King of Stars (The Next Generation #2)

46. Stella

Chapter 46

Stella

I didn’t hear the door open or shut as I was setting the table and mom was finishing dinner, but I knew the time. Only if something came up with the family was my husband ever late, and when he was going to be, he would let me know. Mom had decided to make special Louisiana dishes with what we had. She’d turned from a decent cook into an excellent one. The samples she’d given me while cooking, making sure each dish had enough seasonings, were out-of-this-world good.

“Are you sure he’ll like them?” she asked in a rush.

I nodded. “He’s not a food snob or anything. He ate half of my funnel cake at the theme park we went to in Los Angeles.”

She exploded with laughter. “That’s good, but I can’t blame him if he is a food snob. The Italians ’round here know how to cook.”

Oh! I ran to the stereo system and pressed play. Italian music seemed to float out, and mom and me both moved our hips to the opening notes, trying to bring them to life with our bodies. We both stopped when we realized we were doing it, and we exploded with laughter.

Matteo walked in right then and smiled at me.

I gasped and rushed to him.

“Good day, ah?” he said at the same time I said, “What the fuck happened to your eye?”

It was swollen shut.

Mom rushed to the fridge and pulled out wrapped steaks Scarlett had sent over. Mom took the raw meat out, and close enough, she stood on her toes and set it against Matteo’s eye. He went to take it from her, and their hands touched. Instead of recoiling like she usually did, she left her hand there on purpose, it seemed.

“That’ll help with the swelling,” she whispered.

“ Grazie ,” he whispered back.

And in that moment, I knew something was changing. He felt the beginning of her acceptance, and maybe she felt the first wave of his warm love and appreciation.

“I’ll start plating everything,” she said, leaving him with the steak pressed to his eye.

I took her place and walked him to the table. With a shit-eating grin, he wrapped his arms around my waist and sat down, pulling me onto his lap.

“What happened, Matteo?” I whispered.

He gazed at me with one intense dark eye, making me feel like the star he believed was created for him. “Natchitoches.”

“Natchitoches?” I repeated, not catching on right away. Then I remembered. “Oh, when I sassed Rocco outside of Scarlett’s dance studio?”

As he laughed, he bit at my neck, making me laugh. “Sass him?”

“Yeah, when I basically told him to get control of his boil.”

“I can’t get control of the beautiful star that sasses me.”

“Wanna try after dinner?” I stuck my tongue out at him.

His eyes heated, and a second later, a slow smile came to his face, one that showed teeth.

My breath caught and he pointed at his lips.

Leaning in slowly, I set my lips against his, then my forehead against his. “I’m sorry, Teo,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean to cause—” I nodded to his eye “—something like that. Someone hurts you, they hurt me too.”

“Same here,” he whispered. “Except I’ll kill a motherfucker.”

“Instead of killing him, I’d rather sweeten him up. Do you think he’ll accept cookies from me? I really shouldn’t have said what I did, even if it is the truth.” And if I had been of sane mind, I would have kept quiet. In Matteo’s family, if a woman disrespects one of the men, it was her man or husband who took the punishment for it.

“He didn’t say what you think he said.” Matteo patted my hip. “He was worried about you.”

I groaned, covering my face. “Double the cookies then.”

Matteo pulled my hand away from my face. “Mamma has a recipe for a cookie he likes.”

“She already taught me how to make it. She said it’s one of your favorites too!” I went to hop up, but he held me tight to him.

“You’ll be too far.”

I smiled. “I’ll be missing you too,” I whispered against his lips, “as I’m helping mama plate the food. She made dinner. I made dessert.”

“You are dolce .” He kissed me, then lifted us up, setting me on the chair. “Relax, baby. I got this.”

“Your eye!”

“Doesn’t control my hands or legs,” he said as he removed his suit jacket and set it over a chair. He started rolling up his sleeves as he turned from me.

Mom was staring at us when he started to walk toward her, and when he got closer, she turned away and went to grab for a plate. He took the plate from her.

“I’ll serve dinner tonight, Ms. Nola,” he said. “You cooked. I’ll do the rest. Have a seat at the table.”

“Are you sure?” she whispered.

He winked at her. “I got this.”

“ Wheew ,” she mouthed to me, fanning herself as she took a seat at the table.

I cracked up, wondering if his looks had anything to do with her worry for me. He was entirely too good looking, like against-the-laws-of-nature good looking. And I guess it was hard to believe he could be faithful to one woman all his life, given the fact that he had choices galore. But if Matteo vowed it to me, I believed him.

His word is as good as his blood.

The men who had been honest about not wanting to be faithful to their wives in the family were not, and the ones who were, were. To these men, their words meant something. In a world where that practice was archaic and not valued any longer, it was a breath of fresh air that this family still held tight to that—even if the truth hurt.

Dinner was so good, conversation was scarce. After dinner and dessert, though, Matteo picked up all our plates and brought them to the sink. Then when mom went to grab for the dirty dishes, and I told her we’d take care of them, he stopped her before she went to her room.

“Thank you for dinner, Ms. Nola.” He gave her a gentle kiss on the cheek. “It was delicious.”

I’d heard him, and his brothers, say and do that to Scarlett a million times, and it was nice to see him doing the same with my mom. She said something like, my pleasure, and then set her hand there, like she was keeping it close.

When I met him at the sink with more dishes, he kissed me and told me the same thing about dessert. I bumped him and said, “Thank you. For making my mom feel welcome, even when she wasn’t all that warm. I think she understands now…to a certain degree…what we feel for each other.”

“She loves you,” he said, handing me a dish to dry.

“She’s always been that protective over me.” I set the dish in the cabinet. “I guess that all goes back to love. But that’s why it was so hard for me to understand why she’d left me. Even though she told me I was spending the summer with Henri, I knew something was…off with her. She’d never even let me sleep over at a friend’s house. She said you never know what’s going on behind someone’s door.”

“I didn’t expect her to like me right away. She’s smart not to.”

I looked at him and narrowed my eyes.

He shrugged. “When something is that important to you, you guard it fiercely.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t smart enough to guard you. My sassy mouth got you in trouble.” I glanced at his eye. “That looks painful, Teo. Why don’t you go sit down. I’ll make you a glass of bourbon.”

“We’re almost done here,” he said. “Then a bath and bed.”

That sounded really nice.

I smiled. “It’s not every day you see a man such as yourself helping with the cleanup.”

“Why the fuck not? Are my hands too good for dirty dishes? If that’s the case, you should never touch one. Your hands are much cleaner than mine.”

I stared at the pattern on the plate and rubbed my finger along it, thinking about what had happened in Los Angles, to Damon Carter, and if that was what he was referring to. He interrupted my thoughts by clearing his throat.

“My old man did almost everything for Magpie when he was growing up. Nonno was in prison, and Brando Fausti had to become the man of the house. Magpie wasn’t always the way she is now.”

“Fun?”

He laughed some. “Yeah, she is that. Fun. Except for her candy mixes. Stay the fuck away. They look appealing, but you eat too much, it’ll turn your stomach sour.”

Too late for that, I was about to say, but since no one had filled him in on my vomiting spree after I’d indulged in it too much, I decided to stay quiet. He might make it hard for me to enjoy women time if I admitted it. He worried about me too much.

“Noted,” was all I said.

“My old man did the cooking, the dishes, the grocery shopping, even paid the bills. Mamma told me once that if she spent the money for things they needed, he’d try to work for it when he was a kid. Sometimes mamma’s parents helped them out, since my old man and my uncle, mamma’s brother, were tight. It was easier when my old man got older and could work.”

“Magpie told me she couldn’t read until your mom taught her.”

He nodded. “Magpie didn’t have an easy life, and she had my old man young, and she didn’t seem to grow up, some, until she and Nonno got back together.”

“So, you didn’t learn this from your mom then?”

“Nah, my old man instilled this in us. We help around the house, no matter what needs to be done.”

“If things are so equal between us, then why do you refuse to let me bring groceries in or pick up anything heavy?” I lifted my brow at him, but secretly, I loved that he did all those things for me.

“You won’t touch a trashcan a day in your life, either, if I can fucking help it.” He gave the counter a wipe with a dishtowel he spritzed with some lavender-scented cleaner, then lifted me off my feet, carrying me to our bedroom.

He set me down on the counter in our bathroom and started running water in the tub. We sank into the warm, fragrant water together a few minutes later, and after the water had turned cold, we switched to the shower, and we washed each other.

It took me longer to do what needed to be done in the bathroom after, and when I walked into our bedroom, he was sitting on our bed, only in sweatpants, staring down at his left hand.

“Damn,” I breathed. His hair was still wet, dripping water on the floor, and so was his upper body. He smelled…I couldn’t even describe it. But it made me feel ravenous in a part of my body that had nothing to do with my stomach.

“Stella,” he whispered.

“Yeah?” I whispered.

“I can’t change my past.”

That threw me for a second. What was he—oh, what I’d word-vomited up before Scarlett helped me purge myself of haunting ghosts. His past was a ghost, and I couldn’t be honest and say, oh, I was just speaking out of…destituteness when I said that to you. Because then I’d be a liar, and wanting to be more like him, I wanted to be honest. Being honest meant that I wasn’t afraid of him, or what lived between us. I wasn’t afraid to be honest with my feelings because he might run.

“If you could?” I asked.

His eye rose to meet mine, and the intensity in it almost made me take a step back. But I held my ground. I was learning how to do that more and more with him.

“I don’t harbor regrets,” he said, as honest as ever. “I control my steps, even if fate changes the signs occasionally. But if my past hurts you, it’s killing me. I can’t fucking change it.”

“Okay,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“Okay,” he said, repeating me and my tone.

“What else do you want me to say, Matteo? That I’m okay with it? I can’t. I’m not okay with it. I can’t help how it makes me feel when I think about it.”

“Don’t fucking think about it. I’ve forgotten every touch but yours. None of it exists.”

“Except in my head.”

“You’re giving life to something that’s dead and buried then.”

“Is that what I’m doing?”

He nodded. “You keep thinking about it, and maybe you might start to get ideas.”

“Like what? That I can’t live with your past?”

His open eye turned then. Focused. Hard. And I could see the challenge in it. I’ll give you a head start, then game on.

“There’s no place you can run from me,” he said. “We made vows. You are my vow. I’ll keep it, nourish it, protect it for as long as I live, my wife.”

“I know, but who said I’m going to run? Stella without Matteo makes no sense—not even to Stella. I’ll find a way to let it go. I’ll find a way to make it all make sense, since we were made for each other, and you with anyone but me makes no sense. But right now, it doesn’t feel all that great.”

He stood, rising to his full height, and even though I said I’d stand my ground, the force of his nature had me taking steps back, back, back, until my back hit the wall, and he was crowding me. His arms were like bars, keeping me in, but I knew what a prison felt like. This wasn’t it.

In his arms I found freedom—a freedom so strong that it made me almost giddy.

“I love you,” he whispered, his voice hoarse.

“I love you, too,” I whispered.

“I’ve never loved a woman before you. I won’t love another woman after you.” He set my hand over his pounding heart. “I’ve never felt the inside of a woman until you—without protection. The only woman I’ve ever called mine or will ever call mine.”

“What are you doing to me, Matteo Fausti?” I breathed out as his lips came to mine and he kissed me.

He kissed me until I couldn’t breathe, until I was dizzy and disoriented, and he was making his way down my neck.

“Making you forget my past, Stella Fausti,” he whispered against my pulse. “As I have forgotten every woman but you. And I’ll make you forget every day, until you can’t even remember ever feeling the way you do. The only thing you’ll remember…” He pulled me to him, breath to breath, skin to skin, his darkness to my light.

Us.

Always.

My husband left me that morning with more than a goodbye kiss. After the night before, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to walk the next day, but what he’d done to me was warm, slow, and made me feel like I could sleep the entire day away. But my husband had business to attend to, and so did I. Matteo didn’t usually leave that early, but something was going on, and Nonno had requested a meeting with him. That could mean anything from our personal war to our private ones within the family to financial dealings that Matteo took care of for the family.

Mom and I had our breakfast and herbal tea outside before we dressed for the day. After I stopped by Rocco’s place, I was going to Brando and Scarlett’s place to hang out. The women were all meeting up there. Ava was visiting, and she was going to fill me in on what would happen next November. It was a big deal in the family, because it would be a sort of retirement party for Nonno. Scarlett called it the switching of power, though. I guess Nonno was going to relinquish control of it to Rocco.

The entire family was tense about that, though, since Rocco and Rosaria were having serious marriage issues, especially after what she’d done to Massimo. I’d asked Matteo what would happen if Rocco gave up his right as the next King of Italy, and he’d told me he was next in line to rule, unless someone challenged him.

“Like what’s his name?” I’d asked. I knew him as Marzio, but since he shamed the name, Nonno demoted him to a name that meant traitor in their family. Sometimes I could remember it, if someone had brought it up, but mostly, I just remembered it started with a T.

“Tiziano,” Matteo said.

That was it.

He nodded. “He could, but I’m not sure if Nonno will allow it, since he threatened you. That’s not how things work in my family. If Tiziano had a problem with what you did to his mamma, he should have taken it up with Nonno or me. He could have challenged me, but he didn’t.”

“He knew he was going to lose.”

“Yeah,” he said, but then he got this dreamy look in his eyes, like he was imagining going at it with his cousin. Probably with a sword.

The thought made me sick.

“If you were a man and took a piece of sharp stone to a woman—” he shrugged “—the outcome of this would be vastly different. But it was woman against woman.”

“You okay, bestie boo?” Mom asked as we got to the new car. Matteo said it was safe to drive it, if we were behind the gates. One day, he promised, we’d take it out on the open roads, but after what had happened at the cemetery, he was more paranoid.

“Yeah,” I said, handing mom the two tins of cookies for her to hold. The car didn’t have a back seat. “Just thinking about some stuff.”

“Seems like there’s a lot of stuff to think about around here.”

That was the understatement of the year.

Mom gave a whoop! as I backed out of the drive, and she turned the music up. Neither of us acknowledged that even behind the wall, I still had guards that followed me around. They kept a distance, but they were still there. Placido and Oscar were with us. Saverio and Armando had gone to the meeting with Matteo.

We drove around for a bit, trying to learn the lay of the land, before we followed the directions Matteo had given me to Rocco’s place. It was close to Brando and Scarlett. Everything this family did, they did by hierarchy. Matteo’s place was close to his sister and brother’s places. I wasn’t sure what would happen after something happened to Nonno, or once he retired. Who got his castello ? Rocco? Since it seemed fit for a king and his queen? I wasn’t even sure if I was right about everything, since I was basing my theory on what I thought I knew. I’d have to ask Matteo later.

I wasn’t sure I’d even want to live in the castello . It was so big. I liked our smaller place. It felt more intimate.

After a few minutes of driving around, listening to Italian music we didn’t know and trying to sing along to it, we pulled up at Rocco’s place. I was proud of myself. I only got lost a few times, and we only got smacked by a few low-lying branches once or twice. Mom laughed her ass off when she’d said, holding her hands in front of her face, “Estella! You’re smacking me with twigs!” I caught the giggles, and caught them so hard, I had to pull over because I couldn’t breathe. Neither could she.

I honked the horn in front of Rocco’s place and waved to my two guards. They waved back.

“The one in the passenger seat,” Mom said, staring in her rearview mirror. “He looks like someone, but I can’t place him for the life of me.”

“You mean Oscar?” I asked, taking a tin of cookies from her.

“Oscar,” she repeated, tapping at her chin. “It’ll come to me.”

“A hint?” I smiled. “What has four wheels and flies?” I said in the Oscar-iest voice I could come up with.

“Stop.” Mom held a hand up. “My stomach hurts so bad from laughing already.”

“You might not be ready for this. Ready? A… garbage truck !” Mari had taught me that one.

Mom’s face went blank for a second and then she exploded with laughter. “I get it! I didn’t at first, but I get it! But what does Oscar the—” She stopped mid-sentence and looked in the rearview mirror again. “Oh! Hehehehe. They could be twins.”

“You should see his father,” I said, as Rocco stepped out of his villa, looking as gorgeous as the day. His skin was the color of an olive that had been ripened by the sun, his eyes the green water of the Mediterranean, and his hair jet black like the night sky.

“That man,” mom breathed. She made a noise with her mouth that no doubt meant… I approve . “He’s fine .”

“He looks just like my father-in-law,” I said. “But with green eyes.”

“I know, and…variety is the spice.” She whistled low.

My smile was kind of shy, especially after the way I’d treated Rocco. He wasn’t too chatty with me—he wasn’t chatty, period, it seemed—but…he was always welcoming and nice to me. I really felt bad for him. It couldn’t have been easy having your wife have a totally different opinion about who your son should marry, especially if it was true love. Scarlett had told me Chloe and Massimo had an instant connection when they’d met in Paris.

Rocco nodded at me, and I waved with my free hand.

Niccolo, Matteo’s great uncle, Luca’s youngest brother, came up behind Rocco, and when he noticed us, he stepped outside and took the other tin of cookies from my mom. I went to open my mouth to say that those were meant for Scarlett and the women meeting up at her house, but when Niccolo offered his arm to my mom and she took it, my mouth snapped shut on its own. They went in ahead of us, and Rocco came out to meet me, taking the cookies.

I looked up at him. “Those are for you,” I whispered. “A ‘I come in peace’ offering.”

He nodded. His eyes were serious.

“I’m sorry, Zio Rocco,” I said. “I shouldn’t have said what I did when we were in Natchitoches.”

He cocked his head to the side, like he was truly seeing me for the first time. “It is the truth. About the boil.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But it’s none of my business. I’m sorry. That was during a real low point for me.”

“You have your mamma back.”

“I do.” I smiled. “I feel more like…myself now.”

He tucked the tin underneath his arm and touched my chin. “You are a star,” he said.

“Does that mean you forgive me?” I asked.

“Your man took the punishment for it. All forgiven.”

“I know, but it was me who said the words.”

“It was not your feet that stepped up and challenged me.”

Oh. It was because Matteo had stepped in front of him, like he might have said something to me, and he was going to stop it before fists were involved.

“I know you have your rules, and that’s between you and the men, but I still want to make peace between us. I like you.”

He opened the tin and took a bite of the cookie, eating it so properly, he didn’t even spill a crumb on his suit shirt. “All forgiven,” he said. “These are delicious. Just as good as your mamma-in-law makes.”

Maybe I beamed, because he smiled at me.

Damn.

Another Fausti man close to taking me down with that Fausti bright white, perfect smile.

We turned at the sound of a baby crying. Mia was walking Graziana in a fancy-looking stroller, and the two boys were being taken care of by Scarlett and Brando. Scarlett waved at me, and I waved back. When I turned back, Rocco was watching them, and with a look in his eyes that made my heart break for him. It wasn’t just the scene, but more. Like…he was watching Scarlett with more than want for what his brother’s family had. It almost seemed like he wanted her .

Brando hadn’t seemed to miss the look. His eyes were hard on his brother as his brother watched his wife.

What had Ava told me once? “Watch,” she had said. “Watch the looks people in this family give each other. They might not always speak what they’re feeling, but intentions are in the eyes.”

That made me stand closer to Rocco, because even I could feel he wanted a true love like Brando and Scarlett had, and somehow, fate got it twisted and paired him up with Rosaria. I mean, okay, she was beautiful and talented, seemed smart too, and was driven, that was for sure, but for someone who was an opera singer, she seemed to lack the passion Rocco needed. It was like her ambitions had driven out the romance in her veins.

“Here,” I whispered, handing Rocco another cookie. “You seem like you need this.”

He took it, laughing.

“What’s so funny, honey?” Mia asked as they got closer. “Oh, don’t mind if I do!” She snatched a cookie out of her uncle’s tin. “These are so good, Stella!”

Rocco handed Brando the tin and went straight to the stroller for Graziana. She had changed so much in just…what was it? Not even two months? We all cooed at her for a bit and gave the boys some attention before we all followed Rocco inside. Mom and Niccolo were talking in the kitchen. He had a cup of coffee and a cookie. Niccolo wasn’t doing much talking though. He was starting at my mom with a hungry look in his eyes. Mom was being her usual charming self, going on about different things.

“Seems like your mom has put a spell on Niccolo,” Scarlett whispered, nudging me.

“She knows a thing or two about voodoo.” I wasn’t sure what was happening, but…it was interesting to watch.

We all took seats around Rocco’s table and snacked on the cookies, chatting about so many different things, it was hard to keep up. Sometimes two people would start a conversation between them and then the whole table would get in on it. But then Scarlett froze, and her eyes seemed to dim before the thoughts she was having disappeared completely and left her looking vacant.

“Baby,” Brando said to her, and the entire table went still.

She held up a hand a second later, but she looked pale.

I stood from the table and grabbed her a glass of water. As I set it in front of her, she squeezed my hand, thanking me. A knock came at the door, and the guards must have opened it. Matteo came in, followed by Saverio and Armando.

The men at the table stood, meeting my husband and his two men face to face.

“Nonno sent us,” Matteo said, looking in his uncle’s eyes, as serious as he ever was when he was about to deliver bad news. “Massimo has been arrested in Natchitoches. Chloe decided to marry someone from our town in a secret ceremony. Massimo allowed it to happen, then he killed her husband and left her his heart before the wedding night.”

A pin drop could be heard in the room.

Rocco fixed his suit, but that was all he did.

Scarlett stepped up next to him, keeping Brando’s hand in hers. “Rocco,” she whispered.

Rocco gave a curt nod and then left.

Most of the men followed.