I never had to be afraid. I couldn't lose him.
The moment before the crash would come, and every ounce of fear would leave me. Because I knew. I had him forever. No regrets. Our love would live on. Even if only through our children.
That disjointed sensation had come back tenfold, and without the reassurance that he'd always be the solid foundation that couldn't be broken.
Always.
One powerful word that held little weight in the outside world. In my world, it meant everything, because he had proved its meaning to me. That one word had become a buoy amid stormy seas.
When he called mehis, he’d meant it.
Always.I let out a trembling breath.
Yeah, a snarky voice snapped in my ear,but even a beast sometimes breaks and bleeds for his beauty.
I had broken him, and if I had broken him, I had broken myself.
The thought made me cradle the bag harder to my chest, willing the inanimate object to keep me together. The drive from our house to my parents’ place felt like a blur. I remembered the before—refusing to pack, refusing to get in the car, both situations remedied by his determination and temper. But I couldn’t remember getting from there to here.
Brando had taken his old Chevy, and it trembled in park, idling outside of the sprawling estate. The dogs shot out of the front door, ears alert, but tails wagging. Even from our spot they had scented us out.
Guido sat in the car behind us, dark sunglasses over his eyes, black hair glistening in the sun.
The accident had almost torn Luca’s heart out, or so he told me time and time again, and he couldn’t have his daughter in danger any longer. It caused another rift between father and son—If you wouldn’t have left in the first place, this never would’ve happened.That was what Luca’s eyes communicated. Brando gave him silence in return.
Something else had passed between the two men. Something my husband never spoke on.
Nemours was still alive. The police said he’d run, gotten away before they could locate him. I called bullshit. My husband must have arranged for one of the men to take him and hide him. He would make him suffer. And if history was anything to go on, Brando might have threatened Luca for Matteo’s own good. Luca would want his grandson, an heir to the Fausti throne, to see what happens to men who harm one of their own.
A woman who he considered a daughter, especially.
Therefore, Luca sent Guido to head up our security team. He wanted a more competent detail. A regret, he’d said, and I knew for him to admit that was like chewing glass shards and then swallowing them.
I assured Luca that what had happened would have come to pass whether we were in Louisiana or Italy, perhaps the outcome even worse. It was a feeling I had gotten deep in my bones. Nemours had studied every inch of our places in Italy, where we were most comfortable, but Louisiana still threw him for a loop.
Accustomed to bigger cities, he took advantage of our town’s small atmosphere, thinking he knew it without really studying it at all.
Cerise had given him details. Though she did what she did, her mind was not at all straight. Deranged, in fact.
For a moment, I spared some emotional thought toward her and her daughter. Emotional pennies that almost left me spent.
Cerise got away after she killed her husband—she had hit him in the head with a blunt object when he was paying attention to Nemours. He hadn’t expected it from her and hadn’t seen it coming. Livia had been at school.
Livia was flown to Italy after, given to a family that would keep her immersed in the ballet.
It wasn’t out of character for Luca to sacrifice innocents for his own family—the sheriff and his family were proof of what he was capable of—and I wondered if he had considered it, instead of sending Livia away.
The Faustis prepared for the future, not leaving the fate of the ones they protected to chance, as best as they could. And Luca knew Livia could one day, possibly, follow the same path her mother had taken. If, or probablywhen, she ever found out what had happened, perhaps from someone who would manipulate the truth, the potential for Livia to inherit the same resentment toward the Fausti family could be strong, which could lead to issues in the future. Especially since Cerise was on the run, and if she knew the same people Nemours did, they would hide her.
If Cerise was ever found…her fate was sealed, but I was thankful Luca went in another direction with her daughter. Livia was innocent in all of this, and I hoped her life would turn out differently.
One of Guido’s sons popped out of the waiting SUV, running toward the house, catching my attention. The dogs ran around him, glad to see someone they knew, and he gave them a pat before getting lost in the expansive old house.
Lou had taken a ride with her husband. She was glad to be back home, in America. Born and raised in New York, she had been gone from home for much too long, she had confided to me, and she had plans on opening a small hair salon somewhere in downtown Natchitoches, if she found the right spot. My mother suggested the place next to her boutique.
As soon as my attention came back to the tension between me and my husband, I could feel my heart bleeding out. It hurt to look at him. The pain in his eyes was substantial enough, even through his Ray-Bans, to make my heart shrivel. So did the distance between us.
Brando held on to the steering wheel, his knuckles straining, and stared ahead. “Tell me if we’re out of the woods, Scarlett.”
