“I would not have done it for anyone but you,” she whispered.
“Give me the reason.”
She studied my eyes. “I do not know.” Her voice was even softer than it was before, and then she broke the connection and looked past me. She blinked, and I realized we weren’t alone.
We had company. Remo, my men, Adone and his crew were all staring at us. My heart kicked in my chest when I realized it was time to go. Even if Iggy hadn’t pieced together Sistine was the reason for my visit to the jewelry store, what I’d seen from him when he found Sistine behind me was rubbing me the wrong fucking way. It wasn’t anger, but something far more dangerous.
Interest.
I took the gift box with the necklace out of the bag and placed it on her desk. Then I took another one of her clips. This one of a red buttercup. Her favorite. Those and roses. Not only were they on the dress she wore the last time I saw her, but I noticed her pencils had them taped to the ends, and she had two vases, each one with one of the flowers. The flowers were both made from silk. I placed the clip in my bag.
“We’re even now, Annie. Your clips for the necklace.” I leaned down close to her ear, and she shut her eyes as I whispered, “I’ll be gone for a while, but this between us…is just getting started.”
She trembled, then shoved against my chest. “You are missing a shirt,Casanova. Make sure you put one of those on before you leave. We do not need all the damsels fainting in the street. We do not supply enough smelling salts.” She set a dramatic hand to her head and pretended to faint.
“You’re telling me I’m faint-worthy, Annie?”
Her eyes slowly opened, but the pinched look was back on her face. She glared at me. “You are insufferable.”
She truly meant it.
I couldn’t bring myself to grin, though. Too many emotions were swirling like a raging fucking storm inside of me. I did asshe said, though, and grabbed the shirt Adone had offered me before the situation with Iggy. I set myself straight, as straight as a man could be on the outside when his heart wasn’t where it usually was, so close to the surface of his chest, before Adone met me in his office.
Adone cleared his throat. “What my granddaughter said is the truth. Protecting what is valuable to the Fausti family is part of our commitment to your family—to you. It is what we have always done. What we will always do.”
I looked him in the eyes and spoke to him in Italian. “I do not know what must change. I do not care how it is changed. But for Sistine, it will be changed. She puts her life in danger for no one or anything. Tell me you understand what I am saying.”
He breathed out a name, but I caught it.Luca.He was comparing me to my grandfather. He should have added Brando to that breath. My father was just as passionate about protecting my mamma as my grandfather was about protecting Magpie, my grandmother.
For Sistine Evita, I’d become both men, plus ten more.
Adone seemed to understand the look on my face. The seriousness in the subtle threat. He nodded. “She will not be put in danger, but as you can tell, she is,ah, hardheaded.” He gave his head a hard thump with his crooked pointer finger. “I cannot make any promises when it comes to her own convictions and decisions.”
“She won’t put herself in any danger,” I said, refusing to admit the truth aloud.Unless it comes to me. This was all new to me, too, and it was fucking rocking the ground beneath my feet.
In that moment, I had a new understanding of my old man. The fog we’d been enveloped in the morning I went to see Sistine had cleared, and it was like I could see him like I’d never seen him before. This new version of him brought out awe in me. He was able to keep up with my mamma all those years. But thefeeling was also part anger. If he’d figured out how to live with a spirited woman, why the fuck hadn’t he wrote a manual on it? I was so fucking lost. A man without a compass.
The bag dangled in my hand as my men and I headed for the exit. Iggy would see me leaving with it and have no fucking clue that what was inside was priceless to me: the scent of a woman—apple, pear, rose, citrus, metal and leather—that had somehow become the scent of the air in my lungs.
Without it, I would die.
As I entered the front of the store, my feet almost dragging because my heart demanded I go back to her, I caught a glimpse of myself in an ancient baroque mirror hanging on the wall.
“Fuck me sideways,” I breathed out.
Mariano Leone Fausti stared back at me, but in that moment, it might as well have been my father after he and mamma had gone at each other. My hair was a mess. My eyes still looked crazed. My heart raced in my chest, harder than it would have if I had run a marathon. But when I looked deeper, a woman stared back at me, and she wasn’t my mamma.
Sistine was behind me in the mirror, meeting my eyes in an unwavering stare. Her eyes lingered before she went back to her desk, leaving me feeling as if all my vital organs had stayed behind with her. I’d never felt so empty before.
The only way to retrieve what made me whole, made me live, was through her.
Chapter 6
Mariano
It seemed like, after the fog lifted from around Brando Fausti, causing me to see him in an entirely different light, it brought me deeper into it. I was focused on finding Iggy, that was clear enough—find and destroy—but when it came to matters of the heart, I was still so fucking lost.
I hadn’t had direct contact with Sistine since the day she’d shot at Iggy in Venice, so I wasn’t sure if the fog was because of that, or because I’d never felt the way I was feeling about anyone before. The only clear thoughts were to keep her safe and get back to her. We had unfinished fucking business. But I refused to allow myself near her. I wasn’t sure what Iggy’s intentions were as far as me. Because what happened that day in Venice complicated things. Sistine taking a shot at him should’ve made him livid. Out for blood.
