She would never love another.
Her barbs had gone too deep, and so did the hurt she handed me on our wedding night, and the nights that followed. I would never kill out of honor in her name, if the circumstances pertained to love, but out of bitter resentment, the vengeance as warm and passionate as our wedding night should have been.
Chapter 7
The Truth is More Expensive Than Lies
Ihad been, on paper, a married man since summer, and it was winter, and my bed had never been so cold. My wife had the cold blood of a snake and preferred warmer weather when she was not performing.
Monica Attigliano, the first woman to ever have me in the bedroom, caressed my shoulder with her red nails as she studied my face. Monica was as warm as the Mediterranean sun, and as stunning as the water that shimmers beneath it. She was known as one of the most beautiful women in the world, and if she hadn’t been in love with my father almost her entire life, I would have considered marrying her. But we both knew that, when we made love, it was my father she was imagining, not me. She was someone else entirely as well. When I looked into her eyes, I imagined a woman with the same shaped eyes—feline—but that stared back at me with love and adoration.
A woman who was committed, loyal, and would not only have my back during cold wars but would be my ear in our warm bed at night. A woman who would listen, give me council, and expect not only for my body to pleasure hers in roughness, but also in tenderness. Being soft towards one another would not be considered a weakness but a strength.
Monica moved a long tendril of jet-black hair from her face. The color of her hair made her skin seem even paler, but those eyes…I could drown in them, they were so green. A color between mine and Rosaria’s, with gold streaks close to the irises. She usually painted her lips a ravenous red, a color that was created and named after her. Some big-name makeup company had offered her the deal for it, but I had kissed it off her hours ago. It was smeared on the side of her face. The color probably stained my lips, as if I had been eating cherries.
“You have that look on your face,amante mio. Tell me what is on your mind.”
Monica was magic, and part of her spell was that she was a good listener. A woman who seemed able to pull the sins from my soul as well as anypadreI had ever confessed to.
I lifted my hand, letting it fall gently on her bare back, as I stared up at her elaborate ceiling from her equally ornate bed. She lived in her family’scastello,Castello di Ballerini, in Perugia with her mother, the Countess Sibilla. The countess’s brother, Matteo Ballerini, was a world-renowned painter who enjoyed painting flesh. His pieces were considered torrid and erotic, even down to a belly button. I found them fascinating and owned a few pieces. As time moved on, his pieces grew in monetary worth after collectors had finally seen what his followers had—he was one of the most influential and talented painters of his time.
Monica and her mamma had some of his original pieces, completed when he was a young man and a painter on the street, and the pieces were worth millions if they ever decided to sell them. But Sibilla was close to her brother and refused to even allow the outside world to see his first pieces. She said perhaps when she died, but not a day before then.
Then there was the mysterious woman. A woman who the world claimed was a Slovenian ballerina and spy during World War II. Some claim the woman in the pictures was the ballerina, but others say they were not so sure. But there was a book left behind with letters from one lover to another…
“Rocco.”
My eyes snapped to Monica’s. She had a voice like velvet against sensitive skin after a long night of love making and wine in bed.
She sighed and rested her chin on my chest, gazing up at me. “You should have never married her. I told you this.” She touched my chin, then my temple, making a screwing motion. “You are hardheaded, just like your father!”
“You did tell me this. I am sure you warned my father about the woman in America as well.”
“I warned him.” She sighed, and her breath whispered softly across my skin. “But he knew I had only warned him because of my own selfish feelings for him. I was—am—in love with him. I would have lied to keep him. And I tried. I am not as honorable as your blood.” She waved the notion away. “It has been a long time since all of that. However, this marriage is new for you. I know it is not what you wanted—this tryst between us. You told me goodbye before the wedding. And what I did tell you?”
“I will meet you in my bedroom when you return from your honeymoon,” I repeated her words.
“I would have wanted that woman in America to destroy your father so he would run back to me, but it truly hurts me to see you this way. A piece of your heart shredded.” She placed a chaste kiss on my chest. “Do you regret choosing her yet?”
I thought about her question.
Did I regret setting my options up in the witch’s tower to see which photo could survive the frigid wind? Did I regret choosing my wife?
I was not a man who ever had one of those—a regret. What I did was in honesty, and if that was the way my mind, heart, and body directed me, we went. Rosaria had entranced me the night at the opera. Her aria had swirled above my head, and I had followed its magic straight to her room backstage. I listened to my heart and could not find a conflicting feeling about making her my wife, but the emptiness inside of me seemed to be growing.
As if Rosaria had set a contrasting color next to the gaping hole, I was finally able to see it for what it was.
A wound that continually bled out.
There was something about my wife that I had fallen for the moment she started to sing—her ruthless truth—but there was also something about her that I loathed—her twisted way of thinking and feeling. She was not a woman who seemed to feel much, unless it affected her desires. And all her desires depended on things of this earth.
Romance was not always things, but feelings that could turn a man warm to his core, or a woman to hers.
It was to give love and to be loved in return.
Love was a stranger to me, and I to it.
“I do not regret it, no,” I said.
