A catchy beat played in the background, and when the artist began to rap out a few lines, Brando and I looked at each other.
As enchantin’ as Fausti and Resnik on the dance floor. Was it only just a dream?
Brando hit the back button, going back to that certain part of the song. He turned it louder.
“Do you think he did that because of your family?”
The Fausti name had been used in a few songs, in regards to their reputation as a ruthless and savage bunch of high-powered criminal entrepreneurs. To call them mobsters would be too light, though it somehow fit them too.
Brando checked his rearview mirror. The matte black Lamborghini Aventador smoothly drifted into the other lane. The insanely fast car was bulletproof, among other things. Brando had made some smart investments that paid off, and his car collection was becoming impressive. The Faustis were well known for their expansive Ferrari collection, but I was coming to find it was much bigger than that.
“Yes and no.” His eyes were back on the road, hands tightening against the wheel, the signet ring on his little finger glinting when a spark from the lowering sun touched it. “The name is known, but he purposely added Resnik and something about the dance floor.”
Huh, I thought. My grandmother made it into a popular song. It was surreal—even more surreal that I was included.
The mood he was in must have preceded him. Everyone in the villa scattered like doves in a tree after a shotgun blast as soon as we stepped out of the car.
Brando was that blast.
Even the men keeping guard stood outside of the confines of the house, not willing to take the chance of being in the right spot at the wrong time.
I was the one left to deal with the blast of his anger. I was the one who had caused it, even if unintentional. I tried to explain this as we both undressed—the upper hand went back and forth, like a ping pong ball, until our raised voices collided and a lot of hand gestures and Italian were being thrown into the mix. A bit of French too. Perhaps even some Slovenian.
“You went behind my back.” He threw up a frustrated hand.
Through my anger I noticed that he wasn’t preparing for bed, he was dressing again, in all black—searching the closet for his (my) leather jacket.
“You need this! So do your brothers!”
“You are going to tell me what I need now? No. What I fucking need is formywife to listento me.” He stopped for a second, flinging clothes around. “Where is the fucking jacket?”
I plucked it from the bar, shoving it at his chest. He stormed out of the closet, going to take a seat on the bed, shoving his feet into a pair of leather boots.
“Listen to me!” I almost screeched. “Your brother is getting married. Who’s to say what might happen tomorrow? You never got to bond with them!”
He looked up at me, nothing remotely friendly about his face. Cold. Calculated. Isolated with his rage. He hadn’t been this enraged in—since before we lost Matteo. “I can fucking bond with them over a few beers and a fire pit. Africa? You want to send me hours away when people want to fucking kill you!”
“It’s not the same!” I defended, ignoring the “people want to kill you” part of his tirade. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get to know them. Without the constraints of this…” I waved a hand around wildly. “This place! And every sense of duty that binds you all.”
Brando had taken me to Fiji after we lost our son, and it had been a life-changing place for the both of us. Brando and I had been close since the moment we fell in love, but after the loss, we started to drift away from each other, both lost to our own grief and dealing with it in separate ways. Getting lost on the island had done us good. We became stronger than we ever had before. There was no doubt that even without the trip, we would have worked it out, but the time away helped.
Besides, this would be fun for them, a group of men getting lost in the wilds of Africa—nothing but each other to count on. He needed thiswiththem, and they needed thisfromhim. Why couldn’t he see that?
“Once in a lifetime.” He stood, towering over me. He stared at me for tense minutes, eyes chilling me to the bone. I refused to blink or shrink. “Tell me what happens if once in a lifetime becomes the last time I see my wife.”
No, I refused to let him treat me as a casualty. He had to stop the madness that lived within. It only grew with the thought that kept him prisoner there—hemightlose me. “I could go for a walk and get hit by a passing car. Are you going to stop me from doing that too?”
His chest rose and fell with his anger, as though he ran a marathon, but his breath came slow and easy. “I’ll stop you from doing whatever I see as a threat. Understood? You’re not going. Neither am I. The only tie that binds me is you, Scarlett.”
He turned then, hustling down the steps. I ran after him, almost catching his sleeve but too slow. I was halfway down the steps when I cleared my throat.
“Brando,” I called. “You’ll make me unhappy if you don’t allow this to happen.”
My tone was normal, voice even, but there was so much fear behind it that I wondered how I stood upright. I had never pulled that on him before. And I was thankful for Donato’s absence. He wouldn’t appreciate me using his advice against Brando’s will.
How could I allow him to miss this opportunity because of me? We were inthis mess because of me!
Brando stopped, as though I had put up an invisible wall that he ran into. An aching amount of time later, he cleared his throat. “Are you that fucking unhappy with me that you’ll risk your life—my life—for time away?”
