We were en route to my parents’ place in Tuscany.
She looked different. More…mature in a way she hadn’t been before.
It wasn’t just her attire. My grandfather demanded respect, was traditional about it, and we both had changed before we landed in Tuscany to honor his wishes. I had dressed in a custom-made black suit. She wore a sheer black dress that had a slip dress underneath. The sleeves were long, and the dress fell at her ankles. A belt to match the fabric of her dress cinched her waist in, showcasing her figure. She wore a pair of black stockings (which I wanted to rip off with my teeth) with a pair of high-heeled booties, as she had called them.
That was the term she had breathed at me when I had called them boots on the plane, slipping them on her feet.
“Boo-ties,” she had said, trying to make a joke, trying to bring back our time on the island and the wordbooby. She was makingthe word out to meanassinstead of something she wore on her feet.
I had never considered myself a stone-cold motherfucker until I found the one thing in life worth living for, worth dying for,mywife, and I couldn’t find the humor in even her jokes. She had sighed at me, like a fucking accusation, and shook her head.
I was rambling inside of my head.
It wasn’t her clothes that gave her a refined, more mature look. It was her. The way she carried herself, like she could walk into a room full of monsters and tell them all to sit the fuck down and they would do it. She was finding her worth as a woman and demanding no less than what she deserved.
This was something I would always challenge.
I would keep upping my game as her husband to keep up with her standards, because there was no fucking way I would ever be able to claim I deserved her. I would never be able to meet her worth. But it fed into my hunger for her. My need to forever work for her acceptance, her yes, her love.
My old man didn’t have a way with words, unless he was speaking to my mamma, and they had a language of their own, which he seemed to speak to her enough through it, but there was one thing he taught all his sons.
How to love a woman.
How to feed the unworthiness to my hunger to keep her satisfied and in love with me.
So deep in love, her heart would expand to a size she couldn’t even fathom.
That was what my wife had told me on the island, in the cave she had called magical, hidden behind the waterfall. Her heart felt as if it might burst, but at the same time, it was still beating inside of her chest.
It’s a woman’s right to feel that way.
As a man, I was lost, worthless, entirely gone without her. The only trace I had lived for a time would be my time spent with her. Nothing I ever did before her meant fucking anything. My life was a blur before her. When I had found my Renaissance painting in that jewelry shop, surrounded by priceless jewelry that was worthless to me in her presence, my life came into focus, but the blur kept around the edges—only she and I were in the clear.
I was physically stronger in every way than the woman sitting beside me, but where it fucking counted, she could destroy me. Destroy me enough to bring me to my knees. She could take a knife to my throat, to my heart, and I would allow her to—as long as she didn’t fucking stick it in my back. If she did, she would kill me in a way that was unnatural. There would always be a part of me stuck in the hell she inflicted on me.
What she had done, not telling me about Iggy, was not that type of betrayal. Because I knew the reason behind her silence. I understood it, even if I couldn’t stand it.
I had my way of doing things when it came to protecting mine.
She had hers.
We wouldn’t always see eye-to-eye on it.
This was one of those times.
I ran a hand over my chest—I got the feeling I was in for more of this fucking heart strain. By the time I was my old man’s age, I’d need fucking antacids like him.
Oscar turned into my parents’ drive in Tuscany.Dr. Musawasnext to him in the front seat, and Nino was behind us in the third-row seat. A line of cypress trees bowed to the wind, and dust swallowed the armored car as it ate the slope of the steep drive with ease. The SUV came to a smooth stop in front of the villa, and Sistine and I sighed at the same time.
We looked at each other.
Our eyes connected.
I refused to rip mine from hers, and she refused to move hers from mine, even when Dr. Musaknocked on the window. My wife had been right. The old gangster and the good doctor had mended whatever rift had been between them. My wife said they were more in love than ever, and she was thrilled with how the island had healed their relationship. Nino’s fucking business was his. Whatever went on between him and his wife was theirs. I didn’t meddle in other people’s business unless it directly affected me.
The end.
However, bringing them together made my wife happy, so I allowed it. All she had done was set up a date for them in Fiji. Nino took the hint and did the rest. Dr. Musa’s knock, though, signaled that she wanted her husband out of the car. My wife and I were blocking his exit.
