He waved a hand. “Names do not matter when it comes to fate, but since they seem important to you, my name is Renato Fausti, and I am taking your rejection as a challenge.”
It didn’t ring any bells, but he claimed the Fausti name, and I could tell he belonged somewhere.
“I’m Pepper Nash.” I looked up into his dark eyes.
“Pepper from America.” He grinned, then looked away from me and back to where I’d been standing. “Is he your man?”
“Rainer? No. I only accompanied him tonight as…an acquaintance.”
His eyes narrowed some. “You do not seem to like this acquaintance.”
“What would give you that impression?”
“I am a Fausti.” He blinded me with his smile. “I can tell these things. But if you really must know.” He touched the tip of my nose. “You made a face with this.”
Oh, he meant I’d scrunched up my nose.
I turned my eyes from his for a second, the intensity hard to hold. I went straight from the pan into the fire because the other eyes I met were the same ones that had been staring at me throughout the night.
“Who is that?” I asked, breathless.
The mystery man was standing close to the bar, a glass of whiskey in his hand, staring at me like he was starved, and I was the next course.
I wasn’t looking at Renato, but I could tell he looked in the same direction when he answered. “Nazzareno.”
My brain went into filing mode and started searching through all the notes I’d taken over the years. Nazzareno Fausti was Lothario and Belaflore’s first-born son. The rest of the details were a bit sketchy, because the last time I’d updated his cards was when I’d first started.
“Is there a reason why he’s looking at me like he wants to have me for dinner?”
Renato turned his head up and laughed. It was gritty and deep. “A Fausti knows an angel when he sees one. Mycuginois probably growling at himself for not seizing the moment before me.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that, and if I did, I couldn’t have. Nazzareno continued to watch us, or me, and I felt breathless. He was unnerving me. Every instinct was screaming at me to FLY AWAY!
Forcing myself out of Nazzareno’s hungry force field, I looked back to Renato. He was looking over the crowd, but when he felt my attention turn back to him, he concentrated on me.
“Listen…do you think I could talk to Luca? It’s about my…acquaintance. I think the man who sent us has ill intentions toward someone in your family.”
It was like someone had teleported the charming Renato out of his body and replaced him with an entirely new version. Renato’s eyes turned hard, and he became almost stiff.
“What is his name?” he demanded.
“ON. That’s all I know—” I couldn’t even finish my sentence.
The crowd seemed to shift around men hustling through it. There was an urgency in the air that wasn’t there before. I wasn’t sure why, but my eyes went back to where Nazzareno was, but he was gone, like my breath when he’d stolen it.
I’d never felt breathless in that way before. Like my body would remember it when his starved eyes came to mind, and I’d always have to catch my breath when I thought of how they made me feel.
Renato cursed in Italian. Then he looked at me, like he was remembering I was there and had to decide about it.
After a second, he grabbed my hand and started hauling me in the direction of theno goarea of the palazzo.
I was powerless to stop it.
Not only because my nature always followed danger, but because suddenly, it didn’t feel like I had control over my limbs anymore.
TEN
AVA
