“Rocco.” My voice broke. “You don’t love me. You only think that you do. Because…” I took a deep, settling breath, releasing it in a cloud. “You want love.”
We watched each other for a while before he nodded.
“Perhaps so.”
“You love Rosaria. I know you do.”
“Can you feel it?”
I nodded. “I can, but someone needs to crack the glass, so to speak. Shatter it. Make a mess of it. Then put it back together in such a way that you both are behind the wall. All love is not the same, Rocco. It grows in different ways. But if you’re on the constant hunt for it, you’ll never know what Rosaria has to offer.”
He placed his knuckles against my cheek. “If you say so, I will try. If it is worth it.”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“This spot seems to open a man’s heart, no? You seem to accept the secrets the man is not willing to share with another.”
“I do love you, Rocco,” I said.
“I know,bella.” He smiled, a bit sadly. “Just not as you do him.”
Every maternal instinct I possessed screamed at me to reach out to him, to make this brutal man with a heart feel love. In one way, I could. In the way he reached for it, I couldn’t. “No, not in the same way. You are my brother.”
He offered me his arm. “I have discussed this with your husband. If he dies, perhaps I will take you as my wife. If Ettore ever has the upper hand, the thought will enrage him enough to defy death.” A quick glance and he flashed his teeth at me. “I cannot hide a thing from you! Yes. Part of it is selfish. The other part is true.”
“And not going to happen,” said a voice from the shadows.
“Had enough of the slaughter, brother?” Rocco said to Brando.
“For now.”
Brando opened his arms to me, and I went to him. He was full of sweat, a hoodie the only thing standing between him and the freezing cold. He had no shirt on underneath. The unzipped portion of the sweater revealed bare, glistening skin. Warm breath blew out of his nose, causing clouds to form—a dragon like his brother.
“You have things under control here. I will go and find a few challengers of my own.”
“Yeah,” Brando said, watching him warily. “It’ll do you some good.”
“Rocco,” I called.
He stopped, turning to look at me.
“Thank you for sitting with me. I—I enjoyed our time.” My heart broke to see him walk away. I wasn’t sure why.
He looked between Brando and me. His gaze was stronger on his brother before it came to rest on me. He cleared his throat. “The same for me,bella.” Not long after, he disappeared in the fog.
“You’re crying,” Brando said.
“Am I?”
Brando turned me toward him. I looked up into his eyes, even darker under the shield of the hood over his head, just before he averted them to the right. Then he closed his eyes, nodded, moved closer, and kissed my tears away. I cried even harder, not even sure where the well of it sprang from or how it came to run down my cheeks.
“Did you hear our conversation?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice low.
“Are you…okay with what he said?”
“No. But he’s tortured. Confused. Dario and Carmen have set him on a spiral. I owed him one for Greece. What he called that stewardess and what he told you—we’re even now. I won’t forget though.”
