Luca made it clear that after Tito asked to be dismissed, he was, in every sense of the word. But he respected Lola, his father’s only sister, and therefore allowed them to join in family functions.
My suspicions proved to be true, though, when after Lothario flat out declined Luca’s last offer to exchange the power peacefully and shake hands on the matter, Luca stood. Taking down a sword from the wall, he handed it hilt-first to his brother.
Lothario laughed out loud, but no one else did.
Luca took a swipe at Lothario’s throat with another sword to prove the point.
Then the two men were at it, swinging and clashing.
I’d never seen anything like it in my life.
The fury in their faces, the determination to win. The swords were not light, either. They were made to defend and destroy. Sharp as the day they were born, they glinted like brand-new steel against the burning candles.
There had been a moment during the fighting when Luca had confronted Lothario in the heat of battle with words—“You sent my daughter to the slaughter, to steal my son’s life! My heart. My blood. My legs!” An impassioned grunt met this statement, the swords seeming to spark with the heat of the battle.
Lothario had lost his head for a moment, giving Luca the advantage.
Luca swung low, straight, the noise unlike anything I’d ever heard before, before the room froze.
Lothario looked at him in shock and then fell to the floor, his legs squirting blood. His knees down to his feet still stood straight on the marble floor. It had been a clean cut across.
The smell of the room filled up instantly with reeking blood and feces. Someone had shit their pants. Could have been Lothario or one of the men. Perhaps more than one. Two men had to turn their heads, vomiting to the side.
Tito, nothing daunted, jumped in and saved his life. Men stood around him, all medical backgrounds, ready to act.
Luca had known all along that this was how he was going to regain the kingdom. Tito, knowing how the game was played, had been prepared for any outcome.
It wasn’t until I walked out of the room that I saw a man folding up a body bag. Luca had showed mercy on his brother, if one could call it that, but Lothario was lucky he wasn’t going out in the bag, only without his legs.
Tito cleared his gravelly throat, setting down a wedge of apple, bringing me back to the moment.
“You did all you could,” I said.
The heaviness he felt touched me.
A part of me felt it, too, but another part of me had been dulled by the realities of this life, making me almost cold to the thought of death and loss outside of the realm of the people I loved the most.
Tito nodded, eyes not yet in the moment. “Ah, yes, but I learned years ago.” He lifted his hands, turning them to and fro. “These are just tools, nephew. I do what I can as a man. No more. Once upon a time I was a new doctor who thought the sun shone out the split in my ass and miracles came from these hands alone. I was not always such a faithful man, but I have learned over the years. My hands are nothing but a tool from God. It is at His will alone whether a man lives or dies. Aid and comfort are mine to give, no more.”
He picked up another wedge of the apple, studying it for a moment before he set it down.
“Lola and I have loved all the children that have come into our lives over the years. We were especially fond of all Marzio’s children. We spent more time with them than we did with the others. Marzio and Lola were as thick as thieves growing up. That friendship transferred to me and him after I married his sister.”
He shook his head, took his glasses off, setting them down, and then wiped his eyes. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he took a few deep breaths before he looked at me again.
“I still see them as boys, ah? The Faustis believe all their sons are men from the first breath. I was not raised this way. And I saw boys running through the fields in Tuscany, playing toy guns in Florence with their fingers, huddled together when their mamma died.
“It is one thing to care for a stranger, ah? But another to cause destruction to one you care for, even in the name of healing. To see their flesh come apart in your hands, to force their wounds to clot when they are screaming out in pain. I once held them in my arms, and later, held their hands, tied their shoes…shoes that a man will never wear again.
“Perhaps it is my age, nephew, but a man begins to think about his mortality sooner or later. The eyes go, the hearing, it all starts to fade. Even the elasticity of flesh begins to perish, the meat on our bones… Perhaps I have had my share of fighting for the flesh and the soul. Perhaps it is time for me to leave the tools to the next man God appoints in my position. My flesh has grown weary. My soul tired. This is why your aunt and I will be leaving after Venice.”
He had met my eye the entire time he spoke, except for when he spoke the last line.This is why your aunt and I will be leaving after Venice.
I cleared my throat. “Where are you going?”
He waved a hand. Pushed the rest of his apple toward me. His bourbon too. “To our place in Rome.”
Tito had become to me what he had been to Marzio. Or close to it.
