13. Time Reveals All at Its Own Pace
Chapter 13
Time Reveals All at Its Own Pace
F amily business took me away most of the next day. A marriage arrangement between a Fausti man and a woman in Sicily. We had branches all over Italy, and each branch was broken down into clusters. Each cluster had a leader, and from there, each “family” had a boss, but each of those bosses answered to the leader of the cluster. The leader of the cluster collected dues from each separate family.
The Fausti family operated as a royal family would as its highest point. Hierarchy was king and ruled above all. Our branch of it had ruled the family for years.
My grandfather was king over the entire famiglia . His word was law. And he had earned the right to enforce our rules as he saw fit—the more creative a king got with the punishment he doled out, the more respected he was. He chose time. Place. And how the sentencing would go. There were times he would sentence on the spot. Times when he would take days or months to ponder the situation. Then there were times when a jury would be called in.
Our own famiglia.
We challenged each other at times for offenses we felt were acts of misconduct. Sometimes we drew swords, as we did in the olden days, or even took our quarrels to the racetrack, as we did then. My grandfather had declared a no-swords rule after my grandmother asked it of him. Perhaps she had thought it barbaric. Sometimes money was on the line. Sometimes life and death.
It was not a system all crime families could honor for as long as we have.
The Fausti famiglia guarded their ways as fiercely as they guarded their honor, loyalty, and blood. This was where our motto was born. La mia parola è buona come il mio sangue. My word is as good as my blood. The blood in our veins was so rich with all the things money could not buy, it would be dishonorable to have to spill a droplet of it for something we considered disrespectful. The older men in our family, who got this from an even older generation, and so on, were known to say proudly, What do have to be afraid of? Liars are cowards. These are the only men who lie. I vigliacchi!Faustis have the hearts of lions!
We were ruthless in the face of challenges and passionate toward our women.
After all, what was a man who could not please his wife?
Not a lion but a laughing hyena.
My grandfather often laughed at that one, attempting to mimic the sound they made. I grinned when I thought of it, and the two betrotheds in front of me gave me suspicious looks. We got back to business, and after it was completed for the day, I raced back to Pienza and picked up another special package from Mario before heading to Siena. The package was bigger this time. He gave me triple the amount since I had not received the others.
My heart started to pound harder in my chest when the ballerina met me at the door.
Lifting the bag, I grinned. “I will be your private chef. Lead me to your kitchen, Signora .”
She laughed, inviting me in.
The bella ballerina watched as I took out the contents of the bag and set them on the counter. I could cook simple dishes, but nothing extravagant. Abate Pears with pecorino cheese was what I had decided on. I sliced them finely, along with the cheese, and then drizzled warm honey and pepper over it all.
I did not think it possible, but she was even more beautiful than she was the day before. She would only age like a fine wine. There was a pleasant warmth about her that went beyond the physical. As if her love could take a seed in winter and create a rose from it in spring. That was the scent that drifted off her skin. Rose. But I was not sure if the scent would always fit her. With long hair, yes. She looked innocent. A subtle beauty breezing into a man’s life and changing it forever. But with the style of her hair after it had been cut, she had turned into a vixen. It brought more attention to her feline eyes. They were a true jade green, but closer to the irises, gold streaks like sunbeams bled out.
The look in her eyes as she studied the dish almost made me grin. She was uncertain but took the risk. I did not know what to do at first when she lifted her hand after eating a few bites.
“High-five,” she said, wiggling her fingers.
When I did not move, she took her two hands and brought them together, making them clap once.
“That’s how you do the high-five thing.” She lifted her hand again. “Don’t leave me hanging, Rocco.”
I lifted my hand, and she slapped hers against mine. I could do nothing but laugh.
She was so intriguing, it should have been a crime.
“That means your dish is excellent,” she said, seemingly forcing her eyes away from mine, as if my laughter had hypnotized her and she had to look away, going for another bite of jazzed up pear.
“Grazie,” I breathed out as she whisked past me, done with our meal. She began to show me areas of the house she wanted to change to suit her tastes.
Not only her tastes, but her husband’s. He was always in her thoughts.
I was intrigued by this. By her. By him. By their relationship.
She had excellent taste. All that she longed to do to the farmhouse would suit it. She was being respectful of its bones but giving it a facelift. My grandmother would have approved. I did not hesitate to think that my great uncle would stop by and approve of it himself as well. I made sure the workers knew that the Fausti name had sealed itself over the door of this home. I even brought up my wife’s name to the bella ballerina, leaving out the wife part, and approved of the deal Rosaria had worked out with my great uncle.
However, there was more to this story than my wife was telling me. She was purposely not sharing, and I was purposely not demanding it. The truth would reveal itself in time. Where this bella ballerina was concerned, the mystery surrounding her almost suited her magnetic spirit.
The more time I spent with her, the more I understood there was a draw to her that the eye could not immediately capture. Her intelligent eyes were sharp, and they cut straight to the bone, revealing feelings not on the table. Her perception was invasive, and when she would speak the thoughts before the people around her had a chance to voice them, it could cause cold ripples on the skin.
In another time, she would have been labeled a strega, a witch, and possibly burned at the stake.
She was a woman who felt too much, and perhaps she did not always know how to control the burden of it. As if she were a sponge, she would have to be wrung out not to drown. This softened me toward her, especially when I would catch her staring at me, or when she would be hypnotized by my smile or my laughter.
My wife blinked at me when I laughed, ready to jump on my cock, but this woman…she looked at me as though I was a person. A man who, perhaps, did not look as though he would laugh often, and when he did, the sound touched her core.
Then the questions about my father came.
“What was it like growing up with a famous racecar driver?”
I waved a dismissive hand. “He wasn’t around much. ”
“Do you get along with him?”
I shrugged. “He is my father.”
“Are you an only child?” she rushed out.
“Is there a reason you wish to know, bella?”
“No.” She waved a hand. “No reason. Just curious.”
This word she used , curious, was a dangerous word to her, indeed. Curiosity killed the kitty, and all of that. She was climbing the wrong tree inquiring about my father, our family, as she was. There was also the knowledge that she was using our last name.
Was she a secret child of my father’s?
Anything was possible, but in our family, sons outnumbered daughters to an astounding degree. It was a rare occurrence when a daughter was born. Lola Fausti was one of them, and even though my grandfather’s sister was loving, she knew her worth in the family. The thought of my great aunt made me grin. She was a spicy chili pepper. And although Scarlett…Fausti was a woman and not a man, she did not resemble the Faustis in any way.
This was why, before Donato left for America, I gave him an envelope holding the picture of Scarlett, and I tucked inside of it a brief letter for Donato to deliver to him personally. I would not hide this mystery from my father. Even though Nonno had banished him from our kingdom, he was still my father, and I had a feeling he would rule us someday. Nonno would not live forever, and after his death, if he had not written his wishes in stone, my father could challenge my uncle to rule. I doubted my grandfather would ban my father for eternity. He knew my father was the most capable to lead the family after he was gone. If Ettore, or one of the younger brothers in line, ruled and failed, my father could still claim his birthright after Nonno left us.
All of this was why I did not want to outright demand the ballerina give me the truth. As she was with her husband the night before, she was clever. She danced around it. But if I pushed the issue, she might lock me out or leave. I did not want to forfeit my time with her over family issues. I would get to the bottom of it on my own time, but I did not wish to cut my time with her short.
She was everything in a woman I had yearned for my entire life. She seemed to love her husband with a passion that put the two of them first. She was creating a home for them. She was warm and supple and yielding, but fierce when she needed to be. Perhaps she would turn into a hell cat for the ones she loved. And the way she had gone on excitedly about learning how to cook Italian food, since she had lessons in France, only endeared me to her even more.
“I just worry about adding not enough or too much!”
“Quanto basta,” I had said to her, making a do not worry about it motion with my hands. Quanto basta meant as much as needed.
She laughed. “There is nothing worse for a cook then not seasoning the food enough or over seasoning it. Even your dish was perfectly peppered.”
I grinned at her when she had said perfectly peppered , her alliteration almost like a song, and she exploded with laughter.
She was so comfortable with me already, but not trying to impress me, it seemed. From the moment I had met her, she completed a void inside of me, and I craved for her to fill the rest of them, until I was the perfectly balanced leader my family honored above emeralds, diamonds, rubies. I was not inherently ruthless, since I appreciated the romantic side of life, craved more of it in my personal life, but it did not take much to swing a man like me in one direction or the other. Rosaria had gotten that much right. But this was where my true struggle thrived, between the two types of blood rushing through my veins: ruthless and romantic.
I was a man whose blood was battling inside of his veins. Both sides of me needed to be in harmony for me to become the king my family needed.
There was something inside of this ballerina that was uncatchable, and the part of me that was an excellent hunter responded immediately to it .
As I watched her move around the kitchen, a warmth I was not accustomed to blossomed in my chest. Perhaps she was not doing these things for me, building a home her man looked forward to returning to, but she was still doing it for the man she loved. She was a beacon of hope in a bleak world where I had started to wonder if a woman like her, a love like hers, still existed.
“Bella,” I said, moving closer to her so she could feel the warmth of my body. “I prefer your hair that way. You look like a…woman.”
Calling her a woman seemed to please her, but she turned away from me, busying herself in the kitchen. Her eyes kept flitting to a stubborn cabinet that kept falling from its hinges. She would fix it, and the next time she set something inside of it, it would fall again. I had offered to fix it, but she shook her head and said it was personal.
This woman considered fixing a piece of wood personal.
I laughed myself out of the farmhouse that evening, twirling the keys on my finger, after I said goodbye to her. My instincts told me to move as fast as a Ferrari when it came to claiming this woman, but I held back, putting my urgency on a leash I was not accustomed to wearing, deciding to set myself to public transportation time in Italy: never on time.
Why the rush, ah?
Rosaria was waiting at the table for me when I got home, her lips already stained with red wine, the proof of it sitting at the bottom of her crystal glass. In the darkness, with the light behind her, the dregs of wine turned into droplets of blood. The house smelled of starch—pasta.
“Husband,” she said with a cheeky grin, “did you have a good day?”
Before I could answer her, one of my men came from the kitchen with a message. My father was on the phone. I took the call in my office.
“ Papà ,” I said.
His end of the line was silent. The hours he called me were outside of normal calling hours. The guards under his control gave him the use of a phone.
“Son,” he said in Italian, calling me figlio , “leave the situation as is until it comes to you. Time reveals all at its own pace.”
Donato had successfully delivered the envelop to him with the photograph and note then.
The line went dead, and a glass of red wine appeared on my desk, my wife’s canary-yellow diamond wedding rings glinting against it. I looked up, and she looked down at me.
“Drink up,” she said, pushing the glass closer to me. “Every king needs to heat his blood, then be cooled down with the sacrifice of his ruthless queen’s cold blood.” She sat on my desk, opening her legs to me, and I brought my head between them after I drank the last drop of my red wine.