It wasn’t to bid us goodnight.
* * *
Her rant went on for a good ten minutes before her Italian cooled enough for me to understand her words.
A few people had been curious to stop for a moment before deciding that loitering around a cat fight was not a good idea.
Brando stood directly next to me. I noticed that Rocco inched closer to her. Perhaps he thought she was going to hit me, or I was going to hit her.
“Always about you!” she spit at me. “PerfectScarlett Rose Fausti,” she said, lowering her voice, making my name sound childish. “It is all an act!”
“Are you done?” I said.
“No! You have caused trouble in this family since the beginning! The eldest should have married an Italian, a woman who can understand our ways. A woman who supports her husband in the ways of his family. A legendary family!A woman. Not a girl who gets jealous when her husband admires other women.” She made sounds from her mouth that came out as whiny. “You are pigheaded! And you did not deserve to marry the man you did! He is a born leader, and you want him to sit in the back of the crowd—with you!”
Brando went to open his mouth, but I signed to him:You deal with your issues; I’ll deal with mine. Let her ramble. Maybe she’ll feel better.
Rosaria had done something for me that I could never repay—when she refused to tell a football player that had been obsessed with me where I was. I owed her this, and that was exactly why owing in this life came at a steep price. Brando understood it, too, or he wouldn’t stand there and take it. As it was, he was trembling from anger. I could feel it in the air around him like heat.
She hadn’t even noticed my hands moving as she continued.
“You do not even deserve Vincenzo, who is narrow-minded enough to fall for your fake charms! Ettore is right. You are astrega! You have somehow hypnotized them all! Now the other brothers have followed suit. A troublemaker—”
“Rosaria—”
She snapped at Rocco in Italian, shrugging off his attempts to touch her.
“Now he is taken with you too!”HeI assumed was Luca. “Men run behind you like a dog in heat! A bi—”
The door to the restaurant had opened during this and Romeo and Juliette poured out, followed by Dario and Carmen. Hearing this, Juliette snapped.
“How dare you!”
If Juliette wouldn’t have said something, I got the feeling Brando was about to, or was about to do something extreme—take the issue up with Rocco. He would never put his hands on a woman, unless she was out to kill one of us, but he’d reached his breaking point. And when one man had a problem with the other one’s wife, or girlfriend, he took it to the man. It was acceptable to come to blows over it.
“Stay out of it!” Carmen snapped at Juliette.
“How can you stand there and not saying anything?” Juliette snapped back. “After Scarlett took up for you—when you told me yourself that Rosaria and her sister had treatedyouunkindly before you married Dario.Not good enough, wasn’t that the issue? Not to mention what her sister called your son.”
Side note, Rosaria’s sister had been extremely jealous of Carmen. Abree Caffiand Dario had a history that he hadn’t mentioned to Carmen. And jealousy was an ugly shade, especially on Abree. She’d called Carmen and Dario’s son a bastard because he wasn’t Dario’s by blood. He had married her while she was pregnant with another man’s child.
No one was good enough for the Fausti men except for them.
Carmen called Juliette a bitch, picking up the assault where Rosaria had left off.
Without warning, Romeo and Dario collided in battle. It took Brando and Rocco, along with Donato, Guido, and Vincenzo, to separate them.
Finally, after they were separated, smoke billowing out of their noses and mouths like fire from dragons, each man separated to his appointed corner. Rocco spoke to Dario in hushed tones, while Brando did the same to Romeo.
Not knowing what else to do, but needing to do something, I squeezed Juliette’s hand in silent appreciation, and then walked up to Rosaria.
“I apologize if I’ve wronged you,” I spoke in Italian.
I almost bit my tongue at the sincerity. I was sorry that it had come to this, but again, there was a nagging voice in my head that screamed,You did nothing wrong!Another voice chimed in at this, reminding me of what she’d done for me.
I was tired. Suddenly, too tired. It usually took Brando wearing me out to get me to sleep, but my entire body felt as weightless as a snowflake.
“Scarlett.” Brando almost growled at me. It was as though the words that I’d spoken had made him swallow broken glass.
