Brando’s warm hand enclosed mine, a tight hold that attempted to steady the fear that monster’s name evoked. He reassured me, told me that the monster in him was more powerful than themostrothat lived in Nemours.
I nodded at the last word he had spoken in reassurance, needing no more. He sensed that. He knew what to say and exactly how much to say.
“Lothario spoke to him?” I asked, bringing the conversation back to the beginning. “To Nemours.” I swallowed hard after saying his name. It was like getting glass shards down.
“Sì.”
Brando explained that the French who backed Nemours, themilieu, had requested another meeting with the Faustifamiglia. They did not wish to start a war, but they would not shy away from it if the time came when it could not be avoided. Therefore, another suggestion was put on the table: “She continues to dance until the contract is up, then everyone splits ways amicably.”
“What is in it for ourfamiglia?” Lothario had shot back with. “He killed one of our own!”
The French dismissed this, our son’s life of no great matter to them. Nemours, after all, didn’t know that I was pregnant.All is fair in love and war.
Even if he would have known, he would have done it out of spite—better for him, I thought.Two birds with one stone…
In which Lothario shot back with, “This is precisely why you do not put your hands on a woman!”
The meeting came to a tension-filled halt then. Nemours was escorted out of the room and whisked away to some undisclosed location, the French keeping him under their protection— he made them a lot of money—and the two groups left on uncertain terms. The threat of war still loomed over all of us.
“So,” I said, picking up the sprig of grass Brando had discarded. “I could put a stop to all of this if I agree to dance.”
“Sì. Ma non lo farai, mia moglie. E il problema si riposerà sulla schiena, non il tuo. Sto facendo la decisione per entrambi.”
Yes. But you will not, my wife. And the trouble will rest on my back, not yours. I am making the decision for both of us.
Guilt ate him up though. I could stop this. We could.
There was no way he would.
Not after what Nemours had done to me, to us. Because of his evil hand, I almost lost my life, and if our son’s life was in trouble, he diminished any hope he had. If that monster lived, somehow, Brando felt he couldn’t. There wasn’t enough air for them to share. He had confided this in me one night while we gazed at the stars.
Lives wereatstake, though, and not just ours. Lothario was set to rage in the name of thefamigliaand all that it stood for.
However, there was another reason we had deduced from his reasoning to start this war. Brando and I both knew what it was: Lothario was new, taking his father’s place, and he had almost impossible shoes to fill. Marzio Piero Fausti was a legend in his own right. He was known for being ruthless, but also fair, and if it could be said for a man who could steal a heart from another man’s chest, compassionate.
I had felt more passion from Marzio, but I guessed the two could easily be mistaken.
This threat of war, and how Lothario would handle it, would give him credence, and speak volumes to others who waited in the shadows to see what he would do.Ifhe had the balls to do it, as Brando had put it. No one had dared to challenge Marzio Fausti, in fear of him and out of respect. He had demanded both. Luca Fausti? Even more ruthless. Ettore Fausti—not as ruthless, although close.
Lothario?
Who was to say? He balanced two boxes of evil at once—the looming war with themilieuand the issue with his brother, Ettore, and all those who took Ettore’s side in this feud. That was one battle where Lothario’s morals fully aligned with our own. His feelings were pure and in line.
The conclusion to that battle was irredeemable and as final as the closing of the coffin.
Before Marzio took the bullet that saved Brando’s life and ended his, he had made his feelings known on the issue of my dancing loud and clear. I did not have to dance after one year. Ettore had disagreed with this and had wanted the contract for himself. Marzio refused this request, at his own peril. Ettore therefore wanted to eliminate the threat—his own nephew. He had ended up taking his father’s life because of his own greed and overwhelming need for power.
Brando posed too much of a threat to Ettore, and for a man who wanted to be the head of the infamous Faustifamiglia, to eliminate a man he had no ties to—Brando had never been around them, had no idea his brothers even existed—was no great loss to him. In Ettore’s eyes, Brando was ashamed of them, since he had made no move to approach them before. Therefore, Ettore was ashamed of Brando. He didn’t claim Brando as family.
Brando turned his back on me then, his legs pulled up close to his chest, arms dangling over knees, eyes fixed in the distance. I sat up and set a hand to each of his shoulders.
There was no mistaking who Brando was and whom he belonged to, and whom he resembled beyond skin and bone. Luca’s name alone caused fear. Even deeper, Luca’s son had inherited that unfeeling ruthlessness from his father. He had also inherited Marzio’s passionate nature, and yes, his compassion. Some of that came from Maggie Beautiful too, I knew. The blood that ran through his veins was not able to kill the small seed she had planted.
Menwouldfollow him, even knowing that he had never been deeply immersed in that life. Rocco, Dario, Romeo, they were baptized in it, raised in it, knowing their blood and not understanding any other way. Still, the men trusted Brando. They knew him for what he was right away: a man with the heart of a beast.
Maggie Beautiful had somehow protected him from that life for as long as she possibly could. Still, he went to it like a lion goes to the scent of blood.
For men like Ettore and Lothario, the threat was a living and breathing being, in the form of the man sitting in front of me, attempting to tame down his anger, the monster of his own that called for blood to be spilled in the name of Matteo Leone Fausti, his son who would never see the light of day.
