“Now,” Luca said, lifting his finger for another drink, “she shall see the truth of matters.”
I nodded at this. He’d proved his point. Did the woman want a man or a boy? She would know the difference between the two. The boy didn’t stop Luca from dancing with his woman out of fear—fear of what Luca could do to him. Putting himself first.
A man wasn’t a man unless he set boundaries in his life that no one, not even himself, could cross.
Most would think that Luca would have killed the boy for denying him the dance. On the contrary. He would have earned his respect, and he would have called himmaninstead ofboy.
This was Luca’s version of having a good time.
It was also what made him so complex. It was hard to get a read on him most of the time, even knowing him as well as I did.
Madness only has regards for its own wants.
A tall blonde, close to six feet tall, with dark makeup smudged around her eyes and a beer in her hand, took a seat on the fireplace, crossing her legs, staring at me. She said something in German, then smiled around the throat of the bottle. Taking her meaning clear enough, I stood, giving her the seat.
Another bland face in a dim room. The only face that stood out to me in vivid color was my wife’s. Her hair would have caught the light of the fire, and the heat would’ve played with the shades, making the interspersed red spark like embers, pulling the green from her eyes. So feline and feral, giving me a look that drove me wild.
She was the only one who could make me feel when numbness was my default.
“Come,” Luca said to me, slapping me on the shoulder. “Let us go to your wife. We will serenade her.”
Somewhere along the route home, he set his arm around my shoulder, pulling my head closer to his. His breath came out in billowing clouds, scented with the finest aged bourbon.
“I love your wife. I want her to love me in return, as she loved my father,” he said to me in Italian. “Father always spoke the truth to me, and he spoke to me about your wife. ‘Luca, my son,’ he said, ‘she is not afraid of snow for her household, for all her household are clothed in scarlet. She, herself, is clothed with strength and dignity, and she laughs without fear of the future.’”
He kissed me on the temple.The ice-cold air clung to the spot he left behind on my skin.
“This is our Scarlett Rose, ah?” he continued. “She is a woman who can make a lion forsake his meal for compassion, and can urge him to war for the honor of the lamb. His own lifeblood! I hear the men call her many names. Beautiful. Little kitten, this is what your grandfather called her. Little dove. But you,myson, call her the most important of all. You call herwife!”
The lion might have demanded respect from other lions, but the lamb required that of the mighty lion to earn her devotion. The harder the hunt, the more rewarding the end meal.
Luca roused the men to sing in the streets, cold smoke purling out of mouths, breaths escaping from panting beasts.
* * *
I’d left her in a state of anger, but I didn’t think it’d come to this.
Luca set me in the center of the group, and together, we started to sing Italian love songs. At first, he urged me to sing solo, but when he heard my voice, he stared at me for a second and then encouraged the other men to join in.
Some of them wanted to laugh, given the amount of alcohol we all had, but Luca’s serious face, his demeanor, put a stop to it.
It was as if the man sang for his life.
A few men preceded my wife out the door, standing to the side, making walls on each side of her. Instead of fully coming out, though, her hand did, and in a blur of white and blue,WHACK!
I took a snowball to the center of my forehead.
It fucking stunned me.
I stood dazed for a second before raucous laughter bellowed around me, the men finally able to laugh because Luca was louder than them all.
The men had taken her around to the other side of the chalet, where she was able to create an arsenal of snow weapons. One man had brought out a plastic tub filled with them.
Scarlett was plenty of wonderful things, but her aim was legendary, and so was her quickness and lightness on her feet. Laughter grew and so did cries of dismay when snowballs started flying from the chalet at lightning-quick speed.
WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!
Men dodged and ducked, some slipping on the ice, while others laughed too hard to move.
