King of Stars (The Next Generation #2)

6. Matteo

Chapter 6

Matteo

T he weather in Venice at this time of the year was cold and dreary. It seemed like the entire place had a silver shadow hovering over it. The water looked as if it had turned dark and, rising to the sky, had turned upside down and mixed with the clouds. It felt like a representation of the mood we were all in—somber. But underneath the surface of my sadness, an anger like I’d never felt before churned. I almost wondered if it was going to manifest itself into something the world could see, hear, and touch.

When a woman named Stella gave me a glimpse of heaven and then bolted on me, I found myself standing at the gates of hell. After what my sister, Saverio, and Evelina told me, I was standing in it, nothing stopping me from going after mine .

Where we were headed was part of that journey, but a lighter part of it.

Cappello's had serviced the Fausti family as their exclusive jeweler since the Faustis had been the Faustis. It was usually an occasion to go to the actual store. And the stores were strategically placed for our convenience, even though the original, and main store, was in Venice. The second store was in Southern Italy, in Palermo. A special code had to be given to make an appointment. Our family was the only source of income the Cappello's had. It was plenty enough.

“A minute,” Marciano said, grabbing me by the arm of my jacket and stopping me from entering the jewelry store.

I nodded for everyone to go ahead of us. We were here for Massimo to pick out a ring for Chloe, and it was always eye opening to see what our family had stored in our vault. I hadn’t decided if I wanted something antique or newly designed for Stella. Fate would have a say.

After everyone was allowed entry, my brother looked at me and cleared his throat. Out of all of us, Marciano was the bulkiest. Our uncle, Uncle Tito, had asked that Marciano be his name. Uncle Tito hadn’t been far off. Marciano boxed on the side, for fun, but he had formed a company that dealt in personal security. And he was one of the smartest motherfuckers I’d ever met. He was a walking, talking, dictionary with a deadly right hook. Mamma always said he was her plush lion, though. That was because she’d never been put in a headlock by him or had one of his fists impale her skin. He was strong enough to break a man’s ribs by picking him up and shaking him. He’d done it before.

We—meaning Scarlett’s sons—always marveled at the fact that such a tiny woman had carried four sons who, physically, towered over her like skyscrapers.

Marciano set his hands in his pockets and looked me harder in the eye. He spoke in Italian. “Stella doesn’t have family now, but she has us. We’re her family.”

I nodded and squeezed his shoulder, my way of thanking my brother for his support.

“I will say this, too. Mamma and papà love us. They’ve always done everything for us. Given us the best lives. Treated us well. We never wanted for anything, most of all love. But mamma can’t exist without papà, and papà can’t exist without mamma. If something happened to one of them and they left us all behind, it didn’t matter. One without the other cannot exist.” He shrugged. “Stella had a parent who loved her more than herself. That is something you should tell her when the time is right.”

My brother turned and buzzed to get inside. The door opened immediately, and I was left out in the mist to contemplate his words. After Olivier Nemours was successful in taking mamma and almost killing her, papà made the decision to not live without her if she would have been taken from us. Mia knew it. I knew it. All of us did, except for Maestro, because he came after. And it was something that left a scar on each of us in different ways. We never truly discussed it in depth, but we all knew. And that was Marciano’s way of saying that Stella had a mamma who sacrificed all she was for her daughter. Our parents would have left us behind for their love.

It stung me too, but the scar had healed the moment Stella came into my life. I was starting to understand. Nothing made sense to me anymore, not even myself, and I knew she’d be the cure to it.

Another thought branched from that one: Maestro. He came after. If mamma hadn’t survived Olivier Nemours, my youngest brother wouldn’t exist. It was one hell of a line to follow, and I was going to have to think about it later.

Before I could ring the bell, the door opened and one of the workers invited me inside. The front looked like a typical jewelry store, with glass cases and a plain wooden sign engraved with “Cappello” hanging behind the counter. The rest, though, was all in baroque style. Gold scrollwork sconces were hung on the wall, candles burning and dripping wax. It gave the room a moody feel, like we’d sunk into the canal and were underwater. Especially when shadows grew and dipped along the walls, and the many voices came together in a collective hush.

My parents, along with my uncles and their wives, except for Rosaria, had decided to join us. Maestro scanned the case, no doubt already looking for a ring for his fiancé. Because the thought of my brother not existing caused a hollowness in my heart, I squeezed his shoulder harder than usual. The action took him off guard and he blinked at me before he turned and hugged me.

Maestro was a Fausti through and through, but he was different. He was more like mamma’s brother, who died before any of us were born. That was why mamma and papà had named him Maestro. It was our uncle’s nickname, and he loved music, even though he couldn’t hear. Maestro had hearing loss, too, but not to the extent my uncle had it. In time, though, the doctors said it was a possibility.

We separated after a second, and mamma was looking at us, her eyes soft and a smile on her face. After we all greeted each other, Adone, the head metalsmith, came to bring us in the back. I kept noticing how mamma was looking at papà. It was a look that wasn’t obvious to those who didn’t know them. Quick glances that carried a silent conversation. My parents had their own language that no one else could understand, but it put me on edge. Especially when I noticed the way Mia was looking at Mariano.

I lifted my brows at her. She shook her head, as if to say, not now . But when she picked up a pamphlet on one of the counters and whacked him on the head with it, I wondered why not now . Mariano grinned at her and fixed his hair. I picked up one of the catalogs and thumbed through it. Ava, who was married to Nazzareno, had been a journalist in New York years ago. Nonno took an interest in her, and he enjoyed her work, so he’d put her in charge of documenting certain aspects of our family’s history. Cappello's Jewelry was one aspect.

Ava had written our history with them, and it was all detailed in the pamphlet. It even mentioned how no Fausti could ever marry a Cappello due to an engagement gone wrong in the late 1800s. I popped my brother on the head the same way Mia had. It suddenly made sense why my parents were here, and why Mia was acting so strangely. Mariano was the Casanova fucking Prince. And if one of the metalsmith’s daughters caught his eye, he’d tempt fate by seducing one of them.

I opened my mouth to order him to stay out front, but mamma shook her head and said, “Let it be.”

I lifted my brows at her.

“What will be, will be,” she said in Slovenian. “No human intervention can stop the road fate sets before us.”

Mariano was on a crash course then. The metalsmith had two granddaughters, both about our ages, and both worked in the jewelry store. The blonde was Mariano’s type, and their eyes kept meeting as Padrino had a talk with Adone. The other granddaughter looked like a girl out of an antique Italian painting. Fair skin. Fair eyes. Brown hair that was on the lighter side of the color spectrum. Slight in build. She wore one of those headpieces that have a magnifying glass on it, and her hair was pulled back in a low bun.

My brother kept staring at her after their introduction. Her name was Sistine, and I wouldn’t forget it. I didn’t know what game he was playing, but he refused to let her shy away from him. Her cheeks turned a shade of light pink whenever she was forced to meet his eyes.

Her sister, the blonde, was named Capri. She was a designer, but Sistine designed and worked as a metalsmith. Judging by what I was seeing, they were opposites. Where Capri was more forward and demanding that Mariano meet her eyes, Sistine seemed to want to melt into the wall, like candle wax, and hide. Sistine’s eyes showed disdain for my brother, and I wondered if she’d made it a game by being seemingly repulsed by him.

We were joined by more people. Not Faustis, but the only other family that was allowed to be back this far. They were members of the family that designed clothes for the Faustis, House of Sicilia. I spotted Sicilia right away. She was the great-granddaughter of the founders, who had dressed my great grandmother, Grazia, back in the day. Her parents were with her. Her mother’s family owned another world-renowned design house in Paris. Her mother was friends with my grandmother, mamma’s mamma, who was also a world-renowned fashion designer. Sicilia’s father was from Sicily and had grown up in the industry.

We’d see Sicilia from time to time whenever there was an occasion she and her family would be wherever we were. We hadn’t seen her in years, though. At least I hadn’t. She was a mirror who reflected both of her parents: light brown skin, black hair, and green eyes. Her father was Sicilian, and her mamma Black and French.

Mia nudged me and chucked her chin toward Marciano. He was keeping to the shadows, but even so, it was clear he’d found the center of this room in his eyes: Sicilia. Which told me I was right. None of us had seen her in a long time, or Marciano would have said something. She was all grown up and wearing an engagement ring. She was here with her parents to pick up designs inspired by the Fausti family. She’d come up with the idea to go Baroque but showcase some of the jewelry in designs for clothing.

That aside.

What the fuck was happening here?

Mia gave me a smile. “It’s true,” she whispered. “The Faustis are good at falling in line. I fell first. You second. Mariano third. Marciano next. Maestro…he’ll be last, even though things happened in a different way for him. But our love stories will play out in order of our births. It even happened that way for papà and most of his brothers. Padrino had no idea papà existed when he married Rosaria.”

“Mariano.” I said his name and it sounded like a question.

Mia laughed. “You know the saying…the harder they play, the harder they fall.”

“No, I don’t believe I know that one.”

Mia laughed even harder, and mamma laughed too, like she was right beside us and heard our conversation. Saverio grinned and squeezed Mia’s neck, burying his hand deeper into her hair.

Adone cleared his throat to quiet the crowd. He had a lot of Faustis to deal with, and then the House of Sicilia crew, not to mention he kept looking between Mariano and Capri with his forehead so drawn in, a crater had formed between his bushy eyebrows. For whatever reason, he hadn’t taken notice of the way Mariano was watching Sistine. Only Capri. Which was why Sistine looked horrified when her grandfather told her to show us to our vault. She wanted to protest, but something about the way Mariano was looking at her made her shut her mouth. She visibly steeled herself. She stood taller, pinched her lips, narrowed her eyes, and nodded, then left to grab the key.

Zio Romeo took Mariano by the neck, then collected Marciano in the same way, and we waited by the door that led to the underground vault. Venice didn’t have much of an underground…anything…because it was built on wood piles over the water, but there’s a crypt, and that crypt served as inspiration for our vaults. With the rising tides, though, a lot of our valuables were moved to Palermo for safe keeping.

Sistine still had the headpiece on when she took the lead. She held a keychain that was the size of her head, with a skeleton key that was the size of her hand, attached to it. She took one last look at Mariano, and then we all followed behind her as we made our way below the surface of the building.

Mamma and Mia shivered. The temperature was much cooler, and it smelled like old valuables and water. Sistine grabbed a torch from the wall and pointed forward.

“This way,” she said in a voice so soft, it didn’t even echo in the carnivorous space. She handed the torch to a man who was coming with us.

We’d all been here before, but we followed behind her like we hadn’t. The Cappello family took their job seriously, and this was part of it. Most branches of the family had their own jeweler in whichever part of Italy they were in, but since our branch was the head branch, we had the privilege of storing our things at this location, since it was the first location, and it had historical meaning.

Sistine stopped at a door that was aged by years and scuff marks, maybe even sword cuts, and directed the man who had followed our group to point the flaming torch at the lock. She stuck the key in and turned it, then shoved the handle, but it wasn’t budging. Mariano stepped up and shoved it open, then gave her a wink. She rolled her eyes.

Once inside, we all went in separate directions. This part of the vault was a labyrinth with separate rooms, lit by only the torches on the walls. Wooden signs over the doors gave directions on which way back to the exit. Some of the jewelry stored in this vault could be traced back to the 1600s. Each piece was hand packed and stored in glass boxes. The year and history of the item were listed below it.

My eyes found it right away.

A piece I’d always thought about, ever since the first time I’d been allowed to come down here. A ring that was shimmering in the darkness because of the wavering flames on the wall. It was designed to look like a seven-carat North Star.

It had been designed years ago by my great-grandfather, Marzio, for his wife, Grazia. Papà came to stand next to me. So did Padrino. Their shadows rose and fell with the flickering fires of the torches, throwing a red hue over all of us except for the ring. It gave off a rainbow of colors, brightening the darkness with its brilliance.

“This one,” I said to the man holding a book. It was a list of all the items in the vault.

“We will have to get permission for that,” he said in Italian, glancing down at the entry inside of the book, reading by the glow of burning firelight.

A voice echoed inside of the vault, deep and melodic, singing an Italian song. A few seconds later, it seemed like a cold wind had entered the underground rooms, and the torches hissed and swayed with it. Then a massive hand fell on my shoulder, squeezing. My grandfather’s face wavered with mine in the reflection of the glass.

“A reflection of my youth,” he said in Italian. His voice was like gravel against my skin, and the weight on my shoulder was like steel. But the heat from his palm seemed to burn through my coat, and even though I could see and hear the depth of his pride, I felt it even more. It was the heat in his palm burning through the layers and touching me someplace deep inside.

Padrino had taken a step back. My uncles took their places around him. My brothers around our uncles. My father kept his place on the other side of me.

I was the son of Brando Piero Fausti. The grandson of Luca Leone Fausti. Great grandson of Marzio Piero Fausti. Nephew of Rocco, Dario, and Romeo. Brother to Mia, Mariano, Marciano, and Maestro.

I am a Fausti .

And this ring had been worn by one who was a star in her own right.

It was going to be my honor for another star to wear it on her finger as a symbol of our love for eternity.

My grandfather nodded, as if to say, I approve of this . He gave the man with the book a nod, and just like that, my future seemed brighter.