“Yes.ZioLuca is in the hills. The Vincio di Brandeglio Valley.”
He nodded. “He is not hiding. He is on the hunt. The game has begun.”
“Did you expect anything less?”
His head turned slowly toward me, and our eyes met. Our difference of opinion when it came to this power struggle silently clashed from across the seats.
“Who is your alliance with, son? Your uncle or your father?”
“My love for you is greater than my love for the rest of the family.” That answered his question, but it also touched on how I felt about all this. In this family, words had to have double meanings, or one wouldn’t last long in it.
“If you looked any differently, I would question your Mamma’s faithfulness to me,” he said. “You are not like me.”
I was like him in certain ways, but our biggest difference was that we placed our values on different things. It wasn’t an argument I could have with him, though. Besides, if I was going to argue, I had to do it in a way that was not coming across as challenging or disrespectful.
Son or not, he would not hesitate to treat me the same as one of his men if he felt I was being either. Speaking to him was like walking a fine line. Our world was made of them. Some were short fuses.
He turned back to the window, watched as Rome flew by us in a blur, before meeting my eyes again. “I will not allow him to take what belongs to me.” He punched his chest. “Not after all he put this family through. Setting his mistress before us! What message does that send? She is a witch and weakens us in the eyes of the world. Her blood runs through his son, and now he has taken a witch as a wife as well. That blood strengthens them while it thins ours.”
I looked toward the window. I did not want him to see the truth in my eyes and challenge it. My father was from a different time, and he believed such things were true. The superstitions of the past still clung to him. I was not a firm believer that such things did not exist, but I had never personally felt that from a woman. And when my father could not make sense of something, he reverted to beliefs that would make them make sense.
ZioLuca had an affair with Margherita Granchio while he was married. His marriage had been arranged, as well, and from what I’d heard, it was not a good match. Whether this had to do with Margherita Granchio or not was not clear.
My father said afterZioLuca met her, he was never the same. And for someone as powerful as his brother to lose the one thing he’d always lived for? Would die for?
Margherita Granchio had bewitched him.
This all happened before my time, but a lot of our family accused her of being astregato captureZioLuca’s focus like she had.
The affair between them produced a son, Brando, and his wife was as peculiar as his mamma. Brando was a duplicate ofZioLuca, but he wasn’t raised with us. Margherita had kept him in Louisiana whileZioLuca went to jail there. Brando did not carry our ways, but I could sense similarities about him even though he was not raised by our rules. He seemed to have an innate understanding about how our world worked. And he was as formidable as his father and our grandfather.
Naturally, my father felt threatened by him. Brando’s brothers—Rocco, Dario, and Romeo—were all in line to inherit the throne, too, but my father felt they would have stepped back out of respect. But because he felt Brando’s wife, Scarlett, was the same as Margherita, he felt dark magic was at work.
All because my father could not understand how a man who had the Fausti kingdom at his fingertips would not fight for it, choosing the love of a woman over our world.
Spells had to be cast for this to happen.
I’d met Margherita and Scarlett. Both were beautiful women who did have something special that made them different. Perhaps it was their spirits. Or the light in their eyes when they talked about something they loved, or how they looked at their husbands. What I found most interesting about them, though, was their loyalty.
Especially Scarlett.
Brando would kill for her. She would kill for him.
There was nothing sneaky going on behind the scenes with them. What was going on for all to see, for those who cared enough to look, was the unbreakable bond between them. That was the sort of thing some men would go to war over.
Me included.
I’d always admired the relationship between Marzio and Grazia, my grandparents. They had a love worth living and worth dying for. My father reflected on them as his parents, but rarely did he speak about their love, and never how theirs had helped shape the love between him and my mamma. He never spoke of it because love hadn’t. My parents were both driven and kept in line by the rules of the family. The rules shaped their relationship.
Love was fleeting. An afterthought.
“You think my belief in such a thing is foolish,” my father said, breaking my attention.
I turned back to him out of respect.
“I am just an old man who believes in old superstitions. But like everything else, superstitions have a place in this modern world. We learn from our ancestors, not ignore them. Both of those women have powers that are not normal. When you look at me, you see my older brother as well. Can you see me falling to my knees, losing all that I inherited, because of a woman? My older brother does not have a weak bone in his body. But for her? He is weakened, as though she drains his blood.
“I am not weak.
