He watched me, though. I felt his gaze on my face, as though it were the stars he watched instead of a woman who couldn’t stand to look at her own self in the mirror, too terrified of her own reflection. Of the truth it would throw in her face.
Then he was crying.
He pulled me to him, as languid as a jellyfish in the arms of his rough seas, drifting with the pain and loss. He shook with it, his muscles trembling, fighting to hold back but unable to.
His tears slid over my face, salt to the wounds, but healing at the same time.
Unintelligible words flowed from his mouth as he rocked me, holding me so tightly that I thought my bones would split in two from his intensity alone.
He grieved over me as though he’d lost me—like all that was left of me was the heart sent through a box by a madman, accompanied by a single red rose, its thorns saturated in lifeblood. A reminder of what could’ve been.
Brando had told me more than once that all the good in him rested in me. I kept his good safe. And that, I felt, was the true source of the grief.
No matter what he did in this life, I held the key to his good, and I’d never lose it. Only he knew the secret routes to find it—a fathomless, mysterious labyrinth that he himself had created; only he could ever find a way through.
If he became lost along the way?
He could find his way back through me.
His soul rested in my care, and I held it as one does a sparrow, because the one who held my soul was greater than the two of us together.
His heart and mine had already been secured through the lives of our children. A forever-lasting bond. A blood oath sealed in DNA.
I could do nothing, not even open my eyes or speak, except take his hand and place it against my chest, the heat from his palm scalding against the stitches that held my skin together, then take the other and place it against my cracked ribs, the warmth a soothing sensation against the pain of it and let him find his peace through the life that flowed through me.
He had saved my life; therefore, I had saved his.
* * *
I’d fallen into a deep sleep, but I knew somewhere in the peaceful darkness that he stood at the gates, a stalwart figure in my dreams, keeping the monsters from entering our kingdom.
I held on to him as fiercely as he held on to me.
Throughout the night his touch was on me, barely a brush against all the raw wounds. His tears had slowed but still came, cool against my skin; even more so, I felt his desperation to heal me, to make the hurts fade into oblivion.
Deep into the night, when not even the stars burned deep in the vault of heaven, I felt a cool caress linger on my neck, and then a reassuring weight rest against my heart.
Reaching up a tentative hand, I clasped the symbol of my faith as a dying woman with much to live for would cling to the last stubborn shred of will, and then take the breath that would bring her back to life.
When my voice came, it came from faraway, but on the journey back.
“W-where?” I cleared my throat and tried again. I hadn’t been screaming, had I? My throat felt raw, like I’d been screaming to the top of my lungs for hours on end. “Where did you get it?”
At the sound of my voice, his tears ran faster. He put his hand over mine, a complete and safe warmth that not even words could do justice.
He kept his voice low, and it was almost melodic. “He took it off, not far from the place where he brought you. There are two cabins in the area, nothing else. We’d been watching them for a while. He had a few places setup to—” He shook his head, looking like the beast that reigned wild in my heart. “The cross, it caught the light, dangling on a wooden sign that directed traffic either left or right. Two cabins, Scarlett. If I’d made the wrong decision, I would have been—”
“You weren’t,” I said, turning my hand to grip his. “You weren’t too late.”
He didn’t have to tell me the group had split up; somewhere along the way, I remembered more men coming together with us, all of them carefully keeping their eyes averted. Out of respect for me, but more so, out of fear of Brando.
What he had set out to do, he had accomplished.
In the eyes of the Faustifamiglia, he had earned his rightful place, and in the eyes of the world, respect no one could ever take from him.
I shivered, closing my eyes, the pride on Luca’s face drifting behind closed lids, as though lightning had seared the vision on my retinas.
Brando held me tighter, the same lightning swimming in his blood, the thunder still booming in his heart.
