“One look—that’s all it took.”
“I—” I opened my mouth to speak, to answer him, but he shook his head.
“Not now,” he said, like he knew I couldn’t answer him and was prepared for that. “I’ll work for it. I’ll earn it. You know the truth, but it has to make its way to the surface.”
Idolove you.
That was the most insane, and intense, truth about this situation. I’d known it from the moment he’d found me on that stage in a tomb. He was so right about that. But the last time I’d felt love, it was between me and my mom, and this was a new version of it. A version reserved for two people who had an unexplainable attraction. It was like my body had its own gravitational pull, and I’d always been circling around him, but didn’t know it until he showed up.
It was a thought that had come to me the night he’d crashed into my life. And it made so much fucking sense in the darkness, and what was even more bizarre, it was making so much sense in the daylight too. But there were still voices in my head doubting all of this.
Maybe those voices were lying to me, but he was right. He had to prove something to me before I could say those three words back to him—three words that were pure truth, but too dangerous to say aloud yet.
He’d always been mine, and something told me he’d always be mine, in a way that no one else could touch. It was the most natural feeling, while also being the most foreign. But time. I needed time. I shivered when I thought about him saying he’d prove himself as my feelings made their way to the surface. Even though his eyes were dark, there was something about them that reminded me of Scarlett’s. Like he knew too much—maybe only about me, but still. Those dark pools were wise beyond their years.
“You were always mine, Stella,” he said, the rasp in his voice making me shiver again. “You’ll always be mine. Let my voice be the one that talks over all the others. You hear me, you hear the truth. Allow me to bring our truth to the surface. I’ll spend the rest of my life pulling it from your depths. You know why?”
I shook my head, entranced by his voice, his words, his eyes, his warmth, the scent of him.
All of him.
“Because only I can.”
“You’re it for me,” I breathed. I finally understood what it was that scared the shit out of me the night I’d first seen him. He was right—a part of me I’d never discovered before knew. Matteo Fausti wasitfor me. For the rest of my life, he wasit. I’d go to my grave loving this man.
He rested his forehead against my chest, and my chin rested on his head. “You’re it for me,” he whispered. “Na muri scrivutu ne stiddi.I followed the path fate set out for me, and it led me to you—the most beautiful star in the sky,my Stella. All mine.”
Those last two words came out as hot as a searing brand, and I knew they had touched where they were supposed to. My heart would always wear the marks of those two words for the rest of my life.
Chapter 16
Stella
One month in the hospital, and after my first surgery, Dr. Casella gave permission for a shower. It was Matteo who set up the bathroom and carried me inside the warm, humid room. The nurses had bathed me before, and he’d stepped out of the room to give me privacy, but even the short distance sent me into a panic. I’d tried to overcome it, but for whatever reason, I couldn’t be that far from him.
Once he’d found me, that wasit. I was hooked and couldn’t seem to untangle myself. I honestly felt like I was becoming dependent on him, and I said so.
“So?”
“So…?”
He tested the temperature of the water, setting his hand underneath it. He fiddled with the knob, then turned to me. “I can’t be far from you either.”
“Is that normal?”
He shrugged. “Depends on the couple. My parents can’t be apart.”
“Oh,” was all I could manage to say.
His mom, or mamma, as he called her with an Italian accent, Mia, and Magpie had been coming to see me since thebeginning, and I was growing closer to all of them. During their visits, and as my release from the hospital grew closer, it was like they were giving me lessons in all things Fausti. What I was learning was that the family was vast, and that they had their own set of rules.
It made me a little nervous.
It made me even more nervous when a woman named Ava, who was married to…shit!A cousin of Matteo’s father, maybe? She came to visit me when his mamma did. Ava handed me a notebook. Some of the pages were filled with information she filled in for me—thankfully—but the rest she told me to fill in as Matteo, his mamma, sister, and grandmother schooled me. Ava had whispered in my ear that I should pay attention to the women, especially, because they were the true rulers of the family. It was important to watch the mechanics from afar after I was released.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on everything I read. So far, I knew this much:
The Fausti family was a powerful family who looked one way to the world, but behind closed doors, was like a pride of lions.
