doing,” Mitch said, but his leg kept moving up and down.
“He does,” I said, the tone of my voice more confident than my heart. Rocco had been raised to race these cars. Brando did it to win things he couldn’t afford, since he refused to touch a penny of the Fausti fortune. There was a reason why my brother called Brando “Seven,” other than him being seven years old when Luca Fausti was arrested.
Brando was luckier than your average man. As soon as he was able, he started to race for wagers, sometimes for extremely high bets. I had found out after we started dating that he even won his pride and joy, his old Chevy, in a high-stakes game of poker, and then he began to race. He’d travel wherever the track took him.
He’d win cars and then sell them—sometimes back to their owners for more than they had paid for them to begin with. Other times he’d win money. Nice pots of money. He’d also gamble—he was a shark when it came to pool and poker. Maggie Beautiful had taught him.
That was how he was able to afford all of my wedding rings. He was frugal and had saved all of his winnings. The money he made working at the refinery had been enough to pay bills and such, at the time. He made more while in the Coast Guard and then working offshore as a diver.
Seven,my husband, nodded at me before slipping inside of the car, and then things went from zero to a hundred in the space of a heartbeat.
This sport was lost on me—how many laps, how fast, what it all meant. It seemed like both cars were nose to nose for the majority of the race. No matter what the outcome of this situation, there was no way Rocco would allow Brando to win on purpose.
This family seemed to thrive on leadership, even if it meant proving that you were stronger than a brother or cousin or even an uncle.
The laws of the jungle seemed prominent.
If Rocco would even attempt to let Brando win, these men would know. They grew up around these cars. They also drove them for fun, something the family did together. Like playing baseball for normal people.
Marzio, his sons, even Uncle Tito—they were fixated on the track. They didn’t make noise, but the truth came through their movements—leaning forward, a little further, a little further…eyes glued.
It came as no shock, once I realized who these people were and what they were about, that they had kept tabs on Brando since he was a child. They knew he raced, but to challenge one of the best? That took, as Mitch said, humungous Italian balls, and they knew that too.
If my husband showed an ounce of fear or a breath of hesitation around these men, they’d snap his neck and paralyze him. There was no recovering from that wound.
As the last of the race was drawing near, and my heart was lodged in my throat, I couldn’t predict the outcome. It was too close. It seemed like there couldn’t be a winner. Rocco’s car would edge up, then Brando’s would, on and on, and the race seemed never ending.
Until finally my heart relaxed and I was out of my seat, my locked hands coming to my heart, relief like none other flooding over me. Tact refused me the right to clap.
Brando won, but only by a slight margin.
I thought that summed up his and Rocco’s relationship, what it would become, without having to find the words to describe the dynamics of it.
The two brothers stepped out of their cars and shook hands, Rocco pulling him in, saying something in his ear. Brando nodded to his grandfather, before his eyes found mine. He called me to him with only a look. When I reached him, he swooped me up, kissing me, before placing me in the car and making a victory lap for our future.
