“Ah, it is doable.” I winked, putting a period to my father’s statement: time reveals all at its own pace. “When?”
“Soon.”
We worked out all the details.
“A man who has such a treasure would be one to know,” I said, already feeling the warmth of his blood on my hands when I killed him. Perhaps with him out of the picture, my silent heart would roar for the first time. “It will be a pleasure to meet him.”
She smiled, and it was the same sort of smile my wife would give when she held a secret and could not wait to be the one to announce it to the world. “Yes, I’m sure it will be.”
Scarlett walked me to the pool to collect my brothers. We bid goodbye to the women, and as we walked toward the car, Dario cleared his throat.
“Something is amiss here,” he said. “The situation is not adding up.”
“ViolaCastellanos,” Romeo almost sang.
Dario slapped him in the back of the head. “Pay attention!”
Romeo fixed his hair. “I am,fratello. I will get close to her. Find what we need to know.”
“No,” Dario snapped at him. “Father did not give us orders to find. We are to wait. Not as you did inside!” He slapped him a few times in the head, and Romeo knew he meant business. He was out of line both literally and figuratively.
Romeo did not make a sound, but in the soundtrack of his mind, I knew it was going something like this:Ah! Ah! Ah! My hair!
We arrived at the car, and my brothers waited for me to get in.
“If you want to take her out, that is it,” I said to Romeo. “There will be no need to find what we need to know. The situation will come to me.” I shared the date and time with them both. “Just as Papà said it would.”
And I would be waiting for it.
More specifically.
Him.
Chapter 15
What is Hidden is not Always in the Darkness
My wife leaned against the Giulietta balcony of our home in Maranello, her voice a breathy whisper as she hummed “O mio babbino caro”. Hummed, not given me an aria that would send me staggering behind her. Her truth was quiet in the tender morning light that broke around her as she ran her fingertips softly, slowly, across the warm stone. A tender breeze flowed through her dark locks like a comb through silk. Two tear drops ran down each cheek, crystallized in the light to salt.
We both understood her quiet held meaning. Whatever was coming today had unnerved her. Perhaps this was why she shed a tear. This change would affect her, and she could not see a way out of it, and her heart was stomping in her chest as her foot would if it would not be such a childish and foolish thing to do.
The sad sight of her inspired me to go to her, wrap my arms around her shoulders, and whisper in her ear, “Whatever comes today, I am stronger, my wife.”
She stepped out of my embrace, turning to face me, her arms crossed like a petulant adult. “Even you are not stronger than fate, my lover,” she said in Italian. “Even you are not stronger than traditions. History. Rules.” She waved a hand.
A loving wife would have prepared her husband for the truth instead of giving him clues to decipher.
Rosaria left me alone on the balcony and disappeared from our room entirely.
It took me a moment to move, to leave the view of the property I had inherited from my grandmother’s family and prepare for what was to come. Like the hand that stitches the fabric of life with a tale to pass down to generations, my father was weaving this story as he wanted it to look, fate helping him.
Even a man such as I knew fate had the strong hand, and when the time was right, it would push us in the direction we were meant to go in. I was moved by fate. The romance of it. This was why I dressed for the day and waited for the time to come.
Two hours late.
Rosaria’s Ferrari pulled into the drive. Scarlett had tied her hair back and hid her eyes under sunglasses. Even from my spot behind the window, I could tell she was not herself. She seemed shaken. Almost broken. She was alone. Her hands trembled as she removed the scarf and fixed her hair and face in the mirror.
I did not even bother to run through the reasons her husband had not driven her. My father knew. That was all I needed to know. I would deal with the situation as it came.
