Luca was a fine-looking man, and his son could have been his younger twin. It would be hard for menotto notice him since I was so strongly attracted to his flesh and blood.
The man was still his father though. Still, there was no other explanation for the hard glare.
“He intrigues you,” he said in Italian.
A shift in the wind sent a piece of my hair into my eyes, and I went to move it, but he stopped me with a strong grip on my wrist.
“Answer me.”He took down my hand but fixed the piece of hair for me.
“Yes,” I said, not even attempting to lie. “He does. Mostly his voice. Before I met him, I was even more curious. Everyone built him up to be this…force. And he is. I told you that. But now that he’s free, there’s a different side to him. If you take a wild animal and lock him up, he’ll snarl and snap. When you release him into freedom, intohiswild, he’ll behave as his instincts tell him to. That’s what intrigues me.”
“And his voice.”
“Yes, his voice too.” It was smooth, but with the perfect amount of grit to make it heartbreaking. “It’s so at odds with who he is.”
“I can’t sing,” he said.
The situation was all too serious to even consider laughing, but I had a hard time keeping myself in check. He was being altogether serious. I admired Luca’s voice, and it bothered him. Just like it had bothered him that I received a poem from another man. He was as selfish as they came when it came to me. I couldn’t deny it made me feel all warm inside.
“I know,” I said, touching his cheek lightly. “Neither can I. Perhaps Mia will be able to?”
“It doesn’t matter.” He shrugged. “She’s a dancer and a swimmer.”
Of course, what him and I could do separately, but together in her.
“You know,” I said, resting my head against his chest, tucking my hand inside his jacket, rubbing my hand up and down his side, along his ribs. “You’re not very good at singing, but you’re not terrible. I love when you sing to me.”
“Time to go.” He urged me to walk. We stood close, though, bundled together against the wind.
Halfway to the car, I stopped him. The imposing figure of the castle in the background made an impressive sight. With the sun going down even further, streams of light afire surrounding it before the twilight’s waking yawn swallowed it, it was hard to escape all that it stood for, and what it meant for our future.
“Are you going to make the call?” I asked, staring up at him.
He was looking in the direction of the castle. Men slipped in and out of the shadows like a bunch of lions in a pride.
“Yeah, I am.”
Luca had called his sons to his side before we left, murmuring things that I couldn’t hear. Soon after, he and Maggie Beautiful made it up the staircase to retire to Luca’s bedroom for the night. Brando told me that he was ordered to call Lothario, to summon his uncles to the castle for a meeting. Only a few people knew Luca was out of prison.
He was pulling a Machiavellian stunt.
Ettore’s presence was imperious to keeping this secret. Acting as his brother’s face until the monster emerged from the darkness, announcing his rule once again. At the same time, destroying the enemy that threatened his son’s heart. He was about to make examples out of all of those even curious enough to challenge this branch of the Faustifamiglia. I had a feeling he was making up for lost time, what happened when Lothario tried to get us both killed in a way that didn’t seem so obvious.
There was always a cost though. Always. Even to avenge a wrongdoing to his son.
“Will Luca—kill Lothario?”
Brando shook his head. “Only if he has to. Ettore has done much more than Lothario, but he sits at his table and eats his food, drinks his wine, and enjoys the perks of the palace.”
“He’s complex,” I said. “Multi-dimensional. I see all four sons in one man—Brando, Rocco, Dario, and Romeo. Marzio is there too. All dimensions walk the earth.” I bit my lip for a second, wanting to ask but not wanting to. It was hard not to let the thoughts flow free from my lips though. “Maggie Beautiful?”
It took him a moment to look at me, to tear his gaze away from the castle. “Maggie Beautiful?” A confused look came over his face. Dark, thick eyebrows drew down, his gorgeous mouth tight. Until he blinked, understanding. “He knows her limits.” He said this with conviction because he spoke from experience. “It’s not how you imagine it’s going to be. He’s been without a woman for years. His woman. There’s a difference between fucking and love, Scarlett. The giving in of flesh because it’s needed and connecting half of your soul to its missing other half.”
“I understand that, about one soul knowing another, how life-changing the recognition is,” I whispered. “Since I know how that feels, I can only imagine how the act without love would feel—lonely afterward, for someone like me, who feelstoomuch. But Brando…he might—he will…well, it’s been so long—”
“A man like him learns to savor what he craves, not inhale it,” he said, putting me out of my misery. “Especially when it’s something he’s burned for. Later, things can change. But not at first—not the first time. I really can’t explain it in words, what it can do to a man—consume the burn, but somehow keep the ember in a place that he can’t even reach. A place where it never dies out. It turns into an immediate blaze when he allows the fire to be stoked.”
Prolonged satisfaction. The breaths right before the first and last kiss.
