Blood trickled on my face, and when I looked up, not only was Wilkerson shocked at the blow to his balls, but he had a gash from the middle of his left cheek to his mouth, which made it seem like there was no separation, just a flap of skin that showed gums and teeth.
Get it together!I willed myself. Then I tore down the alley, moving so fast that I created a breeze. The man at the door let me in, his eyes going round at the sight of my face—I could smell and feel the sweat and blood of another, viscous and pungent on my skin.
I found our group at the table Gabriel had reserved, laughing and joking around. Rocco looked at me, turned back to Gabriel, and then came back to me in a flash.
“What is it,bella?” he said.
I pointed out the door. “Brando! Big. Football. Players!”
Donato told Guido to stay put. The rest of the men were already rushing the door, their forms dissolving into the night not long after.
I trailed not far behind Mitch, and he put out a hand to mine, and I took it. We ran the rest of the way, but by the time we arrived, police sirens were growing closer, the three witnesses had gone, and Brando stood alone in the alleyway, staring toward the other end.
Blood stained the cobblestones, the only proof the fight had existed. Brando might have been outnumbered, but his knife was sharp, and he was swift.
“Let us go,” Rocco said, glancing over his shoulder, toward the street. Sirens were even closer. “They will not be hard to find.”
Brando gave a slow nod. He turned, and his face broke out in a huge grin when he met Gabriel’s eye. The two men came in for the one-arm man hug, before Brando put his arm around my shoulder.
“Ahh,” he almost groaned in satisfaction, like waking up from a long winter’s sleep. “It’s good to be home!”
He took my wrist in his hand, narrowing his eyes on the watch. After he fiddled with it for a second, the hand on the watch began totickagain. He seemed to breathe easily after that.
Chapter Fourteen
Brando
It was turning out to be one hell of a morning after the night we had. It started with Abree screeching about how Scarlett had punched her while we were traveling back from Africa. I stopped my wife from doing it again after Abree admitted to calling Diego a bastard. Dario heard this, and I stood in front of him because I didn’t like the way he was looking at Abree. Rocco kicked over a plant because he was so pissed off at how things were between the women. The men came back as thick as thieves; the women came back as divided as a house of enemies and friends.
Having enough of Abree and the rest of the world, Scarlett locked herself in our room.
Before I could follow her, Tito pulled me aside and had a talk with me about the state of my wife’s sanity. He said she was hanging on by a thread, that he had seen the same look on Maja’s face once, and he didn’t like where we were all headed. He told me this as if I didn’t know my wife or what was best for her. Like I didn’t know that this world we lived in was attempting to harden her, to turn my ballerina girl into what her history called her to be, an assassin with satin shoes.
It wasn’t even eight o’clock.
I found Scarlett asleep in our bed when I was finally able to disentangle myself from the fucking messes outside of our room. She was tired—and not just physically. I felt wired, too many thoughts in my mind to allow sleep to come.
Two hours in, a knock came at the door. I was hesitant to answer, but once I saw that it was Guido, it couldn’t be avoided. It took a minute to extract myself from my wife’s monkey hold, but I was able to ease out without waking her up.
I scrubbed a hand over my face and then ran it through my hair. Though I couldn’t sleep, jet lag made me a bit delirious, and it was starting to grate on my nerves.
“How is Scarlett?” Guido asked, peeking in.
“Addormentato.” I waved a careless hand.Sleeping.
“Incubi?”
The word seized my heart with two cold hands. It made me think of demons and sleeping women, but in Italian, the word also meant nightmares. I turned around to look at my wife, as if I could see them coming for her. “Has she been having them?”
He nodded. “After the parade in Ireland. It scared her. This was before.” He pointed to his head.
I nodded once, realizing how much I had missed. It pissed me off even more.
Guido cleared his throat. “Ciro. There has been no word—Rocco and Romeo both tell me this.”
“He disappeared last night. Lothario hasn’t heard from him. Can’t get in touch or find him.”
“He is up to no good.”
