My mind was not on any of those tracks. It was still on my grandmother and my biological grandfather. I was missing something terribly important. Lev gave me a piece of the puzzle, but I couldn’t connect the rest for some reason.
“You called him your friend, Scarlett.” Brando’s grip on the steering wheel caused all of the veins in his arms to pop. The one along his forehead mimicked the rest. His jaw ticked.
“He was,” I whispered. “He was just a boy.” I felt it, though, after I had called him that. A feeling had come over him. A memory. He had reminisced for a brief moment, and then his demeanor changed. I was no longer a girl. I was a woman.
Rocco shifted. Donato made a noise from his throat that conveyed his displeasure. Brando shot them both a look from the mirror.
I held both of my hands up. “Let me go over the night again so we’re all on the same page.”
Going over the night might help me find the missing piece that was poking me and then hiding too. The pressure inside of me was building, and it was frustrating, as well as frightening. I went over the finer points, going into as much detail as possible, and when I came to the end of the story, I left out what Lev had asked me. Brando didn’t need to worry about that, not now.
Rocco and Donato suddenly seemed much too big for the back seat, for their shirts even. They tensed and flexed, and nothing about their faces seemed any friendlier. Rocco cursed the rat’s soul to Hades, but he didn’t limit himself. He seemed to have a list, like he had a list of baby names. It soundedha-hafunny in theory, but in reality, a hot-tempered Italian who was about to burst through the seams of his shirt like the Hulk was not funny at all.
“How do you know their name, Scarlett? Seven Deadly Sins?” Donato went to scoot up but couldn’t. I could feel the vexation. He wanted to kick the car to make more room.
At least he was back to calling me Scarlett.
“Mm? Oh. He told me, when we were little. We were not your usual children. We both knew our destinies. Then I heard the name tonight, when they were talking. That’s how I remembered who he was. He’s changed a bit since the last time I saw him.”
“That name is not known to many,” Donato said, catching Brando’s eye in the mirror. “Only a few know them for who they are.”
“What do they usually call them?” I asked.
“Niente,” Donato said. “To the world, they do not exist.”
“But you know them?”
“Of them,” Donato said. “We have spun around in the same circles.”
I didn’t want to knowhowhe knew them.
“Scarlett,” Brando said, much calmer than he had been, which was even scarier. The storm brewed. “If there is anyone else—anyone at all—that I need to know about from your past, now would be the fucking opportune time to tell me.” He made it seem so torrid, like my past was sketchy.
“Brando—” I lifted my hands and let them fall. “I’ve danced for a lot of people, with and without Maja. I didn’t even remember him. Not until I saw him.”
“You made him feel,” Brando said, almost accusingly.
“For a man such as him, that is a dangerous game to play.” Donato sighed, his back settling into the leather seat. “They feel nothing, the same as the rest of us.” He caught my eye in the mirror. “Soprattutto.”Mostly.
“You were doing fine up until the point you told him you saw him as a boy,” Brando said. “I saw it in his eyes after, something changed. I felt it too. Tell me what he said when he put his hand on your stomach.”
Nothing escaped him. Not a damn thing.
I looked out the window, trying to keep the giggle suppressed down. I blurted out what Lev had said, not able to look at him.
“If your womb is clean?” Rocco repeated, not understanding.
None of them did. I blew out a breath, going on to explain. “Children. That was his way of inquiring if I had borne your children, Brando.”
Brando’s eyes opened wide, suddenly making sense of Lev’s comments and his appraisal of his size. “You lied to him,” Brando said.
“Yes.”
“Why…?” Donato trailed off, probably answering his own question in the empty space.
I nodded. “I felt the change in him too.”
“He would want you? If yourwombwas clean?” Rocco still trailed behind, or he didn’t want to accept the truth—a Russian assassin had taken an interest in me.
