King of Italy (Fausti Family Royal)

30. The Island from a Different Perspective

Chapter 30

The Island from a Different Perspective

E ven though my husband only spoke the truth, and he spoke to me enough, sometimes he could turn inward, so reflective, like an image of time wavering against the reflection of clear water, but his thoughts were too deep to find. I would have thought it was just him, but I noticed Luca Fausti was the same way, and so were his sons. Romeo less than Brando and Dario, but at times, Romeo could be that way too. Their wives noticed it. Sometimes they would bring them out of the mood, and sometimes they left them sitting inside with it.

Rocco hadn’t mentioned it to me, being reflective again, but I’d figured out one of the reasons why he was determined to leave Castello Burranea and explore the island.

He was out to prove—to himself mostly—that what existed between us was more than just sex. He knew what we had was real, but he was almost…hesitant to believe that what he’d always craved was finally his.

The “love” between us.

He’d retract into himself so deeply, he’d stare at me, unblinking, and after however long—either I’d call his name or he’d snap out of it on his own—he’d shake his head, like he was surfacing, waking up from a dream .

It was Juliette who had told me how Rocco had been used for his, er, entire body. Even the thought of it sent an ick factor through me, the green monster rearing her crazed head. But…to paint the entire picture of his life up until that point, how he came to be that ghost in the window of my photo, I had to consider his past and how it had changed him.

And for something to change a man like him…almost like an island…it took years and years of erosion.

Erosion of his wants.

His desires.

His heart.

Juliette had also told me how many hearts he’d broken because he never felt a connection to a woman. It was always an understanding.

An arrangement.

So many damn rules boxing him inside of his life.

Then there I came, the wildest thing he’d ever felt a connection to, and he could barely keep me contained in his heart. Our connection was just as strong outside of the bedroom than it was in it. The bedroom only brought our bodies together in some kind of harmonious joining that no words could describe, nor did it need any. Just like our relationship, it was part of us, what made us melt into each other without rhyme or reason.

The only way I could describe it…

My heart needed his to survive, and his needed mine. As long as we both breathed, we could live.

To the realists of the world, it would probably sound like the crazed ramblings of a newly delivered author to the romance world, but…the tension, the pressure for me to flee New Orleans to make it to this island…my heart believed it went deeper than being chased by a killer. Some deeper part of me sensed that my reason to live was about to die. The killer was symbolic to what was about to happen to me if Rocco would have set his other foot in the cold grave.

Dramatic? Maybe. But the truth was the truth .

We both didn’t seem to exist without each other, but unlike my mom, it was like we still held on to who we were separately. Our differences contrasted us like two colors that only enhanced, or maybe even enchanted, each other. I was an old soul with wild-child ways, and Rocco was his age with rules reigning over his life—but only laws that his family abided by. It didn’t seem like maiming or murder mattered much to his people. He was cold about it. Almost detached. Almost like I had been when writing the criminal thriller.

All that to say…we explored the island.

He was determined to give me a tour from one end to another. I was determined to absorb it all, and not to prove anything to him. He was the only one who could blink for the last time and realize… This is the truth of my life. Believe it. Live it. And I’d be there, smiling at him as he brought me into focus for the rest of his life. But I just loved being with him. Spending time with him. Getting to know him and sharing parts of my life with him, both known and unknown. We were building a life together. Putting down a solid foundation for the years to come. This shelter we were building was for what existed between us—the it that had no name but somehow did—in the secret part of the heart we shared.

We seemed to talk about everything and nothing as we explored day after day, our age difference not mattering because I could be just as deep and reflective as he could when the mood struck.

One day, after driving the “Cliffs of the Gods,” Rocco giving me a history lesson on the island, how locals claimed it was formed by Neptune, he’d decided to take me to a more secluded area of the island, where nature ran wild, almost like a jungle. There was a worn-down path that visitors had carved out to get to where we were going. An abandoned lookout tower in the middle of nowhere.

As we climbed and climbed and climbed, we somehow started to discuss fate, and what we believed of it in our own lives—are we directed by fate’s hand, or do our own minds, hearts, and feet bring us in whichever direction we want to go, and we just happen to crash into whoever, whatever, and move from there?

We both decided before we reached the tower that we were of the first camp. We felt God set desires in our hearts, and the hand of fate helped direct our steps. That wasn’t to say we were not people of free will, but…people, places, things, even obstacles were put in our way so we could follow the map to the desires of our hearts. It was kind of like that saying… follow the path of your happiness.

During the walk, when I would say something he felt was exceptionally poignant, he would stop walking, and, since he held my hand the entire time, I’d stop too. Our footsteps were already in sync.

On one such stop, I couldn’t stand to not know why he was looking at me that way, with an intensity that would make a woman have an…explosion of the heart. (Okay, I was really thinking orgasm of the heart, but I wasn’t sure if that would be an appropriate body part to use in that metaphor.)

“What?” I asked, my breath trembling out. Not only from exertion. From the way he looked at me. He was a breath stealer. That was how powerful his…magic was.

“You are a line in a novel that makes even a heart made of stone pause to read it more than once to absorb the greatness and beauty of the hand that wrote it.” He repeated the words in Italian.

He stole not only my breath with that answer, but any words that could do justice to what he’d just said. I nodded, whispering, “ Grazie mille, martio mio .” Then he caught me before my legs gave out, as if the vapors had gotten to me, and carried me the rest of the way to the tower, staring at my face while I stared up at his.

He climbed every ancient step with me in his arms, droplets of crystal sweat rolling from a shimmering olive body. He was sweating from the humid heat, but he wasn’t even panting. At the very top of the tower, he set me on a stone windowsill, his powerful arms the only thing keeping me from falling hundreds of feet to my death. I knew he wouldn’t ever let me go. I even leaned back some, feeling the swaying breeze sweep my hair against my exposed back.

“You trust me,” he said, almost like he was stating the obvious to himself.

“With my life,” I said automatically.

“This,” he breathed out. “This creatura selvaggia came straight from my heart.” On the word my, if his hands wouldn’t have been on me, I imagined he would have hit his heart.

He’d called me a wild creature, and I grinned, swaying back and forth in his arms, my hair dangling like that long-haired chick’s from the fairytale stories. Until the sun melted into the night sky and set for the night. Rocco lifted me from the sill as if I weighed nothing, turning me forward, keeping me in his arms. My hands caressed his arms, my fingertips moving back and forth slowly across his warm skin. The world had turned pitch, like coals from a fire, except for the stars dancing above our heads. Diamond embers flaring from leftover heat.

“Wow,” I breathed. “This is…almost unreal.”

The stars seemed so close, like the sea had turned upside down and was showing us a few secrets from its deepest depths. Two telescopes were placed by two windows, but I didn’t even feel like we needed them. Maybe if I was searching for one, but I liked the idea of an entire picture of them.

“ Sì ,” he whispered.

When I turned some in his arms to catch his reaction to such a spectacular light show put on by Mother Nature, he was gazing at me. My eyes closed instinctually when he moved closer, his lips barely touching mine.

The only stars I needed to see were dancing behind my eyes from that healing kiss.

“You know,” I breathed out, trying to catch my breath from the kiss and his hold on me, “I was conceived in—” I almost stopped myself from saying it, but decided to say it anyway “— the Witch’s Tower, Torre della Strega , in Fogliano di Maranello.”

He turned me around so fast, I gasped. His eyes were almost frantic, searching mine.

I lifted my hands, a grin on my face, not sure how else to react. “I swear I’m not a witch. At least, I don’t think so.” I cackled like one to make a joke.

He didn’t even grin. He was holding on to me so tightly, he was trembling to stop from hurting me. “Tell me,” he said, and even though his voice was hoarse, there was no doubt it was a command.

“I don’t know, Rocco,” I whispered. “That’s just what my mom told me.”

“The entire story.”

“Well, I wasn’t there for it, obviously, but…my mom and dad are both from Louisiana. My mom is from a place called Metairie. Met-tree as locals pronounce it. My dad is from New Orleans proper. He was born and raised in the French Quarter. Lived there his entire life until he moved to Los Angeles, after his books hit it big. Anyway. My mom graduated from high school, and her family paid for her and a few friends to celebrate by sending them on a European vacation. Not until January, though. It was cheaper. My mom’s parents are frugal.

“My dad was older, always wanted to be a writer, and decided to scrimp and save until he had enough money to go to Italy—hence the January price tag instead of a summer one. His first book, the beginning of it, is set in…Maranello. The book is about a…” Oh my God. I almost choked on the words, but I managed to squeak the first four out before my voice matched his—hoarse. “A powerful criminal family that attempts to murder a racer, and the racer must find out why they want him dead before this powerful family finds him and kills him. Spoiler alert. He becomes a modern-day Italian James Bond, even sleeps with one of their wives to get more intel.”

It didn’t seem like any of that was what he wanted to hear .

I cleared my throat. “My mom and dad met in Rome—I guess they both flew from New York there? It was a whirlwind romance. She split from her friends and went with him to Maranello. She claims he seduced her with too much wine, too many stars, and ramblings of a writer who thought he was going to be the next great novelist of our time—a modern-day Hemingway, but one who wrote thrillers.” I shrugged. “I never believed that part of the story. That my mom was ‘seduced.’ Takes two to tango, and if she really didn’t want him, why did she ditch her friends to follow his dreams? He wasn’t innocent either. He fed her a lot of lies. Anyway. Not the point. The point is…I was conceived that night.”

“In Maranello.”

“Yeah, she said that’s where the tower is.”

“That is where I live—mostly.”

“Oh, I thought you said Tuscany?” We’d touched on where to go after we left the island, and he’d told me that his place in Tuscany was his alone—Rosaria hated it and refused to step foot in the place. Sounded great to me for a starting point. Scarlett and Brando, along with a lot of family, were not far.

He stared at me so hard, I wasn’t sure what to do.

“What is it, Rocco?” I whispered.

The trembling outside of me seemed like it was coming from the trembling inside of him.

“You are the answer,” he whispered. “You are all my prayers heard and created. You are the desire of my heart, my Amora. I live in Maranello—it is my home base.”

“Oh.” Oh. Oh. Oh!

Creek. Creek. Creek.

All the pieces suddenly clicked!

His reaction, the meaning behind his words, finally reached me.

Deep inside of me.

Where it all made sense.

“I was c-c-created in your h-h-home,” I said, the trembling even worse.

It was like the rough road it took us to get here, the conversation while we climbed, all lead to this highest point.

“While I was dreaming of you,” he barely got out, “and meant for me even before.”

Probably while he was gazing at the same stars that had seduced my mom to give in to my dad.

One time.

Her first time.

Lots of times after, but she told me she knew I was conceived that first night. Exactly nine months after, like I couldn’t stand to be late, I arrived in the world.

Created and born for this man.

To love him.

To live with him.

To walk beside him in good times and in bad.

To die while he held me in his arms and I held onto him, both of our souls refusing to leave without the other.

As if our hearts sighed at the same time, that big secret broken between us, we seemed to move at the same time, our arms reaching out, our hands exploring, our lips coming home…he sat me back on the sill, his hands roaming up my legs, pushing the soft, thin material of my flowy dress to the side, his eyes intense on mine. My arms locked around his neck, my legs around his waist, and not because I was afraid to fall.

If I was going to fall, we were going to fall together.

The look in his eyes vowed it to me.

Wherever we went, we went together.

I used my feet to push his pants down, and he entered me to the hilt on a thrust that felt like it would send me over, but he kept me rooted to him, the center of my world only shaken by the extreme pleasure flooding my system. He spoke to the pulse in my neck as he made love to me with the intensity of our first time, like the intensity of what would be our last time, reminding me of his vows, how ancient they were—created before the ticking clock of time had even started moving between us, but how present they were in this moment with us.

How ever present those sacred oaths would always be.

Past. Present. Future.

He was all mine, and I was all his.

His touched lingered on my skin, like a scent, and it floated around me as our moments on the island moved forward.

After the visit to the tower, it seemed like we held a secret between us, a secret that had been born before the both of us, and it…solidified what we’d known since our eyes met for the first time. What existed between us was born to be. We didn’t have years between us yet, but we had something more powerful.

That secret between us.

It thrilled me to my core, sending zaps of life through my veins, making my heart dance.

The next morning, as he sped to the private beach that would lead us to where the statue of Christ was submerged underneath the water, I lifted out of the convertible some, singing the song playing on the radio at the top of my lungs. He grinned as he pressed the gas pedal down harder, taking turns as smoothly as Luca Fausti. My arms were lifted, my fingers wiggling, the scarf in my hair like a mast catching wind, my terrible voice on blast. But the island was mostly deserted save for the Fausti soldiers and the locals, so the only person who heard it, and didn’t care, was the man in control of the car.

My husband, ladies and gentlemen.

My.

Husband!

And I got to keep him for life and beyond.

I made a waaa hoooooo! noise, the sound catching on the wind and dragging behind us. I brought my hands together over my heart because it felt like the joy I felt was going to explode from my chest.

Rocco laughed, and the sound was free—as free as the two of us together. It wasn’t him but me who kept a grin on my face as we hiked the path to the private beach hand in hand. He kept humming and softly singing parts of the song he liked that I had played the night we had killed the chair on the dock. There was one part he kept repeating, and I took it to heart.

Amen.

Once we arrived at the beach, we had our day on the water, scuba diving to see the statue, which was…breathtaking. Silvery fish swam around the realistic statue’s hands as they lifted toward the surface, light breaking around Him in piercing rays. Even farther out, it seemed like a lost city of statues that some Roman empire had commissioned, and some ship had lost, existed in the shallows, which didn’t seem that far down—maybe eight or nine feet?

The one that caught my attention the most was the statue of Hercules and the Nemean Lion. Hercules had his powerful arms locked around the lion’s neck, and as I remembered it, it was impervious to an attack by mortals.

It was hard for me not to see Rocco as Hercules and his family as the Nemean Lion—the struggle between them.

Maybe that thought fed into this one. I could tell that, as a hot-blooded man, he was sometimes lost when it came to living, to loving without his family’s rules to guide him.

For example, after snorkeling around for a couple of hours, and taking a boat tour, we swam closer to shore. Before we made it to land, and into a depth I could stand in, I moved my hands back and forth underneath the thin layer of clear water, watching as both of my hands shimmered with the new rings on both ring fingers. The water waved over the diamonds on my left hand, the emerald, diamond, and ruby band on my right, like lost treasure beneath the sea that was finally being pulled to the surface. I was so entranced in what I’d been doing that when I finally looked up, I noticed Rocco doing the same thing, copying me. He stared at his left hand, the new platinum band there. It was like he was doing it to see if it would make him as happy as it made me.

When he finally met my eyes, our grins came slow. But it made my heart ache that something so simple wouldn’t have crossed his mind to do—just because it might warm his heart.

Waterlogged and exhausted, I collapsed into a lounger while lunch was delivered. Rocco fed me, and after, I fell asleep to him caressing my back while I ran my hands through his hair. We were pressed together on the beach chair. He was reading a novel. My dad’s first book. After the big secret was revealed about Maranello, pieces started to click, and since it seemed like my dad had based his first book on the Faustis, Luca Fausti in particular, I believed that the story he was going to write, the one I had written, was based on a true story. Either someone had told him, or he had stumbled upon the information by sleuthing around.

That was all in the past, though, and even though the killer could be a real threat, I wasn’t sure if he could find me. I’d left everything behind and found myself lost—and found—in an entirely different country. And with Rocco and his family…I doubted he would try anything. I’d tried to talk to the police about it in New Orleans, but since the case I’d based the book off had become cold, it didn’t seem like they were too interested in finding the killer, or helping me, either, even though I’d written the truth and exposed the crime.

I shivered when I thought about it.

Then fell asleep.

An hour or so later, I woke up, groggy and starving again.

For more than just food.

Rocco was staring at my face, moving the hair out of my eyes.

Wordlessly, he carried me toward the car. But before we got there, we passed through a field full of fennel. The sweet, aromatic smell of anise was strong in the air. The breeze carried me back to my Nonna’s kitchen when I was a little girl, and she would bake her famous anisette cookies. She’d twist the dough into a figure eight, then add sugary glaze and nonpareil sprinkles to the tops. That had been my job. To shake the sprinkles over them until I was old enough to help her bake them.

Earlier, when I’d asked why we weren’t taking the boat docked behind Castello Sul Mare to the sunken statues, he’d told me this path was different. I assumed in that moment that the acres and acres of fennel was what he’d meant. It reminded me, almost, of lavender fields in France. I’d never been, but I’d seen pictures.

Squeezing Rocco’s hand, I dropped to the ground and picked a few plants, making a buttery yellow bouquet out of them. They were exceptionally…whimsical with their feathery leaves.

Rocco cleared his throat. “The woman who delivered me. Those were her favorites.”

My eyes lifted to his. “Oh, Maggie Beautiful, you mean?” I’d never heard him call her mamma, or anything, really, and it struck me as odd, but…I’d never really heard any of her sons call her anything. I just chalked it up to not spending a lot of time with the Faustis yet.

He shook his head. “The woman who delivered me.”

I blinked at him. “Maggie Beautiful isn’t your mamma?”

“No.”

“Oh.” I’d just assumed…Luca looked at her like Rocco looked at me. Like Brando looked at Scarlett. Like all of Luca’s sons looked at their wives. I just couldn’t see Luca…loving anyone else. But maybe he had been married before her? It didn’t seem like Rocco was going to go on, so I asked, “Was your father married before Maggie Beautiful?”

“ Sì. ”

Okay.

I sensed a powerful emotion creating a tornado inside of him then. Actually, I sensed a lot of different emotions swirling in him then. Whatever truth this was, he was keeping it close to his chest, and it was bothering him, but he refused to let on that it was.

My Spidey senses toward him were bu zz ing.

“Want to tell me the story? I…shared with you about my co nception. It sounds romantic, at first, but it’s really not—not the ending to it.”

He stood taller, like a soldier, his eyes hard and faraway, like he was waiting for me to command him into battle.

“Tell me, Rocco,” I whispered. “You’ll…get it off your chest, if you do. I’m a sacred place. A place where all your secrets can go to hide.”

His hands balled into fists at his sides. “The woman my father was married to, annulled by my father to wed Margherita Granchio with a clear record, is not my mamma either. My mamma was chosen to create a solider for the Fausti family. No more. No less. The first wife could not carry sons of the blood—any child. She was infertile. She knew this and did not state this before the arrangement was created between her and my father.”

I forced the lump in my throat down. I refused to allow him to hear any pity in my voice, only tenderness in my touch when it was time. But not then. Not when he was so vulnerable to this truth that was visibly eating at him.

“I was not created out of love,” he continued. “As my sons were not created out love. They were created out of understanding—loyalty to my famiglia .”

An offering—something that went deeper than breath to pledge fealty. Blood.

“I get that,” I whispered, holding the stems of the fennel in my hands, crushing them—I wasn’t sure if I should hold onto them tighter, or fling them in the opposite direction. “But you still love your sons. I’ve seen the way you look at them, Rocco.”

“ Sì. ”

“Your brothers?” I asked, just to send some relief toward him. The wind had stopped howling, and the field was still. So effing still. It was like my heart had held its breath, and the world around us reflected my feelings.

“Brando was created out of love. My brothers and I were not.”

This explained a lot. So much.

I forced down the urge to sob—sob for all the years he thought that he wasn’t a product of love, but a product for the family to command into battle, and every time that thought crashed into him, it stole blood from him.

He had been so lonely.

So fucking lonely for so long.

“Your father doesn’t have a…warm way of expressing it,” I whispered, thinking Luca was probably raised the same way. It was just that Luca had found love with Maggie Beautiful, and Rocco hadn’t found his until me—too many years later.

He watched all his brothers have legendary love stories. And his father, whose marriage was arranged to the first woman, would go on to clear the record—annul it in the eyes of the church, therefore their world—and marry for love instead of duty.

“But he does love you, Rocco,” I continued in the same tone. “I see it. I can feel it.” I stood, dusting off my clothes, and left the fennel in the field where it belonged. I went to touch him, but he turned from me, like he wasn’t deserving of my touch.

My love.

My care.

Me.

“You are,” I whispered, answering his thoughts. “So deserving. That’s why I’m here now. You deserve this. You deserve all the love the world has to offer.”

“Your love.”

Oh, because I am his world.

Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry, Ari!

“ My love.” I stabbed my pointer finger against my heart, stepping in front of him. “My entire heart, my entire soul, my entire body, and all that each one can hold—and there is no limit. It doesn’t matter what the circumstances were of your conception.” My voice took on a bolder tone. All my truth concentrated to each declaration. “You were created for love—you were created for me . You are mine, Rocco Piero Fausti, and I’ll love you beyond death. That’s how deserving you are to me. You are my heaven. If we get to choose, I’ve already picked you as my eternity. Or it wouldn’t be heaven to me, but hell. When I first saw you, I knew. My heart knew. You are my love in physical form. The love we’ve always been missing. It doesn’t matter why our parents created us, all that matters is that we’re together now. Our parents were only the vessels that delivered us to each other.”

He blinked at me, almost like he was in shock.

It was such a genuine, guileless reaction, the Mediterranean might have been me—a puddle melted at his feet.

It should have been me asking him what he was thinking, but it was him who said in a ragged voice, “What you must be thinking of me at this moment.”

He thought I’d think of him as weak for confiding in me. Even though he hadn’t said it, I knew he was wondering how he could love me if he wasn’t made from love. He probably never told anyone else that story.

My smile came slow. “I’m thinking…I’m so happy you’re the reason why I write love stories now.”

I took a step closer to him, another step…it seemed like his muscles trembled, his bones rattled, his skin tightened, like feeling something soft, my love, against his…metal shell…wasn’t something pleasing, but uncomfortable. But he held his ground.

Sighing, I slipped my hand in his, something not too deep, but deep enough. Palm to palm—just one way to connect.

It was like words failed him.

He was lost—so lost in love.

That was okay.

That was why I gave him my hand. He might direct me inside of his world, but I’d direct him inside of mine.

The world around us had turned a delicate shade of pink—the sky a baby blue, the cotton-candy colors reflecting all around us in a heavenly glow.

This was my version of heaven.

The man in front of me, and nothing else.

“I went to Trapani to find her,” he said, entwining our fingers, and by unspoken agreement, we started to move forward.

He went on to say he’d gone to see the woman who had carried him in her womb, but she had already died. Her father was left, but he didn’t want anything to do with Rocco. Rocco belonged to the Fausti family, end of story. To make things even between us, I opened up to him about my parents, and how my mom hated my dad so much, she didn’t want anything to do with me. It was my grandparents who opened their home to me and loved me unconditionally. That was how I knew love.

Even if I wouldn’t have had my grandparents, I had a feeling Rocco and I would have still found our way together. The love between us would have taught us, because we would have chosen it and put it first—above all.

It was already showing us the way.

“You know,” I whispered as we approached the Ducati. One of the men must have switched the car out for the fast bike. “I think I saw anise not far from here. A wild field of it. Let’s stop there before we go home. I’ll cook dinner tonight for us and make my Nonna’s anisette cookies for dessert. I miss her cookies. She cooked with love. Food that became more than just…food. It was good for the soul too.”

“You will tell me more stories,” he said.

I grinned and touched his face, and even though it wasn’t a question, I nodded and said, “You don’t have to tell me twice to keep talking.”

He leaned down and kissed my lips—it was a kiss so full of thanks, tears escaped from my eyes, and before I could wipe them away without him knowing it, he noticed and wiped them himself.

“Do not cry,” he said, rubbing the salt of my tears on his lips, like he did the pressed oil from an olive. “I am not worth it.”

“Please, never say those words to me again,” I whispered, my eyes fierce on his, tears continuing to run down my face. “You speak those words to me, it means my love isn’t enough either, since you aren’t worth that much.”

His eyes shimmered green and gold in the waning light, buried treasure underneath the surface of water, and he ran his hand down my face. I leaned into his palm as he said, “Yes, my heart, you have my word,” in Italian. “I will never speak those words to you, in that order, again.” He repeated his family’s motto to seal the vow.

“ Bene ,” I said, kissing his fingers, but what I didn’t say was that my tears were his—the tears he couldn’t cry for all that had deeply wounded him.