Chapter 5
A Cat Will Be a Cat; if Not, It Would Be a Dog
Aria Amora
Sitting outside by the pool, in what felt like a continuation of the hours before, I tried to bring the night to terms with the day.
Long before dawn, Scarlett and Juliette had been escorted back to their own house, and maybe I was being too quiet for Carmen, so she had disappeared back in the house. But I had been deep inside of my head, my heart chanting for Rocco, calling him home.
Closing my eyes, it was all I could see.
The most vulnerable time of the night, when light starts to push its way through the barrier, thinning it. And the vision that stepped so quietly through it, barely disturbing the delicate balance of dawn.
My husband.
His hands clean, but his clothes covered in blood.
It was only the two of us, facing each other. I was already being revealed by the tender light. He was still cloaked in darkness. The scent of blood had swirled around him in the wind. It was so thick in the air, even outside, that there was no escape from it.
He stared at me for a second, before he dropped to his knee, producing a box from behind his back. With a trembling hand, I lifted the lid.
I was never so thankful in that moment for not taking the entire box from him.
I would have dropped someone’s finger.
It was tucked deep inside of tissue.
It only took me a second to know who the finger belonged to.
Remy.
He had a tattoo on his middle digit. Tiny letters that spelled out meant were inked not far beneath his nail bed, and going down finished the message:
For.
You.
Whenever he wanted to give someone the bird, he did it with a message, just in case they had any confusion about who the finger was meant for.
You.
I hadn’t known how to respond—still didn’t—to what Rocco had offered me. What he had done in my honor. In his world, this was an acceptable loss. I couldn’t blame him for following rules that had been instilled in him since birth. It would be like blaming a cat for bringing a dead rat to your door.
Pisolino surprised me with gifts like that at least once a month. He was stalking then, watching a squirrel run the length of the fence between our rental’s yard and next door.
But back to my lion.
Loyalty, respect, honor…those long gone and buried traits were ingrained in Rocco, and just like love had been ingrained in me, I couldn’t fault him for that. So, I ran my hands through his hair, keeping eye contact, and thanked him for honoring me.
He’d placed a kiss over my heart, set his head against my stomach, his hands around my waist, his hold tight, so tight, his knuckles had turned white, keeping me in his space.
Then, because his madness seemed to have inflicted me too, I took him by the hand and led him to our room, slipping in our closet, grabbing him fresh clothes.
I’d made a motion for him to follow me into the bathroom.
After I started the shower, he refused to let me share it with him, not until he scrubbed himself clean.
Maybe what bothered me the most was not his action, but my reaction to it. I didn’t even think about Remy or what he had gone through. My fear? That Rocco hadn’t used gloves, and Remy might have something that would make my husband sick if his blood got into a cut or something.
In that moment, and all the moments after, I truly empathized with Scarlett Fausti. How her empathy put her at odds with her feelings—her entire heart—when they were supposed to be one and the same.
All this to say…I didn’t look at my husband in a different light.
He had never lied about who he was or sugarcoated it.
It was me I was looking at through a darker filter.
I might not have been chatty with people, but I felt their pain and suffering and could relate to it.
Then again, my grandparents had been well loved, and no one had ever threatened them.
Remy was a threat. I knew he’d stab Rocco in the back in a heartbeat.
That was when I realized how lethal love could be—in the face of someone who would try to take my love away, I’d become a lioness for him.
His family was ruthless, but I felt it right away. They loved even harder.
I could never put into words how much Scarlett’s presence meant to me that night. How she’d just held my hand, letting our emotions flow through each other, while we gazed at the sky sans stars.
Which felt odd, maybe to the both of us. Or maybe not odd, but…incomplete.
After the secret between my husband and me had been shared on the island, how I had been conceived in Maranello underneath the stars, it felt right to look up at them and know.
During a night like this one…I had been created for someone to have and to hold, even in death shall we not part…
The realization of how meant to be my husband and I were hit me like a forever rolling wave—sucking me under and stealing my breath, only to bring me up again.
It was that breathless exhilaration, the kind that knocks the breath from the lungs, but starts in the heart and spreads throughout the entire body like a potent drug.
A trembling breath escaped my lips, and my entire body seemed to tremble with it, even though the weather seemed hotter, more humid than the day before.
Pisolino, who had given up on the squirrel, jumped onto the lounger next to me, his tail swaying back and forth while I kept my eyes closed to the sun and scratched behind his ear. Then he started to purr.
“Even the island hunter is under your spell.”
I opened my eyes and blinked.
Rocco had been on the balcony, looking down at me, on the phone.
I was pretty sure it was his father. “Business,” as all the men called it.
But without me hearing him, he’d made it to me and was standing next to me, shielding me from the sun.
And as if he controlled that, too, he took a seat next to me, releasing it, and ran a finger down my face.
Always touching me.
I took his hand, entangling our fingers, demanding to keep him close. “Island hunter.” I laughed, and it was quiet. “He probably would like that better than Pisolino. What’s the name for hunter in Italian?”
Rocco grinned, looking at Pisolino, who was lying next to me on the opposite side. “Cacciatore,” he called, giving three short whistles after.
Pisolino yawned and closed his eyes, keeping his face toward the sun.
“Call his name,” Rocco said to me.
“Pisolino,” I said with an Italian accent in a sing-song kind of voice.
His eyes opened and he looked at me, as if to say, you rang, queen?
Guess he only answered to the name I’d given him, even if Cacciatore was more masculine or its meaning fiercer. I laughed, and Pisolino watched me for a second before he closed his eyes again.
My husband was watching me, too, but with a guileless look in his eyes.
“What?” I whispered.
“Tell me,” he said, his tone softer, full of curiosity, “why did you name him this.”
“Oh.” I yawned. “The first time I saw him, a wave of peace washed over me. He…helped me relax. Feel at home. Safe and comfortable enough to take a nap. Such a good feeling. So…Pisolino it was. And, I like saying it. It’s one of those fun words for the mouth.”
“Fun words for the mouth,” he repeated, like maybe the concept of this was foreign to him.
“Isn’t there a word you like saying just to say it?”
“Sì, but not truly a word, a name. Amora.”
I smiled at him. “That’s what Nonna called me too. She said out of all the beautiful names I had, that one was her favorite.”
“This is you.” He took my hand and placed it over his heart. “My love.”
We stared at each other, our eyes meeting in the light, and that endless wave came in, rushing over my head, sucking me under the surface with him to depths that stole my breath.
Somehow, though, he kept me breathing. It brought back memories of the past, like the night before, after he got home, and I climbed on top of him, riding him deep and long until I was covered in sweat and crying out, and it also set before me a future—a future where we’d still be in bed together, holding on to each other, when we were old and silver all over.
I brought our hands to my mouth, kissing his knuckles.
He breathed out. “There is no cure for this, for you,” he whispered. “If there was one, I would refuse it. Allow me to live and die in what goes beyond the perimeters of love.”
“Does love have perimeters?” I asked him, breathing him in.
“I would have answered no to this before. I am answering yes now. Love has bars. What exists between us does not.”
All I could do was smile at him and touch his face. He had such bold features, except when his eyes would lower, when he was swept up by passion. By me.
Rarely did he check his watch, but he did, and a second later, one of his men stood at the threshold of the patio that ran the length of the house.
The balcony above it ran the same perimeters, and from our personal balcony, it gave a stellar view of the courtyard area.
The pool was surrounded by French statues and clinging ivy.
The solider waited for permission to come forward, a woman next to him.
Rocco gave me his hand before I could pop up on my own. Pisolino hissed a little, complaining about our nap being interrupted, and jumped down, trotting toward the curtains of ivy.
“Thandie!” I called, waving to her. “Thandie!”
Rocco set his hand on my lower back as I started for her and she came toward me.
We met in the middle of the yard and rocked as we hugged.
She set me away from her for a second, her eyes taking me in.
I smiled a little, running my hand down my outfit.
Since it was hotter than it was the day before, I decided on a cream-colored matching top and midi skirt.
It was soft, breathable, and the hem flowed nicely around my ankles.
I looked back for a second. I had set my leopard print heels to the side and forget about them in my excitement to get to her.