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“What are you talking about? That was just pure mean to do that to him.”

“What I’m talking about, Annie, is because he looks like…Oscar, the puppet, as you call the characters on that show, it’s endeared him to all the women.”

She took a breath, and I could see the wheels turning behind her eyes. “This is true. There is something about him that is…sweet in a grumpy way.”

I laughed and she shoved me.

“Quiet, Fausti,” she said, picking up on Mamma calling Papà by our last name at times. “It is very romantic what Oscar is doing for her. Noemi.”

I pulled her closer, wrapping my arms around her. She looked up at me.

“It is.” I leaned down and kissed her.

“Not as romantic as making love to your wife in the hays.” She wiggled her eyebrows at me.

I grinned at that. Both the compliment and how she said hays, just like she sometimes said hairs. We locked eyes, and a slow song started playing through the speakers. The horses seemed to like country music. No fucking shit. My wife did too. I danced with her.

“One of our songs.” She smiled as I turned her out, then brought her in, swaying with my arms wrapped around her.

“One of,” I said. “You’re my steady heart.”

A gust of wind blew so hard at us, all the extra pieces of hay from our clothes took flight and were caught in an eddy. The broken sign swung and creaked; the one metal chain keeping it attached rattled, and so did the one hanging on by a thread to the sign itself.

“The sign,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “I need to fix it.”

“Here,” she said after the song was over. She handed me one of the tools I’d brought out.

“Thank you, my Annie.” I set it on one of the rungs and climbed the ladder.

Sistine kept her hands on it, looking up at me.

I nodded to the side. “I’m all right, Annie. I don’t want you close.”

“Why?”

“In case I fall.”

“The same reason you do not want me to try to ride Seraphina alone until the baby is born?”

“Yeah, horses can be unpredictable, even if mild mannered.”

“So is life,” she whispered, and then her entire face transformed. It was like she’d been stuck in ice, and my response made the sun come out. She was melting at the fact that I was being protective over my wife and our child.

“Annie.”

“ Sì ,” she breathed, but she wasn’t moving.

“Move to the side, Annie.”

“ Ah ,” she breathed, her fingers still on the ladder. “I cannot let you go. I do not want to see you fall.”

I was the one who was fucking melting. What was this fucking madness?

“Still,” I said, my voice hardening. “Get to the side. I can’t fucking think straight if I think you’re unsafe.”

This moved her. She set her back against the entrance and watched me while I figured out how to solve the problem.

Live music started up from outside of the stable. Dandolo was singing a romantic ballad and playing the guitar. He even started riding the horses and dressing like a proper buttero . Moleskin pants and matching vest, velvet jacket, flat-heeled high-top boots, and a large-brimmed felt hat.

“Will he ever leave?” Sistine whispered to me.

“He’s going back to Venice when we leave,” I said. “No fucking longer.”

“I think this is for the best,” she said. “I do not like the way Nino is looking at him.” She noticed me looking for a missing tool. I fucking forgot it.

Madness.

She grabbed it and lifted it toward me. I stepped down and took it from her. Not before I kissed her fingers.

“It’s hard to tell with Nino, but given the context, I do believe you’re right.” I narrowed my eyes against the metal. I was going to have to take the entire sign down to fix it. “Dandolo wouldn’t have fingers left to play the guitar if it were me.”

“The same as an eye,” she said.

“Wink at my wife.” I shrugged. “Find the fuck out.”

She seemed to stand straighter, almost rigid. It could have been because I had removed that motherfucker’s eye because he kept winking at mine—best to stop these things before they truly fucking start—but I got the sense it was something else.

My wife was a sharp woman, though, and whatever was bothering her, she was keeping it from me for a reason. Which made my senses prickle even harder when she said the next words.

“The island in Fiji,” she said, almost curious, but not. “It is completely private?”

“Yeah. You get there by boat, and we have our own boats that do the shuttling. Mamma and Papà broke up the areas for us, so we each have a private beach. My sister and brothers each have their own place, same as me. Then we have places for guests.” I stopped what I was doing and looked at her.

She shrugged, answering the look, crossing her arms over her chest. “I am just curious.”

Yeah, and when the stove was on, it burned. Tell me something I didn’t fucking know. There was more to this. I was about to start the conversation but stopped.

Yelling.

Sistine tilted to the right so she could see better. Her eyes widened. “Signor Dandolo!”

My entire body turned, and the ladder rocked.

Dandolo was running toward us, waving his hands.

Nino was a step behind him, the guitar in his hand.

He had been hurt when he was taken by the Russians who wanted my sister.

He wasn’t as fast as he used to be, but he was gaining on Dandolo.

Dandolo seemed to have fear on his side.

He might have gotten away, too, if it wasn’t for the guitar.

The tool he was trying to use to lure Nino’s wife into his romantic spell.

Nino used the guitar to have a longer reach. He swung at him.

He missed.

Dandolo shouted as if he had been hit. When he realized he hadn’t been, he took a sharp turn and used the ladder to hide behind.

They were going in circles around it. The dogs rushed in, started to bark, and the horses were starting to get upset.

All but Guerriero, who I could see from my vantage point, and if a horse could smile, he was.

He was showing his teeth, but at me. He wanted me to fucking fall.

Had a fetish for it like Dandolo seemed to have one for a wild, curly wig.

“Fuck,” I said, holding on like the ladder was a bull and I was a rider in a rodeo.

“Signor Dandolo!” Sistine shouted. “Signor Nino!”

“Sistine,” I said, sharp enough that her eyes turned to meet mine. “Don’t fucking move, do you hear me? Whatever happens between them, happens.”

“But—”

“But fucking nothing,” I said, but I was starting to climb down, fuck the rocking. I could tell my wife was about to interfere so Nino couldn’t kill Dandolo. I would kill one of these motherfuckers if she even got a scratch.

Nino lifted the guitar, and this time, Dandolo wasn’t quick enough.

It went over his head with a crash, and then his head came through it.

His eyes crossed, and to stop himself from going down, he lurched into the ladder.

The fucker tilted from the hit. The next thing I knew, the ground was coming up to meet my face.

I went down at the same time Dandolo did.

He crumpled, and I went down on my back, knocking the fucking wind from my lungs. Sistine fell to the ground next to me, talking to me in rapid Italian, screaming for Dr. Musa.

“Not a good idea,” I croaked out, forcing the air back in. Musa was the source of all this discourse.

“Mariano!” Sistine shook me.

I waved a hand. “All good,” I croaked again. A frog must have been knocked from my lungs, and he had decided to take up residence in my throat.

Sistine set her head against my chest, and I set my arm around her, pulling her in closer.

“Seven days,” she barely got out.

Fuck seven days.

“Now,” I said, rising to my feet as Musa came in, her eyes narrowing on the scene in front of her, her wild hair going insane in the wind. I set my arm around my wife’s neck and directed her to our villa. Grabbing her new things, and as we were, we left.