The night Luca Leone Fausti stole his brother’s legs right out from underneath him.
50
Brando
Lover’s moon.
That was what Maggie Beautiful called a moon so full that even in the darkness, no other light was needed. It filtered in through the windows lining our suite, illuminating the veranda and our bed.
Scarlett had fallen asleep on the ride home, head on my shoulder, clutching my arm, mumbling incoherent words in her sleep. I carried her in, but before making it to our room, she asked me to go into the children’s room. She kissed Mia and Matteo, and then I picked her up again, bringing her to the bathroom and then placing her in the bed.
After I did, I undressed her, leaving her bare, the moonlight turning her skin an ethereal shade of silver. It was like she’d been carved out of light. Her hair haloed her head in a fiery nimbus, her cheeks flushed, lips pink, and if her eyes had been open, I knew in this light they would be an almost unearthly green. Almost alien.
On her side, all of her indentions and lines were on full display. The curve of her hips, her full breasts, slim arms and perfect legs and ankles.
Sighing, placing the glass of whiskey down on the table beside me, I refused to look away from her. Though my thoughts were anything but focused.
Another piece of wisdom had come from Maggie Beautiful’s lover’s moon.
The moon, she claimed, had special powers—forces to evoke the animal inside of all of us. Some of our animalistic tendencies were closer to the surface than others.
It was no mystery that the moon controlled the tide, but water makes up more than half of the human body, which, she had reasoned, explained the entire phenomena.
The full moon controlled our feelings, our thoughts, us, bringing our most hidden desires to the forefront of who we were. Inhibitions were lost, basic needs found, the entire universe turned upside down and inside out.
From this one night, I started to agree with her logic.
I’d come mighty fucking close to losing my mind. My life goes without comment.
The ordinary world started to seem a myth to us, and our life served as the cautionary tale parents fed their children at bedtime. And though so many had lost their lives, without the party even catching a scent of the blood, Lothario’s words, before his legs had been sliced off, weighed heavily on my mind.
Attacks would come.
From who?
Nemours? I longed for it. Craved it. But he was not man enough to take me on face to face. Instead, he targeted my wife, a woman who had more courage in her small finger than in his entire body.
“Brando?” Her soft voice seemed to float through the air. Her eyes didn’t open, but her hand reached out, searching. Then she coughed, her throat bothering her.
A fist seized my heart at the sound.
“Here, baby,” I said, sitting forward. “Go back to sleep. I’m not going anywhere.”
She sat up, blinking at the light, before turning to find me sitting in the chair across from the bed. Her weary eyes rested on me for a minute before catching the empty glass and the half-drunk bottle beside it on the table.
“No,” she murmured, almost too low for me to hear. “You’re not.”
She padded over, as quiet as the night, swaying when she got close enough that I could reach out and steady her.
“You’re too clean,” I said, keeping her at arm’s distance. “I’m splattered with—”
Before I could finish, she moved out of my hold, going for the bathroom. When she came back, it was with a washcloth, damp with warm water.
“Let me clean you,” she whispered.
“It would take holy water, ah?”
“No, just water.”
