“Tu sei la mia vita, mia moglie.” He leaned in and kissed my forehead gently. His lips were warm compared to the chill of skin.
You are my life, my wife,he had said.
“I know,” I whispered.
Lingering there for a moment, he finally pulled back. “Tell me what this life means for him.”
“You know as well as I do. It can mean everything, or it could mean nothing at all.”
“That’s not good enough.”
A sense of either irrational or rational irritation swept through me.
“What do you want from me?” I shoved at him, but he kept as solid as a rock. “I can feel, but I can’t predict the future, Brando! Instead of asking what this life means for your son—” I touched my stomach “—ask yourself what this life will mean foryou. Perhaps the answers to his future are there.”
He took a step back, running a hand through his hair, knocking the hood back. He paced in front of me for a moment or two, deliberation wafting off him as strong as heavy drink. I doubted the irritation had stemmed from his wanting to know what this life meant for his son, but more so to do with this. I didn’t always understand my feelings right away, until one thing triggered another, and anaha! so that’s what it was!hit me like the dawn.
He was about to divulge whatever it was he had been keeping from me—probably the reason that drove him to get the tattoo without telling me first.
Slipping something out of his back pocket, he handed it to me.
“What’s this?” The words were a waste of breath, useless in the face of the truth, as I unfolded the picture. “Oh,” I breathed out.
The photo he’d taken of me in the Mediterranean Sea. The day was hot, the water cool, and my breasts bobbed above the water. Though the picture was done in black and white, I could remember the colors as vividly as if we were there in that moment. I could taste the salt from the water still on my lips, even remember the force of his tongue in my mouth, as ravenous as the waves for the shore.
Just from the state of the picture alone, folded over, crinkled, with a slice down the center, right between my breasts, I knew he hadn’t done this.
This was one ofhisprivate pictures. He had taken all of them and then locked them in a safe. The night he had decided to write me a poem, he had taken this one out for inspiration. He had called me his muse.
I lifted the picture. “This is why you got the tattoo?”
“Part of the reason.” He waved a hand. “It’s who I am, Scarlett.”
“You want him to see the tattoo before you kill him? You want his friends to see—” I waved a hand at his back “—so that they’ll tell the next guy, and so on and so on.”
“What do you fucking want fromme? This is our life! This is who I have to be!” He pounded a fist against his heart.
“No! No, it’s not! Not always!” I lifted the picture even higher. “Did Giulio Cesare do this?”
The entire picture was becoming clearer, the focus sharper. I’d never forget the day he exited his father’s office, the look in his eyes, his face as hard as stone, his hands itching to kill someone.
“He stole my picture out of our home. Left another one of those replica boxes for me to find. He sliced through the center of the picture and wedged a piece of the rose petal in-between, so it’d look like your heart.”
“I understand your anger, Brando,” I snapped. “I even understand the tattoo.” I lifted a hand before he could react. “I do, believe it or not. But it’s your deceit that bothers me the most. When did you start hiding your feelings from me, no matter the cost?”
“The cost?” he repeated, then almost scoffed. “The cost ismylife—you. It’smywife being targeted for whoIam. If something happens to you—” He couldn’t even finish, and his fist shot out next to my head, slamming against the wall.
It made me flinch, but I stood taller.
“I’m strong enough to handle this!” I shouted, waving the picture around.
A few people stopped in the street, their heads moving from left to right, trying to see us better. I didn’t give a damn. They were welcome to pull up lawn chairs and share popcorn.
My mouth opened to continue the rant, but before I could process the movement, we were both moving back toward the wall—we must have pushed away from it before—and he stopped us right before I slammed into it, setting me against it more gently, but not giving me enough room to even breathe. I fought, but there was no budging him.
“Are you?” he said after I’d calmed down enough to take in breaths of air instead of gulps. “Are you strong enough to handle this? Fucking try again.”
“I didn’t mean physically! You’ve never hidden from me like this in the past, not for something like this, and I’ll be damned if we start doing this now! That’s what hurtsmethe most. That’s what gives me nightmares and keeps me up at night. That’s what tears my heart to shreds! My soul—I can feel you there! All of you—not just during sex, all the damn time! I feel all of you! Your warismine, Brando Fausti.”
