Taking her hand, I led her toward the door. We stepped out and I locked the place up before we started walking down the street.
“This is a really nice jacket, Nazzareno.” Her eyes flickered to the patch with the Italian flag on one arm, and then to the other arm, the Fausti insignia.
“It has special meaning to me. It is the first jacket I ever flew in. It represents who I am. I am wrapped around you now.”
She sniffed the collar, and when she noticed I’d caught it, she grinned some.
“You smellreallygood.”
“I amreallygood.”
She laughed. “You are, and not only because you’rea Fausti.”
We entered the building I had renovated and turned into a state-of-the-art place to store all my vehicles. Her eyes widened as she took it all in.
“I figured you had a lot of cars, but damn. This is more than a fleet.”
“Some were inherited. Others I just enjoy.”
“Are these consideredtoysfor men?”
“Nah, just an added tool to get the woman.”
She threw her head back and laughed again. It echoed inside the cavernous space. And suddenly I believed the words and stories of my mamma andpadre—this woman was astrega. She had bewitched me, and I was under her spell.Per sempre.
I knew it, yet I did not fucking care.
Her laughter seemed to float down, and quiet settled between us like it had done before, but this time it was not as dangerous.
“What is it about my family that has put a spell on you?”
She blinked at me, like she had never expected me to ask. Once the surprise seemed to fade, she turned fully toward me, our hands connected, facing each other as if we were standing at the altar. Perhaps she had connected the thought in my mind through my eyes, or she had just noticed it as well.
She sighed, then took a step into me, turning some.
“You,” she finally breathed. “I mean, it didn’t start with you. It started with your grandfather. Edna, like I told you, is still obsessed with Marzio. The day she found out he’d died, I thought maybe she would too. But before then, after I first saw a picture of your grandfather in her office, he had stolen my attention, and then the more research I did, the more I got to know your family and have a feel for them…they stole my heart. It made the one in my chest not ache as much.”
She sighed and turned toward me again. “Look at you, Nazzareno. You are a dream come true. You somehow marry the ruthless and romantic. You would stand against your family for the woman you love, in herhonor. You would live for her. You would die for her. You would pick up a sword like men used to do in herhonor. You instinctually seem to know when to be hard and when to be soft. You’re not just a gorgeous face and statue-worthy body. You have substance to back it all up.
“And women…we don’t experience that kind of phenomenon every day. It’s the kind of stuff we read about in books. Fairy tales is more like it. Except…you are the princeandthe villain. You are a man of honor. You are also a man who would pillage a village for the woman he loves. That’s why I love the Fausti family. I’m not sure if it was a choice or not to become dangerously obsessed with them, but standing here…I’m so fucking glad I did, even if this is all I’ll ever have of you—in the darkness.”
When she spoke of my family that way, her eyes seemed to burn with passion, just as they did for me. Somehow, though, I knew she had separated us. I was not my family, but a single part of them.
“Ask me anything about my family.”
Her eyes rose. “You trust me with your secrets?”
“With my soul,” I said in Italian. Then I translated it.
Her breath accelerated and she gripped my hands tighter. “Why did they kill Tigran?”
“He got too close to what did not belong to him.”
“Did Rosaria Caffi love him?”
“That is not something I know. I do not get close to her. She is looking for something I cannot fill.”
“My guess has always been that Rosaria Caffi and Rocco Fausti have an arranged marriage, and it’s not a happy one. It must be hard to be forced to marry someone you barely have anything in common with, for the sake of appearances.”
