Prologue II
The Answered Prayer of Today
Rocco
It was a tepid night in Maranello, Italy. A night that contrasted another in exquisite detail.
I no longer called any place home except for the heart I had found an eternal home in. I had found a home that goes beyond road and soil. A home that went beyond brick and mortar. This home resided inside of a woman that I have the honor to call mine.
A woman, mine, who was eager to get to the witch’s tower, Torre della Strega. The woman who, with an excitement that reminded me of a youth I had never known, squeezed my hand as I led her to the room where I had first touched love.
Sì. Touched it as it fluttered around the cobblestone prison, as curious about me as I was of it. Back then, when the scarf, smelling of her scent, her essence in every delicate but strong fiber, caught my attention, it had only been a symbol of what I yearned for.
To love.
To be loved in return.
This symbol had become the beat of my heart. The life in my veins.
It has become her.
Love had turned a symbol of her into my reality.
A woman I could touch.
Scent.
See.
Hear.
Taste.
The woman smiling at me in the moonlight, the light caressing the color of her hazel eyes and causing them to shimmer and dance, as it would over glistening water.
Her smile was brighter than any room I had ever been in that was filled with the warmth from candlelight; brighter than the moon, even, and in this, I am completely made whole in understanding my brothers and the love and appreciation they feel for their wives.
She is my wife, and she has changed my life completely.
She is mine.
For that moment.
For the day.
For the week.
For the month.
For all the breaths left in my lungs.
For always.
The scarf fluttering through my life that night led me to this moment. It materialized out of thin air. All of my choices, and the direction of my life thereafter, have led me to this second—all from that single moment in time.
My life before her was as contrasting, as polarizing, as the light of the moon is to the darkness.
She is my light.
In the brightest of days.
In the darkest of nights.
My wife, my beautiful song in physical form, touched the scarf I had secured in her hair for the drive to the tower.
She knows as well as I do how symbolic it is for both of us.
Being in the witch’s tower, her body next to mine, as soft as the fabric, as permanent in my veins as my blood, does something to me I can barely explain in words.
The woman I gazed at was as telling as the stars blazing above our heads, as infinite as them, and she burned for me alone.
Her hands caressed the stone, her eyes taking in the scene, and I could tell her breathing had picked up, though we did not have to travel far by foot.
Her breathing had picked up because we both realized how connected we were through this place.
She was conceived here; for me, it felt as though I took my first breath here, first touched love here, even if I did not know it at the time.
Her pulse fluttered as if it was a caged bird, while her hands reached for the gold chain around her neck, with the symbol of me dangling on the end.
Apart from me, this symbol of my heart, my love, was the item she considered safe ground.
The gold lion stained with my heart’s blood.
The lion that represented who I was, who I am, who I will always be.
My Amora directed me back to life, shared her breath with me, when I had been a breath from the unforgiving grave.
The lion inside of my heart was starved for her.
Could not last another second without her.
At that second, she came into my life, the answer to my one prayer—one I said on a cold night in the witch’s tower in Maranello, when the chasm inside of me opened and swept me into a sea of loneliness.
It all goes back to breath.
Her breath.
It is mine. Without hers, I cannot breathe. I refuse to.
“This is it, then,” she whispered, keeping her eyes on the stars. “This is where I was conceived. This was where you first encountered…a symbol of who I would someday be to you.” She released the pendant, and her hand trembled as she gently touched the scarf in her hair again.
My first instinct was to rush to her. To take her in my arms. The doors to the home we built together. Instead, I gave her this moment to truly understand the gravity of what this place symbolizes.
Us.
Nodding, I kept my back to the wall, though my eyes could not roam far from her.
My heart would not allow it. The lion in my chest controlled my sight.
He kept my focus on her, ready to defend her with my life in an instant.
Just the thought of anyone getting close to her, anyone who meant her harm, also meant me harm through her, made me salivate for the violence the lion inside of me instinctively knows.
The violence was not something I could control.
If she was in danger, so was I, and I would guard her heart at all costs.
This.
This is my answered prayer.
Her.
A satisfied grin came to my face, even though I shivered when I thought back to that night and how I had thought these words:
It all comes down to a woman, ah?
It did for me.
One woman.
The woman my body longed to protect and serve.
The woman my heart longed to be protected by.
Every prayer I had offered that night came into fruition and was even more than I had asked for.
I tried to picture myself as a younger man. A man who had not seen the type of love that would make him forsake his family for it. The first moment my eyes found her, I knew this without a doubt: I would forsake my own heart, breath, body for her.
She looked up at me with stars reflecting in her eyes.
My breath became shallow. My heart levitated outside of my body—around hers. Always around hers.
“You’re being very quiet, Rocco Fausti,” she whispered. She took a step closer to me. Another. Our breaths, our heart beats, our blood tangled even deeper.
Close enough, I reached out and barely touched her face.
Her hair, long, thick, a light brown as hypnotizing as autumn, rustled as gossamer wings would in the slight breeze, along with the delicate fabric of the scarf.
Her scent swirled in the air around me, and my lungs, as greedy for it as air, took it deep inside.
My thoughts from the night I had offered up the prayer came back to me, as swift as a cold wind, though the thought did nothing but warm me, only adding to the natural heat my body produced.
My romantic heart ruled my body, and I went back for the scarf. I brought it close to my nose, scenting a woman. A woman who had a floral essence, but also a bit spicy and citrusy. Her long hair, which seemed light brown, stuck to its fibers.
“You’re thinking back, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Sì,” I whispered, my voice full of gravel. “I am thinking back to one of the loneliest nights of my life. When I offered up a prayer for you.”
“Was this before or after I was conceived here?”
“After.” I barely got the word out, knowing that, before I even asked for it, I was given it.
She looked away for a second, and then her hazel eyes turned back to mine. So fierce. “Scarlett told me the story of the pears—those pears she loves, and how she can trace back the history of them to before the beginning of her and Brando’s love story.”
“Sì.”
“We can trace ours back too. To this spot.”
Lifting her hand to my mouth, I placed a soft kiss on her racing pulse, then set it over my heart, allowing it to answer for me. Mere words could not do this moment justice. To offer a prayer and then have it be answered in such a miraculous but solid way…what words could honor it? None.
“Our eyes…when they connect…” She took a deep breath, and when she released it, I breathed her in, refusing to allow it to go to waste.
“I can’t describe it in words. And that’s my job.
To take the scenes in my head, capture the emotion behind the words, and share it with the world.
The only way I can describe it is, my body yearns to be wrapped up in yours.
The only reason my soul levitates is because it needs to get to yours.
My body is the vessel that keeps it locked inside, but someplace stronger, deeper, it meets with yours when we connect this way, in any way, Rocco Piero Fausti. ”
My eyes burned as they did when the art of life moved me.
I did not hold back. I softened my shell so that this woman, my wife, could see and feel how vulnerable I had become with her.
She moved our hands from my heart to my eyes.
I leaned in and kissed hers, the tears she cried for our love as sacrificial as the blood she would shed for our children—if we were blessed with them.
“Even with my eyes closed,” she whispered. “I see you, my husband. I see us.”
I removed the scarf from around her head, and while her eyes were closed, I tied our hands together. Slowly, her eyes opened, the hazel color celestial in this light.
“A cord of three is not so easily broken,” I said in Italian. “The cord binding us together—nothing or no one can unravel.”
“Sì.” Her voice was bold, not a tremble in it. “We won’t allow it.”
“We will not,” I said, my blood rushing through my veins with conviction—with the undiluted truth my family was known for. “I will die for this love. Live for it.”
“For always; for the both of us.”
I took her hand and brought it to my lips once more, our eyes holding as securely as the stars blazing above our heads clung to the night sky.
“My prayer on the loneliest night of my life was this: that a woman with the same hypnotizing scent as was on the scarf, the same beautiful hair, would satisfy the lion in my chest someday. In the claim, in the one word, mine, the empty void in me would close, and my skin would be warm once again.”
She searched my eyes, and even though she knew the answer, she asked. “Are you? Are you healed, Rocco Fausti? Are you warm?”
I grinned at her and her breath caught, then picked up.
“I have found the one my soul recognized right away. I have found the one who could not only destroy me but heal me. I am no longer freezing. I am no longer lacking. I am your husband. No matter what happens in this life—I am yours and you are mine. My prayer was answered. I am…whole for the first time in my life.”
“So am I,” she said. “So am I.”
I took her in my arms and we turned toward the sky, our hands still connected by the cord.
We knew without a doubt that for as long as the stars burned, for even longer, our love was written in them, and in the same spot we stood, no matter how long or how far, we could always return to them and find our way home.
The scent of mine drifted in the air, from my skin, along with the taste of her on my tongue, and it was a warm reminder of who I was.
The grandson of Marzio Piero Fausti.
Son of Lucious Leone Fausti.
I am Rocco Piero Fausti.
The grandson and son in line for the Fausti throne.
I was no longer alone in this life, bred only to rule and nothing else. I would rule, but only with my queen at my side.
To whom do I belong? Who belongs to me?
Two questions that were neither absurd nor fantastical. Two questions that went beyond all others.
The two most important questions of my life.
All my life, I was taught to believe I belonged to the family. My grandfather. My father. I could understand that. I could accept it. However, a man such as I needed more than that.
In my arms, I held much more.
I finally held my home, my heart. Inside of its chambers, my lion roared, calling for his lioness, who answered him in a language only the two of them could understand, feeding a hunger only a starving animal could know.
My wife squeezed my hand in understanding, and together, we watched as the cold stars burned, warmed and healed by the love between us.
“Let this be our prayer,” my wife whispered.
“Always, let this be the prayer and the answer to it.”
“Us,” she whispered. “Amen.”
We held each other closer, refusing to allow even a breath to come between us.