“Ettore was born eleven months after Emmanuelle. In our family it is necessary to have several children. My mother wasn’t—isn’t—the mothering type. She didn’t want children, and she certainly didn’t want to be married to a man she didn’t love. Their marriage was arranged. My father is a man who is very difficult to explain. He has a very large ego. He’s good-looking and he knows it. Eventually he began to have affairs. He was discreet, but he had them. He paid no attention to any of us. I think having children cramped his style. If a woman got too clingy, my mother would have a chat with her. Their strange lifestyle didn’t leave a lot of room for any of us.”

She didn’t make the mistake of giving him sympathy. She couldn’t imagine growing up that way. Her parents had loved her sister and her. When they died, Cella had stepped up and given her that same unconditional love.

“I saw what my cousins had. Aunts and uncles loving one another and their children. They tried to make it better for me—for us—but they couldn’t be in our home 24-7. So I decided that I’d make a home for us.”

She knew he had. It showed in the way his brothers and sister reacted to him. Loved him and one another. They were a tight-knit family with Stefano at the helm.

“Ettore had respiratory problems from the moment he was born. He was small and his lungs weren’t developed. He was in the hospital for two weeks. My parents went to see him twice. Aunt Rachele and Aunt Perla—you haven’t met them yet, only their children—took me every single day to see him. The nurses let me put my hands in the gloves and touch him. Eventually I could hold him.” He swallowed hard and looked away from her.

Francesca pressed her hand tighter against his abdomen, matching her steps to his because he’d begun to walk faster. She could see they were headed for a small park in the middle of the neighborhood.

“He just never got strong. My parents were extra hard on him. I told you, we were required to train from age two. They refused to give him more time. Neither spent any time with him, and if they came into contact with him, they were irritated by him. He learned very fast to keep out of their way and my brothers and Emmanuelle took to deflecting their attention immediately if they spotted him.”

“I don’t understand.” Francesca couldn’t help but break her silence. “Why would they be irritated by a child?” There was genuine confusion in her voice because it didn’t make sense to her. The boy obviously needed love and attention, not annoyance or anger.

“He wasn’t perfect, Francesca. In my home, growing up, nothing but perfection was allowed. Our training. Our education. Our ability to speak languages. We had to be not good at everything, but great. Ettore tried, but he couldn’t keep up. We all tried to help him, tutor him, work with him on physical training, but he was always behind. And the martial arts and boxing took a toll on his body.”

“How? Wouldn’t that strengthen him?”

He shook his head. “He didn’t heal from the inevitable bruises and injuries we got. He was slow at other things, too, things that were necessary in our work. I tried to talk to the parents about him, but they wouldn’t listen to me. He was far too sensitive for our kind of work.”

She still didn’t know what his kind of work was, but if helping out a seventeen-year-old girl who was being horribly abused was anything to go by, she was fairly certain she knew Stefano meant even reading the reports on such things hurt Ettore’s heart.

“That’s so terrible, Stefano. He should have been protected.” She wanted to wrap her arms around him and hold him tight. She knew what it was like to experience loss. Stefano obviously loved his brother very much. More like a parent with a child than a sibling.

“He should have been, but when he was sixteen, the parents insisted he become active. We got into a terrible fight, but they pulled rank on me. Ettore died. I went to get his body and I carried him home myself. I never allowed them to make a decision regarding any of my siblings after that.” There was steel in his voice.

The parents. That was how he referred to the man and woman who had given him life. Stefano loved family. Her fingers curled in his vest, and she turned her head to press a kiss into his side, regardless of the fact that they had a lot more things to work out. Her heart ached for him. She had to blink away tears of sympathy and swallow the terrible lump that had formed in her throat.

He looked down at her bent head. “Amore mio, you are far too soft to be without my protection. When you’re upset or hurt, or you don’t understand, trust me. Talk to me. We’re going to be together a lifetime, and I don’t ever want you to be afraid or hurt and not come to me. You’ll hear a lot of ugly things.”