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My father was standing stock-still. Sistine had hugged him. She didn’t even seem to care. She let go, maybe to give him a chance to recoup from the touch. My father was all about my mamma touching him.

The fucking end.

I stared at my wife, fixing my suit. Fucking same. I was all about her touch alone too.

The end.

My wife smiled at my old man. “Have you been staying away from those big choppers?” She meant chomp-ers, as in big teeth, as in horse teeth. I’d heard Atta call them that. Sistine showed him her teeth and then snapped them at him.

Her teeth were fucking perfect. When she smiled, the sun came out, and so did the kaleidoscope colors of the world, all breaking around her.

My old man made a hunh noise deep in his throat.

It meant he was simultaneously amused by her behavior and somewhat wary of it.

Mamma had that same kind of personality—my sister too.

Monsters never bothered them. Even though Brando Fausti wasn’t a monster to my wife, definitely not to his wife and daughter, they knew him for what he was and accepted it.

The rest of the world didn’t look at him in the same light.

He was a Fausti. That meant what existed inside of him wasn’t for the fucking faint of heart.

He passed his blood on to his daughter and his sons.

His sons, though, were considered monsters, the same as him.

Even our youngest brother, Maestro—he was an artist, his finesse different from his brothers, but he had a monster lurking inside of him too.

He was like a mad scientist, except he was a mad artist. He was touched the way mamma was too—all of us were to a certain degree.

Except Maestro had found a way to channel it into his music.

He could read the mood of the room and write a song to represent it. Some of the music he wrote was dark.

The song he wrote for my wife and I was a tune I still heard in my sleep at times. He had played it at our wedding. It lulled me to sleep. It brought me peace.

All this to fucking say, my wife didn’t seem to mind monsters. She was attracted to me. Stood up to me. As fierce as a horse who attempted to kill me time and time again just to keep me quick on my fucking feet.

Mamma exploded with laughter. “Come inside, you two. I cooked!”

“Ye sss .” This from my wife. “I cannot wait!”

My father looked at me and grinned—it was a shit-eating one. Maybe because he knew I was in fucking trouble. My wife was a little dare woman. My lil’ outlaw sidekick.

I nodded at him—quick, sharp.

His eyes narrowed.

I shrugged.

In that small interaction, he knew something was off with me. He allowed the two women in ahead of us. Mamma stopped on the threshold of the door, Sistine behind her. They both eyed us. My old man and I chucked our chins in the same direction.

“Go—”

We both stopped talking at the same time.

We were going to say the same fucking thing. Go ahead—I’ll be behind you in a while.

Mamma laughed and Sistine grinned.

“Meet us inside when you’re done,” Mamma said. “I’ll feed the daughter of my heart.”

Nino and Oscar went to check in with Guido, who was Oscar’s lead.

Mamma invited Dr. Musa inside. My old man and myself moved away from the villa and walked to his gym.

It was empty except for all his equipment.

It smelled of rubber, slick metal, and the bitter sweat and rich blood of men who had both ruthless and romantic inside of them—this was where a lot of them had met to feel it.

Including myself.

It wasn’t a traditional gym in the sense that it housed all traditional equipment.

My old man enjoyed physical labor, like hauling hay, getting his hands dirty by changing the oil in an old car, working on its motor, changing tires, picking them up and pushing them, and he also enjoyed swinging a sword with precision and to spar with men who were a challenge.

If we didn’t scrap with each other, there was no other men who could meet our strength.

And even most men in the family had heard about how strong Marciano was. They always wanted to challenge him.

Prozio Tito had named Marciano correctly, or his name had dictated his personality in life.

It seemed like all of Brando Fausti’s sons’ personalities developed by the seed of who he was, and after it fractured and broke off into trees of their own, we branched off but kept the core bounty of the seeds he had spread. Meaning, for instance, myself.

Hauling hay.

Working the land.

It had grown inside of me to a passion level, and it also separated me from my brothers. Mia was in her own league, though she was connected by this one powerful thing as well—our last name.

It went beyond Fausti.

It was what our parents were known for in our world.

A love so powerful, it would stop bullets from touching Brando and Scarlett Fausti—and if one ever got through, it would go through them both. It would take them together or not at all.

I had never understood the latter part of that thought until recently. How a man would demand to go with his love. How natural it felt to accept it. To live with the peace that death would happen this way.

My old man stared past the ring and out the window, his hands over the top rope.

When he felt my gaze on him, his eyes cut to mine before they stared ahead again.

I did the same in the dim gym. Looked ahead.

The world was overcast, causing shadows to rise and fall when a tree would shimmer with wind and the light would shift.

Before anyone could invade on my time with my old man, I told him what the fuck was up.

He took it all in and then sighed long and hard, processing what this could mean.

A branch of the war with the Russians, after they had my brother’s heart locked up for nefarious reasons, was branching off and coming in a different direction.

Mine.

This situation had the possibility to cause many fucking fractures.

The disrespect wasn’t going to go unpunished by me.

We had a “treaty” with Lev and his crew.

Even beyond that, Lev was a secret branch of his government, and it went far beyond what anyone knew.

Lev and his men only went by numbers, mostly, and to the world they didn’t fucking exist. Unless they did.

And if they did, a person was in deep fucking trouble.

If other underground operations knew their name—the Seven Deadly Sins—they were in fucking deep too.

My old man growled low in his throat, as if he had read my mind, our thoughts processing at the same time as we came to that thought together.

Lev had recruited Iggy. And the situation between my wife and I with Iggy was playing out like it had been between mamma and papà with Lev, and Lev was feeling fucking nostalgic. I wasn’t sure how far Lev would go for Iggy, but given that conclusion, I knew he was going to fight to keep him alive.

When I started a war over my wife, Iggy was the man I would demand to meet on the battle ground, and the Russians might not feel it was a war worth starting.

If that was not the case, I wasn’t sure how this was all going to fucking play out for my brother, Maestro, since he was engaged to a woman who belonged to them.

The entire focus of that time had been keeping my sister safe.

My grandfather wasn’t going to dishonor his word, but to what extent would he feel this was my right to defend my wife’s honor?

The disrespect had been done to me the moment Iggy crossed the threshold—crossed a line that disrespected me.

If I went against my family’s wishes, I would have to stand against my brothers if they sided with the family.

Marciano—on the fence. He’d mull it over until all the facts were presented, or his instincts spoke to him.

I believed Maestro would stand with me. He always chose his siblings; that was why he was marrying a woman he had never met.

Lev had information on the people who had been threatening Mia’s life, and he demanded a trade for it.

That trade was Maestro agreeing to marry the mystery girl.

Matteo.

We would go toe to toe.

He wouldn’t jeopardize his place in the family for anyone but his wife.

Not only would I be sparring with enemies, but my own fucking brother—he would become my greatest foe. Something our parents worked extremely hard to stop before it even started.

In the Fausti family, the two oldest brothers usually had a tremulous relationship.

Most of the time, the two oldest sons were close in age, like Matteo and me, and it caused a rift that usually couldn’t be mended.

Power in our family was as natural as breathing, and when men of my blood felt as if their air was thinning, they would become ferocious to take another breath.

This was partly why our parents encouraged my siblings and me to do things separately.

At one time, I had been Matteo’s shadow, and he was a stringent motherfucker even back then.

I had found fulfillment in many things, but he had only found it in the Fausti family.

His focus was clear. Mine was blurred—I could do, so I fucking did.

Until my wife.

The door opened to the gym, and male family members invaded our space. We had a meeting planned with my grandfather in a short time.

My father looked at me, and I knew the words inside of his head before he even said them aloud.

“Do not be fucking hasty, my son,” he said in Italian.

I nodded, acknowledging that I understood, and he turned his face forward.