Matteo stared at me for a second, but his eyes had turned hard, like he was looking at me, but imagining…something unpleasant.“Sì.”He stood from the table and pinned me against the kitchen counter. He had an arm on each side of me, crowding me in.
“What?” I breathed him in, looking up into his eyes.
“Proof that you are so much better than me.”
“Proof?”
“Yeah, proof. I have it. Here it is. I would have killed any man that touched you before me, and you’d have a closet full of hearts.” He leaned in and kissed me, leaving for a day of “work.”
“I didn’t think that was an option for me!” I yelled at his back a second too late. I mean, thinking about those women, one in particular that had made an awful impression on me, the chocolate-making chick, did make me murderous, and if anyone tried to hurt him, Iwouldhurt them, but to just find those women and…I made a slicing motion across my throat. How could I? I mean, it was one thing to feel something, but another to do it.
Maybe that was why I’d been locked up all those years. Maybe I would have been a strumpet, and I would have a collection of hearts in my closet to regret.
My husband’s raspy laughter echoed until the entire house fell silent. He was so quiet, I had never heard him come in or leave.
Sighing, I looked around the empty villa. All clean. Dinner already planned and ready to go.
What to do?
I’d pick mom up and we’d go for a ride. The temperature was starting to come down, and the Florence scenery was changing from the dried, brittle earth of a scorching summer to the painting-worthy auburns, pumpkins, and stark golds of fall.
That was a shocker. Not the weather but mom. About two weeks after we’d found out about Massimo and what the media in Louisiana had calleda bloody massacre,Mom told me she was moving into Niccolo’s villa.
“With him?” I’d asked.
Matteo had grinned at me.
“Yeah,” Mom had said. “You’re practically a newlywed, will be again after the second wedding, and you need your space. And when you’re off on your honeymoon, Niccolo is going to take me to all my doctor’s appointments instead of Maggie and Luca. Niccolo’s been cooking me all these healthy dishes. He even makes green smoothies for me!”
I was so excited to admit that mom was looking more like herself. She wasn’t as tired from her treatments, and she was starting to get a wild spark in her eyes. The same spark I remembered from when I was a kid. She was almost…glowing. I knew a lot of that was because we were finally together again, both of our breaths coming easier since we knew we were both breathing the same air. But I also knew Niccolo was making her happy in a way I’d never seen her before with a man.
After I started to help her pack, I’d asked her, “Mom, why didn’t you ever get married? That guy, the carpenter—remember him? He was really nice.”
She focused on folding a shirt, like she couldn’t get it wrong. “Um, well, I don’t know. There were a few over the years that might’ve had some potential, but it was me and you, bestie boo. I didn’t want anyone trying to tell me what to do with my daughter. You came first. That’s why I didn’t mind the deal between Henri and me. He wasn’t the type to interfere with you. The money was nice whenever he sent it, but that’s another reason I didn’t push for it too much. I didn’t want him getting any wild ideas, like he had rights or anything to you. I made enough to get us by. That’s why I didn’t give you his last name. Babin. I gave you mine.”
“Your parents?” I asked. “They were not…nice people?”
She shook her head. “My mom died when I was fifteen. But before that, she wasn’t the definition of a caring mom. She was sick on and off throughout the years. Blamed me for it. She’d get mad at me for the stupidest shit and make me kneel on rice for hours in the corner.”
She had never told me that before. I swallowed down the sudden sadness I had for my mom, squeezing the pants in my grasp, and whispered, “What was she sick with?”
“Same thing I have.”
“Your mom had it too?”
“Yeah. The first time it went away. The second time it took her.”
“How could she blame you for that?”
“She thought it spread because of me.”
“That’s fucking ridiculous!” Mom flinched when I yelled, and I could tell she was over talking about it, but I had to know. “What about your dad?”
She shrugged. “He was off on a boat a lot of the time, and even when he was home, he didn’t stop her. Which made him just as guilty as her. I left the day after she died. He never came looking for me.”
Tears slipped down my cheeks as I replayed that conversation in my head while I dressed. I didn’t want mom to know it bothered me as much as it did. Every so often, the look on her face and in her eyes—like maybe she hadn’t fully gotten over it, and maybe never would—almost haunted me. I wished I could erase her past, make it better, but it was out of my control.
Same with my life with the Fausti family. I could be there for Matteo, be his light, but I’d decided to keep myself as separate from the family politics as possible. Rosaria had almost roped me into the seventh circle with her, but that wasn’t my place. My place was to love my husband and do what I was passionate about—whatever that was.
