Page 79

Mariano

I was racing again. I didn’t even bother looking out at my land as I usually did as I sped across it.

Maremma is a coastal region of Tuscany, where the rugged land seamlessly merges with the Tyrrhenian Sea.

It’s also known for the butteri, or as my brother’s wife, Stella, prefers to call them, Italian cowboys or cowgirls.

Most of the cattle, Maremmana, were used for meat production in my time, but in another time, they were also used for draft.

I kept a herd of them on my property. Most of their hides were in the gray color spectrum, and they had two long horns.

I dealt with buffalo and horses, too.

Even though my stable was filled with Maremmano, a horse known to the region of Maremma where I lived most of the time, in the Grosseto area, my personal horse was a jet-black Friesian.

My war horse, Guerriero. It meant “warrior” in Italian. My great-grandfather, Marzio, bred them. My great-grandfather’s Friesian was named Guerriero as well. I hadn’t known this fact until Padrino told me.

Padrino even gave me a framed black and white picture of the stallion, my great-grandfather on his back. The Friesian had reared up, and my great-grandfather held on as Guerriero’s powerful hooves kicked at the air.

Padrino had told me that every horse my great-grandfather felt a powerful connection to carried on the name Guerriero.

I adopted this tradition for my own, while also honoring Marzio Piero Fausti.

My Guerriero didn’t need a direction. The tattoo of the horse on my back was a portrait of him.

Whatever I felt, he naturally understood.

He was a wild horse, one of the few Friesians not of the genial temperament the breed is known for.

He would stomp on a snake, remain calm at noises or bad weather, and take a chunk out of a man with his teeth if he didn’t like him.

He was me in another form. Whenever I needed to race, he came to me, knowing I needed the ride.

The speed.

The rush.

He instinctually knew that, somewhere in a deep part of my soul, I craved battle.

If I had ever craved it before, as a man would food, it had also become a thirst after my wife made the decision to stay with her family instead of fighting to come home with me, her husband.

My wife.

Guerriero spurred forward, feeling the fury that swirled in my soul like a tornado. One squeeze of my thighs and he would slow, but there was no slowing for either of us. We were both panting, our muscles tight, our hearts racing.

We both knew where we were headed.

Apollo and Zeus, my two Maremma sheep dogs, had been left in the dust, and I could hear the echoing of their barking as we made our escape.

The sea was not far ahead, and the strength of the cold wind skimming off the irritated water pushed against my body, pushed against Guerriero, his mane and mine carried by the wind.

I could feel how wild my hair was. How unkempt.

Everything in my life had been unkempt since she made the decision to separate us.

Mamma had come at me with an explanation, but I needed none where my wife was concerned. She had something to prove. Even if we were separated for a time, I would still find her in the maze. Therefore, no one, most of all her fucking family, could ever challenge it.

There was more to it.

This was a cooling off period. Two loves wrapped up in each other couldn’t see their own hands in front of their faces, much less the truth their parents were yelling in their ears.

Passion burns out, especially when death might be a stake.

However.

I fucking knew it.

My wife fucking knew it.

What existed between us could never burn out.

Could never fizzle out. Could never go out in any capacity.

I wasn’t overstating it when I told her grandfather and father that Fate had spoken to me.

The voice echoing in my heart was true—much truer than even I could be.

Than any Fausti living or dead could be.

There was also the issue of us conspiring for the day of the maze. Figuring out the logistics and using it to our advantage the day of. Maybe desperate suitors had thought about this. If we were together, and we conspired, my truth could come into question.

I’d remove anyone’s tongue who challenged me in that way.

Yeah, Sistine’s earphones had been tagged, but I wasn’t going to use them that day. I knew I could find her without issue. I had no proof, but faith the size of a mustard seed and all that.

My shredded feelings had to do with how quickly she had agreed, and on our behalf. It fucking tore me up inside—more than she could ever imagine. Walking away from her, I left my heart behind, my own wife’s hands the ones that ripped it out of my chest.

Zio Romeo’s words from that underground club in Paris seemed to echo inside of my mind.

How time was limited, and once a moment was over, it was over.

There was the true fucking problem. The moments my wife was spending were not with me, and they were moments we could never get back.

I needed her beside me. Touching me. Breathing next to me.

Without her, it felt as if my windpipe had been crushed, and air was barely getting in.

Yeah, it was a short time in the world’s view, but in mine, it might have been centuries.

I made a “hah!” noise at Guerriero as he climbed the cliffside. He picked up even more speed, and right at the drop, he stopped, dust floating in the air from his hooves sliding along the crude path. My body went to slide forward, but I knew the fucking drill and braced myself for it.

Been there.

Done that.

It had been a while, but that sort of memory doesn’t fade.

When I’d first got him, he had been trying to kill me.

He hated to be ridden. He wanted to be as wild as a mustang, running free with his harem.

All of them under his protection. Then I got hold of him, and we butted heads.

The murderous motherfucker instinctually just seemed to know the most prime places to kill me.

This was one of them.

The drop from the cliff was steep. It came to a jagged point at the end, extended rock holding it above the seething sea. He’d been racing as fast as he’d just been, and when he knew it was time, he stopped short, hooves hard on the ground, sliding to the edge. I was not expecting it and went over.

I felt like one of those fuckers in an action movie who clings to the rock a second before going all the way over.

The wind had knocked against my body, swinging me back and forth.

The sea had been seething that day too. The motherfucker stood over me, looking down, his teeth pulled up in a laugh or snarl.

It was hard to tell with him. I had to use all my strength to pull myself up before I became the wreckage.

Cool sprays from the sea dotted my overheated body, and finally, with an animalistic noise that came from my chest, erupted from my throat, and came growling from my mouth, I lifted myself back on solid ground.

I was face-down in the dirt, breathing it in. When I could catch my breath, I stood.

My eyes had locked with his. “Not today, motherfucker,” I had told him. “Not fucking ever.”

He moved his head up and down, stomped his hooves, and made a noise I took as acceptance. I mounted him again and, without any complaint from him, we took a leisurely stroll back to the property.

It had been that way ever since, except there was an understanding between us.

We were one and the same.

I leaned over a bit, patting him on the side as we both seemed to absorb the view around us.

The horizon spread out as far as the eye could see, as did the sea underneath it. One a mirror to the other. The weather was silver and black, moody as fuck, and a fine mist of fog drifted in the air like a ghost, attempting to cling to the living.

“The ghost of who I once was,” I muttered to myself.

After Sistine had come into my life, shattering me to pieces, I didn’t recognize the man I once was. I had found clarity once that part of my life had drifted away like the fog.

All the women.

The chasing.

The temporary fulfillment of the moment that had somehow filled the emptiness for a time. That was why there were so many women.

All that Casanova behavior ended abruptly the moment my eyes had found mine in the jewelry shop in Venice.

A breath left my mouth when I remembered seeing her for the first time.

Girl in a Renaissance Painting.

My girl.

My woman.

My religious experience.

My Sistine.

My Annie.

My wife.

My life.

Looking back, my heart had fallen at her feet. It still hadn’t recovered. Never would. It would always hit a dip whenever she came to mind. Because she had hit body, heart, and soul with something much stronger than any force on this earth.

She was underneath my skin in the best and worst way.

The sickness and the healing.

Her fucking socks.

The elf she had made up.

A growl vibrated low in my throat, and I set a hand over my heart, rubbing the aching spot. It was the most childish fucking thing, the elf, but she was so fucking cute, she broke my heart.

It was hard for me to breathe when I thought about the countless seconds, minutes, hours, days that we would never be able to recover because of the space between us.

Space she had chosen to accept.

What fucking new idea was she coming up with?

Was she laughing, thinking about how I threatened to kill a fake fairytale creature because it made her fucking smile?

Was she thinking about the iced coffees she loved? How we’d take time out of every day to grab her one? How she’d make me try them all with a knowing grin on her face? Yeah, some of them were fucking delicious for a girlie drink.

Was she sick? Her allergies might be causing havoc on her system…

My entire body turned at the same time Guerriero’s did. If I kept thinking of all the things she might be doing, if she was sick…

Maybe I would chance fate again and see how far Guerriero could take me over the ledge again.