6. This is a Stupid Plan
Chapter six
This is a Stupid Plan
Eoghan
“ W hen people told me you had gone insane, I didn’t believe it.” Shiny sat in the armchair, having just heard my brilliant plan, and being the same unsupportive little shite she’d been since she’d returned to the life. “But now? I’m kinda seeing their point.”
She slapped the photos on my desk- the product of days of Dairo spying on Kira in her new home.
Again, I laughed at the works of fate. Me, Dairo and Shiny were back in my father’s office, together. We used to come in here as children, sitting on the sofas, reading with our feet up, before my father’s madness. Now, we three old companions were back, creating a war council.
“Where’s your sense of adventure?” Dairo asked, smirking over to her. “It’s romantic!”
Married life had made Dairo a different man. It had changed Shiny too. They were happy, content. I could only hope that bringing back my bride would have the same effect on me, one day.
“It’s fucking insane,” Shiny said again, then looked at me, shaking her head. “It’s never going to work.”
“You’ll still do it,” I said, keeping a straight, stern face despite the way my stomach flipped with excitement. My sweet Kira would be with me soon.
She had the slightest twist in her lips, the barest hint of amusement, and I knew I had her. She might protest, but she’d go along with it.
Bunch of romantics, the lot of us!
I knew Shiny well. Better than anyone; and as much as she might have thrown the girl she was into the past, there was still a bit of her left in there. She’d dyed her blonde hair black but she was, in her bones, the same girl who had spirited a message to the Bratva for me, when she thought it was the right thing to do.
Why else would Shiny have tried to help my wife? And that’s what she thought she was doing when she helped her steal away. She thought she was helping. The way Aoibheann thought she was helping.
Because they believed me to be the same monster as my father.
That was why I could not find it in my soul to hate her. Someone was on Kira’s side, and that meant they were on mine. They just didn’t know it yet.
Always two steps ahead…
“I can’t believe I’m going to go with this,” she said with the slightest chuckle, her eyes bewildered as she criticized herself for her own folly.
“Aye, that’s a good lass,” I chuckled.
Morelli says that leadership isn’t just about being followed, but it is in making others follow of their own volition, not from coercion. Was I now a good leader? The jury was still out.
I picked up one photo - the one of Kira holding a painting, placing it on an easel for display. She had started to paint. My Muse was creating, and using her God-given talent. I smiled, recognizing the image she had recreated and made her own. It was an homage to a classical bit of art, but with the faces of the people in it changed.
“We should send him to the asylum,” Shiny said, looking at Dairo. “We need to get him into a nice padded room. Have the nice people with the van come over with the straight jacket, Dairo.”
She didn’t see what I saw. Shiny, for her acuity, could not know what it was between me and Kira. I saw it as clearly as the crisp, white orchid petals before me.
I tapped my finger on my Muse’s painting, my heart fluttering in delight. My faith was rewarded with every image Dairo brought back of her.
“You don’t have the power to commit me,” I said, feeling saner than I had been in a long time.
“Yeah, because that was the point of my statement.” Shiny’s biting sarcasm and Dairo’s tacit support of her did nothing to dampen my mood.
As if the deities above were sending me a sign, I glanced out the window and saw the sweet flutter of slowly falling snow - thick and perfect. Soon, the once green land would be covered in snow.
“What if it doesn’t work?” Shiny was trying to be the practical one. I appreciated that because I was nothing if not wildly impractical when it came to my Kira, and I was downright feral when it came to protecting my son.
“Then I bring her back here by force,” I shrugged, because that was the only real option I had. “And I will try something else.”
I would try anything and everything to win her back, not just in body, but in heart and soul as well.
“And… what? Offer her a library and a talking wardrobe, and a foot rest that barks and wags its tail? Hope she decides to stick around?” Shiny’s eyes were dull with her doubts. “Give her a magical rose, and get all dramatic with it wilting?”
Dairo and I stared at her and blinked. The long uncomfortable silence was punctuated by Dairo’s careful, and loud, slurp of his martini. We knew what she was talking about because we didn’t live under a rock, but we had loved to tease her about her love of fairy tales. A love that she had since disavowed, but it would never be forgotten.
“What are you on about, Shiny?” I asked.
“Seriously?” She looked between me and Dairo. “Beauty and the Beast? You haven’t… Of all the fucking books you’ve read, you don’t know Beauty and the Beast?”
Dairo and I shrugged, keeping our teasing amusement from our faces, though I felt his humor in the undercurrent of the room, and the invisible ties that bound the three of us together.
“Probably hits too close to home,” Dairo chuckled, giving Shiny a wink as he nodded his head to me.
What the fuck was that supposed to mean?
As much as the conversation had been completely derailed, I knew that Shiny had given her approval. She hadn’t stamped her foot, or tried to block the plan. She would play along, and I very much needed her on my side.
She had Kira’s trust, when I didn’t.
I’d need to use that influence sparingly, but use it I would.
“I won’t need to resort to a magic library, or talking furniture,” I said, tapping on the photo of my Muse, under a covered bridge, where her own paintings stood on easels, selling for a pittance. A fraction of what they were truly worth. “See here?”
I tapped on the painting that was as familiar as any one I had created with my own hand.
She had never painted in front of me. She hadn’t so much as doodled on a napkin. But I would know the work of my beloved, regardless of the medium she used. I could feel it in the image, the brush strokes. In the sheer talent of it. Of course, my wife was talented. She was the embodiment of all perfection, and more. I knew our son would be the same.
“She loves me,” I said with a smile on my lips, secure in knowing that my two childhood friends would understand.
“How do you know?” Shiny asked.
“Because I know,” I said, cryptically, not caring to answer her question any more than I already had.
My reason for knowing was something between me and my raven-haired beauty. A secret for us, and only us.
Yesterday, I had given Morelli the cross he’d requested, and his eyes had lit up as the cold metal dangled from his fingers.
“It was a gift from my Cosima,” he said with a small smile. “See? She had her name hidden in the engraving.”
He held it out, back towards me, and there indeed was the name Cosima, hidden in the engraving of the intricate cross.
The joy he got from that totem was immense.
It made my heart sick to know that other than a closet of clothes that I had bought, nothing remained of my Kira. Even the wedding band I wore had been purchased by me. There was no sentimental gift from my wife that I could cherish. There had not been time.
All I had were the orchid blossoms that I had gifted her, still alive and decorating the halls, offices and rooms that marked my daily existence. From my nightstand, to my bathroom sink, to the offices here and in New York City.
I touched the new white blossoms on my desk, feeling the softness of the rounded petal.
You’re so close, my love…
“I’ll stay back here and keep a handle on things.” Dairo swirled his glass. “And if I must pretend to be you, I’ll just pop in some contacts and put on sunglasses.” He placed a hand on Shiny’s shoulder and smirked, giving it a fraternal squeeze. “And if you two should die on your fun little excursion, be comforted in the knowledge that I will not give a damn.”
Shiny punched him in the arm.
I rolled my eyes. “Please, you English prat, we both know you’ll be the one weeping over our graves with the bouquet of flowers in your flimsy little arms.”
And he’d make sure we had enough coins for the boatman.