Chapter 27
Change is Imminent
Rocco
Every day, my wife was changing.
She requested I teach her Italian. She immersed herself in the language, and when she would visit Margherita’s cucina, she requested the only languages spoken in the kitchen to be Italian and Sicilian—she was adamant she wanted to learn all dialects of both languages.
She developed a new exercise regimen. All the wives joined my wife in this.
Along with the other wives, she went shopping and revised her entire wardrobe. She spent enough money that my card company contacted me for safety purposes. Of course, the amount did not touch my account, but she had never used her card that excessively before.
She was creating small changes that would echo for all time.
My brother grunted when my fist impaled his stomach, and the memory of the crowd throwing rotten fruit at my wife, heckling her, came back to me, and I repeated the same move. I could not control the heat inside of me. I continued to erupt without warning. I could not tire myself out.
I refused to let my wife change because the world ordered her to.
She was mine, and no one else would approve or not.
I would walk away from my family, my role in it, without a backward glance if it came down to my love losing who she was to their demands, assuming I would expect that of her to keep what I had coming—the crown.
She was the only person, place, or thing I refused to lose. Without her, I would not be me—I would no longer exist. She was the reason I held out for so long. The reason behind every choice. Every insufferable night and day.
All I could see was her face when she had gotten hit.
How shocked she was. How hurt she had been, even if she buried it down, when she had been rejected by my world.
The comparisons between my wife and Rosaria Caffi tore my heart out.
The words used straight out of the Caffi’s wicked mouth. Those were what hurt my wife the most.
Brando made a noise and jumped inside of the ring, coming between Dario and me.
“I am calling it,” Brando said in Italian.
I stepped back to my side, guzzling water, hitting my hands together, ready for another challenger to step up to me.
My wife seemed to give me superhuman strength, even the mere thought of her.
Brando had been the only man to tire me out.
Even he could not keep up. The burning inside of me called for destruction, for blood. I was unstoppable.
My father’s voice echoed inside of the gym he had designed on his property for us. The thought that he had created this space to bring us to his property instead of Brando’s gnawed at my restraint.
As of late, the feelings I had toward my father were not of the usual variety. For all my life, I did not feel anything for him except for respect, which I was brought up to have—respect at all costs. Loyalty at all costs. Father and son love did not factor into our relationship.
I was angry at him—angry enough to nod and meet him in the middle of the ring when he set a challenge at my feet.
“Meet me in the middle of the ring.”
I was angry at him for all he had done—using me as a solider and nothing more to gain footing in the family—and angry at all he had not done—not giving me the choice to accept or not the laws of this family, as he did my brother.
He had never challenged me before.
Perhaps he had aggression toward me as well.
I was changing, and he did not care for it.
We met in the middle, and when I went to dance around him, he came straight for me.
My father was not a subtle fighter by any means.
He would get the challenger on the first swipe, or his challenger would receive two more before he realized it, and by then it was too late.
My father did this to me. He hit me so hard, I felt a rib crack.
He was fast as well. One hit after another that I could not deflect.
When he cracked another rib, he called the fight.
He stared into my eyes, his full of anger he was repressing as much as I was. “You will have to get creative to defeat the man who created you,” he said in Italian, sweat dripping down his face. “I see you are as lacking as ever.”
With those words, he left the room, no one trailing behind him as usual.
Brando stepped into the ring with me, looking me over. Sweat poured from my body as quick and as fast as it was pouring from my father’s. It hit the ground in massive splats. It was not intentional, but when my brother set his hand on my ribs, my body pulled slightly in the other direction.
The fire felt good.
It made me hungrier.
It irritated me enough to keep swinging.
“Your wife is going to be unhappy about this.” Brando’s dark eyes flicked behind me, reflecting a bright light.
My wife was inside with the women, and my eyes narrowed against the illuminated vision. I did not recognize the woman charging into the gym. Her hair was short, much shorter than my wife’s.
Brando seemed as if he wanted to set a hand on my shoulder and squeeze, but instead, he shook his head, and he and my brothers left, allowing the woman inside.
She smelled like my wife.
Her body was familiar.
However, this woman was not my wife.
She seemed much harder.
The woman stopped close to the ropes with her arms crossed—waiting, expectant.
“I do not know who you are,” I said to the woman in Italian, “but get out now—before I make you.”
The woman made a noise at me, an irritated huff. That was when my eyes narrowed even further, and I realized there was no mistaking the soft voice. A voice that could heal me when nothing else could.
“Make me then,” she said in perfect Italian, opening her arms.
I jumped from the ring, part of me demanding I rush to her, but another part ordered me to take slow steps toward her so that what I was seeing could be made sense of.
My wife.
Her hair.
It was gone.
It was darker, much shorter—above her shoulders. Big waves created a halo of hair around her head, however…the cut made her seem more womanly, more mature. It enhanced the shape of her eyes, making them seem much more dangerous.
Her entire face, as soft as it was, was…more on display, and there was no doubt, the entire male population was going to see her as if she was more dangerous than a shotgun. The perfect invitation for men who ran in my world.
“Bella,” I had said to my brother’s wife, before I knew I had a brother called Brando, my eyes attempting to bring Scarlett in closer. “I prefer your hair that way. You look like a…woman.” I had said these words with such passion that she had turned away from me out of respect for her husband.
These words were coming back to haunt me.
“My wife,” I breathed out.
She did not look so sure that I was her husband. She took a few short steps back, her arms crossed again, until she realized I was crowding her in, her back about to contact the wall.
She lifted her chin. “You don’t like it?” She touched her hair.
“This is not my hair,” I said, and then I cleared my throat. The words were wrong, but they were exactly right also.
“No,” she whispered. “It’s mine.”
“I do not understand the reason for this.”
“Well, I don’t understand the reason for all the violence.” She motioned toward me, the many bruises I’d accumulated over the week, and when she went to reach out and touch my face, I moved it out of her reach.
She had the nerve to look affronted, although all that I loved about her was changing before my eyes.
“I don’t understand what’s going on, Rocco! Why all you do is fight after that night.”
“I am fighting against the ghost of my past!” I roared.
“All the choices that I made, that were made for me, haunting my love. When my eyes are closed, I do not see rotten fruit coming at you, but swords, guns, all things that will steal my love away from me.” I looked her up and down. “It has begun.”
“This is not all for the world,” she said. “This is for you. Who I am behind closed doors is who I’ll always be, but I refuse to allow them to shatter your pieces any more than they have. Who I am to the outside world is for all to see; who I am in our private world will be only for us.”
“You will wear a mask.” Even to my own ears, the statement was accusing. I knew a thing or two about masks and what they could do when the mask faded into the skin.
“So what if I do?”
“My wife will not wear a mask to appease the outside world. She will be herself, or she will not be anyone at all.”
“I’m still me, Rocco! Just because my hair is cut differently, I’m better at speaking Italian and now know Sicilian, and my clothes are more expensive, none of that means who I am to my core is not the same.”
I stood next to her, our eyes meeting from the side.
I leaned in close to her, so close I could feel the warmth her body against the ice in my veins.
Her eyes fluttered shut, her lashes reminding me of butterfly wings, her heart beating just as fast as if the small creature was being chased, and I whispered in her ear, “When you began prioritizing the world that belongs to me over me, your husband, you are not the same. You seek their approval, not mine.” With that, I left her standing alone in the empty gym.
Ermanno ran in behind me as I left.
That night, I packed our things and drove my wife and I back to Piemonte. We were silent the entire drive, and once we arrived home, not much was shared between us.
For the first time in our marriage, I did not understand her language, and she did not understand mine.
It was the first time in my life that I felt unhinged.
My wife was not changing as a natural course of her life.
My wife was changing so that my life would become easier.
This was not the way of things. I had sacrificed my entire life for the family and its needs and wants. I would not allow her to do the same.