Page 62

Mariano

I t was late when we pulled into the ranch’s drive, but not late enough to call it a night. After I’d drop my wife off at the main Watt residence, it was time to hunt.

The scent of my enemy’s worthless blood was in my nose. I was salivating to kill in her honor.

My eyes narrowed against the darkness. A fleet of new cars were parked in the drive.

Most of my family had arrived earlier than scheduled.

I wondered if Zio Romeo had called my grandfather to brief him on the situation.

If a heart would be stolen, he would know about it.

I had spoken to my parents, but the last I’d known, they were on schedule for arriving two days before the wedding.

Angelo and Atta’s wedding was a week away.

Maybe Mamma or Mia had a feeling and wanted to arrive early. Even Papà. We were men, but my old man still kept tabs on us. We were Brando Piero Fausti’s sons.

I parked behind one of the armored vehicles.

A line of more armored SUVs had been following us from the diner.

Remo and Marciano were directly behind me.

Angelo and Atta directly behind them. The lights of their SUVS hit the rearview mirror, lighting up the interior of our SUV, before they turned and found parking somewhere else.

I wouldn’t have doubted if Angelo and Atta had a conversation before they went inside.

Unless he decided to have it in their cottage.

Sistine turned down the music in the car. She looked away from me, out the window. Her hand was still in mine. Damned if she would pull it away from me. I could feel her wilting.

She sighed. “Do not do this,” she whispered in Italian. There was a pleading note to her voice.

“Tell me,” I said in Italian. “Were you the driver that night, or was Atta on the way back to the Watt Ranch.”

Her reflection came to me in the glass. She blinked a few times, before her eyes slowly came to mine. “What does it matter?”

“It fucking matters to me,” I said, hitting the spot over my heart.

“I was driving,” she said. “There and back.”

Rattler had hurt Atta in that way then.

After they had siphoned our gas and left us stranded, we searched the property for a car or truck we could hot wire.

Jack had said he thought the Green family kept a few on the property.

We’d found two. Neither could be salvaged.

Jack had thumped on one of the truck’s hoods and told us the truck had belonged to Bear before he died.

It wasn’t his personal truck, but one that belonged to the ranch.

It had been reported stolen a couple of days after what happened in the barn.

Blood stained the steering wheel, but not as much as the passenger side seat.

I understood if Sistine didn’t want to tell me what happened to Atta; that was Atta’s choice who she confided in.

But Sistine was my wife. I had an idea of how it all went down, but for my own fucking sanity, I had to know.

“Why are you asking me this?”

I sighed. “The passenger side had blood on the seat.”

“How do you know which truck it was?”

“Jack,” I said. “He recognized the truck as belonging to the Watt family.”

“It was stolen.”

“By the dead man,” I said.

“He hurt her that way then.” She grew exceptionally quiet, turning toward the window, her eyes filling with tears.

I took her hand in mine and kissed her wrist. “She didn’t tell you?”

“No.” She sniffed, not even bothering to wipe her eyes.

“Tell me what happened, Annie.”

She took a breath, then seemed to release the pent-up emotions she had been harboring since it happened.

In the softest fucking voice I’d ever heard—so soft it was easy to believe how such a woman could enter a man’s gates unannounced, take over his castle, successfully ending his heart, with no other weapons but her eyes and her smile, essentially ending life as he knew it—she recounted that night.

Somewhere in the middle of the story, her tears dried, until she got to the end of it.

“I suspected,” she said, her voice full of sorrow. “I suspected, but I did not know for sure.”

“She was protecting Ty.”

“Yes,” she said, taking a deep breath. “And I suspect me too. I can be so—” she balled her free hand into a fist, squeezing mine with the other “—hardheaded! I would have gone back if she had told me. I would have gone back to kill them!” She started to cry harder.

“ Shh .” I pulled her in, kissing her face over and over.

I couldn’t control her tears, and they were breaking my fucking heart.

I would take care of my wife, and after, it was time to fucking hunt.

I had never felt that before her. A protectiveness so strong, the entire world wasn’t safe unless she was.

“Mariano.” She took a steadying breath, gazing into my eyes. “You are trying to make this better for me, but…your eyes. Your eyes are scaring me.”

“You never have to be afraid of me. I would kill myself before I ever hurt you.”

“I know,” she whispered, looking away from me. “However, that does not mean…what I am trying to say is that I do not want your soul marked by their blood. This is something that never goes away. Perhaps…perhaps Atta will go to the police. Let them rot in jail.”

“No deal, Annie,” I whispered.

She sat up, her face so close to mine, I could still smell the whiskey and maple syrup on her breath. “They are not worth it,” she said, her voice stronger.

I gently touched the spot where he had hit her, feeling the slight scar underneath her skin.

I kissed it. I kissed it and realized it was a burial ground for what had happened that night.

She knew it was there but tried to forget about it.

I said nothing as I opened the door to the SUV and carried us both out of it.

“Let me go!” she demanded. “We need to talk about this!”

“Never will I let you go.”

“I am not telling you to let me go forever, but for right now.” She wiggled until I set her down.

We faced off on the front lawn.

“Do not do this, Mariano.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

“I’m your husband.” I hit the spot over my heart. “It’s my job to fucking protect you.”

“You can’t protect me from it now. It happened before I met you!”

You can’t protect me from it now. It happened before I met you!

Words that were made of poisonous tipped thorns swirling around in my heart, sticking inside of my mind.

Those words would haunt me for the rest of my life.

She was right. I couldn’t do a fucking thing to stop it, but fuck if I wouldn’t destroy the fuckers who did it.

I would kill them. Steal the memory. Kill that too.

“Acts of dishonor don’t have a fucking statute of limitations.” I lifted her chin, and her red-rimmed eyes met mine. “Especially when they were done against mine .” Before she could protest, I lifted her off her feet and carried her up the stairs and into the main house.

All the lights were on, and the smell of coffee and baked goods was strong in the air. Nonno and Magpie, Papà and Mamma, Padrino , Zio Dario and Zia Carmen, Zio Romeo and Zia Juliette sat at the large breakfast table, drinking coffee with Hannah and Bianca.

Sistine stilled in my arms, and her eyes turned down when Nonno looked us over from our heads down to our boots. I easily set Sistine on her feet, but I didn’t allow her much room. She would be by my side for the rest of my life. Fuck who liked it or not.

Nonno nodded at me, approving of the gesture.

He was a romantic man who enjoyed fate’s plays on epic love stories.

Our situation in Italy would speak to him.

Already was, or I would have already been punished for breaking laws.

In my family, a man had to know how to maneuver in and out of the lines set before him.

Brando Fausti was the king of this. He set his own terms and ruled his own life.

He taught his daughter and sons that as well.

It was up to us to take what he’d taught us and apply it to our own lives.

Matteo, at times, would do this, but I was known more for coloring outside of the lines, so to speak.

Then again, I hadn’t accepted the position to rule the family as Matteo had.

I was only the spare. The spare who never truly gave a second thought to running the family.

Sistine seemed to move closer to me, almost trying to hide her left hand, when Mamma and Papà seemed to clock her wedding bands in at the same time.

Neither of them said anything. Even if Papà hadn’t sensed the same as mamma, which he had, they were both connected to each other, Mamma would know I didn’t tell them for a reason. She would tell Papà.

All the men in my family stood. Not for me.

For Sistine. I greeted my family, then introduced Sistine, formally.

I didn’t call her my wife, but my family seemed to know.

Nonno stared at me, then nodded again, a serious look on his face.

I had made the call. If there was hell to pay for what I’d done, marry the woman who owned my heart, I’d fucking pay it.

There was no price high enough for the honor to call her my wife.

She was my air, and there was no life without her in it.

Magpie was the first to jump up and take Sistine in her arms. She hugged her tightly, rocking them both, and then put space between them so she could look Sistine in the eyes, taking her hands in hers.

“You are gorgeous! A true Italian beauty. Sistine…Superb. No. That doesn’t seem to fit.

We have a Stella Stellar. All these names starting with S!

” She gazed at Sistine, and I could tell Sistine wanted to look at me but maybe thought it would be disrespectful to break eye contact.

“To hell with S words, let’s go with Sistine… Ravishing!”

“Sistine Ravishing. I love it.” Sistine smiled at her.