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“Our children will fill these halls with laughter,” she promised him. “And you and I will make love in that bed, where there is nothing but the sea and the sky. It will no more be a chamber of blood, but of life. Love. The two of us, and the good we do. I promise you, Benedetto.”
“The sky and the sea are the least of the things I will give you, little one,” he vowed in return.
And the stone was cold and hard beneath her, but he was warm. Hot to the touch, and the way he looked at her made her feel as if angels really did sing inside her, after all.
She wrapped herself around him, high up in that tower that she understood, now, wasn’t an empty room at all. It was his heart. These stones had only ever held his heart.
Now she would do the honors.
Because she was the seventh wife of the Butcher of Castello Nero. The first one to love him, the only one to survive intact, and soon enough the mother of his children besides.
There was no storm greater than the way she planned to love this man.
Deeper and longer than the castle itself could stand—and it had lasted centuries already.
And she started here, on the floor of this tower, where he settled her on top of him and gazed up at her as if she was the sun.
And then, together, moment by moment and year by year, they both learned how to shine.
Bright enough to scare away the darkest shadows.
Even the ones they made themselves.
Forever.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THESEVENTHWIFEof the terrifying Butcher of Castello Nero confounded the whole world by living.
She lived, and well, by all accounts. She appeared in public on Benedetto’s arm and gave every appearance of actually enjoying her husband’s company. As months passed, it became apparent that she was expecting his child, and that, too, sent shock waves across the planet.
The tabloids hardly knew what to do with themselves.
And as the years passed without the faintest hint of blood or butchery, Benedetto found himself becoming something he’d never imagined he could. Boring.
Beautifully, magnificently boring to the outside world, at last.
Their first child, a little boy they called Amadeo to celebrate some of the music that had bound them to each other, thrived. When he was four, he was joined by a little brother. Two years later, a sister followed. And a year after that, another little girl joined the loud, chaotic clan in the castle on its tidal island.
A place only Angelina had seemed to love the way he always had, deny it though he might.
And Benedetto’s children were not forced to secrete themselves in hidden places, kept out of sight from tourist groups, or permitted only a weekly hour with him. Nor were they sent off to boarding school on their fifth birthdays. His children raced up and down the long hallways, exactly as Angelina had said they would. The stone walls themselves seemed lighter with the force of all that laughter and the inevitable meltdowns, and the family wing was soon anything but lonely. There was an endless parade between the nursery at one end, the master suite on the other, and all the rooms in between.
Ten years to the day that Benedetto had brought his last, best wife home, he stood at that wall of windows that looked out over the sea, the family wing behind him. He knew that even now, the staff was setting up something romantic for the two of them in that empty tower room that they kept that way deliberately.
Because it reminded them who they were.
And because it was out of reach of even their most enterprising child, because Angelina still wore the key he’d left her around her neck.
They would put the children to sleep, reading them stories and hearing their prayers, and then they would walk down this very same hall the way they always did. Hand in hand. The bloodred ruby on her hand no match for the fire inside him.
The fire he would share with her up there where they had pledged themselves to each other. The fire that only grew over time.
Benedetto was not the villain he’d played. He was not the boogeyman, as so many would no doubt believe until he died no matter what he did.
But any good in him, he knew with every scrap of conviction inside him, came from his angel. His wife and lover, who he had loved since the very first moment he’d laid eyes on her. The mother of his perfect, beautiful, never remotely disappointing children. The woman who had reminded him of the child he’d been—the child who had believed in all the things he’d had to relearn.
And the best piano player he had ever had the privilege of hearing.
