SEVENTEEN
NAZZARENO
I setour bags down and then took off my aviator glasses, placing them on the table.
We—I was home.
My mind kept giving Ava claim where it shouldn’t. This wasn’t her home. Her home was in New York. This was my home. In Rome. But when the thoughts came, the ones that included her in my life like she had a place there, it felt so fucking right.
I did not know if I could ever fly again and not feel the distance from the plane to the ground—if she was standing on it. That was how in tune with her body mine was becoming.
She glanced at me and then turned her attention to my penthouse. It was located in Centro Storico, along the River Tiber. The area was full of Roman history; the Pantheon, Colosseum, and Trevi Fountain added to the old story. I thought Ava might enjoy all the boutiques, sidewalk trattorias and bars. The markets were busy, and the squares seemed to have pulses of their own, including Piazza di Spagna, where the Spanish Steps were located.
My grandfather, Marzio, had left me a much larger place, filled with family history, but I preferred to be here. I could lock myself away from the world, but a world long-gone was only a step away.
Marzio used to say this area spoke to the romantic in me. He would even squeeze my shoulder and tell me, “Nazzareno, imagine it. Two gladiators armed and ready to fight to the death. Now let us add a woman between them.Ah!Now that is what I would call an honorable show! This is why I teach you all to use swords,nipote. I teach you as it was taught tome.”
A grin slipped across my lips at the memory. I would find my sword and practice, imagining the day I would fight for my woman, and not only defend her honor, but win her love for eternity! This was the Eternal City, after all. Rome would go on forever, no matter how many empires rose and fell, no matter how many cities and rulers were buried underneath the rubble, and if our love burned here—it would burn for eternity.
Ava met my eyes, and my grin turned into something else. Something that pinched my lips and made me feel her tension like it was my own. After what had happened at Malum, she had been different. The wind had been knocked out of her, but she hadn’t caught her breath.
My uncle knew what he was doing when he sent her with me. She would be the first woman to ever cross the threshold of a place only men had inhabited over the years, but even men found themselves there in nightmares. It was one of those cursed places that served as a threat to those who rarely felt threatened.
“This is what happens when death is not good enough for you,” the men in my family would say. “You get sent toMalum.” The word was whispered, like it was forbidden to shout, because it might come to eat you alive in your sleep.
Ava was right about my uncle’s reasons for sending us in together—and this was one of them. We were locked in a room with one of the most dangerous men on earth. Alvaro Fausti. The reasonings for him being locked inside were confidential, but it was rumored that he’d slept with a woman and told her some of the family’s secrets in confidence. Later, she had turned on him and wrote a book. The book was pulled, and she could no longer be found, but the damage was done.
He was a killer that couldn’t be contained. He’d rip throats out with his teeth.
He had an identical twin brother, Desiderio, but they became estranged after Alvaro was locked in Malum. From what I’d been told, they looked the same, but were total opposites. Like one city with two faces—the good side and the bad.
Ava had experienced the bad side. She still hadn’t recovered.
I did not think it was only the violence that had knocked the wind from her lungs, but his eyes.
They were completely dead.
My brother was close to it.
Leandro had gone by the time we were able to leave the room. He had flown back to Venice and told Mamma about Ava. She had called me on the ride to Rome, called my uncle a dead man and Ava astregacalled forth by the other witches,and then hung up on me.
I was precariously close to a war with my own brother.
A sigh escaped my lips when her eyes roamed around, curious about my place, but she did not move. I did not think her curiosity was gone for good, but Luca Fausti had tamped it down a bit. She was acclimating to this new world she had entered.
She might have gone on a few crash courses in New York, but nothing could have truly prepared her for my family.
She was a chirpy bird amongst salivating lions.
Ava being chatty was another reason—the reason we hadn’t discussed—that my uncle gave the order for her to accompany me.
My uncle wanted to test her, to see how trustworthy she would be for me. Just like my grandfather, my uncle had romantic notions, and I knew he was trying to push us together because he felt fate was at work. When Ava said that he was putting us in the same situation as Brando and his wife, Scarlett, she was right. Because my uncle was not only seeking his revenge for what had been done to them. My uncle knew I had feelings for her.
He was probably also relishing the fact that my marriage had been arranged by my father, and it was to a prominent family in Italy.Sì, our marriage was to one another, but it was truly between two powerful families eager to come together.
Ava moved from foot to foot, and I set my hand on her back.
She flinched.
