In this room, he would.
I knew it. I refused to stop it. The mania welcomed it.
The chair moved, light footsteps followed, then his form blocked most of the light streaming through the window. He stared out of it, hands behind his back, knowing that standing between my family and me would only drive me further into madness.
“Ah,” he said, his tone even, almost thoughtful, “it is true. She is connected to you in a peculiar way. I have never seen such a thing before.”
Was she gazing up at the window? Or already on her way up? Whatever she had done had answered his curiosity. Confirmed the rumors. He felt the connection, saw it with his own eyes as soon as she had acted on it. My feelings swam through her veins.
“This is what I tell you,” Ettore said in Italian, coming into the room, shutting the door behind himself. “The package would make him insane with rage. She would feel it. It is not normal. Now she waits outside of the door. Making demands. Ha!”
Who was keeping her back? Donato? Guido? Nino? Or some stranger that I’d have to kill if he put his hands on my wife? Luca’s orders or not. I made myself clear enough when I stated that blood won out over this family.
I stood, coming face to face with the man who had created me. His eyes were all together sane, in high contrast to mine, dilated and crazed. It was clear enough to see myself reflected in his pupils.
“I advised you not to marry her,” he said, his tone even. “I warned you. She would come with burdensome responsibilities. Being a Fausti is that to begin with. Now the world knows the love between the two of you is not one that exists every day. Men, men like us, turn mad for her touch. Her grandmother, Maja, was the same type of woman. Though only with her dance. I have not even seen this one dance and I know she is more powerful.
“This is why I told you that if you must marry by your choice, you marry the redheaded one. She listens and does not argue back. She does not make you vulnerable. You are not at the mercy of a love you cannot control. Even her name, Scarlett, is a warning.” He waved a dismissive hand. “What is done is done. We live at our own risks. Your wife, my daughter, has sent you closer to this family than you have ever been. For that, I respect her even more.”
He dared not to touch me, but he didn’t need to. His hands, so like my own, were pressing against my beating heart, his blood calling to mine. Some touches didn’t need to be offered to be felt. Isn’t that what Scarlett had once said to me? Though I couldn’t remember when.
“You know what you must do, my son,” he continued. “You must mark yourself and claim what is yours. If not for my sake, for your own. You are who you are. There is no escaping who we are born to be. You,my son, were born to be a Fausti. Look at you. Grandson of Marzio. Son of Luca. You will wear our name like a badge of honor on your chest. This name will be the last he sees before you steal his last breath.”
“And set her free,”I added to my own mental rhapsody.
“Sì,”I said, tucking the picture inside of my jacket, where Scarlett had had the tailor add an extra pocket for an extra handkerchief. It was one of my stipulations. A woman cried sometimes. It was best to be prepared.
He nodded once, then mentioned Red again, Jane—or Janet—or whatever her name was. “She came to see me the day you were married. She asked a favor of me. I mentioned her timidness but there is a side to her that will stop at nothing to have you. She asked me to have your wife killed.”
This time I willed him to say more.
“It would take an act of God or disloyalty to force my hand against my own flesh and blood. Though you denied me the honor of meeting your betrothed, by all accounts, killing her would have killed you. Now I see the truth in a decision made without even a clue of what I see before me.”
We don’t kill women. It’s against the code of honor,I thought but didn’t speak it.
“It was not honor,” he said. “It was love.”
He made no move this time to stop me as I turned from him and walked out the door. Two threats on my wife’s life had me to a breaking point. Old or not.
My wife’s worried eyes met mine as the door closed behind me. Only a step away, we stared at each other, our eyes connecting. All that had happened was relayed in our silent language.
She bridged the gap, raising a trembling hand, hesitating for only a second before she fixed my hair. “Your eyes, my husband,” she said in Italian.
Instead of asking me questions she knew I wouldn’t answer, she rested her head against my heart, her hands holding on to me as strong and as fierce as the whispered prayer she offered up.
14
Scarlett
Omertàis a code that dictates silence at all costs.
Brando had never employed this code when it came to me. I was his partner in all things. Half of his whole. And by the laws of this life, I was held to the same standards as the men when keeping the integrity of it.
After the meeting with Luca, when Brando came out of the room with eyes dilated and skin quivering as though a million wasps had lit on him, he decided to keep silent on what transpired inside of that room.
The meaning behind his silence didn’t translate into a meaning that made me feel settled.
Attempting to gleam even one shred of what had happened, I tried his brothers and their wives. His brothers employed the same code. Their wives had no idea either.
