Nonna’s perfume.
All her meaningful things and mine in this one…small box.
Sighing, I took a step forward, my hands automatically finding comfort in the things of my past.
“Tell me,” Rocco said, rolling his shoulders. “Who moved these things for my wife.”
I blinked at him. “No one. I moved them myself before I left. I went back home after, parked Apple Blossom for the last time, and the next morning, I took an Uber, then an early-bird flight out from Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, not far from here, and, basically, to you.”
I wasn’t sure what was worse for him—that a man might have moved these things for me, or that I had done it myself.
I nudged him. “Let’s get everything and go.” My husband, my protector, was with me, but I remembered the feeling of being watched.
This place was vast and empty. My footsteps had echoed with each step, my breathing labored with each piece of my past that was going to be stuffed into a box—a box I may or may not have ever come back for. I remembered feeling like I couldn’t get out of the building fast enough. So, it almost felt like muscle memory to keep checking over our shoulder.
Rocco followed my line of sight and grinned, like he was daring whoever to jump out at us. Then his eyes snapped to the manager as she pushed a cart with wheels toward us. Hethanked her, and all she could do was stare for a moment before she shook her head, about to leave. I turned my back on her, and she tapped me on the shoulder.
“You have two handprints on your butt,” she whispered in my ear, like she didn’t want to embarrass me. “Looks like powdered sugar.”
Automatically, I looked over my shoulder, taking the length of my back down to my bubbly ass. My eyes flew up and crashed with my husband’s, a mischievous glint in them. His laughter echoed through the metal space as he started lifting the boxes and scarce furniture like they weighed nothing, setting them on the wheeled cart.
Rocco refused to let me move anything, and I just watched as he stacked everything so neatly, I wondered if he ever left his bed unmade as a kid. Then I remembered…he was rich. I said this, and he shook his head.
“We were required to keep our quarters clean.”
Oh, like royal soldiers.
I tapped on the wooden box in his hands, glad to have a subject change to cling to. “These are letters from Nonna’s older sister, the one she always said I reminded her of, to or from…a lover. Nonna acted like they were nothing and would always ‘forget’ to read them to me, and I always wanted to translate them, but the dialect can’t be Googled. I tried.”
He set the box down, and with reverence, lifted the top. The letters were together in a smushed pile. They were tied with a burgundy-colored ribbon, and from years and years of pressure, had succumb to it and almost molded together. I could smell that, too, on them. The smell of paper that had been exposed to warm, humid air, and had become stiff after being set in the air conditioning. The ribbon was tattered on the edges but in pretty good shape for its age.
Rocco untied the ribbon, setting it aside, and opened the first envelope. His eyes scanned the page, reading the words.
“Do you understand it?” I asked, almost moving from foot to foot with impatience—I loved solving mysteries.
“Sì,”he said, but he was compartmentalizing again. His attention was fixed on the words but also on me.
“Rocco,” I said after he’d torn through the first two letters and was onto the third. “You’re killing me here!”
His eyes slowly lifted from the page. Moving the cart with wheels closer, he sat on it, his long, powerful legs outstretched, pulling me into his lap after. His, er, cock pressed against my ass, even when it wasn’t hard. He set the third letter to the side and went back to the first. He cleared his throat and started reading them out loud.
The letters were one sided—from a man to my great-aunt.
No, no, no, it was two different men.
Two different men from…the Fausti family.
“My grandfather’s brothers,” he said.
“Oh, and let me guess, Francesco from the pepper stand is closely related to letter-writing Francesco in some way?”
“The original Francesco’s grandson.”
“Oh man,” I breathed, about to get up, to pace, to release some of the pent-up tension, but Rocco held me in place with one arm. “This really is a small world.”
He shrugged. “What is meant to be will find a way.” But he wasn’t telling me something, and I wanted to look him in the eyes.
Taking his hands, I kissed them before I wiggled against him. Wrong move. He groaned and started to suck on my neck.
