I’d never be the same.
My arms were still longing, and they seemed to take control of my hand, which went over my heart.
No.
Fucking no.
No.
My old man, the one and only Brando Fausti, pulled that same move in the name of love, so I rebuked it in the name of sanity. I dropped my hand like it had been scalded by the butane lighter on Renaissance’s work area.
If my family had noticed the familiar move, they were not outwardly showing it, though I had a feeling my mamma, the one and only Scarlett Rose Fausti, and my sister, Mia Bellarosa, were keeping their facial expressions in check. Mamma and my sister were “touched”: they could “feel” other people’s intentions and feelings, usually the ones people kept to themselves. I wanted to claim I’d been around them long enough that I could bury my feelings deep enough to keep them to myself, but while a connection pulled me toward the Renaissance painting come to life, I had no fucking clue what my feelings had outwardly been doing.
For all I knew, the colors from the stained-glass window could have been coming from me, my feelings playing out in real time around her. The feelings came in a multitude of colors, as confusing as I felt. Not sure which one to concentrate on, except for the one in the center of it all.
Her.
This was an unexpected twist in my story.
Mariano Leone Fausti, who my family called The Casanova Prince, and for good fucking reason.
Women.
The scent of them.
The build of them.
Everything about them.
Soft.
Hard.
Fair.
Dark.
All shapes and colors in between.
I’d always been a man possessed by them.
However, something had pivoted inside me when the Renaissance Painting came into view, met my eyes, and then…gave me a look that no doubt existed somewhere between disgust and murder. All the curiosity and possession inside of me turned and aimed at her.
One breath-taking, pounding pulse I never knew I had was suddenly vital enough to silence the rest.
The rest of the world seemed to come into focus then, and Adone directed our group. My older brother, Matteo, was the reason we’d all collected in Venice and met up at the jewelry store. He was on the hunt for an engagement ring for a woman he hadn’t traditionally met yet. Yeah, it sounded fucking out of bounds, but I knew my brother—my entire family. When a woman started a connection with a Fausti man, she was it for him.
It.
All he could see.
The only reason he seemed to have air in his lungs and a heart in his chest.
The end.
I shook my head and moved with the crowd—my parents, my sister and her husband, Saverio, all my brothers (Matteo, Marciano, and Maestro), along with all my uncles and theirwives, except for the piranha-bird, Rosaria Caffi. She was a fun one, that one.
My eyes were frozen on the Renaissance Painting when Adone introduced her to the crowd—his granddaughter, Sistine Evita Capella.
