Chapter 28
Wake Up!
Rocco
It sounded as if my wife was in a tunnel, and she was shouting my name from afar. My eyes seemed sealed shut. I reached out my arms and pulled her to me. At all times, her essence made me feel drugged, but especially in the mornings when the sun softened her to a creature I could not get enough of.
She was soft, supple, so sweet and tender—the thought of her made my mouth water with desire.
My wife.
I pulled her even closer, breathing her in. I growled low in my throat when I felt for her hair, and it was gone. “What are you doing to me, ah? You are sending me out of my mind.” I felt her body in my hands and pressed her body to mine even harder.
We were at war, but I would make love to her until she surrendered to me.
I began to repeat the opening lines of an Aerosmith song that the sister of my heart was fond of listening to. “Come here …” When I repeated the last line before the song truly began, my hand dropped down to her culo, and my fingers were searching for the spot between…
My wife shouted my name, her frantic hands on me, attempting to shake me.
This was when I forced my eyes open. It felt as if I had to slice them to get them to rise. My wife was half on top of me, half on the ground.
I blinked, attempting to bring the scene fully into focus.
We were on the ground in the barrel room, sparce pieces of hay that had loosened from working boots underneath us. I set my hand behind my head, itching. It would not quit. I had red whelps all over my body.
“Rocco!”
I forced my stare on my wife, my eyes focusing in and out, before it straightened on her.
A breath slipped from my lips. She was sent to me from above.
Any man who dared to tell me otherwise would have to challenge me.
“You are a vision,” I whispered, my voice as if sandpaper had grated it.
“My eyes had found plenty of women, but none, not one as gorgeous as you. What you do to me goes beyond the skin. This is how powerful you are.”
Her head came to my chest and she was crying.
“Shh,” I shushed her. “We will work it all out.”
She pulled away from me some. “You didn’t come home last night, and oh God, I thought something happened to you! Giovanni escorted me out here, the last place he’d seen you. And I find you like this!” She motioned to my body.
I was naked.
I was not naked before.
Or was I?
My mind began to go in reverse, the memories sketchy. The last thing I remembered was driving my wife and I home.
“I had Giovanni call the doctor,” she said. “Something’s not right, Rocco.”
“No,” I agreed, my mind beginning to fully turn on. This was not me. I was as sharp as a newly forged sword.
“What do you remember?” she asked.
“Driving us home.”
“After? You were out here for hours.”
“Niente,” I said. “I cannot remember a thing prior.”
She began frantically searching me, keeping most of the attention on my head. Not a scratch to be found.
“Amora,” I whispered. I had to call her three times to get her to stop. Finally, she looked up at me, tears still in her eyes. “You said the doctor is on his way?”
“Yes, Giovanni went to get him. Guido is outside the door, along with Mac.”
“Help me with my pants, ah?”
“Help you? Oh my God! You never ask for help!”
“I just need a moment to gain my bearings. I can do it, but you have been spoiling me.”
My brain might have been swaying, but her hands on me touched me even deeper— my cock was hard, ready to be connected to her, my wife.
And although she was helping me, I was a big man, and she could barely move me.
But some place deep inside of me had missed her, missed the time we usually spent together at night, and I was desperate for her hands on me, to feel her healing touch. This was how she was helping me.
When I finally sat up, she searched me over again.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered. “You don’t even have a scratch.”
“I do not understand either, my love.”
She looked around, searching the room, until her eyes stilled on my desk. “You were drinking. I see a bottle but not a glass. Was the whiskey bad?”
I shrugged. “I do not remember drinking.” My mind was beginning to strain. As if the memories were there but my brain could not recall them. As if my memories were eaten by a monster inside of my head.
My wife sniffed at me. “I smell it, the whiskey.”
A knock came at the door. My wife’s eyes shot up. She was on edge.
The doctor had arrived.
Amora nodded. She went to get up, but I held her in place. I demanded to kill the tension between us, tension caused by all she demanded to change that I loved. She searched my eyes for a moment, and with tears in hers, closed them. I leaned forward some, placing a lingering kiss on her forehead.
“I might look different, Rocco,” she whispered, “but I’m still me. You’ll see. You’ll continue to see me—where it counts.”
Another knock came at the door. Amora went to get up, but I stopped her. We rose together, which was symbolic to both of us. If we were down, we would forever rise as one.
The physician, surname Silvestri, came in, and so did my men. Questions were asked. None of them I could answer. The last I remembered was driving us home.
“Do you not remember our conversation last night, Signor Fausti?” Giovanni asked me.
Everyone looked at him.
“No,” I said.
“We walked together to check why the donkeys were going off. The old man who tends to them was passed out in the enclosure. I moved him and we walked together to this room. On the way, I asked for permission to protect Thandie.”
“What’s going on with Thandie?” My wife rushed out.
Giovanni looked at me.
I nodded.
“After our visit to New Orleans, and the subsequent explosion at the rental, her position has been compromised. I do not trust anyone but me to take care of her.”
Amora searched his face for a moment, and finding whatever clue she was searching for, nodded.
“That doesn’t answer all the questions I have, though,” my wife said. She nodded to the whiskey. “That bottle wasn’t there when we left for Lucca.”
Giovanni nodded. “Signor Fausti was drinking.”
Silvestri walked over to the table. “No glass?”
“Unlike me,” I said.
“Sì,” he said, and after he pocketed the bottle, he checked me over more thoroughly. “Nothing that I can see.” He motioned for my arm. “I will take blood and see if there is anything there I can find.”
I nodded, and as everyone was clearing out, my wife walked the doctor to the door. Ermanno came through it. He came straight for me. And although I was seeing him, I was also keeping an eye on my wife and the doctor. He was young, and although respectful, I could sense how taken he was with her.
“Signor Fausti.”
I nodded at Ermanno.
“The witch did this,” he whispered to me.
My eyes narrowed and he took a step back, then he held his ground and lifted his chin.
“I do not come with proof.” He held up a wine bottle.
“Perhaps I do, but I do not know it yet. This is from the donkey man. He drank himself into oblivion last night. Or did he? This is just an educated guess. Or, perhaps, a feeling in my gut. The witch stirs the animals when she is around. She attempts to send her mean spirit into them. She sent the cinghiale after us that night. She wanted the donkeys to make the noises they do. Heeehaw. Heehaw. Heeehaw. Heeeehaw—”
“Get on with the story, Ermanno.”
“She wanted you out of the room so she could poison your brew. She also needed to shut the donkey handler up. This is why she poisoned him too. He is still asleep. I checked.”
“Give me her purpose in doing all of this.”
“The witch wants you and does not want Ari— Signora Fausti to have you. I believe we should have this bottle checked as well.”
I nodded.
He cleared his throat. “There is something else. Your son was on the property again.”
My entire body stiffened with the ice in my veins.
My son still had not requested to see me face to face, yet he was living off my land.
If it would have been anyone else, he would have been a dead man.
My son was doing this to me on purpose, challenging me without speaking a word, because he knew with every bit of disrespect, he was carving pieces of my heart out.
“The last time the witch was in the woods, your son was there as well. Two voices in the woods that night.” Ermanno quickly looked behind us, at my wife, who got a nod from the doctor and looked as if she might float higher than the clouds at her feet.
Ermanno’s stare followed mine.
“The handsome doctor, this Elio Silvestri, is taken with Signora Fausti.”
Perhaps the good doctor had heard Ermanno. The look in my eyes stated the same, except with a warning. He fixed his glasses and left.
My wife turned to me, a smile on her face, tears in her eyes.
“Leave us,” I said to the room.
She kept her eyes on mine, and when she was close enough, I took her arm and slid her sleeve up.
She gasped at how quick I was. How her entire body fell into mine with the move.
Perhaps the rest of the world could not tell there had been a slight puncture wound on my wife’s skin, but I could scent the loss of blood—my blood.
“Tell me.” My voice was sharp, a command.
It did not faze her. She looked into my eyes with so much love, it could have been the warmth of her ardor that shone through the window and highlighted the two of us. She gently reached up and touched my face.
“I’m pregnant, Rocco,” she whispered. “You’re going to be a papà again.”
“Repeat this,” I said, my voice full of gravel. I had to be sure whatever was going on inside of my mind was not playing tricks on me. If it was, I would carve my own mind out and feed it to the pigs.
Her smile lit up the dim room. “I’m pregnant! You’re going to be a papà again. I’m going to be a mamma!”
I lifted her off her feet while she laughed and cried, and I carried her inside of our home to celebrate, damning the world to hell if it tried to steal what I had longed for my entire life.
My wife, and the second chance I had been given at life.