Page 4

Mariano

I was born to run.

Even before my mamma told me that, I knew it.

Since my mamma was touched, for each of her pregnancies, she journaled for the entire nine months. And when she was ready, she gave each of her children the books she’d written for them while we were in utero.

She said my sister, Mia, was going to practically dance through life, while there was also a fire to my sister that gave Mamma indigestion every so often. Especially when it came down to Mia protecting her family.

Matteo was a rule keeper, but so fierce, his intensity kept her almost too hot.

Marciano was a slugger from the beginning.

She said sometimes he would kick or move, and she thought the bruises to her insides would make it to the outside.

She also called him a “cuddler,” which he ate up like a toddler with a silver fucking spoon.

She said he would nestle underneath her ribs and wouldn’t move for hours.

Maestro was the caboose, so to speak, and mamma said she knew he was going to be attracted to music. She said it would either make him do cartwheels or put him to sleep.

That left me.

The spare to the heir.

The second-born son of Brando and Scarlett Fausti.

The Casanova Prince.

The runner.

Mamma said I moved nonstop, restlessly. When she placed her hand on her stomach, I’d calm for a while, probably long enough for me to rest. Then I’d be off again. She said I had the heart of a lion with the spirit of a wild stallion.

I was never one thing that made sense, like my brother Matteo, but my own thing—and I loved to race.

To move. To discover. I felt the restlessness inside of me whenever my heart would beat and my blood rushed through my veins.

The hunger inside of me pushed me past my limits, until I’d rest for a little while.

Just long enough to find what felt like an endless well of energy inside of me again.

I’d tap into it, not always sure where it was going to lead me, and whenever I exhausted myself of traveling, of women, I’d have to run to tire myself out again.

One thing I was thankful for: my parents made sure my older brother and I grew into separate men.

He had his own thing. I did too. I remembered a time when we lived in Italy, before my old man made the decision to move us back to Natchitoches, Louisiana, when all I could see was Matteo Fausti, and I couldn’t imagine being anyone but him.

I followed him around as if I was his shadow, and in traditional ways, that would have been acceptable to the Fausti family.

I was born to lead if for some reason my brother couldn’t.

Except my old man experienced the strain between him and his brother, Rocco, that had crept up when it came to family hierarchy and rules.

He didn’t want the same fate for his sons.

Though, in the Fausti family, there was no escaping the pecking order.

Mia could have led if she wanted to, but she turned it down after our grandfather offered her the role.

If she had accepted, it would have caused some issues between my sister and older brother, though I didn’t think it would have caused a major crack in our family.

Matteo would have been her second in command, and he would have learned to live with it. But. All Matteo had ever wanted was to lead the family someday, which meant that my brothers and I were his soldiers to command. Uppers would teach Matteo how to rule, and those rules would trickle down to us.

We were his brothers, because we shared the same parents, and those parents had raised us to be more to each other than Fausti family members, but there was something deeply embedded in Matteo that was inherently Fausti through and through.

The hierarchy always kept us in line and separate, as it was meant to do.

Matteo saw us as his closest soldiers, but in a way that meant he would teach us and lead us.

His closest confidant wasn’t me or any of my younger brothers, but my sister’s husband, Saverio Macchiavello, because when Matteo would inherit the family, he would need a right-hand man.

He’d chosen Saverio.

Time would only tell how Matteo would change, if he truly would, once he brought the woman he fell in love with home. Her name was Stella. He fell for her the moment he saw her dancing on stage in an underground club in Paris. The same one my mamma used to dance in.

Maybe some people don’t subscribe to the idea of love at first sight, but if Matteo said he loved Stella already, even though she hadn’t spoken a word to him, I believed him.

That was who Matteo was. A straight-shooting, no-nonsense motherfucker.

He didn’t have a wandering eye, like me; he wasn’t restless, like me; and he had a life plan, unlike me.

He was even willing to marry out of obligation to the family.

I, myself, felt that part of his obligation was more like sacrificing his heart—the beating thing that keeps us alive.

All Matteo had to do was take a hard look at our uncle Rocco’s life for half a second to realize where that road could lead.

It was a road to perdition if the woman was anything like Rosaria Caffi.

I found her entertaining, like a soap opera, but would I want to live inside of the tube with that storyline?

Fuck no. I could barely spend more than one night with the same woman.

Sighing, I sat up in bed and scratched my head, messing up my hair.

Hair that everyone said was the spitting image of my old man’s, jet black and cut in the same style, an undercut.

Longer on top. Shorter on the sides. I was a man who didn’t walk in anyone’s footsteps, but the cut looked good on my old man, and since I looked like him, had inherited his hair, it made sense to get the same cut.

I grinned when Zio Romeo came to mind and how competitive he was when it came to the hair . If someone was having a better hair day than him, he’d flip. Become a monster no one wanted to fuck with.

That same sense of restlessness was fucking with me.

Urging me to get out of bed and get dressed after I did the necessary business in the bathroom.

I slipped on a thermal and a pair of sweatpants, stuck some socks on my feet, and donned a pair of tennis shoes.

I covered my head in a beanie and left my room.

We were still in Venice, waiting for word on a meeting we’d have with a man who called himself a pirate, before we left for Paris to find Stella, who the French and Russians had locked away.

She was a valuable dancer to them, and my brother falling in love with her was going to start a war.

Fuck. It already had. The entire family was on board to fight with Matteo to save Stella. Saving her would save his heart.

I might have been a Lothario, but I was still a Fausti, romance pumping through my veins, just as strongly as the ruthlessness that ran parallel to it.

Lifting my arm, I pulled my sleeve up and checked the time. I had about an hour that belonged to me to kill.

My mind was on autopilot, and my feet moved me through the grand palazzo. It belonged to my grandfather, had been in my family since the 16 th century, I believed, and sat along the Grand Canal. It was a testament to the riches of the people of that time.

Being surrounded by so much water never sat right with my old man, since he’d been in the Coast Guard at one time. I didn’t mind it. Venice during winter was one of my favorite spots. I enjoyed the cloak and dagger scene with the fog this early in the morning. It was both ruthless and romantic.

The palazzo was quiet this early in the morning.

My footsteps didn’t make a sound when I moved through it.

We were taught at a young age that we were Faustis, and even though we were tall, muscular men, we wouldn’t be heard, only seen when the time was right.

This worked in our favor. Our enemies rarely heard or saw us coming.

Maybe that was why I’d decided to do this early in the morning.

Sistine’s enemy would be cloaked, and she wouldn’t see me right away.

My feet stopped in the kitchen, and a grin I couldn’t control came to my face.

Sistine Evita.

Her face didn’t just flash in my memory; it stuck there, as if she had seared herself inside of my mind like lightning when it hits a tree.

After I had followed her back to the store area of the jewelry shop during my visit, she returned to her station, paying close attention to what she was creating.

The earbuds were back, and she was in her own world again.

Her sister’s eyes were on my every move, but Sistine might as well have been in a painting for as much attention as she was paying me, or anyone else in the building.

Who knew what the fuck had come over me, but it felt like fire in my veins. While my family was talking to Adone about all the orders, I crept up on Sistine and removed one of her earbuds, curious as fuck to what she was listening to.

“You working that nine to five?” I had roared with laughter when her eyes flamed, and she went to grab her earbud but had to bounce from the floor to my hand to grab it back. She was much shorter than me.

“Do not touch my stuff,” she’d practically hissed at me as she swiped the earbud back.

I’d given her the artist’s name.

She studied my face for a second, like she was fucking surprised that I knew who the singer was, and when she realized she was giving me a somewhat amicable reaction, she lapsed back into indignant anger.

She wiped her earbud off with an alcohol wipe, to get rid of my touch, of course, and then stuck it back in her ear.

The working woman’s theme song had ended, and a song about a woman telling a man to not tell her what to do was playing.

I said that artist’s name.

She turned the volume up so loud I could hear it.