“This is our way,” she said. “What will be done, will be done.”
In agreement with this, it seemed, Scarlett snatched my hand and squeezed.
After Rocco had cut him deep enough, he released him, stepping back, sticking the knife back where it had come from, and then fixed his suit. Francesco left first. Rocco walkedover to me after and took me by the arm, and we marched toward thecastelloabove the sea.
By the time we arrived, I was sweating, and not just from the climb. The last couple of hours beat down on me, replaying in my head over and over.
The mean pepper picker.
Her words.
Jealousy ate at me, its sharp teeth gnawing at my nerves. I had never been a super jealous woman before, but I’d turned into one. And the oddest thing of all—visions of my mom crying over my dad after he had left her for another woman, not even the one he married—swam in my vision like her tears, reminding me of her heartbreak.
Scarlett kept glancing at me, but I wasn’t sure what she was telling me, or if she was even trying to tell me anything at all. I’d realized after being around her and Eva that I might have been “touched,” but not as touched as those two. I didn’t always know what the eff was going on, like they seemed to. My brain wandered too much to be that fast at translating feelings.
It was as if we were all traveling at manic speed. When we stepped into thecastello, I flung my arm out of Rocco’s hold. I told myself I couldn’t hold him accountable for anything he did before me, and this was all so new, but…the pepper picker’s words were as acidic as her raunchy peppers.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t the peppers’ faults, but still. She had come at me first.
He looked at my arm and then at me. I crossed my arms.
We glared at each other, but I felt something from him, something that was making me feel hotter—he was putting up an ice wall between us right as Rosaria Caffi’s voice played through the spaciouscastello.
It was as if I were fighting a ghost’s hold on him, and I charged through the place, looking for the music’s source. One of the soldiers sat at the kitchen table, eating some kind of pasta withveggies in it. I snatched a chair from the table, dragged it to the corner, stepped up on it, and ripped the speaker from the wall.
Rocco watched me like he had no idea what to do with me. I had gone rogue in his castle full of family expectations and laws.
Maybe he understood. Maybe he didn’t.
I was battling a ghost who refused to unstick her claws from his chest, constantly tearing him apart, pulling him toward a deep, cold grave. It might have been a little soon to move on—and I had accepted that she would always have a place in his life—but I understood. It had been over a long time for them, and she was haunting him. Not out of love but some effing claim. Time was of the essence though. I had to keep him close to me while not tearing him apart like she had. I refused to do that to him. I…loved him too much to rip him in two.
The wind whipped against me as I carried the speaker outside and flung it over the cliffside with all the strength I possessed. The scream that tore out of my chest burned and made a lasting mark that no one could see, but I would always feel.
Rocco was right behind me, making sure the gusts of wind didn’t take me off the cliff. Maybe he was thinking Rosaria had sent them for me, and we would share the same fate. He picked me up, my feet dangling ridiculously, and brought me back inside. He set me on my feet, and we faced off.
Neither of us said anything.
I was too emotional to even talk.
The wall of ice keeping him from me was quaking, but it was still there.
Then, out of the blue, Scarlett came to stand beside him. She used her fingertips to caress his shoulder.
What the hell?
Where was her husband?
He was standing on the other side of the room, fists balled.
What did the mean pepper picker say? Wasn’t it rumored that Rocco was in love with Scarlett? Did he fuck her too? I looked at her husband. Yeah. No. I didn’t feel that would fly withhim. I wasn’t sure if I was safe even thinking the thought. It was like he was on to me and would throw me through the glass, straight to the sea, for even giving the thought any kind of life.
“You okay, Rocco?” Scarlett whispered, giving me a mean look.
He glanced at her, a confused look on his face.
“It’s okay,” she said. “You don’t have to?—”
Before she could finish, I rammed my body into hers, and we both went to the floor in a heap. She was so slight, the thought came to me that I might hurt her, but that was the point, wasn’t it? She was trying to come between my heart and me, just like the mean pepper picker! Just like a ghost who had his past on lock.
