I flinched at the term, but given the choice between either suffocation or being in Rocco’s company, I chose the latter. Uncle Tito murmured that he would let Brando know that he left me with his brother.
“No use,zio,” Rocco said to his uncle’s sprightly, retreating form. “He is well past the time of understanding words.”
Uncle Tito put a hand up,say no more, as he disappeared down the hill.
“What do you mean?” I said, keeping my face averted from his.
“He has exhausted every man in the room. He has now egged Donato on. If he is to make it through tonight’s agenda, he needs the outlet.”
I turned to leave, to dispel the situation before someone got hurt, but Rocco took my arm in his hand, stopping me. I kept my stare on a drop of water, precariously balanced on a dead leaf.
“Do not worry about him. Donato is fierce but cannot take me.”Therefore, he cannot take my brother.
“I’m worried about Donato,” I said. The slightest brush of wind was going to send the droplet falling to its doom. There it went.
“Ah,” he said with a grin in his voice. “Do not worry about him either. The girl you paired him up with is watching. When he loses, he will win her sympathy, I am sure. Either way, he comes out the victor.”
Retracting my arm from his grasp, I turned in the opposite direction, taking a seat on the iron bench. A shiver ran through me. The metal was a conductor to the cold.
“Will you offer your sympathy for a while?” He nodded to the space next to me, asking for permission to sit.
“Yes,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest, as much to ward off the cold than to ward off my growing attitude. “But no sympathy allowed.”
He gingerly sat next to me. Instead of feeling his eyes on me, I felt him looking ahead, taking in the sprawling land with the legendary patience that seemed to run through his blood. “You were correct about your sister,” he said after a little time. “She seems to adore her Gucci.”
I made an agreeable noise in my throat but didn’t respond. The retort I had was best kept to myself. We were both content to sit for a while and breathe in the sharp air, neither of us pushing for an ending.
“I must apologize,” he said, a definite note of fury in his voice. “I would have rather died than to learn of therattoputting his hands on you.”
The words seemed to come slow, fighting the thick air to reach me. When they did, my eyes narrowed on him. “Is that the reason you’ve been avoiding me? Because you think that I blame you?”
“Sì.You should.”
I stood, looking over him. Just like his brother, he refused to look at me.
After muttering about pigheaded men, I told him to look at me. His sea green eyes found mine, the lack of sun or possibly guilt causing their color to dull. The breath came out of his nose like a dragon.
“I blame no one but him,” I said with as much conviction as I could call upon.
“You turn away from me now. It seizes my heart,bella.”
“The reason I turn from you has nothing to do with Nemours. I heard you, Rocco.”
He blinked at me. “I do not understand.”
If I hadn’t put a guard up, the innocent way he blinked his eyes, the beauty, would have made me stumble over words. “I heard you and the stewardess on the plane. I heard what you called her when I was banging on the door.” It wasn’t that he had called herbella, it was the way he had said it. In the same way he used the term to address me.
“You heard me call herbella.” He stood, standing before me, looking down. He was as imposing as his brother. In his presence, I might as well have been a butterfly standing against a beautiful giant. “It is a good thing then that you did not hear me call her Scarlett.”
Both of us became still, watching the other. I found that Brando’s brothers could be as viscous as nightmares, but I also found the three of them starved for love. I had discussed this with Dario, after he decided to marry Carmen. He ached for real love as much as she did. The situation between Rosaria and Rocco was similar, except Rosaria kept her emotions under lock and key. In return, Rocco seemed to seek the possession of flesh and soul elsewhere. The tender moments in the still of the night, the secrets passed between one lover to another, and the trust of a companion to wake up to in the morning, no matter how fierce the battle during the dark hours had become—he craved that.
There was also the relationship between Rocco and Brando. They were too close in age for one to feel superior over the other, but those couple of months Brando had on him seemed to make him feel—less. Rocco was bred to know his place, and all of his life he had been theolder brother. He had always believed he was the brother who would one day rule the kingdom of men and monsters.
I got the feeling thathisfeelings for me were born from that place, yet I didn’t know how it all connected, only that it was.
“I am in love with you,” he said, like those words were the easiest to confess. Though I felt what they had cost him. “I took the stewardess because I was jealous. Jealous that you are his and he has the right to touch you in ways that I can only dream about. I sometimes believe that fate has made a mistake. She sent you to him when you were meant for me.”
As odd as that sounded, in one blinding way we were better matched. I wanted children. So did he. Rosaria didn’t. Neither did Brando. I had no doubt that fate was right though. She sent me to my heart.
