than several homes put together.
Not believing Marco was taking steps to bring his mother to him, Theo had asked daily to see her. Marco repeatedly told him that one day he would. That day didn’t come soon enough for the impatient youth.
So he ran away.
Marco found him and brought him back.
He ran away again.
And again.
And again.
And each time, using his tracking skills to find Theo, Marco brought him back.
“Why do you keep bringing me back?” A distraught young Theo had yelled at Marco in desperation.
“I lost Cristiano, my first son. I won’t lose you, too.”
Finally, one day, not even six months after he’d seen his mother for the last time, Marco brought her to Milan and set her up in a house on the property.
And that was how they’d lived the next few years. Marco staying in the villa, his mother in the little house nearby.
Then, a few years later, much too young to have it happen, Theo’s mother died. Marco had paid for a beautiful casket and service, and had her buried in the mountains a few miles north, on old Ricoletti family property. While there, Marco showed Theo his own father’s and mother’s grave.
“There will be a place for me. And one day for you.”
Theo never said a word. He never told his father that he’d never stay here, never be buried here.
But the next day, still in his teens, he left a note for his father and hopped on a bus.
He’d spent years with the man who’d sired him. Marco had provided everything a man could want in terms of education. Fine arts, martial arts, education, and shifter skills. And though Theo had no problem with his father, the powerful, wealthy lion shifter, Italy was not Theo’s home.
Nor was Greece.
Theo felt homeless, anchorless.
He struck out for America.
Chapter 5
B lack Glade Bayou , Louisiana
L eandra didn’t own a black dress to wear to the funeral. She found one to wear in the back of Mémé’s closet. The irony of having to borrow one of Mémé’s black dresses to wear to Mémé’s funeral didn’t sit well with Leandra.
But it’s not like I’m going to go to town to buy one.
No. Leandra wouldn’t go to town to get a dress. She didn’t go to town at all. Mémé was the one who went to town for supplies.
Who’s going to do that now?
Leandra shrugged, though she was having a conversation with herself, inside her own mind. She’d find anything she needed for sustenance in the swamp.
She tugged on the dress, it was far too uncomfortable, tight on her hips, tight on her breasts.
She cursed her curviness.
Then again, there was so much about herself that Leandra had cursed over the years. The dark skin that displeased her mother. The curly, unruly hair that she refused to do much with.
Brush your hair, you look like a street urchin, Mémé had said countless times before she passed.
I should brush it, if only for Mémé’s funeral.
It would make her grandmother happy, wherever she was watching from.
Leandra picked up her grandmother’s brush, but didn’t move the shawl that covered the mirror’s reflective surface.
Leandra never did use the skin bleaching cream Rochelle gave to Mémé. The stench of the cream made her nose crinkle. She’d tossed the open jars, one by one, into the bayou.
She’d also refused to ever see Rochelle again. And Mémé had given up trying to force Leandra to leave the bayou to see her mother.
They’d pursued her education in sorcery. Mémé had become the mother Leandra had never had, and she’d never said a word when Leandra draped her shawls over the two mirrors in the cabin. But she did take the shawls down.
They’d hardly discussed Rochelle after Leandra became a teen, and Leandra remained the wild child witch that lived in the swamp with her Mémé, learning the skills of the Black Glade Coven and staying away from vampires because vampires could kill a fledgling witch.
Leandra met Tante Lucia once, when she’d returned to New Orleans and joined Leandra, Rochelle, and