“You mean this crowd will start cheering for one man or the other?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“This is insanity!”
“The Fausti men love us with an insanity that turns into an obsession, but for them to do this, they must have insanity already buried down deep.”
“Why does—Luca?—choose you to do this?”
She sighed and looked toward the mirror, running her hand down her dress. In the candlelight, the gold in her hazel eyes seemed to glimmer. They were so cat-like, I was thankful for not being a mouse. Her dark hair fell down her shoulders, past her breasts, as smooth as silk, and her light-brown skin seemed to match the dark gold glimmer around her pupils. She wore a gilded flower headband and a cornicello (Italian horn) around her neck.
“My lions. I made a deal with him to use them for these battles when he requested them. Sometimes he wanted them to deal with problems. The support he offered was too much to pass up. It saved our protected lands in Africa.”
I touched her arm. “He set the lions free on these problems.”
She nodded. “Until Scarlett put a stop to it.”
“She did?”
“Scarlett is…touched. She had an experience with Oba, my lion, and she’s been an advocate for them ever since. Her support has brought in more than what Luca donated.”
“Your lion? You mean Valerio?”
She smiled, and it blazed like the fires around us. “You are truly one of us, Ava from New York.”
“Because I made the connection between our lions and actual lions?”
“These men wear these symbols as if they are them, but they have yet to make the connection between them. You carry a torch with you subconsciously, and consciously, you become the flame. Same with the spirt of a lion.”
“Has Valerio ever done this for you?”
“They call me the beast tamer in this family.” Her grin came slow, and it made me think back on when she gave me the tranquilizers. “I am all Valerio’s. I have never wanted to tame him, though. I love him wild, but he has this fear of… losing me to the same beast inside of him.”
“Your lion—Oba?”
“Valerio was going to challenge him, but I told him…it will not be Oba he meets in the middle of this colosseum; it will be the lioness. Me.” She touched her chest.
“I love you,” I said and smiled. She was a fierce woman, and I always loved fierce women. I was finding this family had plenty of them. Women who would make history books, if only in the ones the Fausti family wrote.
She looked away from me for a second, then met my eyes. “I wasn’t sure if I should tell you this or not, and Valerio told me not to, but I would want to know. When Marzio ruled this family, he only held these games as a way for the men to bond, to touch the roots of their ancestors across centuries. Before Grazie died, she asked that of him.
“She found this tradition exceptionally brutal—maybe she was thinking of the women who had to endure this. I’m not sure if Marzio had ever done this for her, but…she asked it of him regardless. If a man needed to challenge another man, it became a high-speed race, cars or horses, things like that.”
Her eyes studied mine for a second before she continued. Maybe gauging my emotional status through my eyes. “Lothario rose to power by default, and he allowed the practice again. He did this because he wanted Brando Fausti dead. He would have been the rightful next heir to the Fausti throne. Venice is proof of the lengths he went to keep his position. Even before that, though, he tried to destroy Brando and Scarlett like they were enemies.”
Malum came to mind, and I nodded. “Nazzareno told me a little about it.”
“Nazzareno is not his father—Leandro is. Nazzareno is more like Marzio. He even looks like him, down to the same haircut. Lothario has never been able to stand it, but he tolerated it because Nazzareno quietly flew the skies and went along with his wishes.”
“I understand that part. What does this…Lodihave to do with what Lothario did to Brando, though?”
“Luca might feel entitled to do the same to Lothario’s son. Twist fate and let it ride.”
A sound that sent a chill through my veins seemed to echo inside of the stone room. Noemi noticed how I flinched.
“The first call by the ancient Roman Cornu,” she said. “Renato will answer it. He was the first accuser. Luca is allowing him out first, since so much has been stacked against him in this fight.”
“Then Nazzareno.”
