“That—” I cleared my throat; it came out strangled. “That is—it means—”What to even say to make him understand?
“Stop struggling.” He dipped me and I put one hand to my hat. The feel of the water was soft and a little cooler than the outside temperature. “I understand what you can’t say.”
All I could do was nod and close my eyes to the azure sky, feeling the zest of water flow down my back. But this conversation led me to think of someone else… “Luca,” I said, and my husband’s eyes narrowed against mine in extreme wariness. “What does he look like?”
I could tell by the rise of his eyebrows that I had surprised him. I had met his grandfather, all of his uncles, his brothers, and they all resembled each other, but I had never seen his father. In my worst nightmares I sometimes saw him, but he came to me in the basic shape of a man.
Rarely did Brando allow us to step foot on any of the properties the Faustis owned. He refused to even use their private planes. When we went to Marzio’s funeral, looking for pictures of Luca was the last thing on my mind.
“Does it matter?”
“It does to me. I want to know.”
“Why? So you can have a picture of him in your mind to hate?”
“I don’t need to see him to hate him. I just do.” Though Maggie Beautiful had warned me that if I were to ever meet him, he was charming enough to make you forget his true nature. She compared him to those cartoon figures that have revolving circles in their eyes—hypnotizing.
“Tell me,” he said, fixing me with a stare that almost made me let go of him.
“Nothing. It’s nothing.”
“Wrong answer. Tell me.”
I sighed and told him exactly what Maggie Beautiful had told me.
His hands came to my arms, squeezing, and I had to curtail the reaction to retreat. “You will never meet him.Never.Do you understand me, Scarlett?”
The tone of his voice, the sharpness in it, made a cold shiver pass over me. It scared me. I nodded, bringing my head to his chest to escape his eyes.
“I know how curious you can be.” His tone was still as sharp as ice. “I won’t allow it. Do you hear me? If you ever try to see him, and I find out—”
“I won’t,” I said, putting a hand to his neck, feeling the pulse there pounding against his skin. “But is he—is he that bad?”
“Ettore is a golden retriever compared to him. Even in jail he still rules. I believe that’s why Ettore didn’t make a move that night in Natchitoches. He had gone to see Luca. And Luca ordered him not to.”
“You couldn’t—”
“I don’t know,” he said, and it was the first time he had ever admitted a possible weak spot in his armor. “Maybe Rocco and me together. Maybe it would take all four of us. Or if he was to ever go after—”
He stopped himself from going any further. I was thankful that he had. Discussing Luca Fausti unfailingly made me feel like we were on unsteady ground. Bringing him up made me fearful that we might summon him somehow. Even though at times I couldn’t seem to help myself.
I didn’t want to continue on the same path, so I decided to take a turn. Going for another bearable issue I could free from the chamber of bothers. “On the hammock, I was thinking—I’m not mad about you and my mother. Your friend of a friend.”
“You make it sound torrid.” He leaned back, cooling his back in the water, but his voice still held an edge. Luca Fausti could turn his temperament for the worse quicker than I could blink.
When he rose, I stared at a droplet of water on his shoulder as it ran down his chest, over his nipple, bumping over his sculpted abs and then returning to its original source. “I remembered something—about that time. Before Elliott was killed. You were making bad choices, weren’t you? I heard my parents talking one night. I think—I think my mom stopped you from coming around to prove a point, to try and motivate you to straighten up.”
“She did,” he said, swirling us around. “She told me that I couldn’t come around until I learned how to respect myself. And do the right thing.”
I used my finger to trail the path the water had taken. “Elliott still hung around with you?”
“You have three freckles on each shoulder. They only appear when you’re in the sun too long. And your hair has more red sparks.” He kissed my shoulders and then straightened up, looking down at me. “Your eyes are as green as the sea here, but with more gold now.”
“You don’t want to tell me?” I asked softly.
He shrugged. “Yeah, he still hung around with me. He tried to sign some sense into me. Nothing mattered but what I wanted to do though. It wasn’t until that night in the snow that I figured out I needed something different.”
“Because ofme?”
