Tormented Diamonds (Marchesi Empire Book 3), page 23
“They’re as stable as can be expected,” he says solemnly. “Physically, they’re healing, but the mental damage … that’ll take time. Only half speak English, so Taz is searching for someone trustworthy to translate Czech and Ukrainian.”
I’m not surprised Taz is back to work. Becca and I both tried to get him to take at least a week off, but the stubborn asshole refused. I can’t blame him. His pride took a hit along with his skull when Flynn knocked him out with a brick.
He’s lucky it wasn’t a bullet.
He doesn’t agree.
Anton lets out a low whistle. “Yep. Definitely a crazy few days.”
I stare at him across the console. “Do you have something you want to say, Anton? Because if this is an attempt at small talk, you’re failing miserably.”
“I just…” He shoves his hand through his gray hair and tugs at strands he doesn’t have the luxury of losing. “A lot has happened in the last month, and I just wanted you to know that … that…”
“That’s not any better.”
He drops his hand in his lap and faces me with a sigh. “Thank you, Gianni.”
“For what?”
“For trusting in me. For believing me. You had every right not to listen to a word I said at Cucciola’s, but you took a chance on a man who was loyal to your father for damn near thirty years.”
I don’t know what to say. That’s some deep shit, way too deep for my liking. I’ve only recently learned I have emotions, much less know what the hell to do with them. I’m nowhere near ready for whatever this is. Still, without Anton, Becca and I would probably be dead, so I offer the only thing I can for now. “Yeah, well, back at ya.”
Apparently, that’s enough.
“So, what now?”
Good question. Unfortunately, there’s no manual for a post-patricide revolution.
“I guess we go home, then wake up tomorrow and figure out how to run this mafia our way. You know, minus the constant threat of death and looking over our shoulders part.”
He chuckles. “Bullshit. Gianni Marchesi will never quit looking over his shoulder.”
He’s not wrong. Letting my guard down in Providence opened the door for a hailstorm of deception. I’ll never allow my walls to be that scalable again. Back then, I had nothing to lose. Now, I have everything to lose, and I’ll die before I let anyone take that away from me.
The man I am without Becca walks a path paved with footsteps I refuse to follow.
It’s a thought that drags me back to the night Sera went back to Newark. The night I sat at the club avoiding Becca. The night Anton spoke the words that pulled back a long overdue curtain.
“Watching love fade away is a pain I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. But fate gave you something others would kill for—a second chance. Don’t blow it.”
I tell myself it’s none of my business and to let the past rest in peace. But when my mouth opens, the question I swore I wouldn’t ask slips off my tongue. “Did you love my mother?”
“Gianni…”
“Answer the question.”
He exhales roughly. “With every piece of my heart.”
“Do you ever think of what life would’ve been like if things had turned out differently?” I watch him out of the corner of my eye. “If there were no oaths, or codes, or rules binding one family to another.”
“Every day of my life,” he answers, his expression somewhere between fondness and grief. “But we don’t get to choose our beginnings or endings, only what happens in between. That part’s all up to us.”
“You’re starting to sound like Becca.”
He smiles. “That’s actually a Rosalia Valastro Marchesi original.”
It feels like I’m being set straight and knocked sideways all at once. For the first time, I realize how similar my mother and Becca are. Both stubborn. Both opinionated. Both determined to save my soul. I never imagined a woman more pure-hearted than my mother, then a prim and proper psychiatrist with glasses and an attitude threw an apple at my head.
“You think she had a hand in all this?”
It isn’t until he digs in his pocket and hands me a folded piece of paper that I realize I spoke the words out loud. “You tell me.”
“What’s this?”
“Your mother gave it to me the day before she died.” He gives me a half-hearted shrug. “Maybe she knew what was coming, maybe she didn’t. But she handed me that note along with her wedding ring and told me to give them both to you when the time was right. I guess that’s now.”
My throat tightens as I open the worn note. “Genesis 24?”
“One of the longest chapters in the Bible.” Anton opens the passenger side door and climbs out of the car. I stare after him, ready to lay on the horn when he leans down, one hand gripping the top of the door, the other braced against the roof. “The story of Rebekah.”
Twenty minutes into my search, I’m about to give up. I’ve walked every blade of grass looking for her and somehow keep ending up at the same damn spot. It doesn’t help that it’s almost dark, and my only guide is a half-lit lamp that looks straight out of the nineteenth century. However, just as I turn to leave, I glance to my left, my heart crashing through the wall of my chest as I see a praying Virgin Mary statue.
Every step feels like I’m moving in slow motion. Once I’m in front of it, I can’t do anything but stare at the name engraved on the ornate headstone.
Rosalia Valastro Marchesi.
“Sorry I’m late,” I say, the words sounding raw and stilted. “I brought you something. They’re peonies. Your favorite. Twenty-two of them for every year I was a shit son.” Placing the flowers on the stone ledge under her name, I scrub my hand down my face, four weeks’ worth of beard growth scraping against my palm. “I thought when I got here, I’d know what to say, but I don’t. What is it about mothers that make even hardened criminals feel like a fucking child?” The curse echoes like a gunshot through the silent cemetery, and I grind my teeth. “Ignore that last part.”
I don’t know what the hell I’m saying. Coming here was a spur-of-the-moment decision and a questionable lapse in judgment. After leaving Anton’s house, I had every intention of going home, but that damn note in my pocket seemed to fuse to my chest and take over my body. Three turns in the opposite direction and I found myself at the one place I haven’t stepped foot in two decades.
“I turned into the man you tried to prevent me from being,” I continue with a sour laugh. “Commendable effort, but I think we both knew it was a lost cause.” Christ, why is this so damn difficult? “I’m sorry for all the times I said I hated you. I didn’t. I just didn’t understand why you’d choose to die and leave me here. But I get it now. I understand loving someone so much you’d sacrifice everything for them.” I drag her worn, folded note from my pocket and tap it against my palm. “Genesis 24. The story of Rebekah. I was thirteen years old when you wrote this. Six months ago, I would’ve chalked what happened up to coincidence, but I guess I’m not so skeptical of the whole fate thing anymore. Becca would probably have a field day picking this apart, but I’m choosing to believe you knew how this would all play out.”
A smile pulls at my lips as I think of how my mother would’ve reacted to meeting Becca. Something tells me they would’ve gotten along too well.
“You’d love her, Ma. She’s smart, beautiful, strong, forgiving, and most of all, she loves me—not the Marchesi heir, or Torch—but me, a man she only knew as an ex-firefighter with a messed-up head.” My smile fades. “I also know about you and Anton. I’m sorry La Cosa Nostra took that chance at happiness from you. You deserved more than what life handed you.”
In another life, Anton and my mother could’ve been happy. I’d like to believe we could all see each other again someday, but I know the place Anton and I are headed is nowhere near her. So, we’ll have to settle for memories and concrete.
“Anton says you always told him that ‘we don’t get to choose our beginnings or endings, only what happens in between.’ I didn’t understand that until ‘what happens in between’ became worth fighting for. I guess what I’m trying to say is thank you for saving my life that day. I won’t waste another minute of it.”
The wind picks up, and I’m hit with the scent of fruit, powder, and sunshine. Quickly tucking the note in my pocket, I quirk my lips. “How long have you been standing there?”
I hear light footsteps, then Becca appears beside me, her chin tipped up. “Long enough.”
She looks like a scholar trapped in a vixen’s skin. Her long blonde hair is pulled back in that low, no-nonsense ponytail I remember, and her new wire-frame glasses sit perfectly on her delicate nose. But that’s where the prim psychiatrist ends. From her red stilettos to her tight, low-cut dress, to her painted red lips, the rest of her is pure, will-testing mafia queen.
My fire queen.
“Are you following your husband, cara mia?”
She shrugs. “What? You’re the only one who can track people?”
I stare at her, but the corners of my mouth betray me and stretch into a smile.
Becca mirrors me, her pout tipping into the same unprompted grin. “Actually, I came to put flowers on Leo’s grave, and I saw your car.” She sobers, her gaze shifting toward the tombstone. “How long has it been since you’ve visited her?”
“Twenty-two years.”
“Sounds familiar.” She’s quiet for a moment, then lets out a dramatic exhale. “Well…?”
“Well, what?”
“This is my first time meeting my mother-in-law,” she says, gesturing toward my mother’s grave. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”
It’s a ridiculous request.
Pointless and awkward.
And something I’ve waited two decades to do.
I slip my arm around her waist and pull her to me, my smile widening. “Ma, I’d like you to meet my wife, Rebecca.” Becca raises an eyebrow at my use of her full name but doesn’t say anything. “Becca, this is my mother, Rosalia Marchesi.”
Becca’s smile brightens. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Marchesi. I’ve heard so many wonderful things about you. I’m sorry we never got the chance to know each other, but I promise I love your son more than anything in the world.” Her gaze shifts back to me, my chest tightening at the devotion I see in it. “And nothing will ever change that. He’s my hero-laced devil.”
“I told you a long time ago I’m no one’s hero.”
“Tough shit. I’ve bestowed the title, and you’re stuck with it.”
I roll my eyes and glance down at my mother’s grave. “You had to pick Genesis.”
Becca tilts her head. “Huh?”
“Nothing.” I’m not being secretive or evasive. I just need some time alone with this … to process and come to terms with this new me … this new us. I’ll tell her about my mother’s note someday, just not today. “Just my mother playing matchmaker from the great beyond.”
“You think she would’ve approved of us?”
“More than you know. My mother believed love wasn’t something you fell into. It was a stain on your soul you couldn’t outrun.”
Becca stares down at her left hand, her eyebrows drawing together as she spins her wedding ring with the pad of her thumb. “L'amore è una macchia indelebile sull'anima.” Love is an irreversible stain on the soul.” She peers up at me. “This is her ring, isn’t it?”
I nod. “My father had it engraved as a warning. I guess I gave it to you as one, too.”
She’s silent for a moment, then cocks her chin and looks back up at me, her teeth sinking into her bottom lip like she did in Providence when she was about to twist something simple into something insanely abstract. “It depends on your interpretation. I think it’s an accurate reminder. Love is an irreversible stain on the soul. But when you’ve lived without color for so long, sometimes a stain is the only thing that keeps it from fading away. You changed red for me, Gianni. It used to be the color of pain, hate, and suffering, the tint of all my nightmares.”
Damn. Will this woman ever fail to surprise me? I hope not.
“And now?”
“Now, all I see is love, passion, and power.”
Three words that four months ago I would’ve never believed belonged in the same sentence, much less in my life. Becca Brennan changed me for the better, but I can’t help but worry I’ve done the opposite for her. She claims to be happy in this marriage now, but what about a year from now … five years from now … twenty years from now?
What if she wakes up one day and realizes I cost her everything?
“Do you have any regrets, Gianni?”
Her question takes me by surprise. “Why do you ask?”
“Because you’re somewhere else right now. Plus, you always grind your teeth when you’re thinking too hard.”
“I do not.”
She jabs a finger at my chin. “You’re doing it right now.”
Goddamn it, she’s right.
Unclenching my molars, I turn her toward me and cradle her face. “While I regret what happened to Victoria, I wouldn’t change anything because it led me to you. I just wish you didn’t have to go through all that pain and suffering.” I stare at the fading bruise on her neck, the image of Flynn’s hands around it burned into my memory. “Now that it’s been a few days, I have to ask… Is this life something you can live with, even after it stole and ruined yours?”
“I told you on our wedding night that actions speak louder than words. You met the challenge. I decided it was my turn.” She lifts her wrist, and everything in my life comes to a halt.
She’s turned her darkest shame into something powerful.
A snake now coils around the rose my father forced on her skin, blotting out the dagger. The Marchesi tattoo has claimed victory over a symbol of deception and pain.
Over the monsters that tormented her.
Over the past that haunted her.
I stare at it. It’s more impactful than any ring. It’s a permanent stain on her skin, one that matches the permanent one on my soul.
“This is my vow to you, Gianni,” she says softly. “A symbol of how entwined our lives have been since childhood. My father may have saved me from a monster, but you saved me from myself.”
I watch every word fall from her red-painted lips. Fire Queen. It seems like another lifetime since she first smeared that shade on and taunted me that day in her office. She was so timid and unsure, a nervous kitten with sharp claws she didn’t know how to wield. I overpowered her back then, toyed with her and bent her to my will. Even as Johnny Malone, she knew things between us went far deeper than what lay on the surface.
And now here we are, over four months later, the same shade on her lips, both of us so different. Dynamics have shifted. Influence has surged. Love has replaced pain and resentment.
Becca claims it’s inevitable, that the only constant in life is change. You either bend with it or fold to it. But anchors don’t fold. They keep you grounded to weather the storms that come your way. Through fire and rain…
Hearts and spades…
And bullets and blades.
I press my lips to her wrist, sliding them up her arm until I find hers. Our kiss is gentle and honest, an effort that takes extreme willpower. That’s one thing about us that hasn’t changed. Touching her will always awaken the darkest side of me. Our connection will always be volatile and demanding, and behind closed doors, she’ll always be my wingless butterfly. But that’s just for us. From now on, the world gets nothing but a united, unscalable wall no one can bring down.
I pull back, my demons licking their lips with anticipation. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Where are we going?”
“Home, Doc.” Taking her hand, I lead her away from the past. “We’re finally going home.”
Epilogue
BECCA
Fifteen Years Later
The roses are in full bloom, along with the peonies and gardenias. They line the backyard like a beautiful botanical garden. A little oasis in the middle of a bullet-ridden jungle. Gianni says it smells like a funeral parlor, but I think they mean as much to him as they do to me.
A nod to both our mothers.
Death and rebirth.
I clip a few of each and tuck them in the basket on my arm just as a wave of water drenches my entire back. Turning, I find my middle child standing in the center of the pool, wide-eyed and panicked. “Renzo, what did I say about cannonballs?”
“Uh, not to do them?”
“Why not?”
“Uh, because last time I landed on Nero’s head?”
“Right, and what did you just do?”
He narrows those all too familiar dark eyes. “I feel like this is a trick question.”
I bite my lip. The kid is every inch his father. While our oldest son, Nero, is the calm, cool, studious one; Renzo is Gianni in miniature form—smooth talking, unruly, and determined to spend the rest of his life in detention. Gianni claims instead of prom king he’s probably going to get voted “most likely to rob a bank.”
He’s not wrong.
“He did a cannonball, Ma,” Nero yells from the other side of the pool.
Renzo shoots him a death glare. “Snitch!”
“I’m not a snitch. I’m telling the truth.”
“What the hell do you think a snitch is, genius?”
“Renzo!” I scold, rolling my lips over my teeth to keep from laughing. “Watch your language.”
A reprimand my charmer of a middle child accepts with a smile, only to turn toward his brother and flip his middle finger.
The Marchesi genes run rampant in that one.
The crazy thing is I don’t worry about Renzo. It’s Nero who keeps me up a night. He has such a pure and honest soul—sometimes too honest. It’s his head that will wear the crown, and I fear he’ll crumble under its weight. Gianni will protect him as long as he can, but all our children were born into a legacy they can’t escape.
“Ciò che il sangue lega, solo la morte spezza,” I whisper.
What blood binds only death breaks.
I’m not surprised Taz is back to work. Becca and I both tried to get him to take at least a week off, but the stubborn asshole refused. I can’t blame him. His pride took a hit along with his skull when Flynn knocked him out with a brick.
He’s lucky it wasn’t a bullet.
He doesn’t agree.
Anton lets out a low whistle. “Yep. Definitely a crazy few days.”
I stare at him across the console. “Do you have something you want to say, Anton? Because if this is an attempt at small talk, you’re failing miserably.”
“I just…” He shoves his hand through his gray hair and tugs at strands he doesn’t have the luxury of losing. “A lot has happened in the last month, and I just wanted you to know that … that…”
“That’s not any better.”
He drops his hand in his lap and faces me with a sigh. “Thank you, Gianni.”
“For what?”
“For trusting in me. For believing me. You had every right not to listen to a word I said at Cucciola’s, but you took a chance on a man who was loyal to your father for damn near thirty years.”
I don’t know what to say. That’s some deep shit, way too deep for my liking. I’ve only recently learned I have emotions, much less know what the hell to do with them. I’m nowhere near ready for whatever this is. Still, without Anton, Becca and I would probably be dead, so I offer the only thing I can for now. “Yeah, well, back at ya.”
Apparently, that’s enough.
“So, what now?”
Good question. Unfortunately, there’s no manual for a post-patricide revolution.
“I guess we go home, then wake up tomorrow and figure out how to run this mafia our way. You know, minus the constant threat of death and looking over our shoulders part.”
He chuckles. “Bullshit. Gianni Marchesi will never quit looking over his shoulder.”
He’s not wrong. Letting my guard down in Providence opened the door for a hailstorm of deception. I’ll never allow my walls to be that scalable again. Back then, I had nothing to lose. Now, I have everything to lose, and I’ll die before I let anyone take that away from me.
The man I am without Becca walks a path paved with footsteps I refuse to follow.
It’s a thought that drags me back to the night Sera went back to Newark. The night I sat at the club avoiding Becca. The night Anton spoke the words that pulled back a long overdue curtain.
“Watching love fade away is a pain I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. But fate gave you something others would kill for—a second chance. Don’t blow it.”
I tell myself it’s none of my business and to let the past rest in peace. But when my mouth opens, the question I swore I wouldn’t ask slips off my tongue. “Did you love my mother?”
“Gianni…”
“Answer the question.”
He exhales roughly. “With every piece of my heart.”
“Do you ever think of what life would’ve been like if things had turned out differently?” I watch him out of the corner of my eye. “If there were no oaths, or codes, or rules binding one family to another.”
“Every day of my life,” he answers, his expression somewhere between fondness and grief. “But we don’t get to choose our beginnings or endings, only what happens in between. That part’s all up to us.”
“You’re starting to sound like Becca.”
He smiles. “That’s actually a Rosalia Valastro Marchesi original.”
It feels like I’m being set straight and knocked sideways all at once. For the first time, I realize how similar my mother and Becca are. Both stubborn. Both opinionated. Both determined to save my soul. I never imagined a woman more pure-hearted than my mother, then a prim and proper psychiatrist with glasses and an attitude threw an apple at my head.
“You think she had a hand in all this?”
It isn’t until he digs in his pocket and hands me a folded piece of paper that I realize I spoke the words out loud. “You tell me.”
“What’s this?”
“Your mother gave it to me the day before she died.” He gives me a half-hearted shrug. “Maybe she knew what was coming, maybe she didn’t. But she handed me that note along with her wedding ring and told me to give them both to you when the time was right. I guess that’s now.”
My throat tightens as I open the worn note. “Genesis 24?”
“One of the longest chapters in the Bible.” Anton opens the passenger side door and climbs out of the car. I stare after him, ready to lay on the horn when he leans down, one hand gripping the top of the door, the other braced against the roof. “The story of Rebekah.”
Twenty minutes into my search, I’m about to give up. I’ve walked every blade of grass looking for her and somehow keep ending up at the same damn spot. It doesn’t help that it’s almost dark, and my only guide is a half-lit lamp that looks straight out of the nineteenth century. However, just as I turn to leave, I glance to my left, my heart crashing through the wall of my chest as I see a praying Virgin Mary statue.
Every step feels like I’m moving in slow motion. Once I’m in front of it, I can’t do anything but stare at the name engraved on the ornate headstone.
Rosalia Valastro Marchesi.
“Sorry I’m late,” I say, the words sounding raw and stilted. “I brought you something. They’re peonies. Your favorite. Twenty-two of them for every year I was a shit son.” Placing the flowers on the stone ledge under her name, I scrub my hand down my face, four weeks’ worth of beard growth scraping against my palm. “I thought when I got here, I’d know what to say, but I don’t. What is it about mothers that make even hardened criminals feel like a fucking child?” The curse echoes like a gunshot through the silent cemetery, and I grind my teeth. “Ignore that last part.”
I don’t know what the hell I’m saying. Coming here was a spur-of-the-moment decision and a questionable lapse in judgment. After leaving Anton’s house, I had every intention of going home, but that damn note in my pocket seemed to fuse to my chest and take over my body. Three turns in the opposite direction and I found myself at the one place I haven’t stepped foot in two decades.
“I turned into the man you tried to prevent me from being,” I continue with a sour laugh. “Commendable effort, but I think we both knew it was a lost cause.” Christ, why is this so damn difficult? “I’m sorry for all the times I said I hated you. I didn’t. I just didn’t understand why you’d choose to die and leave me here. But I get it now. I understand loving someone so much you’d sacrifice everything for them.” I drag her worn, folded note from my pocket and tap it against my palm. “Genesis 24. The story of Rebekah. I was thirteen years old when you wrote this. Six months ago, I would’ve chalked what happened up to coincidence, but I guess I’m not so skeptical of the whole fate thing anymore. Becca would probably have a field day picking this apart, but I’m choosing to believe you knew how this would all play out.”
A smile pulls at my lips as I think of how my mother would’ve reacted to meeting Becca. Something tells me they would’ve gotten along too well.
“You’d love her, Ma. She’s smart, beautiful, strong, forgiving, and most of all, she loves me—not the Marchesi heir, or Torch—but me, a man she only knew as an ex-firefighter with a messed-up head.” My smile fades. “I also know about you and Anton. I’m sorry La Cosa Nostra took that chance at happiness from you. You deserved more than what life handed you.”
In another life, Anton and my mother could’ve been happy. I’d like to believe we could all see each other again someday, but I know the place Anton and I are headed is nowhere near her. So, we’ll have to settle for memories and concrete.
“Anton says you always told him that ‘we don’t get to choose our beginnings or endings, only what happens in between.’ I didn’t understand that until ‘what happens in between’ became worth fighting for. I guess what I’m trying to say is thank you for saving my life that day. I won’t waste another minute of it.”
The wind picks up, and I’m hit with the scent of fruit, powder, and sunshine. Quickly tucking the note in my pocket, I quirk my lips. “How long have you been standing there?”
I hear light footsteps, then Becca appears beside me, her chin tipped up. “Long enough.”
She looks like a scholar trapped in a vixen’s skin. Her long blonde hair is pulled back in that low, no-nonsense ponytail I remember, and her new wire-frame glasses sit perfectly on her delicate nose. But that’s where the prim psychiatrist ends. From her red stilettos to her tight, low-cut dress, to her painted red lips, the rest of her is pure, will-testing mafia queen.
My fire queen.
“Are you following your husband, cara mia?”
She shrugs. “What? You’re the only one who can track people?”
I stare at her, but the corners of my mouth betray me and stretch into a smile.
Becca mirrors me, her pout tipping into the same unprompted grin. “Actually, I came to put flowers on Leo’s grave, and I saw your car.” She sobers, her gaze shifting toward the tombstone. “How long has it been since you’ve visited her?”
“Twenty-two years.”
“Sounds familiar.” She’s quiet for a moment, then lets out a dramatic exhale. “Well…?”
“Well, what?”
“This is my first time meeting my mother-in-law,” she says, gesturing toward my mother’s grave. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”
It’s a ridiculous request.
Pointless and awkward.
And something I’ve waited two decades to do.
I slip my arm around her waist and pull her to me, my smile widening. “Ma, I’d like you to meet my wife, Rebecca.” Becca raises an eyebrow at my use of her full name but doesn’t say anything. “Becca, this is my mother, Rosalia Marchesi.”
Becca’s smile brightens. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Marchesi. I’ve heard so many wonderful things about you. I’m sorry we never got the chance to know each other, but I promise I love your son more than anything in the world.” Her gaze shifts back to me, my chest tightening at the devotion I see in it. “And nothing will ever change that. He’s my hero-laced devil.”
“I told you a long time ago I’m no one’s hero.”
“Tough shit. I’ve bestowed the title, and you’re stuck with it.”
I roll my eyes and glance down at my mother’s grave. “You had to pick Genesis.”
Becca tilts her head. “Huh?”
“Nothing.” I’m not being secretive or evasive. I just need some time alone with this … to process and come to terms with this new me … this new us. I’ll tell her about my mother’s note someday, just not today. “Just my mother playing matchmaker from the great beyond.”
“You think she would’ve approved of us?”
“More than you know. My mother believed love wasn’t something you fell into. It was a stain on your soul you couldn’t outrun.”
Becca stares down at her left hand, her eyebrows drawing together as she spins her wedding ring with the pad of her thumb. “L'amore è una macchia indelebile sull'anima.” Love is an irreversible stain on the soul.” She peers up at me. “This is her ring, isn’t it?”
I nod. “My father had it engraved as a warning. I guess I gave it to you as one, too.”
She’s silent for a moment, then cocks her chin and looks back up at me, her teeth sinking into her bottom lip like she did in Providence when she was about to twist something simple into something insanely abstract. “It depends on your interpretation. I think it’s an accurate reminder. Love is an irreversible stain on the soul. But when you’ve lived without color for so long, sometimes a stain is the only thing that keeps it from fading away. You changed red for me, Gianni. It used to be the color of pain, hate, and suffering, the tint of all my nightmares.”
Damn. Will this woman ever fail to surprise me? I hope not.
“And now?”
“Now, all I see is love, passion, and power.”
Three words that four months ago I would’ve never believed belonged in the same sentence, much less in my life. Becca Brennan changed me for the better, but I can’t help but worry I’ve done the opposite for her. She claims to be happy in this marriage now, but what about a year from now … five years from now … twenty years from now?
What if she wakes up one day and realizes I cost her everything?
“Do you have any regrets, Gianni?”
Her question takes me by surprise. “Why do you ask?”
“Because you’re somewhere else right now. Plus, you always grind your teeth when you’re thinking too hard.”
“I do not.”
She jabs a finger at my chin. “You’re doing it right now.”
Goddamn it, she’s right.
Unclenching my molars, I turn her toward me and cradle her face. “While I regret what happened to Victoria, I wouldn’t change anything because it led me to you. I just wish you didn’t have to go through all that pain and suffering.” I stare at the fading bruise on her neck, the image of Flynn’s hands around it burned into my memory. “Now that it’s been a few days, I have to ask… Is this life something you can live with, even after it stole and ruined yours?”
“I told you on our wedding night that actions speak louder than words. You met the challenge. I decided it was my turn.” She lifts her wrist, and everything in my life comes to a halt.
She’s turned her darkest shame into something powerful.
A snake now coils around the rose my father forced on her skin, blotting out the dagger. The Marchesi tattoo has claimed victory over a symbol of deception and pain.
Over the monsters that tormented her.
Over the past that haunted her.
I stare at it. It’s more impactful than any ring. It’s a permanent stain on her skin, one that matches the permanent one on my soul.
“This is my vow to you, Gianni,” she says softly. “A symbol of how entwined our lives have been since childhood. My father may have saved me from a monster, but you saved me from myself.”
I watch every word fall from her red-painted lips. Fire Queen. It seems like another lifetime since she first smeared that shade on and taunted me that day in her office. She was so timid and unsure, a nervous kitten with sharp claws she didn’t know how to wield. I overpowered her back then, toyed with her and bent her to my will. Even as Johnny Malone, she knew things between us went far deeper than what lay on the surface.
And now here we are, over four months later, the same shade on her lips, both of us so different. Dynamics have shifted. Influence has surged. Love has replaced pain and resentment.
Becca claims it’s inevitable, that the only constant in life is change. You either bend with it or fold to it. But anchors don’t fold. They keep you grounded to weather the storms that come your way. Through fire and rain…
Hearts and spades…
And bullets and blades.
I press my lips to her wrist, sliding them up her arm until I find hers. Our kiss is gentle and honest, an effort that takes extreme willpower. That’s one thing about us that hasn’t changed. Touching her will always awaken the darkest side of me. Our connection will always be volatile and demanding, and behind closed doors, she’ll always be my wingless butterfly. But that’s just for us. From now on, the world gets nothing but a united, unscalable wall no one can bring down.
I pull back, my demons licking their lips with anticipation. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Where are we going?”
“Home, Doc.” Taking her hand, I lead her away from the past. “We’re finally going home.”
Epilogue
BECCA
Fifteen Years Later
The roses are in full bloom, along with the peonies and gardenias. They line the backyard like a beautiful botanical garden. A little oasis in the middle of a bullet-ridden jungle. Gianni says it smells like a funeral parlor, but I think they mean as much to him as they do to me.
A nod to both our mothers.
Death and rebirth.
I clip a few of each and tuck them in the basket on my arm just as a wave of water drenches my entire back. Turning, I find my middle child standing in the center of the pool, wide-eyed and panicked. “Renzo, what did I say about cannonballs?”
“Uh, not to do them?”
“Why not?”
“Uh, because last time I landed on Nero’s head?”
“Right, and what did you just do?”
He narrows those all too familiar dark eyes. “I feel like this is a trick question.”
I bite my lip. The kid is every inch his father. While our oldest son, Nero, is the calm, cool, studious one; Renzo is Gianni in miniature form—smooth talking, unruly, and determined to spend the rest of his life in detention. Gianni claims instead of prom king he’s probably going to get voted “most likely to rob a bank.”
He’s not wrong.
“He did a cannonball, Ma,” Nero yells from the other side of the pool.
Renzo shoots him a death glare. “Snitch!”
“I’m not a snitch. I’m telling the truth.”
“What the hell do you think a snitch is, genius?”
“Renzo!” I scold, rolling my lips over my teeth to keep from laughing. “Watch your language.”
A reprimand my charmer of a middle child accepts with a smile, only to turn toward his brother and flip his middle finger.
The Marchesi genes run rampant in that one.
The crazy thing is I don’t worry about Renzo. It’s Nero who keeps me up a night. He has such a pure and honest soul—sometimes too honest. It’s his head that will wear the crown, and I fear he’ll crumble under its weight. Gianni will protect him as long as he can, but all our children were born into a legacy they can’t escape.
“Ciò che il sangue lega, solo la morte spezza,” I whisper.
What blood binds only death breaks.
