He had a tattoo on his middle digit. Tiny letters that spelled outmeantwere inked not far beneath his nail bed, and going down finished the message:
For.
You.
Whenever he wanted to give someone the bird, he did it with a message, just in case they had any confusion about who the finger was meant for.
You.
I hadn’t known how to respond—still didn’t—to what Rocco had offered me. What he had done in my honor. In his world, this was an acceptable loss. I couldn’t blame him for following rules that had been instilled in him since birth. It would be like blaming a cat for bringing a dead rat to your door.
Pisolino surprised me with gifts like that at least once a month. He was stalking then, watching a squirrel run the length of the fence between our rental’s yard and next door.
But back to my lion.
Loyalty, respect, honor…those long gone and buried traits were ingrained in Rocco, and just like love had been ingrained in me, I couldn’t fault him for that. So, I ran my hands through his hair, keeping eye contact, and thanked him for honoring me.
He’d placed a kiss over my heart, set his head against my stomach, his hands around my waist, his hold tight, so tight, his knuckles had turned white, keeping me in his space.
Then, because his madness seemed to have inflicted me too, I took him by the hand and led him to our room, slipping in our closet, grabbing him fresh clothes. I’d made a motion for him to follow me into the bathroom. After I started the shower, he refused to let me share it with him, not until he scrubbed himself clean.
Maybe what bothered me the most was not his action, but my reaction to it. I didn’t even think about Remy or what he had gone through. My fear? That Rocco hadn’t used gloves, and Remy might have something that would make my husband sick if his blood got into a cut or something.
In that moment, and all the moments after, I truly empathized with Scarlett Fausti. How her empathy put her at odds with her feelings—her entire heart—when they were supposed to be one and the same.
All this to say…I didn’t look at my husband in a different light. He had never lied about who he was or sugarcoated it. It was me I was looking at through a darker filter. I might not have been chatty with people, but I felt their pain and suffering and could relate to it. Then again, my grandparents had been well loved, and no one had ever threatened them.
Remy was a threat. I knew he’d stab Rocco in the back in a heartbeat.
That was when I realized how lethal love could be—in the face of someone who would try to take my love away, I’d become a lioness for him.
His family was ruthless, but I felt it right away. They loved even harder.
I could never put into words how much Scarlett’s presence meant to me that night. How she’d just held my hand, letting ouremotions flow through each other, while we gazed at the sky sans stars.
Which felt odd, maybe to the both of us. Or maybe not odd, but…incomplete.
After the secret between my husband and me had been shared on the island, how I had been conceived in Maranello underneath the stars, it felt right to look up at them and know.
During a night like this one…I had been created for someone to have and to hold, even in death shall we not part…
The realization of how meant to be my husband and I were hit me like a forever rolling wave—sucking me under and stealing my breath, only to bring me up again. It was that breathless exhilaration, the kind that knocks the breath from the lungs, but starts in the heart and spreads throughout the entire body like a potent drug.
A trembling breath escaped my lips, and my entire body seemed to tremble with it, even though the weather seemed hotter, more humid than the day before.
Pisolino, who had given up on the squirrel, jumped onto the lounger next to me, his tail swaying back and forth while I kept my eyes closed to the sun and scratched behind his ear. Then he started to purr.
“Even the island hunter is under your spell.”
I opened my eyes and blinked.
Rocco had been on the balcony, looking down at me, on the phone. I was pretty sure it was his father. “Business,” as all the men called it. But without me hearing him, he’d made it to me and was standing next to me, shielding me from the sun. And as if he controlled that, too, he took a seat next to me, releasing it, and ran a finger down my face.
Always touching me.
I took his hand, entangling our fingers, demanding to keep him close. “Island hunter.” I laughed, and it was quiet. “Heprobably would like that better than Pisolino. What’s the name for hunter in Italian?”
Rocco grinned, looking at Pisolino, who was lying next to me on the opposite side. “Cacciatore,” he called, giving three short whistles after.
