Page 5

It was then, though, that I realized what a stir our little scene had caused.

A pin drop could’ve been heard in the place.

Every eye was on us. Adone cleared his throat a few times.

No one seemed to pay him much attention.

Especially Capri, who seemed like she was going to scream—that one, she had a wicked temper when she didn’t get what she wanted.

I was a womanizer. I’d made women my business.

I’d never gotten a woman’s dress or ring size wrong, and that was harder, to some men, than reading women and who they were.

Men claimed women were complicated, but that was the dumb fucking showing in them.

All a man had to do to understand a woman was pay attention to her.

Sistine, though… She’d heard about me and my prowess with women, so I was going to make an educated guess that her hostility was high toward me because of it. That, and we both knew there was more than attraction between us, and she hated that she felt it.

The dumb was starting to fucking show in me too.

I’d never felt attraction so strongly, and I had no clue what it was about her that pulled me forward like a magnet to its home.

Even though the cowgirl boots made sense, paired with the music, she had immediately embedded herself underneath my skin, and I needed more.

I needed her to tell me why she was listening to country music, what was it about the genre that she enjoyed, and why were her boots so worn.

Though she could have broken them in by just wearing them around Italy, something told me there was more to the story of those boots than what met the eye.

Those boots had seen more than walking time. Those boots had seen some hard work.

I’d blinked myself back into focus, and the room had still been staring at me.

I stared back. My grandfather eyed me for a second, then turned his stare toward Sistine.

Her eyes had moved up, and when she caught his stare, to her credit, she held it for a second before she turned her eyes down and got back to work.

Her sister made a quiet, but deep, frustrated noise from her throat before she took a step in front of Sistine.

Adone, respectfully, had gotten back to business again.

Sistine refused to meet my eyes again until right before we left. I’d written an old country song down on a piece of paper and slipped it on her desk. She looked at it, at me, and then torched the piece of paper.

“Damn,” Marciano had whispered, shaking his head. “That woman loathes you.”

Not hate.

Loathes .

I squeezed his shoulder, grinning, and when her eyes met mine again, she scrunched her nose up, picked up her torch, and pressed the button, sending a small blast of heat my way. I’d exploded with laughter.

I was still laughing.

It had taken me off guard—was still taking me off guard. It was the cutest fucking thing a woman had ever done. I’d never forget it.

Marciano had said my laughing was a testament to my psychotic meter being high when it came to the opposite sex—the more unhinged, the better—but it was the fucking truth. Something about her reaction to me presented a challenge. I demanded to know whether she’d really set me on fire.

“Son,” a deep, gravelly voice called in Italian from the shadows as my hand came to the door that led outside and into the foggy morning air.

My father stepped out of the murky darkness and into my view.

He was dressed to run. In this, we bonded.

We both enjoyed releasing stress this way.

It was either run or fight to release the tension.

Or find a woman to lose myself in for a while.

For my old man, that woman for him had always been my mamma.

He’d never been able to see past her. They say a man’s heart controlled him when he fell in love. Watching my father all those years, I was sure the heart was the commander of the feet. Brando Fausti could never move past Scarlett Fausti, and if forced to, his heart stayed with her.

He must have been keeping her close before he left their room. I could smell roses on him in the crisp morning air.

“Father,” I said in Italian, giving him a nod.

Mamma’s hand slid from his side, and she appeared from behind him. She was wrapped in a pink silk robe, and her auburn hair, streaked with silver, was a mess. Papà had kept her up all night.

She smiled at me. It was the warmest thing about the morning. I smiled back, and she sighed and touched my cheek. “My runner,” she whispered, then stood on her toes, the most graceful being I’d ever known, and placed a kiss on my cheek. “No daring your father to swim in the canal, ah?”

“Ah,” I said, smiling at her.

“It comes so easy,” she whispered, looking between me and my old man.

“That smile. My husband’s smile. My heart is…

so full.” She went to walk off, and my father took her by the wrist before she could get far.

He pulled her in and she gasped, probably at the power in the move, a tear sliding down each cheek.

He dried them, then touched his lips with the same finger he’d used.

She stood on her toes and kissed him, then patted his cheek. “I’ll have breakfast ready for my hungry pride when it’s time.”

He stared into her eyes so long, and so hard, I turned and walked outside. It was time for me to go when she started to blush.

He’d never bailed on a run with me before, but when it came to mamma, he would. Maybe she was having a blue morning. But a minute or so later, he stepped out, his strong form standing next to mine.

Our temperatures ran hot, and his fire was mine. In the morning air, it seemed like our smoke was coming together and forming the mist around us. It was so thick, we were lost in it. I could smell the harsh scents of the canal through it.

My old man rolled his shoulders. “There’s a first time for everything,” he said. “But this’ll be the first time I’ve ever run over water.”

His comment was unexpected, and a grin appeared on my face. “I gave mamma my word,” I said. “No daring you to swim in the canal.”

“I’m not messing around!” Mamma called from behind the door. “I’m not dealing with vicious cases of pink eye. Read what happened to Audrey Hepburn when she fell in that water, then come talk to me!”

My old man and I looked at each other, and our grins came slow—at the exact same time. He shivered, and I did too—at the exact same time.

“We’ll take one of the gondolas.”

My father gave me a look—an all right, I’m fucking in, but if the boat capsizes and we get pink eye, you’ll have to deal with your mamma look. I hesitated for a second, but not even my mamma’s wrath could stop me from running.

It should’ve been hard to rid myself of some of the tension by taking the gondola, but the more my arms worked, steering us in a direction we both seemed to already know I was headed in, the harder the chill clung to my skin, and the deeper the fog cloaked me.

It was a high I couldn’t even put into words.

It made me fucking breathless.

My old man was so quiet, I almost forgot he was with me. His eyes seemed to be focused on the distance, trusting me enough to steer us in the fog.

Water was second nature to Brando Fausti, and he was never hesitant with it, unless he had a feeling it could take his family away from him.

Which was something I knew he thought about from time to time.

How joining the Coast Guard before he was married to mamma, and leaving her for a while, could have taken that from him. What he loved the most.

His wife, and his daughter and sons by association.

I allowed the fog to take that train of thought and swallow it. It was only going to lead me down a road I refused to take. And I was already on an adventure unlike any I’d known before. A hand stronger than my will power was leading me in a direction not even the fog could hide.

That thought almost jolted me out of my skin.

Even though I wasn’t literally running, it felt like I was.

The same blood rush that made my heart work harder was teasing it to do the same thing.

It felt like I was heading in a direction I’d always known was a part of me, but I’d never taken before.

Even if my feet were not hitting the pavement, my arms still knew the route by heart.

My sense of direction was overwhelmed, and it almost felt like a life-or-death situation to end my morning exploration where my compass was pointing.

I was a desperate man who had been lost for much too long, even though I wasn’t a man old enough to be lost for as long as this felt.

To drive the point home, it seemed like muscle memory had me releasing the oar so that our gondola cut through the fog and came to a floating halt before a massive floating mansion.

It stood out amongst the other grand places because of the statue of a hand rising out of the water.

It seemed as if the fingers were gliding along the side of the palazzo, caressing it almost, and on one of the fingers was a replica of the blood diamond in my family’s vault.

My old man sat up straighter, but not because he was surprised by where our “run” had taken us. The hand had caught his attention, or maybe it was the ring.

“Huh.” My old man shook his head, then held out his hand for the oar.

After handing it over, I faced the palazzo. Fog cloaked it, just like it cloaked us. After I’d cut through it, it seemed to envelop us again. I could barely see through it, but a grin came to my face, nonetheless.

The song I’d written down on the paper Sistine had torched the day before played, making its way through the thick gloom and reaching my ears. It wasn’t loud, but loud enough I could hear it. Her balcony must have faced the water, and her door was cracked.