He grinned at me, lifted a hand, and then was gone.
A few seconds later, we heard a grunt from the bushes, like an animal had been tackled, Placido’s praying voice, then, “Whoa! Hehehehehe.”In Italian,“That tickles!”
The sound of her crazed laughter seemed to echo through the night.
My old man grinned, patting my shoulder, like we’d both dodged a bullet.Safe and sound, his touch seemed to say,not from the black widow, but from the women we call our wives.
Yeah, a much more dangerous species of woman—even more dangerous than a woman who killed to soothe something in the blood.
Chapter 35
Stella
The night before, after Matteo had gotten back from dealing with the wicked stepsisters, he told me we would be leaving for our honeymoon sooner than expected. For some reason, I kept thinking about the time we set aside for the bathroom remodel and a few other things—like our patio furniture being delivered. I’d picked out a light green fabric to mimic outside and bring it inside the covered space, the cushions black and white, the hardware wrought iron. We had an outdoor stone fireplace, as tall as thecastello, to remodel.
When I brought that up to Matteo, he’d said, “We’ve talked to the designers. I have men who can handle that here.”
That was the first time we hadn’t had our hands on something that was going in our home. It made me feel uneasy, like thecastellowas going to get mad that we allowed strangers inside to do work we should have been doing.
Matteo had run his knuckle down my face. “You want to stay?”
I’d shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t truly been out in the real world yet. You tell me.”
“Home is wherever we are together,” he’d said. “You’ll be safe with me.”
His words had taken me out of my own head and brought me to a safe zone. He was right. No matter where I went in the world, if he was with me, I’d be safe.
I thought about this as I finished packing. Then last night came back to me, after Matteo had left and Scarlett had kept me company.
She was good company, and I could count on her to give me backstories when I needed them. Like, who was Lev, who did he belong to, and who was the bitch with him that wouldn’t stop giving my husband the gooey eyes? And calling them “gooey eyes” was something, since the rest of her seemed to be made of stone.
Scarlett had smiled when I’d told her that.
“I met Lev when he was a boy and I was just a girl. I’d danced for his grandfather in Russia. My grandmother, Maja, knew him. My grandmother knew a lot of people.” She went on to tell me how her grandmother was one of the ballet’s finest back in the day—and a spy . Maja’s “talent” had caused a lot of trouble for her over the years, as it did for Scarlett.
Maybe it was foolish, but after she’d told me stories of how dancing had led them all down dark roads, I didn’t feel so alone.
When she told me another one of Lev’s women had gone after her husband, I blurted,“See! How cheeky is that?”
“Very.”
Then the conversation somehow landed on her ability to feel things most people couldn’t.
“How does it feel?”I’d asked.“I mean, if you don’t mind me asking. To know all that stuff about people and sometimes feel powerless to stop it?”
She tucked her legs underneath her, sipping on her tea. She was such a slight and graceful woman. Her hair was auburn, touched by grey, but when the light would hit it, red and silver sparks seemed to brighten the darkness. Her eyes were sucha beautiful green. They popped against her fair skin and dark eyebrows. She was stunning, and if anyone would have asked me what I imagined a ballerina to look like, I would have said Scarlett Rose Fausti. And there was no doubt she’d given birth to such a force of a man.
My husband.
She sighed.“It’s always been hard for me to put into words what this…extra sense I have feels like. Sometimes it feels like I’m looking inside of a well at reflections, judging moods based on facial expressions. Other times, the worst times, it feels like I’m grasping to find a wire that has been tangled with other wires, and if I pull at it, will something detonate, or will something change that’s not supposed to be changed? Like…being late for a meeting, but being angry about it, when if I would have left at the time I was supposed to, maybe I would have died in a car crash. That happened to my brother. I warned him about leaving, but he didn’t listen to me. It’s also understanding motives even when I don’t want to. Like why someone would be cruel to someone else.”
“Like why those two women, the wicked witch’s daughters, were cruel to me over the years. I think I’d hate to know why, because then it might lessen my anger, which would steal something from me. Like my right to be hurt.”
“Yes,bebe, that’s exactly what I mean.”
“So, people have done cruel things to you, and you forgave them because you understood why?” I asked. “Is that why you don’t send Rosaria packing?”
“Here.” She handed me a cookie. “I don’t want to eat them alone.”
