Page 100 of Tormented Diamonds

The roses are in full bloom, along with the peonies and gardenias. They line the backyard like a beautiful botanical garden. A little oasis in the middle of a bullet-ridden jungle. Gianni says it smells like a funeral parlor, but I think they mean as much to him as they do to me.

A nod to both our mothers.

Death and rebirth.

I clip a few of each and tuck them in the basket on my arm just as a wave of water drenches my entire back. Turning, I find my middle child standing in the center of the pool, wide-eyed and panicked. “Renzo, what did I say about cannonballs?”

“Uh, not to do them?”

“Why not?”

“Uh, because last time I landed on Nero’s head?”

“Right, and what didyou just do?”

He narrows those all too familiar dark eyes. “I feel like this is a trick question.”

I bite my lip. The kid is every inch his father. While our oldest son, Nero, is the calm, cool, studious one; Renzo is Gianni in miniature form—smooth talking, unruly, and determined to spend the rest of his life in detention. Gianni claims instead of prom king he’s probably going to get voted “most likely to rob a bank.”

He’s not wrong.

“He did a cannonball, Ma,” Nero yells from the other side of the pool.

Renzo shoots him a death glare. “Snitch!”

“I’m not a snitch. I’m telling the truth.”

“What the hell do you think a snitch is, genius?”

“Renzo!” I scold, rolling my lips over my teeth to keep from laughing. “Watch your language.”

A reprimand my charmer of a middle child accepts with a smile, only to turn toward his brother and flip his middle finger.

The Marchesi genes run rampant in that one.

The crazy thing is I don’t worry about Renzo. It’s Nero who keeps me up a night. He has such a pure and honest soul—sometimes too honest. It’s his head that will wear the crown, and I fear he’ll crumble under its weight. Gianni will protect him as long as he can, but all our children were born into a legacy they can’t escape.

“Ciò che il sangue lega, solo la morte spezza,”I whisper.

What blood binds only death breaks.

I feel a tug on my skirt and look down to see Rosalia’s cherub face squinting up at me, an explosion of long dark curls trailing down her back. My little girl, the youngest and most vocal Marchesi, is inquisitive and opinionated and way too perceptive for her father’s liking. A quiet storm Gianni claims is me wrapped in a spicy Italian package. “Yes,piccolina?”

She wraps herslim arms around my legs and squeezes. “Is Daddy a bad man?”

I set the basket on the ground, my chest tightening. “Why would you say that?”

“A girl at school said he hurts people on porpoise.”

“Purpose, love. Porpoises swim in the ocean.”

She blinks up at me like she knows I’m stalling…

Which I am.

I pick her up and sling her onto my hip. “I’ve told you the story of how Daddy saved me from a monster. He had to hurt the monster to keep me safe, but that doesn’t make him a bad man. That makes him a hero.”

My hero-laced devil.