The mention of barbaric men brought another man to mind, a man that Brando rarely discussed. “Aunt Lola,” I said, taking a piece of banana from her plate. I pulled my legs up to my chest, glancing at the water again before I took a tentative bite. “Luca. Can you tell me about him?”
“Hmm,” she said softly, moving a swirling piece of salt-and-pepper hair from her eye—her hair was short but had enough volume for a pompadour effect. “What is it that you would like to know,nipote?”
“Just—things about him. No one will discuss him. Except for Maggie Beautiful.” Though she gave her warnings, she still romanticized him.
“For good reason.” She pointed her own banana at me. “Out of all of Marzio’s children, Luca is the most fierce. There are stories of what he has done to other men that would give monsters nightmares.”
“I see him in dreams sometimes, and that’s all he is. A shape of a man.”
“Nipote.” She took my hand in hers, squeezing. “Even the most beautiful creature can be deceptive, more so than the frightful ones, and if Lucious Leone Fausti is anything, he is that. You are not thinking of going to see him, are you?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I’m just—curious.”
She held my eye for a while. Finally, she nodded once, a sharp acknowledgment. “He is capable of loving a woman. No more than that.”
“Is he nice looking?”
“Bellissimato a sinful degree,” she said without an ounce of hesitation. “There are no words to describe him truly. It is almost gluttonous for one man to be so attractive.”
“Describe him to me in detail.”
I had begun to realize that my fascination with Luca Fausti was close to morbid. I wanted to see his face in my dreams, so he knew that I wasn’t afraid of him.
“He—” she began but was forestalled by the reemergence of the group of shark divers.
After they settled, all of their equipment put to the side, Brando shook his head, pure exhilaration running through his veins—it pulsed through my own blood. The humming became louder, more intense. Giddy was how I felt.
“Wheew!” He shook one of the guide’s hands. A real shark whisperer—he lived in a nearby village, and his people believed that sharks were gods. “That was unbelievable, just unbelievable. Thank you, man.”
The shark whisperer said it was his pleasure and they spoke for a few minutes, laughing and reliving the dive. When Captain interrupted their conversation, Brando’s eyes found mine.
“Baby,” he said, leaning in to kiss me. “She was a bull shark.” He said this as though he had uncovered some amazing secret about the woman he loved.
“Shewas a bull shark?” I smiled. He was contagious when he was this way.
“Look.” He showed me a picture he had captured with the underwater camera. I instinctively moved away from the image. I couldn’t tell if the predator was a he or a she—the sex made no difference to me. It was ashark. “That’s the same kind that was in the water with us.”
“Oh.” I narrowed my eyes at the picture, a bit relieved that she didn’t look like the shark inJaws.“Too bad I didn’t get a closer look—remind me next time to see if she has stripes onherside.”
Laughter rumbled up from deep in his chest. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” He whistled. “You should see her feed.”
I gave him a mean look and he laughed even harder. It was too easy to imagine those teeth snapping me in two. He went through the camera, showing me all of the photos he had taken, letting me feed him pieces of banana as he did.
Captain called Brando over. He was in the midst of a deep conversation with one of the guides and the rest of the men. Brando handed me the camera and went to join them. Male bonding at its finest.
Aunt Lola stared after him, a pleasant look on her face as she watched her nephew in animated conversation—she seemed to understand that this was a rare sight too.
She leaned over, eyes still on the group, mouth set to whisper. “It is unnecessary for me to describe Luca in detail to you,nipote. If you can see your husband, you can see his father. But to see him this euphoric, as your husband is now, you would have to see him throw a bloodied man in the water to be eaten by thesqualofirst.”
* * *
An hour or so later, we made it back to land and explored a small village nearby, where we attended a traditional kava ceremony. Then we took to the streets, looking over local produce to take back with us to Mystical Island.
Brando clanked two coconuts together, a smile still lingering on his lips from the shark dive, and I came in closer to his side.
“Dimmi chi stai cercando,” Brando said, ordering me in Italianto tell him who I was looking for.I turned back to him. I knew my eyes were wide because his were narrowed in speculation. “You keep looking around,” he said.
A shiver caused me to rub my hands against my arms. “I—I don’t know.”
