I kept my hands up, not responding, but walking at my own pace to keep the knife from ripping through the fabric and falling to the floor.
There were three things decided as she seemed to be walking me to the end of the plank.
One, if it came down to her going back after my husband or me fighting her right there, right then, we’d sword fight with our knives.
Two, whoever this woman was, she was truly unhinged.
Three, this was no ghost.
This was Rosaria Caffi in the flesh, unless she had a twin. Which made me feel a rush of heat and chill at the same time. I compared the…feelof this woman to the one beneath the window.The one beneath the window felt like winter incarnate. This woman felt like the flames of the seventh circle had somehow gotten tangled in her veins.
She shoved me toward the area of thecastellowith the glass walls, forcing me to stand close to them.
A shock of lightning lit up the room.
My eyes narrowed against the darkness, trying to process if what I’d just seen was my imagination or not. A boat that looked like it belonged to Vikings was riding the rough seas, coming straight for thecastello.What kind of…people did it take to brave this effing weather in something that looked like it was hellish enough to survive the massive waves, wind, and deluge?
People I didn’t want at our doorstep.
Rosaria Caffi laughed from behind me. Stepping closer to me, she purposely stepped into the light, allowing it to bring her to life.
Okay, that was truly effing unsettling.
The last time I saw this woman, our eyes had met through her mirror while she was dangling from a cliffside. She wore a dark cloak, and it gave the impression in the glass that her head was floating. Her laughter, the meanness in her eyes, though… Nothing had changed. The most astonishing part of all this—she had no visible scars.
This wasn’t adding up. At all.
The only plausible explanation my head could work up in that moment was that she had hit another cliff, and it had broken her fall, then she pushed her car completely over after. That was so damn farfetched, but I couldn’t come up with anything else.
Really not the time to think the situation through, though, not when this woman was still raging behind me, as seething as the sea. Time had not touched her temper. And I was married to the man she had an arrangement with, before her, er, fake death, and it wasn’t that long before he had moved on with me.
“I knew it,” she seethed. “I knew he would go for someone like you! Someone soft.” She spat the word out. “Someone not worthy to wear the Fausti name. All that time. Allthattime!” She threw her hands up. “And this is what the king of beasts does. He marries someone below him—a laughing hyena.”
She motioned toward me, like I was small and insignificant, then made ayip, yip, yipnoise.
I was about to say,and don’t forget a daughter of a whore, but I didn’t want to poke her back. If mental stability was linked to a cord, hers had truly snapped. She was coherent enough, but the amount of rage…it just wasn’t normal.
Then my brain decided to try to play peacemaker. It asked me a question.
If Rocco fell in love with a woman and married her not that long after our death…how would you feel?
Okay, in nothing but truth, I could understand her rage. How she let it all fly, not caring what other people thought of her.
Damn. This was exactly what Scarlett said happened to her. Sometimes she understood people’s motives when she didn’t want to, but that didn’t mean I still didn’t feel whatever I was feeling. And that pissed me off. It was like my understanding nature was irking the bitchy part of me.
The bitch snapped back,Well, if it was love between them, why did he fall in love with us so quickly? Why did she want to take other lovers,sharehim? That man! Share him! If it would have been a lifelong commitment between them, he wouldn’t have married us. He wasn’t that type of man. He would be in the grave with her, not lying unconscious on the floor of the office, blood pooling around his head from the gash that bitch made!
Peacemaker turned up her-holier-than-thou nose andstfup.
That’s what I thought,bitchy me said with delicious satisfaction.
I was going mad, as mad as this dangerous storm.
As mad as this haunting woman suddenly in front of me, her eyes wide, pupils dilated, holding a knife like the bride of Chucky. Without warning, she lunged at me, slicing instead of stabbing. In the dim recesses of my mind, a voice was coming closer, screaming,she cut me!But the fire of it was a dull ache in the background, as I produced the knife from behind my back and held it out to her.
She laughed. “Oh, how symbolic! We are dueling to the death! That is a game the Fausti family just looooves. Fitting.”
We circled each other, and even though I refused to take my eyes off her, I couldn’t help but notice in my peripheral that the boat was getting closer to shore.
