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My great…whatever was the most skilled at designing and creating jewelry of that time.

It was said that if you owned one of his pieces, whoever you were vowing your life to would never leave you.

He would take a droplet of the couples’ blood and place it in the gold, and whatever magic he was capable of through his hands, God given, was sealed for eternity.

The Fausti family were seen for what they were—status and worth. For all time, our family would be connected to theirs, and so the story goes, the magic my family was known for through their pieces could not become magic unless someone of Fausti blood was linked to it.

As it goes with all good fairytales and stories, however, it was most likely a profitable relationship between the two that neither one wanted to end. The Fausti family had the Capella’s magical jewelry to wear around town, and the Capella’s had a steady stream of income and status.

After the couple almost destroyed the marriage between the two families, and the blood diamond was almost lost forever, the law was set into place.

Here Mariano and I sat, the breakers of that ancient rule, and in the traditional way, we had Benedetto Dandolo as our neutral party in this war of the roses.

My father, the pest that he was, cleared his throat and lifted a finger. “The accused, Mariano Leone Fausti, has called my daughter his wife,” he said. “He is no longer the accused. He is a thief. He has called one of the Capello women his wife.”

Rigid stillness could be seen, and it could be felt.

The jolt of it went through the entire Fausti family at the word thief.

I was not sure if Scarlett was holding on to Brando’s hand for her own control or that of her husband’s.

My husband did not seem to care about this insult. He was almost grinning at it.

Also, one of the Cappello women ? He was so incensed, he refused to call me by my name. He even used Cappell o , our business name, as if I was a transaction!

“My husband is no thief.” My voice was smooth but curt. “I willingly married him.”

“Silence!” my father shouted at me.

Mariano stood, and I grabbed his hand before he could squash my father as if he were a bug.

Benedetto Dandolo fixed his spectacles. “The reason for this meeting is not to start a war,” he said, giving my father a blank look. “The reason for this meeting is to allow fate to have a say.” He sighed. He looked at Mariano. “Please have a seat, Signor Fausti.”

Mariano kept on his feet for a minute, his eyes never leaving my father’s face, before he fixed his suit and took his seat again.

“Signore, grazie .” Signor Dandolo also fixed his suit and took a seat. He unpacked his bag and looked at Mariano again. “Signor Fausti, for the record, please state your name and date of birth.” He held his vintage feather pen over the paper, ready to document.

Mariano did.

Signor Dandolo seemed to swirl the answer down in elegant script on what looked like a form.

He compared it to another paper he had next to him, his eyes scanning the page.

It looked as if it was a record of Mariano’s birth.

Signor Dandolo looked at me, setting what looked like my birth record next to Mariano’s.

Mariano made a pleasurable noise in his throat.

“Connected forever through records, my name and hers,” he said almost to himself, pride in his words and in his stance. I felt it. I felt it as acutely as if a warm wave had swept over my cool body.

“Please state your name, ah, is it signorina or signora ?” Signor Dandolo asked me.

“Signora,” I said.

“I see,” he said, looking at Rocco before he jotted that down. “Signora Capella.”

“Fausti,” Mariano corrected.

I squeezed his hand, hard, under the table. Do not push this. However, my husband was in full Fausti mode. This situation spoke to him, and he was eager to swing a sword, or whatever his blood was ordering him to do, in the name of our love.

“Pardon?” Signor Dandolo looked up from the forms.

“My wife’s last name is Fausti.” Mariano nodded to the papers. “Record that as well.”

“Ah, Signor Fausti,” Signor Dandolo said, no heat or chill in his voice. No placating tone or note of authority. Purely neutral. “If Fausti will be the name choice, even if a woman does not traditionally take her husband’s last name in Italy, that will be recorded if all works out.”

“ When it is done,” my husband said.

“This is why I am here. When.” Signor Dandolo sighed.

Each set of his papers were meticulously stacked in two piles in front of him.

One represented the Fausti family, the other the Capella family.

“It has been stated at this table that Mariano Fausti has defied the law and tested fate before the agreed upon time.”

“This is so,” my father said, and my grandfather narrowed his eyes at him. My great-uncles looked as if they wanted to slap my father’s head—all at once.

“Does this mean you mean to charge Mariano Fausti with breaking this law?” Signor Dandolo pointedly asked my father.

“Will I be charged with breaking the law as well?” I asked, but it seemed like no one other than the women and Signor Dandolo were listening to me. “I willingly married.”

“This is not the way of it,” Signor Dandolo answered me.

Mariano cleared his throat. All eyes swung to him.

“If I shall be charged with a crime, the crime of love, and sentenced to death as my punishment, we should also discuss another situation. A situation that did not have to do with love but greed, and ended in death as well.”

“You have no idea what you are speaking of!” My father almost got to his feet, but my grandfather set a hand on his shoulder, keeping him in his seat.

“Your first wife,” Mariano said to my father.

“She died in a car accident!” my father said, his face as red as a pomodoro .

I would have looked to my sister for confirmation, but I truly did not have a sister, not in the way nature had intended. She was a snake who lived in the same house. However, it did not change the fact that this news was shocking to me. My father had been married before he married my mamma?

“Did she?” Mariano seemed to muse.

I looked between my husband and father. Then at Nonno Luca. He was staring at the two men as well. His bottom lip was wet, as if he had been rolling his teeth over it. He was hungry for this fight in honor of love.

Suddenly, I was starving for the truth of this matter.

Did my father kill his first wife? Was that what Mariano was getting at?

“No,” my grandfather said, essentially ending the conversation about my father’s first wife and the car accident that was brought up. “We do not want death as punishment in this matter. Mariano Fausti will stand against fate as our law dictates.”

“However, we still want justice in this matter, for one of the Cappello women being taken from us!” my father added, his fists tightened into useless weapons, but he was not shouting as he once was. Mariano had knocked some of the hot air from his lungs.

“Flavio,” Luca said.

My father turned his eyes to Nonno Luca, and his entire demeanor changed. Before, it almost seemed as if he wanted to jump out of his seat and go not for Mariano’s throat, but mine. However, when he looked Nonno Luca in the eyes, he almost seemed to wilt in his seat.

“The reason the Fausti family entered into an arrangement with the Capella family was because of the romance. Your jewelry stood for this. Yet, you sit at this table and condemn love.”

“In all due respect, Signor Fausti,” my father said, not an ounce of heat in his voice.

Just a curt sharpness that did not bely his intelligence when it came to the rules of the Fausti family, and in this regard, the one my family shared with the Fausti family.

“Your family is known to respect rules once your honorable word is given, and yet your blood sits at my table, breaking the very rule that has kept us together all these years.”

“Tell me this.” Luca’s pointer finger tapped on the ancient wood. “Who at this table is above love.”

Before my father could respond, Signor Dandolo cleared his throat. “Fate. Fate is love, is involved in all matters. This is why we do this. If fate approves of the union, there is no one at this table, in this world, who can deny it is meant to be.”

The entire table went quiet, perhaps all in agreement with this sentiment, except for my sister, who scoffed.

“Remind me.” Signor Dandolo fixed his glasses. “Who is this young woman?”

“My daughter,” my father said, pride in his voice.

“She shall leave,” Signor Dandolo said evenly. “She has no place at this table. Unless she is a witness of some sort?”

“Ah,” my father breathed out, buying time. He looked at Capri. “Will you?—”

“No! Why does she —” she pointed at me “—get to stay if I have to go? This is not fair!” She pounded her fist on the table, and the pitcher of water, along with the glasses set next to it, clinked together.

The other Capella woman was an embarrassment, even over me, the rule breaker. She was a petulant adult who had never grown up because my parents, even my grandfather, never told her no.

“Capri,” my grandfather snapped.

She blinked at him, then started sobbing, running from the room, screeching, “You embarrassed me!”

“Capri!” Mamma stood so fast, her chair toppled over, and she ran after Capri.

I felt the weight of a stare on my face.

It was not my husband or my father, nor was it my cousin.

It was Scarlett. It was almost as if she was looking at me in a different light.

It was hard to tell. I only understood, past my bones, that she and I had connected in that moment for some reason.

This was confirmed when I noticed that she squeezed her husband’s hand.