“Where are you going?” She sounded panicked.
“You ordered me to make you.” I shrugged. “That’s what I’m fucking doing.”
“No! You do not get the right to start thisbool-shit and then walk away!” She ran after me, jumping on my back, like she was a cowgirl at a rodeo, and I was thatbooolshe was trying to fucking wrangle. “You do not get to makeallthe rules, Mariano Fausti! You knew I was going to do this. Stop you!”
“Yeah,” I said. “I fucking did.”
“I hate that I cannot let you go!” she cried. “I hate that I am so dependent on you now! My heart. My soul. My entire body gets…sickwithout you.” I felt her tears on my neck. “This is not me. I am not used to this being me. OhDio. I do not understand how I love you so much! You are right. Love is not even the proper term. I do not know whatthisis between us. I do not understand it.
“I was almost to death in the palazzo I was raised in, learned to thrive in, and the minute you walked away from me, I had to fight myself to the floor so I wouldn’t run after you. What is going on with me? This is not normal!” She began to sob, but she was still holding onto me. “How much I love this child of yours already. I love him or her with every fiber of my being, but I do not understand the rush of what exists between us!”
Her tears were fucking destroying me, and even though I sensed more from her, after this was all said and done, I was going to get in the ring with my older brother, allow him to fuck me up in physical ways—ways she could see and feel. My insides turned out.
I kissed her hands, bringing her back to the bed, and was able to pry her around me. She cried into my neck, breathing me in.
“My Annie,” I barely got out.
She sucked up some air and then looked at me, tears welling and falling from her eyes.
“I’m not accustomed to having to explain my truth, my behavior to anyone. When I said you were it, the woman I would live and die for, made a blood vow to—that’s fucking it, do you understand? Tell me you fucking understand.” I cleared my throat, tried to clear the gravel from it, but it refused to move.
“Your sister came here with one of her friends unannounced. She was waiting in the barn with the friend. Your sister jumped on my back. The friend jumped on Marciano’s back. My sisterordered them off—that was it.” It wasn’t the fucking time, then or never, to mention that both women were naked. I didn’t think it was a visual my wife needed. “I called your father after, told him if she, or any of her friends, came back uninvited—that’s it. Woman or not, her life is mine. Nothing, I mean fucking nothing, comes between us,understand? I never repeat myself for anyone. Tell me youunderstand.”
She looked me in the eyes, taking my face in her hands, and kissed the spot she had bit, but I moved away from her.
“Please,” she whispered in Italian. “Do not look away from me, my husband.”
The name she had given me forced me to do as she said. I looked into her eyes.
She breathed out, then kissed my lip softly, attempting to mend the thread she had ripped out of our tapestry, as she had once called it. The blood diamond glistened in the soft light, as if she wore the proof of our love on her left hand, a symbol of who she would always be to me. The gift fate had given me.
“What do I do, Mariano? How do I make this make sense between us?”
I sighed. “It doesn’t fucking have to,” I said. “As long as it exists, it’s ours, and nothing about it has to make sense, as long as we are confused together.”
She kissed my lip again, telling me how sorry she was, and I said it too. The only person in this world I had ever apologized to. Then I stopped her. “You never have to apologize to me,” I said. “You. You’re the only one who can steal my heart and never have to utter a word to me, except to tell me you’ll always fucking be with me. Whatever this is between us, you’ll keep it alive with me.
“You’ll never separate from me again. When we breathe, when we take a step, when we fucking fall, when we rise, we doit together. The fucking end. Simple in expression, but in theory, we’ll have to fight for it.”
“Yes,” she said simply. “This is what I vowed to do, and I meant—mean—every word. With every breath I take, I take it for what exists between us.”
“Amen.” I sighed.
We grew quiet, the only sounds our breathing, and drunken guests. The loudest was a man singing his heart out in Italian.
Sistine’s eyes widened. She clasped a hand over her mouth. “Is that…?”
I sighed. “Yeah.”
Dandolo.
No fucking doubt he was serenading Nino the Grouch’s wife. Mrs. Grouch. It seemed like he wrote a song for her, and he was referencing her enormous, glamorous, sensual curly wig.
“This is going to end fucking bad,” I said.
“So bad,” Sistine echoed. “Will Signor Dandolo be returning to Venice soon?”
“So soon,” I said. “I’m about to put him on a boat myself.”
