He took the back stairs because they were closer, checking Lorenzo’s room and finding it empty. He tried their new bedrooms in the renovated master suite. It had a long private balcony that wrapped the corner of the topmost floor of the castello, offering nearly a full 360-degree view of the Ferrante lands.
It also looked onto the front terrace where his family was congregating. Octavia wasn’t there, but another level below it, in the courtyard where the fountain burbled in front of the stairs at the entrance to the house, his wife was about to put his son’s car seat into the backseat of her mother’s car.
His heart dropped into the center of the earth.
“Octavia!” he bellowed.
She jerked and swiveled, hugging the car seat to her chest protectively. Her chin came up, up, up as she found him at the top of the house in some kind of reverse Romeo and Juliet satire.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” He was shouting far louder than he had to, but all he could think was that there were too many flights of stairs between them for him to reach her before she got away. His voice had to pin her exactly where she was.
Immediately below him, his family looked up. His sister, standing near the rail, glanced down to the drive, saw Octavia and turned back to the rest of them. Her mouth and eyes formed a round O.
* * *
Octavia was aware of faces appearing across the lower terrace, but the Roman god standing at the top of the house catching thunderbolts and threatening to hurl them at her held most of her attention.
“I’m going to my mother’s. I need time to think,” she said. And, because Lorenzo was getting heavy, she set his car seat on the backseat inside the open door of the car.
“Do not—” Sandro roared, “—put that baby in that car.”
Her mother’s driver took a long, deliberate step back. Inside the car, her mother said, “Octavia, I don’t like this.”
On the terrace, Ysabelle’s count looked up at his stepson-to-be and said, “Sandro, you need to take control of yourself.”
His mother put her hand on the count’s sleeve, face turned up to her son, and said, “No, bello. We’re going to let this happen. It’s been a long time coming.”
For some reason, that made hope squeeze Octavia so tightly she ached. Part of her was terrified—not because her husband looked as though he was on the last peg of his control, but because she was afraid he wasn’t. She was afraid he was merely upset about her taking Lorenzo, that it had nothing to do with her.
So she did the unthinkable. She goaded him.
“Fine!” she shouted, picking up the car seat and moving it to the bottom of the front steps where she set Lorenzo safely in the shade. “That’s all you ever wanted from me anyway. Keep your son, then. But I’m leaving!”
She pivoted and marched to the car, throat so tight she couldn’t breathe. This was too big a gamble. What if he let her go? She forced herself to turn at the open door of the car to shoot him a last, defiant look. To see what he thought of her threat.
He was no longer standing on the balcony. He’d climbed over the rail and was dangling from the bottom of it.
She clapped her hand over the squeak that left her mouth, terrified as he dropped onto the upper terrace with a thump.
“Nonna just rolled over in her grave. She hated when you did things like that,” Sandro’s sister told him as he straightened.
He ignored her, parting the crowd with nothing more than his unwavering sense of purpose as he headed for the rail overlooking the lawn. He vaulted as casually as he’d dropped from the top balcony, landing on the grass in a low, agile crouch.
Octavia’s heart finally started again. She sucked in a stunned breath, gaze fixed on him to be sure he was okay.
He straightened to his full height and gave his shirt a nonchalant pull across his shoulders then tugged each cuff, gaze flashing silvery and livid. “Now. Explain to me again what the hell you think you’re doing.”
She had wanted to unleash the beast. Here he was, control shattered to reveal the dangerous inner animal that operated on pure instinct. Hunter, warrior, slayer. He was terrifying in his magnificence.
She did the only thing anyone could do when faced with such an untamed force. She turned and ran like hell.
Except she was wearing terrible shoes and his long strides crunched louder and faster behind her making her scream even before his arm snagged her. She started to buckle, but he caught her and the world spun. She wound up over his shoulder like a sack of flour as he strode back to the house.
She screamed again, kicking this time, and punched at his backside. “Put me down!”
“No.”