Prologue
Brando
Life comes down to choices.
Yes or no.
Right or left.
Dates and times—showing up or not.
Sometimes right choices are made, sometimes wrong, but each choice is a step taken down the roads of our lives.
I’d always felt led, one thing or another sending me in one direction or another. Sometimes I recognized the road; other times, I had no fucking clue where it was leading. Sometimes I understood the impact of the choice right away; other times, it took years to understand how that choice led me in a direction I hadn’t anticipated, and how everything came together to bring me wherever the path brought me to.
How it led me to where I was then.
How it ledusto where we were.
Looking back, I recognized another set of footprints on the journey of my life. Sometimes they were in front of me, sometimes they were behind, but mostly they were next to mine. Smaller, more delicate, but no less powerful in the marks they made.
Even when we weren’t together, our footsteps were still close on this road of life.
She made a choice—my footsteps reflected. I made a move—her direction shifted.
Somehow, we were always being led to wherever we would end up together, our imprints on this world a unique shape—one that resembled a boot and a slipper, but for all that they were different, they were forged together.
I looked down at the floor my feet were standing on (in Venice, in some room in Luca’s castle that housed his impressive sword collection), and my thoughts seemed to come in reverse.
All the way back, probably, to the Middle Ages.
Luca stood in the middle of the room. Rocco was across from him. Both men circled each other until the clash and clang of swords rang out in the room. Luca was an excellent swordsman, and he had decided to teach his sons what had been taught to him. He even had medieval music playing in the background, something he said would set the mood for the marriage of romantic and ruthless. A unity that our mindset and mood should reflect.
I half expected our wives to enter the room at any second, wearing something from a completely different time. A time that seemed to fit Romeo and Juliette’s names.
This was Luca’s arena, and he thrived in it. After he sliced straight through Lothario’s legs, I’d seen the passion he had for the romantic—using a sword—and the ruthless—using a blade that would have sliced Lothario’s head from his shoulders had Luca aimed higher.
My grandfather, Marzio, had taught his sons this long-forgotten art, and his father before him taught him, and so on.
It was being taught to us.
I’d always preferred to use a knife. It was up-close and personal, and it took some skill. I doubted any of us would be as great as Luca, but despite my feelings toward him, he was a damn good teacher because he was fucking good.
He loved it. That much was clear to see on his face. He was euphoric as he moved around Rocco, teaching him this and that, using the blade as if it were an extension of his arm.
He considered guns lazy and without honor when the offense was personal.
Each time his feet would move, a dance to save limb or life, a memory came forward like the tide, and I couldn’t help but lose myself to it. It couldn’t go back as far as the style of music that was playing, and it didn’t capture the clang and clash of metal, but it brought back footprints made in sand—ones that led me to where I was standing.
* * *
The weather isn’tsure what it wants to do. The air is full of moisture—I can smell the potential for rain in the air—but the sea rocks easily into the shore, the breeze sweeping instead of bending.
The uncertainty of it—thewill it or won’t it do some damage—almost makes my blood hum. Something about water calls to me, like a woman’s body, and here in Fiji, it’s all I see for miles. I should be drowning in the view, but instead, the air moves in and out of my lungs easily, like taking a deep breath after being suffocated.
Setting my beer down next to me in the sand, I watch as the sun disappears behind the horizon, leaving behind the weather but stealing back its light. It doesn’t leave me in complete darkness, though. Not with the number of stars that seem to appear out of nowhere.
We’re going back to Natchitoches soon—one day or two—and this is the first time I’ve sat here before the water and realized how much of a siren it is. People say this all the time, that this or that is music to their ears, and I get it now. It almost puts me in a trance, but at the same time, the blood in my veins feels electric when I think of jumping in.
