Chapter 11 One Heart That Reflects Two Bodies
One Heart That Reflects Two Bodies
Aria Amora
Irested my head against my husband’s shoulder, my arm wrapped around his, as his private plane took off from New Orleans and headed skyward toward Tuscany, Italy.
The trip was going to take a while, and I closed my eyes, grinning when he began to hum “Hey Jealousy,” then started to sing the song in Italian underneath his breath.
He’d told me he never had those songs stuck in his head before, and he couldn’t seem to dislodge them.
He laughed, kissing my head, more relaxed than I’d ever seen him. At the end of the concert, Violet had pulled me in by the hips and whispered in my ear, “You’re humanizing him. Keep it up!”
He was still relaxed.
So was I as we reached altitude and the plane evened out. I was tired. I held tighter to my husband, keeping him as close as possible, and then closed my eyes. I woke up with a jolt when the plane shook so hard, the lights flickered.
“Are we crashing?” I yawned.
“You are being very calm about this if we are.”
I blinked at my husband, bringing him into focus. “Are we?”
He leaned in and kissed my head. “We have encountered bad weather. We will land for the night.”
“All right.” I pulled him even closer and kissed his arm. “Where are we spending the night?”
He lifted a glass of whiskey to his mouth, and even though the liquid trembled, he kept it steady as he took a drink.
After, he set it down in a holder, his eyes hard in the distance.
Fear wasn’t a natural occurrence for Rocco, so I knew the change in his mood had nothing to do with a little turbulence, and that disturbed me.
He wasn’t feeling fear—he was almost…eager to land.
He rolled his lips in, the amber glowing when he released them, before his tongue poked out and cleaned it off. “Utah.”
The word didn’t roll off his tongue as smoothly as many others. “You-tah,” was what it sounded like, and I went to repeat it.
“Uta—” I couldn’t even finish. I began to choke on the name of the state.
Utah.
Where my mom lived with her new family.
“It seems fate has stepped in, ah? I considered speaking to your mamma alone, but I did not feel this would please you.”
“It wouldn’t,” I cracked out.
He held the whiskey to my lips, and instead of sipping on it, I downed the entire thing. Before it could start a fire in the pit of my throat, he took my mouth and took most of it for his own. Even the little leftover made me feel like a fire breather.
“I had the thought.” Rocco tapped his temple. “And here we must land. Fate has spoken.”
“Only for the night?”
He lifted a finger. “One night.”
“We’re going to stay at the hotel the entire night? Leave early the next morning?”
Seemed like fate was on my husband’s side again, because right as I asked the question, the Italian pilot came over the loudspeaker and said it was going to be a rough landing.
Rocco checked me over a few times to make sure I was fastened in my seatbelt tight enough.
No landing was going to keep me from speaking my piece, but the landing felt like a war for our wheels to touch ground.
The fear of going to see my mom and her new family paled in comparison to the landing. Though I kept it together well.
Until we exited the plane.
Then it caught up to me.
Before I could open my mouth to speak, my husband took me by the shoulders and kissed me. He kissed me so thoroughly, when I pulled away for air, I was dazed.
“You were not afraid to crash, Amora.”
“No,” I breathed. “Not when I have all I’ve ever wanted next to me, in front of me, wherever, as long as you’re close to me. You’re as vital to me as my heart, my lungs, my everything.”
“You please me so with the words you speak from the heart,” he whispered, looking so deeply into my eyes, he had to keep a firm grip on my shoulders to keep me from collapsing.
Somehow, we moved from the plane to the armored car Donato drove, his wife, Chiara, in the shotgun seat. I excused us for a moment, and the privacy window rolled up.
My husband looked at me.
“I don’t want to do this, Rocco.”
He took my hand and kissed it. “You do this, you will free yourself.”
“I have freed myself.”
He fixed his suit, almost as if it had become too tight. “This needs to be done.”
“Says you,” I said.
“Sì, says me, your husband. How do I know this? I have come face to face with my past. I faced it.” He made a motion with his fists, as if they were two sets of bull horns clacking against each other.
“Perhaps it was not an ideal situation, unpleasant things rarely are, but the truth freed me. This is why the Fausti family only deals in truth. We refuse to be held captive by lies. This means we fear niente. I fear nothing. You fear nothing. You are a Fausti, and once we arrive in Italy, you will understand what this truly means. You can face your past. It will help you confront your future.”
“I don’t need to be free. I am.” Okay, maybe that wasn’t the entire truth, and the look on my husband’s face said he knew it, though he was too much of a gentleman to point it out. “I don’t want to do this.”
“Tell me why.”
“I—” I couldn’t come up with a good reason on the fly, and the car kept rolling forward. I turned in my seat, and as a child would, crossed my arms, my husband’s hand still holding mine.
He kissed it. “My Aria Amora Bella, you stood up to one of the most ruthless men in history, my father.”
“For you,” I said.
“Are you not worth more than me?” He raised an eyebrow at me.
“That’s not what I meant, though when I think about it—I’d much rather take the heat. It feels worse to me when someone crosses you. They can talk shit about me all day long, but if someone even tries to talk about you…it’s on.”
His eyes softened, and for a moment, I felt like he might give in to me and change his mind. He sighed instead, turned forward and fixed his suit. “I will do this for you. I will do this directly beside you.”
The lights of the hotel in the distance felt like a safe zone, but the next morning, I found myself in a pretty, off-the-shoulder, cream-colored silk dress with a pleated design, a gold belt around my waist, matching pumps, sitting next to my beyond-handsome husband, who had donned a custom-made suit, being chauffeured by Donato down the block my mom lived on.
It seemed so…normal. So…suburban. Nine to five workers.
Nice houses. Two-car garages—a few men washing trucks in driveways, suds running down the cement, pooling in the storm drains.
Moms decorating porches for the upcoming holidays.
Kids playing ball in the street. Dogs barking from somewhere in the near distance.
An ice cream truck playing music while more kids dashed to it with cash in hand—probably the last time it passed before it parked for the winter.
The entire time, my husband’s eyes were on me.
My eyes were stuck on the picturesque scene.
I had to admit. In that moment, I was mad at my husband. All my anger was directed toward him. He seemed to sense this, and even though he never took my hand, or forced himself on me, I could tell by the way he was looking at me that he understood.
Maybe he’d been angry at the situation with his mamma too?
It felt like nano seconds and we were there, Donato putting the armored car in park. Rocco lifted my hand, kissed it, and before I was ready, stepped out of the SUV, fixing his suit as he made his way toward my side of the car. He held out his hand to me, and on a long sigh, I took it.
He helped me out of the SUV like I was a queen the entire neighborhood had to respect. I held my chin up high as he led me to the door, ignoring all the stares—one of the kids even knocked their cone over and started crying. The kid’s mom was trying to console her while staring at us.
My husband was the scene everywhere he went.
“Not me,” he said. “You.”
“Get out of my head, Rocco Fausti,” I whispered.
“Only God could pry me out.” His tone was all seriousness.
At the doorstep, I looked back at the SUV. Donato was watching. I almost wanted to signal for him to cause a scene so I could escape, but, one, he wouldn’t, and two, the front door to the house opened before Rocco could knock. His knuckles were a breath away from the warm blue door.
Harry Richards, my mom’s husband, jumped in surprise, and whatever he was about to scream at the beagle puppy yapping at the door was cut off.
He was an average looking guy—average height, average build—but where he excelled was his orneriness.
He was wearing a baseball cap and jersey, repping a local baseball league that he was probably the star of.
Harry glanced at Rocco, an uneasy look coming into his eyes, before he focused on me. “Aria,” he said. “We weren’t expecting you.”
“Us,” Rocco said.
Harry finally met my husband’s eyes. He had to look up to reach them. “Ah, yeah, Gabby told me Aria was getting married in Italy, but we already had plans. I mean, a free ride was okay by me, but Gabby didn’t want to disappoint the girls.”
“Disappoint the girls.” Rocco fixed his suit.
Harry wasn’t catching on. “Yeah, we took them to the theme park. We can always see pictures of a wedding.”
“Pictures of a wedding,” Rocco repeated, as if Harry had been invited to a royal wedding and he’d turned it down to play a game in the dirt.
Harry grinned at me. “You picked a winner or a mynah bird.” He laughed at his own joke.
I knew this was a bad idea, but at that moment, it seemed like the most dangerous idea in the world.
My husband was going to hurt this man. I could feel it.
Rocco was keeping the bloodthirsty lion behind the gate, but I wasn’t sure for how long.
He was in complete control of himself, which was scarier than a wild animal scenting blood, then plotting to run a water buffalo down and stick his claws in its ass cheeks to take it down to the dirt.