Matteo whistled long and low, covered my ears, and a second later, a blast echoed through the air. It smelled like something was burning, and it took another second to realize something wet was on my face. I touched it and pulled back a smear of blood and what looked like a chunk of charcoal. It was all over Matteo’s face.
Pieces of the snake.
Matteo looked down at me, eyes possessed by something that seemed to be internally controlling him, and just stared at me. I didn’t want him to see the residual panic coming to the surface of my own eyes, so I looked away.
Oscar slid down the wall, making the sign of the cross and praying in Italian. Or giving thanks.
I squinted my eyes, looking for the shooter. I thought it was Brando. But when I finally made out the shapes, I realized it was Brando and Scarlett. He was standing directly behind her, and she held the gun.
Chapter 34
Matteo
My wife kept saying things like, “Rocco named him wrong! Marzio?Pffff!We shouldn’t call him Marzio after such a man. The stories I’ve been told make him seem like such a warm guy. And Rosaria? She deserved everything I did to her! Bitch. No.She’sthe whore! I beat up a kid in school who called my mom that, and that was just when I was a kid. I’ll stab a bitch for that now!”
All these comments were warranted, and so was her anger, but there was something I didn’t like about the undertone of her voice. It was almost panicked and a little unhinged, like at any second, she might break and release a sob she’d been holding in, along with a screech.
I’d considered this when she first came home—that at some point, she’d have to deal with the emotional and mental trauma she got from those fuckers. She’d told me that she had to be naked in front of that soon-to-be dead woman, Régine, to get her weight checked, but none of the men were allowed to touch her. Fuck with her? Yeah, but not touch her.
I had a feeling that was because that dead woman had plans for my wife. Plans that involved “renting” her out to the highest bidder for a night. It wouldn’t have been one of the men whofrequented the underground club to get a paranormal fix, but a man who didn’t necessarily buy into the hype of what the Nemours were always trying to sell. The “otherworldly.” The dead woman wanted the buyer to remember she was made of flesh and bone, and that she would bleed for him.
She fucking bledfor meand made a blood vowto me.She wasn’t a thing to be sold or used, butmywife.Myentire heart.
And any man who belonged to them, who had caused her harm in any way, was already dead. The ones who locked her in with the rats? They would be eaten alive by them.
“Matteo?”
Her sweet voice seemed to come at me from faraway, knocking on my skull, and I was back in the moment. The anger I temporarily had to contain took me away sometimes. I’d get trapped in it. Thinking about what they’d done to her and making plans to slaughter them all. I’d wear their blood on my hands to prove to her that none of them were a threat any longer.
And Marzio? Who I fucking loathed to call Marzio, because he could never be the man my great-grandfather was? He had started a war between us the moment he stepped onto our land and threatened my wife. He was a traitor. And Rosaria had set the entire situation up. She was mad that Stella had gotten the best of her. But there were rules in this family.
Oscar had already told the truth about what he saw, Stella holding a piece of something—which was a piece of stone from mamma’s broken coffee cup—to Rosaria’s throat. Rosaria was claiming that Stella didn’t like her coming around, because Stella was delusional about her coming on to me. It was true, though. Mamma had tripped Rosaria after she’d witnessed the scene, causing a slice across her knee. But mamma knew it was Rosaria’s word against hers if anyone made a deal about it—anyone being Rosaria.
This time, Stella seemed to be in the wrong, even though no one doubted Rosaria had called or implied that Stella’s mamma was a whore. But Stella had drawn blood first over words. Rosaria said Stella was just being sensitive and struck her. But after Marzio’s visit to our property, it leveled the field.
Marzio was summoned to Nonno’a walled city in Lucca, but he hadn’t showed his face yet. Nonno had also decreed that his first name be changed to Tiziano. Which was a high insult. It meant that Nonno had acknowledged he wasn’t fit to carry on the great name of his father, Marzio Piero Fausti. Tiziano was a name that was equivalent of Judas in our family.
If Mariano wouldn’t have been a step behind, he would have killed Tiziano.
One day, I would kill Tiziano.
There was always something different about Tiziano. Something that everyone seemed to acknowledge silently, but never aired. He didn’t look like the rest of us. Yeah, genetics could be tricky, but he just never fit. And we all had a feeling he knew it. Padrino never said anything, but we all got the feeling that he knew it too, and if he knew it, so did Nonno.
Papà never cared much to get in anyone’s business. That was mamma, and most of the time, she was just trying to help. But I could see the way papà looked at Tiziano sometimes when he was looking elsewhere. It was like papà suspected something but wouldn’t say it unless someone had mamma hostage and he was forced to.
“Matteo?”
“Yeah, baby.”
“Where are you right now?”
I sighed. “Inside of my head.”
“Is it a dark place right now?”
“Yeah.”
“Come shower with me?” She opened the door, inviting me in.
