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I was looking at the same place where I had spent many hours, but I was seeing it in a totally different light.

Mitch had tried to make light of my parents’ relationship because it was different from his—he and Violet shared an easy-going relationship.

He flirted. She flirted. His skin and her skin were not connected to a deeper part of the soul.

A man from the bar could slap her on the ass, and she and Mitch would laugh about it. If she was okay with it, he was okay with it—that type of fucking disrespect to not only her, but to him. To the union they shared.

It was different. A more modern-day approach.

Matteo and Marciano never truly accepted Mitch. They were cool with Violet and most of their children, but Mitch—he was on the outskirts of their approval. Maestro didn’t mind him. He didn’t love him either. Mitch was a distant part of our lives. I was the one who always saw things his way.

Until that moment.

When the fucking truth came crashing down on me.

I shared the same type of relationship with my wife as my old man shared with my mamma. One without the other made no fucking sense.

She couldn’t live.

I couldn’t live.

We lived only together.

Before that, we seemed to live to find each other.

Mitch would think the same of our relationship—it would draw too much trouble, it already had, and if it was too much trouble, it should end.

Though years back, he and his brother had a falling out that didn’t end well for this brother.

A lot of bitter feelings existed from childhood, but also from Violet.

My grandfather, Nonno, was the reason Mitch even had a marriage. If Nonno wouldn’t have given them an ultimatum, Mitch never would have fucking manned up and married his woman.

I crossed the street, slowing my pace to a jog, until I entered the dim garage. The air was cooler but still muggy. The concrete floors were shiny, and the incoming rays of the sun made them glisten, even though the rest of the room was overcast.

Mitch had a ’68 Mustang Fastback over the pit.

He bought collectable cars that needed work, restored them, then flipped them for a profit.

Violet was good at finding cars collectors wanted.

The Fausti family included. The glistening candy-apple red Mustang he was working on was a surprise for my wife.

She could keep it in Natchitoches, or we could take it to Wyoming.

My fingers slid along the slick paint job, imagining her cruising with the windows rolled down, her cowboy hat pressed to her head, her long hair waving in the wind, the radio turned up to some old country song she loved for me to sing to her as she sang along.

Her tank top would showcase the freckles on her shoulders; her cut-off shorts would highlight how cut and firm her thighs were.

The perfect spot for my hand to rest, our hands linked.

My hand was massive compared to how slim her legs were.

The end of summer air would be sweet with the scents of fresh cut grass and the leather of the seats.

Her apple, pear, rose scent, sometimes with a citrusy zing, would float through the car, driving me fucking mad.

Mad enough to take a bite out of her myself.

A bite out of her juicy ass.

My mouth watered thinking about how she fucking tasted—so fucking sweet, and so mine. I could spend my life licking her from head to foot, spending most of my time between her legs as if it was a meal I would never tire of having.

Let the world call me mad.

I am fucking mad.

Mad over a woman who knocked down every wall inside of me with one look. The feeling of it was branded inside of my heart. How the world had exploded around me when our eyes met for the first time through the kaleidoscope of colors that haloed her.

The sensation of it was like the one I had when Guerriero would try to buck me off his back and to my demise. A stomach-plummeting fall of hundreds of feet down into the gorgeous Tyrrhenian Sea.

It fucking thrilled me.

The ride.

The race.

The ability to hold on when another man couldn’t.

“If that’s not a Brando Fausti face, I don’t know what is. Takes me back years, when we were your age. Not that your old man has changed all that much. He just has silver in a couple of places he didn’t have before. Not like me. I’m fucking crusty.”

I’d heard Mitch enter the garage but chose to ignore him, allowing the thoughts of my wife to run away from me—so I could give them all fucking chase, earning their place in my life.

He stood by the entrance to the office part of his business, leaning against the doorframe. His blue overalls were stained with oil. So was the rag tucked into his back pocket. A handkerchief was wrapped around his head. He used his shoulder to push against the wall when my eyes acknowledged him.

He ambled toward the red and white refrigerator further in his garage.

A small pool of light lit the dim corner when he opened the door and removed two bottles of chilled beer, removing the caps and dropping them into a glass jar he had on a shelf, collecting them for some reason.

He closed the door to the ice box, as he called it, and that area of the garage went dim again.

It was tucked in the far back, far enough back that the sun couldn’t touch it.

He strolled to where I stood and handed me one. We clanked bottles and took a drink. Mitch hopped up on a stool, and I chose to lean my back against the Mustang.

“Seriously, man,” he said, studying my face, “you’re the spitting image of your old man, except for the color of your eyes.”

“I’d say all my brothers are the spitting image of my old man,” I said. “My sister is a mixture of Grazia Angeli , my old man’s grandmother, and Mamma.”

“I know who Grazia Angeli is. And yeah, that’s all true, but there’s something carbon copy about you. When you walked in here, at first, I thought it was Fausti himself. I had to put my glasses on to check. He never comes around anymore.”

I made an agreeable noise at that, taking another drink.

I fucking figured out why my old man didn’t come around.

This man had made a statement to him he didn’t appreciate.

Mitch Lewis was fucking lucky he had a decent history with my old man.

Any other man would’ve made some comment like that, he wouldn’t be sitting. He’d be six feet in the ground.

“See.” He motioned to me with his hand. “You even make the same noises as him.”

“Yeah, I do,” I said.

“Just takes me back is all.” He took another long pull from his bottle. “Where’s that spicy Italian wife of yours?” He whistled but didn’t add to it, but I knew what he was fucking thinking. She was gorgeous enough to cause me trouble.

She was.

Not only physically, but she also had something deep inside of her that made men like me feel.

Let all my challengers fucking come for me. I’d put each one in the dirt.

“Eating with the women.” I took a drink of my cold beer instead of shattering the glass with a squeeze of my fist.

“That’s right.” He nodded, picking at the label on the outside of the bottle. The glue was coming loose from the condensation dripping down the glass. “Violet went.”

Fucking different. He didn’t always know where his wife was. I knew where mine was always. I couldn’t live with the alternative. I’d go fucking mad.

I wasn’t going to confirm what he probably heard from his wife and probably forgot about. If he had any good sense about him, he would know for fucking sure.

He sighed. Then he launched into what I already knew.

Updates on the car. He said he would be finished by the next day.

Good. I was gifting my wife with the Mustang before we left for Italy.

I wanted that meeting with Nonno and Lev about Iggy as soon as fucking possible.

I was struggling with containing the need to kill and doing as my wife asked of me—not killing.

All I did was nod at the new and old information he was wasting his breath on. If the car was finished by the time he told me it would be, all was good. We didn’t need to have a conversation about it.

“You got something on your mind, Fausti?”

My eyes met his.

He lifted his hands. “Told you—I know your old man, so, I know his offspring.” He cleared his throat. “This have something to do with your wife? I heard there’s already been some trouble, and I’ve never seen you this way before—inhabiting your old man after he got with your mamma.”

Mitch’s son was married to a woman who didn’t live far from my parents’ place in Tuscany.

Mitch’s son’s mother-in-law spent a lot of time in my mamma’s kitchen.

They were both present for the Remo scene.

I was sure Mitch’s son, or his daughter-in-law, had delivered the news to him or Violet before we left Tuscany for Louisiana.

“Explain that to me,” I said. “ Inhabiting your old man after he got with your mamma .”

He sighed. “Your old man was always serious, as his sons are too, but…he was more fucking fun before he got with your mamma. She changed him. Pulled the Fausti out in him full force. Like the responsibility of keeping her safe had hardened him to a point he hasn’t been able to relax since.

He’s in that mold for the rest of his life.

I never thought your brother—Matteo, I mean—could get any harder.

“I was proved wrong. After he met his wife, he has. You’re a hard motherfucker, but with the women, you always had this passionate spot that was like fucking lava.

” He took a swig of his drink. “You’ve become your old man.

And don’t take this the wrong way. I love your mamma.

Always have. Years ago, we all hung out, became family. ”

“That fucking changed when you made the comment about my parents’ relationship causing too much trouble.”