I had married a Fausti, and in the opposite world that Joe existed in, my husband had sent a clear and final message: I was his, completely.
FORTY-SIX
NAZZARENO
My wife sether hand against the door and then her forehead. She closed her eyes, and it seemed as if she was taking calming breaths.
She would need them.
I took a seat at the edge of her desk, my feet solid on the floor, my eyes solid on her. In the hours she had been absent from my life, she had changed.
It was more than the new way she styled her hair.
There was something more womanly about her, as if she had settled into her skin, and she radiated a sharp confidence, even if she was keeping her back to me.
If I could only kill time, I would steal its heart, and rewind its blood flow to the moments we had missed.
“You cannot fly away each time we do not agree, my beautiful bird.”
“It’s notjusta disagreement, Nazzareno. I’m fighting for your life. And if keeping you safe means we’d spend our life apart, I’m willing to do that. I’m willing to throw low blows—drugging you—to keep you in the same world as me. You would do the same for me!”
She gasped when I grabbed her by the arms and spun her around. Her arms were bent toward her body, pressed against her breasts, almost in a defensive position, but her eyes were a defiant cold fire.
“I fight for us to be together.”
“This is different, and you know it! If you lose, we lose it all.”
She tried to fight out of my grip and I released her some, but not much. Her bones were trembling.
“Do you see me as weak, wife?”
“I only understoodwifeout of those words.”
I translated.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I swear, I’m not trying to insult you by implying you’re not a man. Damn it! I know you’re a man, and one who can do the impossible—that’s why Joe was so shocked. You are the only man in this world that could get me to sayyesor to stay longer than one—” She looked me in the eyes and shook her head. “The point is, I said yes to you, and for as long as I live, Nazzareno Fausti, I will never say yes to anyone else ever again. How can you live with that if something happens? What if Luca decides to marry me off to someone else in the family?”
I released her arms and took a step back. So did she. I fixed my suit and stood taller.
“Tell me,mywife, who would my uncle arrange your marriage to.”
“I didn’t mean anything by that last thing I said,” she snapped. “It was hypothetical.”
“I do not play that game.”
“But you’ll play a dangerous game with your life!”
I advanced on her. She came at me. We collided in the middle of the room. She grabbed my jacket, trying to yank at it, and I set my hand against the bottom part of her throat and chest. Her heart beat against my hand, trying to fly into my palm.
“I know who the fuck I am.” I uncurled her fist and set it against my heart. “I do not need the world to tell me or to recognize it. You are separate from the rest. You areme. You do not have to tell me I am a man, either, but you will see me as a man, or you do not see me at all.”
“I feel you,allof you, too fucking much!” She pushed against my chest with her free hand.
A moment passed between us.
I nodded. “Final answer.”
“What?” she breathed.
