I wasn’t sure what was going on here though. Rosaria—maybe her ghost—the slashing motion she made around herthroat. What Stella had told me about Rosaria’s body not being found. She couldn’t have survived that drop…?
Maybe I wasn’t positive about what was happening, but I knew one thing that was more certain than my next breath.
I wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was he.
In two weeks, we’d be married, our vows set in stone so hard, neither of us could budge for the rest of our lives and even beyond.
Chapter 25
Blood Might be Owed
Feminine laughter echoed inside ofCastello Sul Mare, and toasting to the sound, I lifted the glass in my hand, about to drain the dregs of whiskey left and then go for another full glass.
The celebrations had started in preparation of our wedding.
A wedding to a woman I would havediedto have.
It would be, for me, this time around, a wedding to a woman I wouldliveto have.
Even though the notion of dying for my beloved wasromantico,the ultimate sacrifice and honor for my heart in physical form, time had changed my perception of life. I demanded to live it with her, even for a time.
I was not sure if forever would be long enough.
I’d always craved the powerful love my brother shared with his wife. Somehow, someway, the same love had found me, and whatever Amora and I shared in this life would cross over to the next for us.
I refused a breath without her next to me.
I refused a place in any world without her in it.
Love had introduced itself to me through her hand, and it was mine to know, and to give in return.
Mine.
My fist came over my heart with a final thud at the word and its meaning.
Mine.
The soft creature with the heart of a lioness, laughing in the next room, had been created for me.
Rocco Piero Fausti.
She was and would always be the craving of my heart and the longing of my body.
Aria Amora Bella.
I also knew the challenge we were facing.
Ghost or not, someone was after my love because of me. All because of my tie to Rosaria Caffi. When Vincenzo reported to me what had happened at the hauntedcastello—someone had written those words on the wall in blood—I had demanded to read the threat with my own eyes, and I had snapped.
All the years of my life, I had never understood a rage that powerful. I had seen it in my brother when his wife came to me and not to him during a moment of deep despair. I had seen it in my son after Rosaria had come close to mortally wounding his love. I had seen it in Rosaria Caffi when she did not get her way.
I had seen it but had not felt anything deep enough to cause me to explode outside of my body, only seeing the color of the blood that painted the wall. It had blinded me. It had proved to me that I did not know myself any longer, who I was, and who I was becoming.
The soft creature had taken my carefully crafted book of laws and flung it out the window.
She, the author of books.
The thought made me grin into my glass before the anxious feeling inside of my heart rang like a reminding bell. My love, soon to bemywife, was in danger.
