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Valetta. The nurse from the hospital. I hired her to take care of the villa, take care of my wife, however she needed help.

Valetta’s daughter, Giovanna, was a doctor, and after Prozio Tito had a conversation with her, we had a new doctor to add to the family list. Mac’s second son, Salvatore, would soon be the lead doctor for the entire family.

Prozio Tito had spent a lot of time with him. Nonno had approved of them all.

Valetta waited in the doorway with a tray.

I nodded to my wife and then nodded to her.

She knew the fucking drill. If I wasn’t around when my wife ate, I would know all she did and didn’t finish.

As of late, she only picked at her food.

To some degree, I think she only did it for my benefit.

Once, after she hadn’t finished anything, I knocked the full tray to the floor.

After that, she started eating a little.

To give me confirmation she got the message, Valetta nodded back, then began to hum as she entered the room.

She’d pull the curtains. My wife would tell her to close them.

Valetta would. She would offer to help my wife to the bathroom.

My wife would decline. She would hurriedly do her business, like if she had a pressing engagement with the bed, and then she’d allow it to swallow her up whole.

The dogs continued to follow her around, like she was a princess in a movie.

If they ever thought I was doing her wrong, they would tear my throat out.

They had accepted her as a weaker species who needed tending to.

Valetta would set the tray in front of my wife, and if I was in the room, she’d meet my eyes briefly and then turn them back to the food.

I wasn’t sure whether she was seeing the food in front of her or a life she couldn’t change.

She picked at her options, trying to rearrange the pieces, make them make sense.

I tore away from the room, meeting my family in the kitchen. All of them. My parents, my sister, her husband, my brothers, and the women they were attached to, if they had women to be attached to. Angelo and Atta. She had cancelled her tour to be close to my wife.

It was the first time I truly noticed their faces.

How completely helpless they looked.

My old man stared at my mamma as if they were back in a time he couldn’t change—a mold he had been set into that he could never truly break free from. The memories were assaulting him.

Mamma looked thinner, withdrawn, her face pale.

Mamma stood from her seat, her hands twisting. My old man was behind her, as he always was. Maybe he thought I’d blame her for not being able to foretell this. I put the fucking blame where it belonged. On the men who decided on murder.

And myself.

For not being able to fucking shield my wife from what happened to her.

Our son.

“Mariano,” Mamma whispered, her trembling hand barely reaching out.

I shook my head. “The storm did some damage.” I went to move past her, but she seemed to stand taller, her eyes fierce on mine.

“It did,” she said, “but it didn’t destroy everything. Your father and I have something for you and Sistine.” She braved the space between us, taking my hand in hers, holding on tight.

I wasn’t sure who was holding on to who, but we ended up outside.

Rain droplets from the trees kept hitting me in the head, sliding down my face.

Mamma didn’t disguise her tears. She allowed them to fall freely.

With a trembling breath, she stopped moving at one of the most picturesque areas on the ranch.

It had a garden Sistine had described as lovely, and I had planned on building her a covered place to sit and find…

peace. Maybe even a hammock. She loved to swing above the water in Fiji.

Mamma nodded toward a box. “Open it,” she whispered, giving my hand a hard squeeze before she let go.

On autopilot, I did. I opened it. My eyes rose to meet hers.

Then my heart started to race in my chest: my wife was racing out of the house, my sister on her heels.

I hadn’t seen her move that way since before…

what had happened. She took a spot beside my mamma, and mamma took her hand, squeezing. Then they all left us alone.

Alone with a box that was going to be buried in the ground—a spot like the one mamma and papà had in Tuscany for the first Matteo.

Even though it was warm out, my wife stuck her hands underneath her arms, trembling.

My old man—I shook my head, growling some, attempting to get my emotions in check—had dug the hole.

“A knife.”

My eyes swung to my wife. Her voice was soft, low, cracked, as if she hadn’t been getting enough to drink.

I leaned down, taking the one from my ankle, and cut my palm.

She did the same. We allowed our blood to swirl and mix inside of the box.

I sealed it, and after, I set it down in the deep hole.

After I covered it, Sistine set the plaque mamma and papà had commissioned over it.

The engraving was the same as the one in Tuscany, except our son’s name was engraved.

Leopoldo’s Garden

Un po 'di lei. Un po 'di lui. Sarà sempre. Protetto in cielo.

A little of her. A little of him. Always will be. Protected in heaven.

We stood side by side. My wife was swaying.

My feet were rooted to the fucking ground.

Our palms dripped blood as we stared at a physical representation of the son we would never get to know.

Our hands were close, a breath away, but neither of us moved to take the other’s, stopping each other’s bleeding.

A breath…my wife ran from me. She ran toward the house, holding herself as she did.

I didn’t know what to fucking do with myself. My heart was falling out of my chest, and I didn’t know how to fucking deal with it. To catch it before it hit the ground and my life shattered around me.

I did what I always did.

I ran.

I ran until I came to the stalls. I was going for Guerriero when a hand reached out and grabbed me by the shoulder.

I would have swung on him, but he just stared at me with a look that stopped me cold.

My old man. Even if the color of our eyes was different, he was staring at me through eyes that saw himself.

At one time, he had been in my shoes.

I was realizing that, the older I got, the more I understood Brando Fausti and all the choices he’d made.

Fuck if the world would always approve of them, including his daughter and sons, but whatever he did, he did out of love for my mamma.

I could understand that better than I could understand the turn my life had taken.

He squeezed my shoulder, refusing to allow distance to come between us.

I wasn’t sure why, but I nodded. I had no control over my reaction.

No control over my own self. This wasn’t like me.

I was out of control, spinning, spiraling—flying off that cliff after Guerriero bucked me off. I wasn’t holding on this time.

Not if my wife didn’t fucking want me.

Then again, my heart was revolting in my chest, ordering my feet back to my wife.

I was so fucking messed up. She wouldn’t fucking look at me.

My old man pulled me in, keeping my head against his chest. Then, just as fast, he put space between us so I was forced to look him in the eye.

“Open your eyes, my son,” he said in Italian, then switched to English. “Fucking open your eyes. She’s looking straight at you. Straight at you.”

He’d read my thoughts, or this situation was playing out for him for a second time in his life, this time watching as the younger version of him experienced it again. Maybe he wished someone had been there to tell him the same things he needed to hear.

He pushed me in the direction of the villa, and when I walked up beside it, I turned my eyes up.

My wife was at the window, the curtains drawn to the side by her fingertip, and she was frantically looking over the land.

I could tell by how quickly her eyes moved—searching.

Then she looked down and our eyes connected.

A moment passed, and she disappeared on me.

I moved toward the villa, about to storm it, when my wife came tearing out, my brothers surrounding her, my father somehow in the mix.

We both stopped.

Marciano reached out to her. So did Maestro.

Her eyes.

Her eyes were on mine.

I opened my arms.

She took a deep breath, another, and then she collapsed into them. I picked her up, carrying her inside to our bedroom, where I used my foot to shut the door behind me.

She cried into me, sobbing like I had never heard a woman sob before—as if her heart was tearing out of her chest, and she was trying to keep it inside.

I became as still as a warrior preparing for battle, preparing for this woman to tell me she hated me, she refused to be with me, as all the while, each of her tears marked my soul.

The sound of her anguish was a fiery brand inside of my skull.

“My fault!” she barely got out. “I shouldn’t have allowed Dandolo in!”

My eyes slowly fell to meet hers. I could barely get the word out. “What?”

“How can you even look at me, Mariano Fausti? I cannot look at myself!”

I forced her eyes to meet mine. “This is my fault.” I hit my chest. “I am your man. I should have been there to protect you. Protect mine! Give this to me. I’ll carry it. I’m the one being punished.”

“What?” she breathed out.

“You heard me. All those years of running around…” I turned my face away from her.

She turned it back. “No! You came for me. You came for me when I needed you the most.”

“I fucking failed,” I said.

“No.” She shook her head. “You have never failed me.”

“I refuse to allow you to leave me,” I barely got out in Italian. “To separate us.”

“I am not.” She cried harder. “I thought…I thought, perhaps…you hated me. I could not stand to even think it. If I ever lost you…”

She gasped when I brought her to my chest, keeping her pinned against me.

I couldn’t even process the fucking words.

All I could do was hold her close, bring her back to the bed, keep her heart pressed to mine, her bleeding palm pressed to mine.

My heart would speak for me, because words were fucking useless.

To mend this mortal wound, we had to use each other as tourniquets to stop the blood flow.

Her blood and mine—the healing antidote to a sickness that was attempting to tear us apart.

There was no other way.

No other fucking way.

We had hit rock bottom, but we hit it together.

We’d rise together, the sun on our faces, the stormy winds at our backs.

With a trembling hand, she reached for the quilt and covered us both with it.