I’d never seen them fling rotten fruit at her before, but…that was probably because Luca’s “for show” wife, Bonfilia, hadn’t been all that loved.
Still, I demanded to go back, to hold my head up like I did before and look them all in the eyes. I wouldn’t cower from thosepeople or my husband’s life. Those people didn’t know me or what my husband’s life looked like from the inside.
My husband rolled his shoulders, and in this moment, it was almost a flinch. Like I’d hauled off and hit him between the shoulder blades, close to where the neck meets the spine.
He huffed but said nothing.
“We are going back, right?” I pressed.
He rolled his shoulders again. “No one even breathes wrong in my wife’s direction. No one disrespects my wife.”
“I get that, but…” I didn’t know if it was something in his tone or just a wife’s intuition, but…the way he said,no one even breathes wrong in my wife’s direction, no one disrespects my wife, stopped me from continuing down the conversation path I was going.
Slowly, I set the loofah to the side and took a deep breath, exhaling. I wasn’t sure if I was ready or not for his truth.
It hadn’t even dawned on me until then that…some of the angry faces in that crowd, that I’d never forget, I would never see again because my husband handled the issue in the only way he saw fit.
By bloodying his hands for me.
Then the night in Switzerland came back to me, the night Thandie showed up, and Ermanno’s positioning was mentioned.
Positioning.
Rocco was using Ermanno to keep tabs on me.
I said this out loud.
He stood from the tub, hot water sluicing down his body, steam rising from his skin like his temper had become a physical thing.
“Ermanno belongs to the Fausti family. He wears the last name. He is a solider.”
“Not yet!” I shouted and it echoed around the bathroom.
My husband wrapped a towel around his waist and stood in front me like a solider would, except his eyes weren’t straight ahead but directly on me. The intensity in them was unnerving a bit, but I held my ground.
Hazel against a green so spellbinding, it was hard to keep my focus, but a maddening pulse in the background told me I had a right to feel the way I did, just like he had the right to feel the way he did.
“He’s young, Rocco,” I said. “I understand being a Fausti. He has to grow up with rules and learn to obey them.” I waved a band. “But he also has to know people care for him, even the men in his life. He’s lost so much!”
“Sì, he lost his mamma, and that is something for him to grieve privately, in a space in his heart that is protected and hidden from the rest of the world, but he is a Fausti.”
“So you keep saying! But does being a Fausti mean the men in this family can’t have a little compassion toward a…smaller Fausti who needs it? If you would’ve made him my chaperone—fine, he needs that! But you went beyond that. He’s one of my protectors. Oh, and you didn’t even bother to ask me about Thandie!”
“Explain this to me.”
“She’s my friend, and I get that she needs to still do her job because it’s all she knows and it’s fulfilling to her, but it worries me that she’s putting her life on the line for mine.”
“She requested this of me. We do not have women soldiers. It is not traditional in my family. We honor women. It goes against what we stand for to put them in harm’s way. This is why her husband is battling within himself. His love for his wife is at war with her needs. This situation pleased everyone—everyone except for my wife.”
“Because you didn't even ask me. I don’t feel right about her putting her life on the line for mine. She’s my friend.”
He couldn’t seem to grasp why that would worry me even more.
“You will speak to her then. Either way, you will be protected, and so shall she. Her husband will be her security.”
That made me pause for a moment.
Rocco cared enough about Thandie to have her husband watching her back while they all watched mine. But it didn’t detract from the fact that he hadn’t talked to me before deciding. Also, the Ermanno situation. I felt he was more than a tag-along to run back and tell my husband my everyday routine. Rocco easily knew that sort of thing anyway.
