Past. Present. Future.
He wasallmine, and I wasallhis.
His touched lingered on my skin, like a scent, and it floated around me as our moments on the island moved forward.
After the visit to the tower, it seemed like we held a secret between us, a secret that had been born before the both of us, and it…solidified what we’d known since our eyes met for the first time. What existed between us was born to be. We didn’t have years between us yet, but we had something more powerful.
That secret between us.
It thrilled me to my core, sending zaps of life through my veins, making my heart dance.
The next morning, as he sped to the private beach that would lead us to where the statue of Christ was submerged underneath the water, I lifted out of the convertible some, singing the song playing on the radio at the top of my lungs. He grinned as he pressed the gas pedal down harder, taking turns as smoothly as Luca Fausti. My arms were lifted, my fingers wiggling, the scarf in my hair like a mast catching wind, my terrible voice on blast. But the island was mostly deserted save for the Fausti soldiers and the locals, so the only person who heard it, and didn’t care, was the man in control of the car.
My husband, ladies and gentlemen.
My.
Husband!
And I got to keep him for life and beyond.
I made awaaa hoooooo!noise, the sound catching on the wind and dragging behind us. I brought my hands together over myheart because it felt like the joy I felt was going to explode from my chest.
Rocco laughed, and the sound was free—as free as the two of us together. It wasn’t him but me who kept a grin on my face as we hiked the path to the private beach hand in hand. He kept humming and softly singing parts of the song he liked that I had played the night we had killed the chair on the dock. There was one part he kept repeating, and I took it to heart.
Amen.
Once we arrived at the beach, we had our day on the water, scuba diving to see the statue, which was…breathtaking. Silvery fish swam around the realistic statue’s hands as they lifted toward the surface, light breaking around Him in piercing rays. Even farther out, it seemed like a lost city of statues that some Roman empire had commissioned, and some ship had lost, existed in the shallows, which didn’t seem that far down—maybe eight or nine feet?
The one that caught my attention the most was the statue of Hercules and the Nemean Lion. Hercules had his powerful arms locked around the lion’s neck, and as I remembered it, it was impervious to an attack by mortals.
It was hard for me not to see Rocco as Hercules and his family as the Nemean Lion—the struggle between them.
Maybe that thought fed into this one. I could tell that, as a hot-blooded man, he was sometimes lost when it came to living, to loving without his family’s rules to guide him.
For example, after snorkeling around for a couple of hours, and taking a boat tour, we swam closer to shore. Before we made it to land, and into a depth I could stand in, I moved my hands back and forth underneath the thin layer of clear water, watching as both of my hands shimmered with the new rings on both ring fingers. The water waved over the diamonds on my left hand, the emerald, diamond, and ruby band on my right, like lost treasure beneath the sea that was finally being pulled to the surface. I was so entranced in what I’d been doing that when I finally lookedup, I noticed Rocco doing the same thing, copying me. He stared at his left hand, the new platinum band there. It was like he was doing it to see if it would make him as happy as it made me.
When he finally met my eyes, our grins came slow. But it made my heart ache that something so simple wouldn’t have crossed his mind to do—just because it might warm his heart.
Waterlogged and exhausted, I collapsed into a lounger while lunch was delivered. Rocco fed me, and after, I fell asleep to him caressing my back while I ran my hands through his hair. We were pressed together on the beach chair. He was reading a novel. My dad’s first book. After the big secret was revealed about Maranello, pieces started to click, and since it seemed like my dad had based his first book on the Faustis, Luca Fausti in particular, I believed that the story he was going to write, the one I had written,wasbased on a true story. Either someone had told him, or he had stumbled upon the information by sleuthing around.
That was all in the past, though, and even though the killer could be a real threat, I wasn’t sure if he could find me. I’d left everything behind and found myself lost—and found—in an entirely different country. And with Rocco and his family…I doubted he would try anything. I’d tried to talk to the police about it in New Orleans, but since the case I’d based the book off had become cold, it didn’t seem like they were too interested in finding the killer, or helping me, either, even though I’d written the truth and exposed the crime.
I shivered when I thought about it.
Then fell asleep.
An hour or so later, I woke up, groggy and starving again.
For more than just food.
Rocco was staring at my face, moving the hair out of my eyes.
Wordlessly, he carried me toward the car. But before we got there, we passed through a field full of fennel. The sweet, aromatic smell of anise was strong in the air. The breeze carried me back to my Nonna’s kitchen when I was a little girl, and she would bake her famous anisette cookies. She’d twist the dough intoa figure eight, then add sugary glaze and nonpareil sprinkles to the tops. That had been my job. To shake the sprinkles over them until I was old enough to help her bake them.
Earlier, when I’d asked why we weren’t taking the boat docked behindCastello Sul Mareto the sunken statues, he’d told me this path was different. I assumed in that moment that the acres and acres of fennel was what he’d meant. It reminded me, almost, of lavender fields in France. I’d never been, but I’d seen pictures.
Squeezing Rocco’s hand, I dropped to the ground and picked a few plants, making a buttery yellow bouquet out of them. They were exceptionally…whimsical with their feathery leaves.
