I walked out, meeting my old man and brothers. They were waiting for me. We began to walk as a group back toward the villa.
Spring in Tuscany was on the horizon, and the air was chilled but not cold. Though the lack of sun had brought the temperature down for this time of the year and I could scent a storm in the air, the world was still in motion. A few early wildflowers had sprouted on the hills, an explosion of colors about to take over. Magpie’s favorite time of the year.
“Che cazzo vuoi?”My wife’s voice echoed behind the villa.What the hell do you want?
A male cleared his throat, then answered her in Italian.“To talk.”
“Hai la faccia come il culo!”You've got a lot of nerve!Literally, the words translated to:You have the face like the ass.A stream of fiery Italian I knew meant she was pissed—more insults, worse than the literal translation offace like the ass—followed.Pezzo di Merda,for one. Piece of shit,which was a high insult.
My old man looked at me, his eyebrows raising, and in a breath, we all took off. We ran as if we were in a pride.
We all stopped at the same time.
Remo.
He was standing in front of my wife.
Her back was to me, but she was not straight in front of him, her body more to the right, and she was going off on him. Her hands waved. Her mouth shot insults. Her temper was off the fucking rails.
Remo and me, we had unfinished fucking business.
After he was sent packing as my wife’s security in that fuckingpalazzo of horrors in Venice, Guido sent him with Maestro for a while. The sight of him brought back all the memories from the sequester that were stuck in my mind like barbed wire. I’d been fucking murderous when I saw with my own eyes how he was sitting at the table with my wife, making her laugh, too fucking comfortable.
The way he was looking at my wife when she wasn’t looking sat in the fiery pit of my temper, festering. I knew what he wanted. Mine. He wanted her to look at him the way he was looking at her. She never did, which was why I knew he had gotten her sister pregnant. He wanted her fury, any type of reaction from her beside the familial kind. He had come to break the news. The news I hadn’t told her about yet. Capri was pregnant with Remo’s child.
Mamma was behind the door, looking out.
A few soldiers hovered around the situation.
I handed Marciano my suit jacket and rolled my sleeves up.
Mamma’s eyes widened.
Remo’s eyes narrowed and braced for impact a second before I hit him with force. He made anung!noise as we hit the ground.
Chapter 50
Sistine
Ihad never heard two bodies sound that way when they collided. As if two boulders crashed into each other. My husband was fast, and he was strong, and he seemed to hit Remo into next week. Both men went to the ground, the fighting beginning right away.
Dust rose around them, and then it began to rain, coating them in mud.
Marciano deftly moved me out of the way as my husband and his cousin fought. “You don’t need to be close to what’s going on,” he said. “You might get trampled on accident. You know how lions can be when they get hot under the mane.”
The men watching the brawl began to create a circle around the two on the ground, keeping them almost contained. Almost. They were wild, like two animals attempting to rip the other’s jugular out.
Brando had stepped in front of Scarlett, but I noticed the way he was looking at Remo’s father, Vincenzo. With a dare.Step into that ring, and it will be the two of us fighting it out.It was as if Brando Fausti had a history with Vincenzo, and there was unresolved tension still lingering. I was not sure, but I wanted this to stop.
My husband and his cousin were attempting to kill each other.
My temper had taken hold of me when Remo told me the news. He had gotten my sister pregnant. Of all the women in the world, it would be the hellion of the century. I had noticed he was attracted to a certain type of woman in Wyoming—Willa—and I would have rather he gotten her pregnant ten times over than my sister. This meant she was still going to be a part of my life. I could not escape her reach.
I was not sure whether I could deal with that. If I couldn’t, the next time Remo showed up someplace with her, it would be she and I rolling around in the mud, my sister the big sow I would have to wrangle.
I did not even attempt to make sense of the type of woman Remo was attracted to, either, since it seemed he had been attracted to me.
It also dawned on me why Remo had made that noise in his throat when my sister had insinuated that she had slept with my husband, and the blood on her chest was from a blood vow made between the two of them. That was not possible. My sister was no longer a virgin when she attempted to seduce my husband in Grosseto.
