King of Stars (The Next Generation #2)

Epilogue

Matteo

M y wife took a heavy breath at the same time I did. We were always in sync like that. And I knew that, as we spent years together, we’d only become more entangled.

We were already sharing dreams, or wherever we were, and I remembered.

After I’d been shot, after Stella’s movie premiere, and after they told her I was in critical condition, she passed out. And maybe I was hallucinating, or just dreaming, but she was there with me in the darkness. I felt her but couldn’t see her. It hurt me deep in my heart that she wasn’t lighting up for me.

She was keeping herself from me.

And it pissed me off.

Pissed me off enough to make me fight harder to see her again.

My son. Part of my wife’s light.

He was too fucking far from me, too, stuck in an impenetrable darkness that my wife refused to brighten.

My son was a part of my wife, and he had my blood, and the thought of never getting to hold him again was another fighting factor.

Before I knew it, I was awake, giving my wife a narrowed-eye stare because I had no fucking clue why she wouldn’t share her light with me in that darkness.

Share our son with me. Our heart in physical form.

When I told her about it, she narrowed her eyes against mine and said, “That’s because my light will go out if you try to leave me .” Then she burst into tears, flinging her body over mine, soaking my chest with what felt like her blood. She was crying tears of blood.

Not literally, but she could have been. Her tears mixed with the crusted blood on her face.

“You love me,” I’d breathed. “You really love me, Estella Fausti.”

She sat up, letting her tears fall without trying to wipe them. That was my job, and she fucking knew it. “What?” Her red-rimmed eyes searched mine, the red making her gray eyes seem even moodier.

I repeated myself, and she flung herself on me again, kissing me nonstop. “I do, you…you…hardheaded man! I do. I do .” She put her hands against her chest, over her heart, her fingers curling in, like she was about to rip her heart out and hand it to me. “So much I fucking do! I don’t know what to do with it. Or how to handle it. I can’t contain it! And it scares me so much that I can’t...I can’t control it. Oh, Teo.” She laid her head over my chest. “Please. Don’t ever leave me.”

I kissed her over and over, and after she fell asleep on my chest, holding me tight, I realized how much I stood to lose that night.

Everything.

The old man who had shot me was the father of a woman, Santina, who had married one of our men, a cousin, his name Livio, years ago.

If the night made me realize what I could have lost—my entire life, meaning, I had no fucking clue what had happened to my wife after I’d hit the ground and didn’t know until after Saverio told me right before I left the hospital—it changed my wife too.

Her eyes were sharper and harder when she looked at Luca and me, like she too was preparing for a war that might never come or could be on our doorstep the next day. The scene in front of the Spanish Steps made her realize that being a Fausti came with a high price. It wasn’t all night skies and brilliant stars. And the realization of it caused a crippling fear.

I was in this life, for bad or worse. Her son would be in this life, for bad or worse. And he would be our only.

Two months after that night, I should have been hunting Boris and the Russians, my wife’s ear, but my old man once told me something before I found Stella that I never forgot.

“Wars keep fine even when they’re cold. But your wife, she’ll be warm-blooded, and she doesn’t do well in the cold for too long. If that metaphor doesn’t make fucking sense, I’ll put it simply: your wife comes first, even over bloodshed.”

He was fucking right.

My wife was stuck in the cold blood of that night, and she couldn’t seem to release herself from the images, the terror and helplessness, even though Nonno had told me how brave she’d been. She was directly in the middle of a war, and she kept her heels on the ground and a gun in her hand.

Still.

She shouldn’t have been in the middle of a fucking battle that could have taken her from me. I should have been the one protecting her. I thought about that every day, almost every second, the thought becoming a permanent fixture in the back of my mind, even if I could focus on other things too.

But my wife. She stared at me and Luca longer and harder, held him closer, even when he wriggled to get down. It was like she was gazing at her own stars and waiting for the day to come when they would disappear.

I refused to allow her to be bullied by fear.

I was the monster the day should fear when I emerged from the night.

I was her protector.

Her husband.

The father of her child.

Her man.

And I always learned lessons from the past.

I’d approach every situation differently from the night of her premiere going forward.

Stella always felt more at home at our castello in Tuscany, and after the hospital stint, that was where we went. The stars there had always hypnotized her. We immediately fell into a routine that felt like…life. We spent every second together with Luca, watching him change and grow.

The honor of my life.

I wouldn’t have a household of sons, but my wife and son made up for that.

My wife and son were more than enough.

My wife and son were my always.

And if my family couldn’t accept that, fuck them too.

I was willing to give them up before for my family. And I’d do it without a second’s hesitation again.

The uncertainty was still on the table, and so was Padrino’s place in the family. My uncle wasn’t dealing with the unfortunate unfolding of his life as of late. After Rosaria set them on a trajectory of sorrow and despair—Padrino, Massimo, Amadeo, and Ludovico—he wasn’t himself.

If my uncle decided to give up the throne, like I had been willing to do, that meant that I would be next in line to lead the family. I accepted the position along with the cut over my heart my grandfather had given me, though he took a smear of my blood and touched his heart with it. I knew it was a sign of respect. He knew the only thing I would ever give up my place for was love, just like he was doing.

It was romantic.

And the Faustis lived for romance just as much as ruthlessness.

It might make my transition easier, too, if my leadership started sooner rather than later. We had Luca, and that was enough—for that second. But once years passed and no other children came from our household, the inquiries would begin.

Not if they would, but when .

I would be honest.

And if that made other branches challenge me, so be it.

I’d think about all that later, though.

Tonight.

Tonight, I wanted my wife to stare freely at the sky without a worry.

After dinner, I scooped my son up, his face full of sweet cream from dessert, and took my wife’s hand.

“Where are we going?” she asked, looking at the kitchen, which was almost spotless, but she had been cleaning more lately, like she couldn’t help herself.

“To free you,” I said. “Freeing us.”

“From what?”

I lifted her hand and kissed it in answer.

Luca was wanting to get down—he’d started walking early, and he wanted to be as independent as possible. I gave him a sharp command to still himself in Italian, and he did. I kissed his head, fixing his hair, and he smiled at me. I laughed, and so did he.

Stella grinned at him, wiping his face. He gazed at her like she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He loved his mamma.

I loved her too—more than my next breath.

I brought my family to a prime spot for star gazing. I’d already set an old blanket on the ground for us to sit on. My wife sat first, and then I took a seat with Luca, sitting him on his bottom. He started picking up rocks right away, busying himself with toys the land gave him. It wasn’t big enough for him to eat, but he did lick it. He stared at it, going cross eyed a little, and then his face scrunched up and he shook as if it was sour.

Like, yeah, fuck no, that’s not as good as mamma’s food!

Stella and I looked at each other and laughed.

He rocked, laughing with us, even though he was still searching the ground for more “toys” to occupy himself with. I stared at his face, running my hands through his soft, dark hair, and when I looked up, my wife was gazing at me like I was the star.

“Remember, la mia stella , you are the star; I am the darkness. My eyes are on you, not the other way around.”

She startled a little, as if I had caught her doing something she thought she was doing on the sly. She had thought my attention was solely on my son, but it was always on her too—even when she didn’t think so.

She nodded and looked up.

“Talk to me,” I said in Italian.

She understood.

“I don’t know, I really don’t anymore,” she whispered. “I can’t stop thinking about that night. I can’t stop thinking about what would have happened to Luca after. Because…” She pulled her knees up to her chest and set her arms around them, resting her chin there, keeping her eyes up and away from mine. But she wasn’t looking at the stars, she was looking at a spot in the sky that was void of them. It was completely dark.

And my wife couldn’t have been more beautiful to me in that moment.

Her hair was long, that beautiful strawberry blonde, the same as her mama’s, and it waved down her back. Her features were slim and elegant. Her skin was touched by sun and glowing. She wore a flowered dress and brown boots to keep up with our son as he started to run through our yard. But the dress didn’t hide her curves. Curves I ached to trace with my fingertips even in my deepest sleeps. A breeze kicked up and circulated her essence around me, flowers, the spices from dinner, and the smell of our son, our love. I breathed them all in, willing them to become a part of my DNA.

I knew as the years passed, she’d only become more beautiful to me, wiser, more…womanly. And my heart, at the end of it, would die because it couldn’t hold in my love for her anymore.

A woman loved me enough to give me life.

One day, another woman’s love would take it back, sending me up to the stars like I was made of helium instead of flesh, blood, and bone.

I’d wait for her up there someday in complete darkness again, until she came along and brightened my world. I refused to think of the end of our lives any other way.

She sighed and looked at me. “I didn’t tell you this, but that night…I truly understood the love between your parents. How one couldn’t live without the other. Luca…one day, Luca will leave us to find his own happiness, like I did, like you did, and...that’s separate from the connection we share. It’s a part of it, because he’s a part of us, but…it’s just us, Matteo. And as guilty as that makes me feel, because my mom wasn’t like that with me, I can’t stop feeling it, you know? Like my air depends on yours.”

I took her hand and kissed it. “I understand, baby. I didn’t before. But I understood the second my eyes found yours.”

“Stella without Matteo doesn’t make sense,” she whispered, her eyes turning glossy from the tears she held back. In this light, they looked silver.

“Matteo and Stella were born to love each other, and one without the other doesn’t exist.”

“A star can’t shine without the darkness.”

“And the darkness would just be…dark, without the stars. I’d see nothing but my own world without you in my life, la mia stella .”

“I love you so much, Matteo.”

“Love doesn’t even seem like the right word,” I said. “It’s not enough. That’s why we say always. Per sempre .”

“Always, always, always,” she chanted at me. Then she looked at our son, her eyes brightening at the sight of him. “Always, always, always, no matter where I’m at.” She met my eyes. “I still don’t feel all that free, though. I feel chained to that night and what could have happened after. If that bullet had gone in an inch lower…” She shook her head.

I took her hand, hard enough that she felt me, felt my intentions. Just like my heart heard hers speaking to me when she pressed her chest against mine. “That’s my responsibility to worry about.”

“It’s my responsibility too—to worry for my husband.”

“No matter what,” I said, my voice rough with pent-up emotion for this woman who had been through so much but had somehow saved me. “You will give me life through your love. I have no worries about that. But life is life, baby. I can’t promise to always be here. It’s not for me to vow that to you. But I do vow to do all that’s in my power to stay. To lead my family—meaning my wife, my son—with honor and every ounce of my strength. And I vow this here, now, on the stars: I will always bring you home to begin again.”

I pulled my wife into my lap. She reached for Luca, and he went to her, his northern star, and stuck his two fingers in his mouth, his eyes droopy and drunk looking, until he sighed and fell asleep.

“This is our beginning, Estella Valentina Fausti, and no matter what happens in life, we can always come back here to find our way. Na muri scrivutu ne stiddi .”

“ Un amore scritto nelle stelle ,” she said in perfect Italian.

“ Sì , our love was born of the stars. Of the way the darkness loves the way they shine. How no one else but them can bring light to secrets it needs to tell. And if we’re ever lost, this is where we come to find each other. To find peace. This is our home, and no matter how far we are, how lost we are, all we have to do is look up to find it, and we begin again.”

“ Per sempre ,” she whispered.

“Always, always, always—for as long as the stars have burned in a night sky, and for as long as they will burn, and even longer, we will always be together.” I kissed her wrist, solidifying the vow by the power of her pulse. “ La mia parola è buona come il mio sangue. ”

My word is as good as my blood.