“Always, let this be the prayer and the answer to it.”
“Us,” she whispered. “Amen.”
We held each other closer, refusing to allow even a breath to come between us.
Chapter 1
Who Says You Can't Go Home Again? Certainly Not My Husband
Aria Amora
Iwaited in the fast, dark car as Rocco took the steps to his place in Maranello. He held a folded piece of paper in his hands. He’d been keeping it with his things since the letter was delivered from anavvocato, which I learned was the Italian title forlawyer. I’d made a lame joke about lawyers in Italy being avocados, because the word sounded similar, and Rocco had grinned, but we both had known.
The letter was from Rosaria. A letter she had written before her death—it was only to be delivered to Rocco after her death. It was, for her, a way to cleanse herself of all the secrets she held in life and all that she assumed she’d be doing after she left this world.
He didn’t read it on Aria Island, but after we had pulled up to the estate in Maranello, and he’d put the car in park, he had reached for it. He read it, then handed it to me. Rosaria had summed up her feelings on their arrangement, Rocco’s sons, and the woman who was fated to capture Rocco’s heart and become all to him she knew she’d never be. But most of all, she gave that woman—me—a first-hand account of who she was as a person.
“She’s freeing you,” I’d whispered.
“You freed me,” he’d said. “And she understood—the last part about freeing my heart would possibly free me from the Fausti family. That would spite my father, since my brother, Brando, has already freed himself. Till the end, her rage sent her on a dangerous path.”
“That would leave Dario to take over?”
“Matteo would step up, but there are some waves in the water for him right now. The family usually does not challenge a man who can only have one heir, but the sleeping monster has been known to wake for much less. Around the handing over of power, especially. It is a vulnerable time.”
“Matteo can’t have more children?”
“Neither he nor the niece of my heart.”
“Oh.” I’d sighed. “I didn’t realize…”
Rocco was good with family news, although he wasn’t a gossip, unless something came up and he mentioned it. I had a feeling, though, that our current stop in Maranello was not for him to grab some clothes or anything valuable he’d left behind. And the letter confirmed that feeling. Rosaria spoke of singing on a balcony, longing to be free of the constraints of this world, because not even those could keep her locked in. Rocco was going to set her free, just as she had asked him to.
I refuse to be trapped anywhere your memories of our time together might keep me, out of loyalty or spite. Know that when I go, I am not going to linger. It is not my style. To linger means to be weak. To be subtle. I rip. I slash. I kick. I explode. I take over the entire room.
She was a hard woman to understand. Who wouldn’t want to be trapped wherever Rocco Fausti was? And she said she wouldn’t linger, but she had. I knew for certain that was her unfinished business below my window the night I’d found her beneath it. Because Rocco was keeping her trapped on this side of things with his memories, and she wanted me to free her.
Good to know that she wouldn’t be making another appearance.
She’d demanded to be free. She was, or she was going to be—fully.
Pisolino, the cat who adopted me on Aria Island, was sitting in the driver’s seat, flicking his tail, staring at the estate before us. The only reason Rocco felt comfortable leaving me in the car, because I could tell he was unmovable about bringing me inside (I didn’t want to go in either), was because his brothers stood around the car with their wives.
A few of his top men were around too. Plenty of time to get me to safety if something were to happen. The gates around this place seemed top-notch. Strong enough to give us time to find shelter if it was attacked. I just needed a moment to process the letter and the new ground I’d shortly be standing on.
I leaned forward some to take it all in, how lush it all was, and Pisolino made a noise. “Yeah,” I whispered. “I get it. It’s so different than our apartment on the island.”
Rocco had “bought” the apartment for us. I’d learned that no property on the island belonged to one family. It was like timeshares, and the biggest ones were a perk to the top leaders in the family. Which was why I’d been assigned to an apartment. I was only a worker. EvenCastello Sul Mare,the castle overlooking the sea that the king lion himself used when he vacationed there, wasn’t owned. It was only reserved for whoever the current “king” of the family was and their close family. But Rocco had spoken to the “manager” of the apartments and had agreed to pay monthly for the apartment all year round.
So, it was ours, to a certain extent. Still. It was filled with framed pictures of us and our family, Pisolino included, and ceramics we had purchased from an island vendor. Small touches that made it feel like home.
It was vibrant, cozy, ours.
This place felt almost…hot. Like midnight trysts for more than two and hot candle wax on perfumed bodies.
I wasn’t opposed to hot candle wax dripping on an already overheated body, but…I knew how much having so many...wrong bodies had cost Rocco. I might not have been skilled in the art of sex,yet, but I knew how it felt to have a fantasy of the right person, then coming up empty day after day, always one step closer to thinking and accepting: this person for me doesn’t exist.
Castello Sul Marehad felt ice cold to me. It was almost too beautiful for words, but it felt empty, even with the view of the water and all the sunshine the sky had to offer.
