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Mariano

M orning was near. My wife was asleep in the bed.

The room glowed gold from the solar lights, highlighting her sleeping form.

She was naked, on her stomach, her hand fanned out.

The cool white sheet only covered her ass and part of her leg.

Her skin glistened with sweat. Her hair was plump, almost like a halo on top, wavy as it cascaded over her pillow.

Her tropical-scented perfume drifted in the air, her usual scent underneath it.

She almost buzzed as she slept.

She was knocked out.

Not enough to make me anxious, where I’d stick my finger underneath her nose to feel her—my—breath against my skin, but enough that I knew she was numb to the world. Maybe I was with her in dreams. We were racing together, she the mare to my stallion. The lioness to my lion.

A sigh escaped my lips.

I leaned over my legs, studying my hands, the band around my left finger, left hand, engraved with our first wedding date on it. A never-ending circle. A circular field that was my home—a place to race home to over and over.

The special phones we used on the island lit up. The call I’d been waiting for. I slipped out of bed and took a seat in the kitchen at the table—in complete darkness.

“What’s up, Rio,” I answered.

“Brother,” he said. “What’s up? I’ll fucking tell you. Nothing but a bunch of holus-bolus.”

“That’s not how you fucking use that word in a sentence,” Marciano’s voice echoed in the background. The voice from the fucking pit.

Rio laughed. He was fucking with my brother.

Rio sighed. “I’m not going to fuck around and string you along.

I have a few things to tell you. Yeah, Lev was in Fiji.

He’s responsible for the prints in the sand.

From what your old man told me, Lev has a habit of crashing beach vacations this way.

Apparently, years ago, he tried to recruit your old man and mamma to join his band of merry Russian assassins while Brando and Scarlett were in Fiji for the first time.

“My educated guess? Your wife’s ability to shoot has made its rounds in our world.

Iggy for sure knows this, since he was the recipient of your wife’s fuck around and find out approach with the gun.

Lev knows your reputation in our world. You’re the fastest shooter we have, not to mention one of the best swordsmen, especially on a horse.

Even more…notorious, famous…than your great-grandfather, Marzio. ”

“Put one and one together.”

“Yeah,” Rio said. “You have a mighty dangerous duo.”

“You tell Spicy Sissy about all your dangerous attributes yet, brother?”

I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at it. Then I put it back to my ear. “Get off the fucking line, Marci.”

He grumbled and Rio got back on.

“Lev left the island,” I said.

Rio sighed. “Yeah, he didn’t think it was the time nor the place after he arrived and made a call to your old man.”

“Mamma,” I said. “She got involved.”

“Scarlett Rose Fausti changes the assassin’s winds, as strong as mother nature.”

“Iggy feels he’s the new Lev.”

A slight pause. “He hasn’t done anything to earn that right.”

“Fucking truth,” I said, and I didn’t fucking want him to. I didn’t want a Lev in our lives. I wanted Iggy to stay the fuck away from my wife. “What else?”

“Lev has recruited Iggy as one of his men.”

“We’re at fucking war with Iggy and his crew.”

“The treaty,” Rio said. “The treaty between our family and Lev’s.”

“Iggy started a war with me before he was protected by the treaty.”

“I’m not sure how this is going to play out, Mari. Lev requested a meeting with your grandfather upon your return. He doesn’t want you touching Iggy until he’s had a word with Luca.”

“Lev’s doing this because he feels for fucking Iggy. He knows how Iggy feels about my wife, and he’s sensitive to it.”

“Because of how he feels about your mamma? I’d say that’s fucking right.”

I switched gears, or I was going to tear the bure apart. I didn’t want to fucking wake my wife. She was an oven, and she needed her rest to keep baking. “What the fuck else?”

“This one really might blow your mind. I don’t know how your wife is going to handle it. Remo got Capri pregnant.”

A moment passed. Two. Three.

I exploded with laughter.

Even though I couldn’t see him, I could tell Rio was grinning, as dark as his old man’s Machiavellian grin.

I shook my head, sighing. “You can’t make this fucking shit up.”

“Nah,” he said. “The truth’s sometimes weirder than fiction. Our man Remo’s going to have a fucking time with her.”

That was why I was fucking laughing. All the fucking torture I had been going through when my wife and I separated for fate day, and there he was, attempting to get my wife to fall in love with him at the banquet.

I saw it with my own eyes. Had to use all the control I was capable of to keep walking when I saw it.

If it wasn’t for the fate day being so important to my wife, I would have disconnected his head from his shoulders. My grandfather intervened after and traded Remo for Oscar.

Rio continued. Apparently, Remo claimed he slept with Capri to keep her away from my wife.

He said it was easier for Sistine that way.

I’d give him that. Why he didn’t wear a metal condom with that one was beyond me, though.

She was a virgin and claimed there could be no other father. Remo didn’t dispute this.

“Mariano?” Sistine’s eyes were narrowed, and she stared in the direction I was sitting in. Her body was covered by one of my shirts. It was oversized on her and fell to her knees.

She looked so small and vulnerable, and I had an insane urge to wrap her up in my arms and protect her from the world. Which was what I did. I hung up with Rio and carried her back to bed, keeping her pressed against me until it was time to leave the island.