My light in the darkness.
Even though I couldn’t claim to have had a rough life, or parents who didn’t love and care for me, I was still a Fausti, and whatever came with that name, I’d inherited from my old man. I had embraced it fully, pleased to be lost in the deep darkness with monsters who might eat me alive. But the moment my eyes had found my light, I was completely ensnared by it. My heart had roared to life, and a protective instinct I’d never known before rose from its slumber and took control.
It was like nothing I’d ever felt before. I knew it was like nothing I’d ever feel again. That was how deep the feeling had branded me. It exploded into my blood stream and irrevocably linked her lifeblood to mine. From that second forward, whatever happened to her, happened to me.
Whatever was happening to her, at that second, was tearing my heart to shreds, and I could feel my blood leaving my body. Instead of succumbing to it, though, I was rising, ready to go to battle for mine.
The woman the dark underworld had named “Étoile”.
Mystar.
And it was going to be a bloody fucking battle over her. The war that had started years ago, that had plagued my parents, was being carried through generations. My sister, Mia, and her husband, Saverio, had been touched by it. I knew me and mine were going to be touched by it. Wewerebeing touched by it. Which was why my grandfather had us on this plane, taking adetour to Venice before we landed in Paris, where our Russian associates were waiting to fight by our sides.
I looked away from the window, my eyes catching on my parents. Mamma was curled up next to papà, his arm around her protectively as she slept. Or her eyes were closed. Sometimes she did that. “Resting my eyes” she would say. After all these years, he was still ensnared by her. She was all he ever saw, all he ever felt. All that he’d done, he did in honor of her name.
I understood like I’d never understood it before. It was something I had to experience to understand, the same way mamma had said a person only knew what a parent went through when they became a parent.
My thumb glided over the ornament my parents had given me as a Christmas present. It was two interlocking stars, one with Stella’s name and one with mine.
“I want you to be happy, my son. That is all I want. But I also know that the little boy who almost lost his mother is out for revenge. When Chloe called you, I know it stirred up memories you had buried. But you do not have to save me, or yourself. You have already been saved. I was saved. I am here today because my love for you all brought me back. I could not bear to leave you, and I hope you feel the same for me. And when you do save Stella, you both will be saved. Because if you leave her, charging in and getting yourself killed…she will feel there is no point in staying on this earth. Stella without Matteo will make no sense.”
That was the words mamma had spoken, in Slovenian, at the castle in Germany, to keep me from charging in and going after Stella. I was fully prepared to die in Stella’s name, in her honor, but mamma’s words had grounded me. I couldn’t imagine Scarlett without Brando, or vice versa, and I knew for Sella’s sake, and mine, I had to be smart about this. I couldn’t risk Stella’s life, or we both might forever be lost.
I felt the intensity of another pair of eyes and turned to meet them. My uncle and godfather, Rocco (or Padrino, as my siblings and I called him) sat on the other side of the plane, his treacherous wife next to him, but his stare was on me. I nodded, and instead of nodding back, he stood and made his way to me.
The plane shimmied a little with turbulence, but it didn’t seem to shake him at all. He fixed his suit, and Mariano, my brother, nodded and vacated his seat for Padrino. He was quiet for a minute or two before he looked at me.
Mia and Mariano had the same color eyes as his: green as the Mediterranean when the sun beat down on it. There was some darkness that lurked around the edges in my sister’s eyes, her limbal ring, but the darkness that lurked in Padrino’s and my brother’s eyes went even deeper. My eyes, in contrast, were as dark as Brando Fausti’s.
We stared at each other until the plane hit a deep pocket of turbulence. I looked away first. It was out of respect. The Faustifamigliahad rules, and no one knew, or navigated, them better than me. Becoming the King of the Faustifamigliahad always been my ending destination, and to get there, I had to know how to steer the course better than anyone else. Being the head of the Faustifamigliawas a highly valued position, and both getting it and holding it could be dangerous. I’d always thrived in that world, and Padrino knew it, which was why he’d always been supportive of the title going to me instead of his son, my first cousin, Massimo.
Before Chloe showed up in his life, Massimo was on a path to challenging me, at the urging of his mamma, Rosaria. Rosaria felt the title and position was rightfully his, since Padrino would be leading thefamigliaafter Nonno retired. Usually leaders died in that position, handing over power to whoever they willed it to with their last breath. It was unusual for Nonno to retire, buthe’d chosen love over power, and he wanted to spend the rest of his years loving my grandmother.
Rosaria, though, was after the crown, and since my father had given over his right to rule to Padrino, she felt it was only right that Massimo ruled after Padrino’s death. I’d put a stop to it by announcing my desire to rule. Padrino ultimately sided with me, since my father had been next in line, and if he wouldn’t have forfeited his right, by Fausti law I was next in line to rule. Massimo would have challenged me for the position, and I had a feeling thefamigliawould have been on his side of the campaign, since Massimo had decided to marry an Italian movie star, whose roots run deep in Italy, and Padrino had always been respected.
At the time, I hadn’t made a choice—I didn’t care who I married and was on the verge of letting my grandfather decide. And how ironic was this: it probably would have been an opera singer like Rosaria. My father was considered a rebel to thefamigliabecause of his love for my mamma. My campaign wasn’t as strong as Massimo’s, but fate had intervened and brought Chloe into our lives. When she’d called me and told me some man had hurt her in France, I’d raced to her door and discovered that the Nemours family, again, was behind it. While I was out with my brothers, trying to find out who the man was, Massimo had arrived in Paris with Padrino and took one look at Chloe and fell hard.
Chloe and Massimo were getting married, and he decided not to challenge me, since he felt I’d brought Chloe into his world, and he was fulfilled like never before.
Desire and hunger are two of the most driving forces in a man’s life, and the intensity of the combo is infinity-times worse when applied to a man who has Fausti blood pumping through his veins. The desire and hunger to lead had switched veins when Chloe appeared, and Massimo knew she was the one whohad awoken the sleeping lion in his chest. Especially when he took one look at the sketches in her apartment, sketches some people had thought were me. But he knew she’d been drawing him all along.
Mamma said those two had true love.
Exactly the kind of love Padrino had always craved but never truly had with Rosaria. Padrino and Rosaria had an arranged marriage, and over the years, it had built up to something more. Then, as hard times had rolled in, it had eroded back to an arrangement. I hadn’t always been around to see it, but sometimes I saw my life from my uncle’s eyes.
My life would have been an echo of his.
An all-consuming desire to be head of thefamigliahad gripped me since I understood what it meant to be a Fausti, and part of that was romance and being able to balance it with the bloodthirsty animal that lived inside all of us. And to be respected, to be taken seriously, a man had to be married. I was so lost in the honor of what it meant to carry my last name that I didn’t give a fuck who I married. An arrangement was suitable to me.
Then fate stepped in and changed the course of my steps in Paris. Here we were, all on this plane because of it. We were heading in a direction that didn’t sit right with my “aunt,” so her teeth were bared in Chloe’s direction.
Chloe made a noise of distress when the plane hit enough turbulence to make the lights flicker. Chloe was special in that way. She was a sensitive woman who worked through whatever she was feeling through her art. Her safe place.
Massimo pulled Chloe closer and tried to put up a wall between his soon-to-be wife and his mamma. Not a comfortable place to be. Sweat rolled from his temples even though we were in the middle of winter.
ZioRomeo stood from his seat, fixed his hair, and announced, “I am going to speak to the pilots about this. Nazzareno and Augusto Aurelius should know better.”
Nazzareno was the son of my grandfather’s brother, Lothario, and Augusto Aurelius was Nazzareno’s son, who had followed in his father’s footsteps and became a pilot too. The family mostly called him by his two first names, Augusto Aurelius, but the younger generation, like me, called him Auggie in less formal settings.
