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All the possibilities of what she could be doing…

It was fucking with my mind. I needed something easier to deal with. Using all my physical strength to keep me from dropping hundreds of feet to my death seemed like a bright fucking plan.

Prozio Tito was prone to say that the mind was as powerful as the body.

Once the mind gives in…

I was sick without her.

We rarely raced back to my property, but Guerriero seemed to sense something else from me.

He picked up speed, and even though he wasn’t racing as fast as he was before, he was moving fast enough for the wind to whistle past. Even though it was winter, and the weather was cool, I was saturated with sweat.

Apollo and Zeus were there to greet us, turning in circles and giving the occasional bark, but they gave Guerriero a wide berth. He was an insane stallion, and they knew it. Everyone who worked for me, and all the other animals, couldn’t deal with the motherfucker.

I even had to install two doors to his stall that were pulled by two ropes on either side. When I wasn’t around, the men would open the gates this way to let him out of his stall and to a private area I created for him to graze. The men could clean his stall this way.

Guerriero tore through the open door into the stables, and it was like the motherfucker knew. An old wooden sign had come unhinged with a storm. One chain popped, and it hung crookedly, still swinging. It hung so low that my head hit it.

I dismounted the insane horse, and we faced off. He was breathing heavy, his nostrils flaring, and he bared his teeth at me.

“Go!” I flung my hand out. “Get back in your stall, you motherfucker.”

He lifted his lips, baring his teeth again, before he stomped once and went to eat his chow.

Even though I felt it, I set a hand to my head, pulling back an entire palm smeared with blood.

In the cool air, full of humidity from an oncoming storm, I smelled the scent of wet penny.

My own blood. I removed my riding shirt and stuck it to my forehead.

It didn’t take long for it to saturate the fibers.

It ran down my face, my temples. It was running down my chest, dripping on either my riding boots or the ground.

I was leaving small splatters in my wake.

My feet stilled, and the lone stallion tattoo came to mind. He wasn’t so fucking alone anymore. Even the thought of my wife kept me company, whether she was beside me or the memory haunting me.

Haunting me because she had made the choice for us to separate to fucking prove something.

“Fuck me sideways,” I said, and it was as if something clicked inside of my brain, the fury taking over.

I was about to slam my fist into the side of the barn when I heard it.

A footstep.

Lev, the Russian assassin who had always followed my mamma around, stepped out of the shadows, his eyes narrowing on my head.

“We must fix this,” he said. He motioned for me to take a seat on an old stool. He went for the first aid kit Mamma left in the stable. She was always ten steps ahead. She said it came with the territory of being a son mamma.

I wiped my forehead, the salt on my skin making the cut burn—it was a distant fire during a blizzard, though. “You’re here,” I said. “That means you have something you want to tell me.”

He nodded. “The man you call Iggy.”

Iggy.

Tacked in with the fact that I was dying without her, Iggy was of great concern.

Iggy was one of the main reasons I refused to let the meeting end.

Security measures had to be put into place to keep my wife safe.

I didn’t trust her family enough to do it.

Saverio had found some interesting history on the Capella/Cappello family, and history that had not grown cold yet.

Sistine’s father had been married before he wed Aurora.

According to what Rio had found, the first wife of Flavio had died in a boating accident.

However, a man who worked for the family said he didn’t believe it. He was like the town crier, going around telling anyone who would listen that the woman had been murdered.

Apparently, the first wife was having an affair on Flavio, and she was going to leave Flavio for the man.

The man she was having an affair with was the owner of another well-known jewelry store in Italy.

If the Cappello Jewelry store had competition, it would have been the affair guy’s jewelry business.

Rio told me that back in the day, the other family was competing with the Cappellos for who was going to exclusively design and create Fausti jewelry.

But the Capella/Cappello daughter had fallen in love with a Fausti.

The two families came together to form a union.

Then shit went down with the couple and it almost cost both families the agreement between them.

That must’ve been intolerable for Flavio, seeing as he was sore about his wife leaving him for the competition, and suddenly, the first wife dies.

So does the town crier, who was found a few days later, his lifeless, bloated body in the canal.

And by all accounts, Sistine’s mamma hadn’t been the way she was until after marrying into the family.

The sister.

I made a whirling motion around my temple, whistling low.

Capri was the equivalent of mamma’s sister. I knew it the moment I met her.

All this to say, even if my wife had agreed to the separation, she wasn’t going to be left alone to defend herself against her family.

Before Sistine had met me, they might have treated her differently, but she was no longer taking their shit.

They were on the verge of losing her, losing their most talented designer and creator, and her father seemed to have a fucking thing about control.

The entire time, I kept imagining him lying in bed at night, thinking of ways to kill me.

He knew the only way to get to me, truly, was through my heart, who happened to be his daughter.

My wife.

That was why Remo and Oscar were left behind.

Remo, Oscar, and a bunch of Fausti men who were not allowed inside of the palazzo but surrounded it for protection.

Flavio claimed he had his own men, the Cappello family having an army of their own—this army was created to keep our jewelry safe—but I didn’t buy what he was fucking selling.

The family did have their own protection, but it wasn’t good enough for me.

I wouldn’t have doubted if the army he had at his disposal would try to hide my wife away from me if he ordered them to.

Yeah, all that and Iggy.

“My wife,” I said, taking a step toward Lev.

“When you are mad,” Lev said, holding his ground, “your eyes almost glow in the darkness.”

My eyes. Eyes that mamma told me reminded her of the butteri . She had said the peridot color was like liquid and almost translucent, as if frozen in ice. A black ring encircled the irises, which made them seem to glow at times, especially against the tan of my skin and jet black of my hair.

“Your wife is still with her parents,” Lev said, probably sensing that I was about to fucking lose it.

Maybe Lev was an assassin, but when a man has something he’d die without, he’ll kill for it. Lev knew this.

I was that man.

“She has not broken the sequester,” he continued. “I am not here to discuss your wife, per se, but the man you call Iggy. One of my people has been keeping an eye on him and his brothers.”

He paused there, then nodded again to the stool.

“It’s clotted,” I said. I hadn’t felt my blood run in a while. The cool air had helped it stop bleeding, though whenever the wind blew, I felt the thick liquid harden against my skin. “Mamma won’t hold you accountable for me bleeding to death.”

“This is all I am concerned about,” he said.

My eyes narrowed against his. That frame of mind was why my father wanted to kill the man on numerous occasions, but he didn’t because, one, he knew it would piss mamma off, and two , the man had showed up to help them one glaring time—a time when Papà had traded his life for Mamma’s, and he was taken as a prisoner. Lev helped mamma get Papà back.

Lev was also there for my sister when her husband was taken.

Then there was the marriage arrangement between my youngest brother, Maestro, and a Russian woman.

None of us had any information on her, except for a picture, but my youngest brother had agreed to the marriage after he was able to write a song for her.

Still. The woman in question was a mystery.

A mystery Lev was keeping close to his heart.

“Mamma aside,” I said. “Iggy.”

He sighed, walking to a stall, setting his hand on one of the Maremmano. A mare who enjoyed his attention. He turned toward a barrel and grabbed for an apple. He took a bite before feeding her one.

“Iggy, as you call him, is in love with your wife,” he said.

“A man like him can fucking love.” I scoffed.

Lev’s eyes turned to mine. “Your grandfather can love. Your father can love. You can love.”

“Lies,” I said, my hands curling into fists at my sides.

The only reason he was defending Iggy was because Lev felt he loved my mamma.

Any fool could see it. He was willing to stitch my head because he thought she would be disappointed in him if he didn’t.

“What we feel has no name. It goes beyond love.”

“Touché.” He sighed, then waved a hand. “However, the point still stands. Men who are not programmed to love can still find a way to feel it. It is your people who claim they are not above love; therefore, the rules do not exist when it comes down to it.”

“The fucker wants my wife,” I said, changing the direction of this conversation. I wasn’t about to get into a philosophical debate about villains and love with a Russian assassin.

“He does. However, he wants her to want him first.”

“He wants her to fall in love with him, that’s what you’re telling me.”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“Tell me.” I rolled my shoulders. “If she doesn’t.”