The song he wrote for my wife and I was a tune I still heard in my sleep at times. He had played it at our wedding. It lulled me to sleep. It brought me peace.
All this to fucking say, my wife didn’t seem to mind monsters. She was attracted to me. Stood up to me. As fierce as a horse who attempted to kill me time and time again just to keep me quick on my fucking feet.
Mamma exploded with laughter. “Come inside, you two. I cooked!”
“Yesss.” This from my wife. “I cannot wait!”
My father looked at me and grinned—it was a shit-eating one. Maybe because he knew I was in fucking trouble. My wife was a little dare woman. My lil’ outlaw sidekick.
I nodded at him—quick, sharp.
His eyes narrowed.
I shrugged.
In that small interaction, he knew something was off with me. He allowed the two women in ahead of us. Mamma stopped on the threshold of the door, Sistine behind her. They both eyed us. My old man and I chucked our chins in the same direction.
“Go—”
We both stopped talking at the same time.
We were going to say the same fucking thing.Go ahead—I’ll be behind you in a while.
Mamma laughed and Sistine grinned.
“Meet us inside when you’re done,” Mamma said. “I’ll feed the daughter of my heart.”
Nino and Oscar went to check in with Guido, who was Oscar’s lead. Mamma invited Dr. Musainside. My old man and myself moved away from the villa and walked to his gym. It was empty except for all his equipment. It smelled of rubber, slick metal, and the bitter sweat and rich blood of men who had both ruthless and romantic inside of them—this was where a lot of them had met to feel it.
Including myself.
It wasn’t a traditional gym in the sense that it housed all traditional equipment. My old man enjoyed physical labor, like hauling hay, getting his hands dirty by changing the oil in an old car, working on its motor, changing tires, picking them up and pushing them, and he also enjoyed swinging a sword with precision and to spar with men who were a challenge. If we didn’t scrap with each other, there was no other men who could meet our strength. And even most men in the family had heard about how strong Marciano was. They always wanted to challenge him.
ProzioTito had named Marciano correctly, or his name had dictated his personality in life.
It seemed like all of Brando Fausti’s sons’ personalities developed by the seed of who he was, and after it fractured and broke off into trees of their own, we branched off but kept the core bounty of the seeds he had spread. Meaning, for instance, myself.
Hauling hay.
Working the land.
It had grown inside of me to a passion level, and it also separated me from my brothers. Mia was in her own league, though she was connected by this one powerful thing as well—our last name.
It went beyond Fausti.
It was what our parents were known for in our world.
A love so powerful, it would stop bullets from touching Brando and Scarlett Fausti—and if one ever got through, it would go through them both. It would take them together or not at all.
I had never understood the latter part of that thought until recently. How a man would demand to go with his love. How natural it felt to accept it. To live with the peace that death would happen this way.
My old man stared past the ring and out the window, his hands over the top rope. When he felt my gaze on him, his eyes cut to mine before they stared ahead again. I did the same in the dim gym. Looked ahead. The world was overcast, causing shadows to rise and fall when a tree would shimmer with wind and the light would shift.
Before anyone could invade on my time with my old man, I told him what the fuck was up. He took it all in and then sighed long and hard, processing what this could mean. A branch of the war with the Russians, after they had my brother’s heart locked up for nefarious reasons, was branching off and coming in a different direction.
Mine.
This situation had the possibility to cause many fucking fractures.
