“Awwhell,” she said, throwing her hands over her face.
Romeo stepped up first, taking my hand. I noticed that the same exact tattoo as Rocco, a rosary, a lion in its center, and the sacred heart in its mane, spanned the length of his sculpted forearm. Dario sported a matching one in the same area.
“It’s nice to meet you all,” I said, nodding.
“The pleasure is all mine,” Dario said, winking at me.
Romeo’s eyes were back on Violet as she licked her lips—suddenly parched. I reminded myself that those eyes didn’t belong to my husband and there should be no reason why him looking at her in that way should make me uncomfortable, but for some reason, it did.
“Bella,” Rocco said, taking a step forward. “Let us go.”
“Can you give us a minute?”
“Of course.”
I expected Violet to stay withus, but she headed off toward the pool, offering to show the Fausti three where to go. I watched them walk away, Romeo whispering something in her ear, sliding a hand to her lower back.
A Fausti, all right. Romeo was already trying on the alpha role to see if she fit his mold.
“I have a question. Or a few.” Maggie Beautiful pulled my attention in. Her voice sounded strained, like she suffered with a headache.
“I figured you would, but I only have some of the answers.”
I reached over into the candy jar and pulled out a sucker. Chocolate. My favorite. Maggie Beautiful came to stand next to me and she took one of her own. Rocco stood on the edge of the bridge leading to the pool. He seemed to be waiting.
“That one,” she said, rolling the sucker around her mouth. “He could be Brando’s twin. The color of his eyes is the only difference, but not the intensity.”
“Rocco?”
“Yes, the one who’s infatuated with you.”
“Infatuated with me?” I turned to her, and our faces were so close that the sticks of our suckers almost touched.
“I know what a Fausti in lust looks like. And so should you! You saw the way his eyes got all lusty. When they want a woman, they turn it on, like hot water.”
“It’s really not like that. I think he knows something too.”
“He knows about Brando?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But he knowssomething. I didn’t tell him. I couldn’t. Not until I tell Brando first.”
I had no idea why I hadn’t put the pieces together until then. Rosaria orchestrated the meeting, no doubt about it. It was too much of a coincidence not to be.
The night Rocco appeared, I had been too stunned to even form the thought, and with Brando not coming home, the villa occupied my time, but it all became clear. She had held the piece of the puzzle all along, ever since Paris. When she met Brando at some party we attended together.
That smug—
“Did you notice something else, doll?” Maggie Beautiful cut through my thoughts again.
“The tattoos?”
“Yes.” She slurped around her sucker. “Luca has the same one. Around his neck.”
“What does it mean?”
“I traced that tattoo many nights,” she said, watching Rocco. “When I asked about it, all he said was that it was a family tradition.”
“Hmm.”
