25. Blood Might be Owed
Chapter 25
Blood Might be Owed
F eminine laughter echoed inside of Castello Sul Mare , and toasting to the sound, I lifted the glass in my hand, about to drain the dregs of whiskey left and then go for another full glass.
The celebrations had started in preparation of our wedding.
A wedding to a woman I would have died to have.
It would be, for me, this time around, a wedding to a woman I would live to have.
Even though the notion of dying for my beloved was romantico, the ultimate sacrifice and honor for my heart in physical form, time had changed my perception of life. I demanded to live it with her, even for a time.
I was not sure if forever would be long enough.
I’d always craved the powerful love my brother shared with his wife. Somehow, someway, the same love had found me, and whatever Amora and I shared in this life would cross over to the next for us.
I refused a breath without her next to me.
I refused a place in any world without her in it.
Love had introduced itself to me through her hand, and it was mine to know, and to give in return .
Mine.
My fist came over my heart with a final thud at the word and its meaning.
Mine.
The soft creature with the heart of a lioness, laughing in the next room, had been created for me.
Rocco Piero Fausti.
She was and would always be the craving of my heart and the longing of my body.
Aria Amora Bella.
I also knew the challenge we were facing.
Ghost or not, someone was after my love because of me. All because of my tie to Rosaria Caffi. When Vincenzo reported to me what had happened at the haunted castello— someone had written those words on the wall in blood—I had demanded to read the threat with my own eyes, and I had snapped.
All the years of my life, I had never understood a rage that powerful. I had seen it in my brother when his wife came to me and not to him during a moment of deep despair. I had seen it in my son after Rosaria had come close to mortally wounding his love. I had seen it in Rosaria Caffi when she did not get her way.
I had seen it but had not felt anything deep enough to cause me to explode outside of my body, only seeing the color of the blood that painted the wall. It had blinded me. It had proved to me that I did not know myself any longer, who I was, and who I was becoming.
The soft creature had taken my carefully crafted book of laws and flung it out the window.
She, the author of books.
The thought made me grin into my glass before the anxious feeling inside of my heart rang like a reminding bell. My love, soon to be my wife, was in danger.
An urge inside of me to flee, to hide her someplace else in the world, almost overtook me, but my mind kept my feet planted on the ground. A meeting between my family and I was held after the discovery on the wall, and it was decided that the best course of action was to stay on the island. It would keep us close to danger, but that danger, if not a ghost, was kept here as well. Sooner or later, someone would see whoever this was and report it back to me.
The only problem was, most of the men had an aversion even to the thought of a ghost. I had only two men, Vincenzo being one of them, who would brave the castello night or day with a clear head and vision. Even when the men kept guard, their fear of the unknown ruled what they imagined they saw or heard—even smelled. We had reports of a voice singing quietly, of a woman crying, of ghostly sounds, of items being moved from one spot to another, of a spicy perfume floating through the air. One of my men had to be hospitalized. His mind had taken over his body, and he swore he had been possessed by this ghostly woman.
Set these men against the most dangerous army in the world, and they would march toward it without blinking or flinching, but set a fantasma in front of them, and they would flee, leaving behind their guts and balls as an offering.
The caretakers did not know what to make of this new “ghost” either. After all the years they had been taking care of the place, they admitted to the pining, the feeling of a distant being sharing the space of the castello , but not once had they found her to be threatening. Sì , Eufemia believed the energy of the spirit to be a woman. Eufemia believed the woman had drowned but did not realize it. Her love was so great for my ancestor, she rose out of the sea as if she had saved herself to get back to him. However, she could not find him. She needed to be set free.
Vincenzo asked if Eufemia could do this, but she shook her head sadly and whispered, “She must let go on her own.”
In my opinion, this was no ghost who only pined for a long-lost lover. This was someone fucking with me. It did not change the fact that whoever it was had been close to my love and was threatening her.
It could have been Rosaria’s son, Tiziano, raging war on me, but my men reported to me he was in New York, researching Rosaria’s history there. I could have told him where to go to find the man who sired him, if he wished. I had known since the boy was young that he was not mine. But it was not his fault he was created out of spite. I treated him as my own. Perhaps because I knew how it felt to be created out of something other than love. However, at that point, a reminder of what Rosaria had done to attempt to hurt me was no reminder at all—I had become numb to her behavior.
Rosaria’s wrong doings did not forgive mine, though, and I accepted my role in our lives. I had caused this haunting in my own life, to a certain degree, by the choices I had made.
This thought had been on repeat inside of my mind ever since my explosion at the castello . My past is coming back to haunt me.
Proof of this was when Francesco offered me a sum for Amora. The same way I had offered my brother a sum for a night with his wife. Perhaps jealousy was near to me when it came to the love I had always craved, but it was not when it came to the pleasures of the flesh.
In this moment, I could still feel the heat that rushed through my blood when Francesco had made the offer on the street. How I would have killed him if the lion in my chest had not been pulled back. An invisible line existed in my life after I had first laid eyes on my Amora. She could pull me back from death if she held on to me hard enough.
Which she had.
The Fausti family has laws on the island as well as on the mainland. One of the laws: no blood would be spilled between family members on island ground. My rage had swallowed the rule down, about to spit in his face, by way of my hand slicing his throat. However, if a droplet of his blood would have landed on the street, I would have been sentenced to death myself. It had only ran down his chest and absorbed into his swim trunks.
I would have carved my heart out for Amora to place in her care rather than allow the executioner to have it first if Francesco would have placed a hand on her. I did not miss his greedy eyes, how he wanted mine. And not only to fuck with me. He wanted her as his queen. A dream that his branch of our family had since Marzio ruled our famiglia .
It did not matter which generation, men like me, men who have the spirits of lions in their chests, always crave to feel—whether that feeling be love or power, or both sides of it. Francesco’s heart had roared in his chest when he first laid eyes on my Amora. She was different in a world made of the same. She had the power to set a man in the right direction to find a balance.
To rule both sides of who we are—two different types of blood running seamlessly next to each other.
The ruthless.
Lo spietato
The romantic.
Il romantico.
In our family, ruthless and romantic were the two sides of who we were, the ancient qualities that we were created from, that we held close to the chest for the span of our lives.
Sighing, I poured myself another full glass of whiskey, closing my eyes to the sweet sound of her warm laughter echoing throughout these cold halls. The women were spoiling her. Molto bene . She would be spoiled for the rest of her life.
“It is early to be drinking,” Brando said in Italian, stepping into the dim room with me.
Dario followed in his footsteps. “He is celebrating,” he said.
“Alone?” Romeo appeared, making a disagreeable noise. “I do not think so.” He set a bucket hat on my head, fishhooks dangling from it, and I turned to him.
He took a step back, barely keeping his laughter in check. “We are on the island—it is our right to relax.” He shrugged. “And the theme of this stag party is…you have been hooked by Amora Bella, fratello .”
Brando squeezed my shoulder. “In short, we’re taking you fishing.”
All my brothers wore clothes suitable for a day on the water.
I was wearing a suit.
“It is not best,” I said. “The threat on the island is too fucking close.”
“Fucking close,” Brando agreed, “but we’ll be closer. We won’t go far. We’ll take the steps down to the water right outside. Fish from there. Men are swarming this place.”
“My wife’s feeling? Scarlett’s feeling?”
My wife.
A feeling rolled through me then like a rushing wave of water inside of me. It stole my breath even at the thought of it.
“All good, or you know I wouldn’t be stepping foot even in this office,” Brando said. “Your wife agrees with this feeling.”
Romeo blinked at me, probably attempting to control his humor at the fucking ridiculous fishhook hat he had set on my head. “You’re only doing this once, fratello —it is real this time. Your wife wants you to have this.”
Her no-rules policy when it came to our feelings. Did her law state that we extend those feelings to times such as these?
I was thinking yes, and as my brother was prone to say, Fuck me.
My life had become completely reliant on rules—if it had not been for them, during the end of my relationship with Rosaria, I would have been fucking lost on stormy seas, no direction to take. However, in that moment, I remembered a time when my passionate heart had spoken to me, allowing feelings to move in and out of me without a thought from my mind.
Naturale.
The way I was with Amora in and out of the bedroom.
As if my heart had summoned her, she appeared outside of the office door.
“ Knock, knock, knock .” She pretended to hit the wood, peeking her head in.
The smile on my face was uncontrollable. She wore a ridiculous hat as well. One that said “master fisherwoman,” but it was pink.
She grinned back at me. “We match!”
“We do.” I nodded.
Our eyes connected from across the room, and it was as if the power in mine moved her toward me. Brando said he would give us a minute, and with my brothers following in line, closed the door without a noise behind them.
“Hi,” she whispered, gazing up into my eyes.
“Amora,” I matched her tone, caressing her face.
“I’m really digging that hat, Fausti.” She straightened it on my head. “Now all you have to do is rip out of that suit and wear clothes your skin can breathe in while you catch me dinner with your brothers.”
I ran a tender hand up and down her arm, and she closed her eyes, shivering. She was so fucking sensitive to my touch. My cock was already hard at the mere sight of her, but when she responded to me as she did, it made me feel as if it would rip through my skin if I could not be inside of her.
“Tell me, are you breathing, Amora,” I whispered.
“Barely.” I felt the soft breath escape from her parted lips.
I lifted her from the floor and set her on the desk. She reached for my pants as I lifted her dress around her thighs, removing her lacy underwear. The sweet smell of her desire wafted under my nose, and I breathed it in as if it was lifesaving air.
She whimpered, jutting her hips up, already craving the friction between us. Her hands were on my arms, and she tightened her grip on my muscles, demanding I feel how badly she needed this.
If we could not connect, we would both die in each other’s arms.
“Amora,” I barely got out, my breath already stolen from just watching how beautiful she was.
Her cheeks were tinged with a delicate blush. Her were lips parted, her breaths coming in pants. Her breasts were rising and falling with the rhythm of her stuttering heart. Her thighs were open to me, inviting me inside, her fica soaked and ready for me. When I entered her, I closed my eyes, trying to catch my breath.
She hissed out a breath before she made the sweetest, softest noise for me. Her grip on me grew tighter, as if she had to release the tension inside of her on me.
She was putting her love on me.
It caused my hips to jerk forward, but I kept her steady on the desk as I drove her higher and higher, my cock pulsing, my balls slapping. She was making crazed noises. Noises that spoke to the animal inside of me—feeding me and denying me at the same time. I was as crazed as she was. Together, we were making love but fucking as if we were two wild animals that could not be separated, or we would die.
“That is it,” I coaxed her in Italian. “Move with me, Amora.”
She tightened around me and I growled, fighting the animal to hold back. I stilled inside of her before my hips came forward with a jolt that would have sent her flying off the desk if my hold on her hadn’t been sound.
“I can’t hold on. Please!”
“Come to me, Amora,” I ordered. “Come to me now!”
She quaked around my cock with a shaky, ah, ah ahhhh! , and I exploded inside of her with a sound that ripped from my chest. She rested her head against my heart after, her breaths fanning over my neck. I rested my chin on her head, closing my eyes to the fucking dizziness. I had never experienced that before her. Not even with more than one woman at once.
This woman was every woman in the world to me.
She was the woman who fed and controlled my finally roaring lion.
It walked after her as if she had only a kitten on a leash, though the lion needed no such thing. It just followed her wherever she went.
“Rocco,” she whispered.
I peeked one eye open at her .
She laughed. “That good for you, too, huh?”
“If you are not careful,” I said, breathing her in, “you will kill me.”
She laughed softly in my arms, and when she met my eye again, it grew in pitch. I had forgot about the ridiculous fucking hat. But her laughter had stirred something inside of me. My laughter followed behind hers. Her hooks had been trembling with the force of my thrusts. I was still hard inside of her, my cock needing more, always needing more of her, and her laughter turned into a wanting sound.
“I’m feeling it again.” She moaned. “When you laugh. Your… cock is rubbing against all the already sensitive nerves inside of me.”
The word cock from her sweet mouth sent me on the hunt again.
Flinging the hats off our heads, I started moving inside of her again, shutting out the world, until I cleaned her up and she went back to her party, dazed and walking slowly. I changed my clothes, meeting my brothers for the fishing expedition, dazed and walking slowly as well.
Sans fucking hat.
The spiral metal staircase behind Castello Sul Mare trembled with the weight of the men, but it did not make a sound as we all took them to reach the dock. We were sizable men, but we walked quietly, in order of our births. Even on this island, where we were allowed to be set loose from most of our rules, hierarchy was so ingrained in us, we all automatically fell in line.
The sun blazed and ricocheted off the water in blinding sparks. My sunglasses still smelled of my Amora, when she had worn them for the ride with my father. It helped shade my eyes, but not fully. My skin felt hot to touch, but as she had said, it was breathing in the salt air and sighing at the feel of it. Sweat dripped down my face, and as soon as I stepped foot on the dock, I removed my t-shirt and stretched my shoulders. My feet were bare, and the wood underneath my soles was warm. All the men were doing the same, as if we were stretching after an extended hibernation.
None of the men more so than me.
It was as if my heart had stopped and then restarted, forcing air through my lungs, and my first hit of it was as clean as the sea.
The dock stretched the entire length of the back of the castello , though the only way to the castello was up the spiral staircase. Loungers and Adirondack chairs were placed here and there, and a fire pit sat in the center of both sides. Half of the dock was used for fishing, with all the gear lined up. A boat was tied to that side to take passengers further out to fish. It bobbed up and down with the sway of the sea. The other half was mostly used for jumping off to swim.
Papà, two of my uncles, all of my brothers, my sons and nephews, along with Mac and his sons, Saverio, Salvatore, and Renzo, all spread out in different directions. Papà claimed an Adirondack, growling some as he sat down, his two brothers following suit. Brando went straight for the fishing gear. Dario helped Romeo stock the outside solar frigorifero . The dock was also equipped with a cooking station. Mac stood next to me. Our eyes were on all the sons. It did not take them long to jump into the water, coming up after like water dogs shaking off the droplets.
“ Woo! ” Maestro howled, coming up for air, the sea sending him forward with its push as he wiped his face.
Brando and I glanced in Papà’s direction at the same time out of habit. Even that simple of a reaction could cause him to act if he did not feel it was appropriate. We were men, and we acted accordingly to the rules men in our family followed. However, this island was neutral ground. We did not have to wear suits as we normally did, unless it was evening and we dined at one of the fine restaurants, or at church. Papà had taken off his shirt and was wearing swim shorts. He watched his grandsons and his grandsons of the heart—Saverio, Salvatore, and Renzo—from behind dark sunglasses. He ran a hand through his mostly silver hair as he took a slow drink of the cold birra Romeo had handed him.
As usual, Romeo was in control of the music. He announced to everyone that he had put together a playlist for my stag party. It was mostly American music that he had been turned onto after Brando and Scarlett became a part of our lives. Romeo had even learned how to play the guitar and tried lending his voice to country music songs, his favorite. He and my nephew, Mariano, had this in common.
“Romeo!” Dario called.
His head came up from studying his playlist.
“Do you remember the time that American girl said that you were as bad as an STD when it came to getting rid of the thought of you—she was so in love with you, she could not stop thinking of you.”
Mac almost spit out his beer.
Everyone grinned at that, no man as much as Romeo. The girl had been attempting to express how much he stuck to her thoughts by comparing him to a sexually transmitted disease.
Brando’s shoulders shook from across the pier. It was as if he was baking in the sun, his skin turning even darker before my eyes. We were all baking, even those of us who were standing underneath cover.
“This woman,” Papà said, sitting up some. “She was not skilled at the metaphors, ah? Tell me you cured her of that with a dose of romance, son.”
All of us grinned. Her metaphors had needed resuscitation.
Conversation seemed to flow as easily as the wind around us, the music as well. Papà even complimented Romeo’s playlist. He puffed up as if he were a proud fucking peacock at the compliment. He was so busy fluffing his feathers that he did not notice me coming at his hot neck with my cold bottle of birra .
“ Whaaaa ,” he whispered, turning around as if something he did not like touched him, slapping at his neck .
He had not expected it from me. We grinned at each other when he realized.
Our grins lingered as Niccolo started to sing “Night Moves.”
Brando came to stand next to us, a bottle of birra in his hand. “Waste of time to try to fish now,” he said, finishing his drink. “Too many bodies in the water.” He stretched his shoulders, setting his bottle in a custom holder along the deck and, becoming a creature much sneakier than even a shark, dove into the water without so much as a splash.
Cruising under the surface as if he were a part of it, he popped up minutes later behind Matteo and dunked his head under the surface, all his sons laughing. My sons watched this, then glanced at me.
It hit me straight in the chest.
The longing in their eyes.
I remembered it well.
The watching.
The craving.
The emptiness of not having.
No rules , Amora’s sweet voice echoed in my ears. We were still Faustis. We were just living in our own private space.
Finishing the rest of my beer, I handed the bottle to Mac, then dove in as my brother had. The water instantly made my skin pucker from the coolness of it. It felt like sweet relief after a stint in hell. My sons’ bodies were rocking with the strong hand of the sea, and I could barely make out voices as I swam underneath Amadeo and pulled his trunks down.
I broke the surface to find him looking around, almost scandalized. “Papà!”
“Guard your sausage,” I said, laughing at the look on his face. It was probably the same look I wore on mine when Romeo had stuck that fucking hook hat on my head. “Fish enjoy nibbling on meat.”
“Brando will not need bait,” Romeo said, cracking up, his laughter raspy .
At first, Amadeo looked lost, and then he started to laugh, along with Ludovico, who swam away from me when I went after his trunks.
Most of the men roared with laughter, even if Papà only grinned. He watched us in the water until he decided to jump in himself, his brothers following him in. At one point, all the men were in the water, and even though I did not want my sons to feel it, I missed my Massimo. He should have been with us, teaching his son how to swim, his wife enjoying time with the women.
If Tiziano (who had been named after my grandfather, Marzio, but had been stripped of the title when he went after Matteo’s wife with a snake) had not dishonored me, I would have felt the absence of his presence as well. I had raised him as my own. But he had dishonored me, and it was not something I could overlook.
Allowing the water to carry me in its cool embrace, I leaned back, face up to the sun, closing my eyes to it.
I was a second too late to react when it happened.
Brando pulled my pants down.
He was the only one sneaky enough to do it.
“Guard your sausage, Papà!” Amadeo shouted my way. “The fish in these waters are nasty nibblers!”
All the men roared with laughter while I pulled my pants back up, guarding my sausage from naughty nibblers. My woman was a naughty nibbler, and the thought made me grin. I swam far enough away from the castello to see the glass walls shimmering in reflection to the bright sun. Suddenly, a dark head broke the surface next to me, and I met the eyes of my older brother. We’d swum further out at the same time, both of us having the same thought on our minds.
Our women.
Amora and Scarlett were standing together, one arm around each other, waving to us. Amora still had the master fisherwoman hat on her head.
It seemed as if Amora and Scarlett set their hands against the window at the same time. Brando and I raised our hands at the same time.
Brando hit my chest. “Let’s fish,” he said.
We swam together to the boat, leaving the other men in charge of guarding the castello . We did not take the boat too far from the dock, just far enough away to catch our dinner. Fishing is a quiet sport, and in the quiet, memories and the feelings attached to them started to attack me in a silent battle that I did not anticipate. I was fighting them off until Romeo’s music took a turn toward a different genre of music altogether, and one of Rosaria’s arias reached as far out as our boat. Mariano quickly jumped out of the water and changed it.
Romeo lifted his hand out of the water in triumph after the aria disappeared. “The Chair,” he announced, then started to sing it. His shoulders moved in tempo to the beat, and he looked up at the back of the castello , making a come to me motion with both of his hands as if his wife was watching. Perhaps she was, or she had felt his want of her. She appeared in the window and blew him a kiss.
My mood darkened as the light of the sun started to come down. The world was a fluorescent pink, all in its path glowing from the unreal color.
My brother’s dark eyes were on me. “Rocco,” he called.
My eyes rose to meet his.
“As tremulous as our first meeting was, there was no doubt when we finally saw each other that we shared the same blood. It took time to earn the title of brother from each other. But I look at you and see a reflection of myself. You look at me and see a reflection of yourself. I recognize the look on your face—in your eyes. It was the same look I wore when I made the mistake of thinking too much before my wedding. Don’t repeat the same mistake. Claim what’s rightfully yours.”
I said nothing as we grew quiet, reeling in our dinner. By the time we turned the boat in the direction of the dock, we had caught enough to feed the entirety of our men. My brother and I had caught the same number of fish. Before, perhaps, it would have mattered to me if he had caught one more than me, but it did not.
My chest was no longer incomplete—my entire life was full.
Except.
The sound of Rosaria’s voice kept echoing in my ear, reminding me of her absence in this life, how a part of me had seemed to go off the cliff with her, and how my Amora’s life would be tangled in the wreckage of the life I had chosen to live. Even when my father had given me permission to annul my marriage to her, I did not.
Rosaria Caffi had been the only person alive who had understood why.
We had been tangled in an understanding of each other, a python with its body wrapped around ours, squeezing.
Brando and I cleaned, prepared, then grilled the fish in silence, and all the men ate in the same silence. The temperature had come down with the sun, and the Mediterranean was turning the same color as the sky, sapphire blue. Dinner done, Mac lit the fire pit, and we all took seats around it, quiet from the sun and water, nursing our drinks. Mariano handed Romeo his guitar and he started to strum the strings, his voice and Mariano’s meeting to sing, “A Pirate Looks At Forty.”
The men would lift a bottle of birra in the air when a lyric hit the right chord of spirit.
Looking at this world from where I was sitting, I did not recognize it as my own. My life was ruled by the laws of our family. This scene was what Rosaria Caffi feared the most: the ancient ribbons of the Fausti family unraveling with the lax mood of all these men made of rich Fausti blood. Rosaria had even complained of it in my father after he had annulled his marriage and married Margherita.
Rosaria had said the daughter of a whore had bewitched him—and that the entire time Lothario had been trying to warn us, the other daughter of a whore, the spinning ballerina, had bewitched us , and look what happened to Lothario—Luca cut his legs off to silence his truth. That was fair, Rosaria had said—it proved how ruthless the son of Marzio could be—but the daughter of a whore, this ridiculous wildflower , was turning a deadly animal into the soil in which these common seeds grew from.
Brando and Mac’s eyes were on me as I stood, going to the end of the dock, looking out over the dark water, which only an hour or so ago was as clear as my thoughts.
The truth, as the song echoed it from behind me.
I was hundreds of years too late arriving for my own party, and I had missed it. I was not the man I once was. I was not this man who was allowed to be free. Setting a ridiculous hat on my head, even a mask over my face, was not going to change my status. I was created to rule. To be the ruthless leader of the Fausti famiglia . The python might have released Rosaria, perhaps, but it replaced her with my role in the family.
I refused to pull my Amora into its suffocating embrace only because I could not live without her. She deserved to live a life that offered her the freedom to live without bars and cages. She deserved to be a roll of water in the sea, carefree and going in whichever direction she decided to take.
A freedom that would lead her away from me and into another male’s arms.
The glass in my hand shattered when I thought of her skin being touched by another man. The noises she made that were all mine. The smile she wore that was all mine. The perfume she wore that was all mine after it had caressed her skin and created a scent that was all hers, therefore, all mine to take pleasure from.
She was all mine.
Yet.
The roaring lion in my heart was at war with the hissing snake inside of my mind.
The war waged till the day of my wedding—I was caged in with it, turning my back on the only key powerful enough to set me free. Because I knew I would never truly be free. My life was more powerful than the key, its suffocating squeeze locking my Amora inside this hell with me.
If Rosaria Caffi could not survive this life with me, what were the chances my sweet Amora could?
That was the most haunting thought of all, because it was not a thought. It was a question with a clear answer.