“Is there a reason you wish to know, bella?”
“No.” She waved a hand. “No reason. Just curious.”
This word she used, curious,was a dangerous word to her,indeed. Curiosity killed the kitty, and all of that. She was climbing the wrong tree inquiring about my father, our family, as she was. There was also the knowledge that she was using our last name.
Was she a secret child of my father’s?
Anything was possible, but in our family, sons outnumbered daughters to an astounding degree. It was a rare occurrence when a daughter was born. Lola Fausti was one of them, and even though my grandfather’s sister was loving, she knew her worth in the family. The thought of my great aunt made me grin. She was a spicy chili pepper. And although Scarlett…Fausti was a woman and not a man, she did not resemble the Faustis in any way.
This was why, before Donato left for America, I gave him an envelope holding the picture of Scarlett, and I tucked inside of it a brief letter for Donato to deliver to him personally. I would not hide this mystery from my father. Even though Nonno had banished him from our kingdom, he was still my father, and I had a feelinghe would rule us someday. Nonno would not live forever, and after his death, if he had not written his wishes in stone, my father could challenge my uncle to rule. I doubted my grandfather would ban my father for eternity. He knew my father was the most capable to lead the family after he was gone.If Ettore, or one of the younger brothers in line, ruled and failed, my father could still claim his birthright after Nonno left us.
All of this was why I did not want to outright demand the ballerina give me the truth. As she was with her husband the night before, she was clever. She danced around it. But if I pushed the issue, she might lock me out or leave. I did not want to forfeit my time with her over family issues. I would get to the bottom of iton my own time, but I did not wish to cut my time with her short.
She was everything in a woman I had yearned for my entire life. She seemed to love her husband with a passion that put the two of them first. She was creating a home for them. She was warm and supple and yielding, but fierce when she needed to be. Perhaps she would turn into a hell cat for the ones she loved. And the way she had gone on excitedly about learning how to cook Italian food, since she had lessons in France, only endeared me to her even more.
“I just worry about addingnotenough ortoomuch!”
“Quanto basta,”I had said to her, making ado not worry about itmotion with my hands.Quanto bastameantas much as needed.
She laughed. “There is nothing worse for a cook then not seasoning the foodenoughoroverseasoning it. Even your dish was perfectly peppered.”
I grinned at her when she had saidperfectly peppered, her alliteration almost like a song, and she exploded with laughter.
She was so comfortable with me already, but not trying to impress me, it seemed. From the moment I had met her, she completed a void inside of me, and I craved for her to fill the rest of them, until I was the perfectly balanced leader my family honored above emeralds, diamonds, rubies. I was not inherently ruthless, since I appreciated the romantic side of life, craved more of it in my personal life, but it did not take much to swing a man like me in one direction or the other. Rosaria had gotten that much right. But this was where my true struggle thrived, between the two types of blood rushing through my veins: ruthless and romantic.
I was a man whose blood was battling inside of his veins. Both sides of me needed to be in harmony for me to become the king my family needed.
There was something inside of this ballerina that was uncatchable, and the part of me that was an excellent hunter responded immediately to it.
As I watched her move around the kitchen, a warmth I was not accustomed to blossomed in my chest. Perhaps she was not doing these things for me, building a home her man looked forward to returning to, but she was still doing it for the man she loved. She was a beacon of hope in a bleak world where I had started to wonder if a woman like her, a love like hers, still existed.
“Bella,” I said, moving closer to her so she could feel the warmth of my body. “I prefer your hair that way. You look like a…woman.”
Calling her a woman seemed to please her, but she turned away from me, busying herself in the kitchen. Her eyes kept flitting to a stubborn cabinet that kept falling from its hinges. She would fix it, and the next time she set something inside of it, it would fall again. I had offered to fix it, but she shook her head and said it was personal.
This woman considered fixing a piece of wood personal.
I laughed myself out of the farmhouse that evening, twirling the keys on my finger, after I said goodbye to her. My instincts told me to move as fast as a Ferrari when it came to claiming this woman, but I held back, putting my urgency on a leash I was not accustomed to wearing, deciding to set myself to public transportation time in Italy: never on time.
Why the rush, ah?
Rosaria was waiting at the table for me when I got home, her lips already stained with red wine, the proof of it sitting at the bottom of her crystal glass. In the darkness, with the light behind her, the dregs of wine turned into droplets of blood. The house smelled of starch—pasta.
“Husband,” she said with a cheeky grin, “did you have a good day?”
Before I could answer her, one of my men came from the kitchen with a message. My father was on the phone. I took the call in my office.
“Papà,” I said.
His end of the line was silent. The hours hecalled me were outside of normal calling hours. The guards under his control gave him the use of a phone.
“Son,” he said in Italian, calling mefiglio, “leave the situation as is until it comes to you. Time reveals all at its own pace.”
Donato had successfully delivered the envelop to him with the photograph and note then.
The line went dead, and a glass of red wine appeared on my desk, my wife’s canary-yellow diamond wedding rings glinting against it. I looked up, and she looked down at me.
“Drink up,” she said, pushing the glass closer to me. “Every king needs to heat his blood, then be cooled down with the sacrifice of his ruthless queen’s cold blood.” She sat on my desk, opening her legs to me, and I brought my head between them after I drank the last drop of my red wine.
