12. Elio
Elio
W hen we emerge from Briar and Boar onto the street, I swear under my breath, momentarily blinded by the fiery spray of light on snow. In my haste to get over here this morning, I forgot to bring along a pair of sunglasses.
I also didn’t put on clean clothes or shower. I’ll need to rectify that soon. Can’t go to my Songbird all rumpled and out of sorts. I’ve gotta live up to the standards set out by my impossibly pretty fiancée.
I close my eyes and think of her on the drive home, using the image of her to soothe the ache in my right side and the tight pains in my wrists and hands.
I’ll be home soon, and I can shower and then slide back into bed beside her.
I wonder if she’s still asleep, and open my eyes to take a look at the security app on my phone.
Looks like she’s up. She’s in the kitchen drinking something, maybe some tea.
Her violin and bow are down there, too, and my chest constricts at the thought she might have been playing music without me there to hear it.
The security app alerts me to something else, too. Uncle Vinny’s car at the gate, making its way up the driveway.
Fuck.
I knew I’d have to deal with my uncle eventually, but I was hoping to have at least a little quiet time to myself with Deirdre first. If I ever wanted to hear her play for me, today is one of those fucking days.
But Uncle Vinny isn’t the sort of man who likes to wait. And I should know better by now than to expect to just go home and relax whenever the fuck I want to.
No rest for a Titone. Not in this town, anyway.
We’re actually pretty close to home, now. We pull up to the security gate on my property and then get to the house just as Uncle Vinny is striding up to the door.
He turns at the sound of the car’s tires behind him, scowling into the sunlight as Curse parks and the three of us get out.
Uncle Vinny doesn’t waste any time.
“Where the fuck have you been?” he says, jaw working.
“Curse and I had some business to deal with up north,” I tell him as we walk up to the door where he’s waiting.
That business being Deirdre’s scumbag ex, Brian, who now finds himself without a dick as recompense for even dreaming he could touch her.
“What kind of business?” Uncle Vinny says as we head inside. “Since when is your business not my business?”
“Since it involves my fiancée.”
“Oh. Yeah, don’t think I know about that,” my uncle snarls. “Blasting that shit all over every local newspaper’s website without even bothering to consult me. What the hell were you thinking?”
“I was thinking about my glad tidings,” I say dryly.
“How the fuck did you have time to get that drafted and send that out when you were up north?”
“We got back last night. I did it this morning.”
“Where the hell were you coming from just now, then?”
“Had to have a little chat with Darragh.”
Uncle Vinny swears loudly in Italian then fixes me with a furious stare.
“Running up north to deal with secret shit you won’t tell me about. Making dumb-fuck political moves in the media without running it by me. Now you’re antagonizing Mad fucking Darragh. And for what? All for some freckled Irish whore?”
If he were anyone else on this Earth, he’d have gotten a knife through the eye for what he just said. But as he’s the man who saved my life and raised me as his own, instead I simply say, “No one is allowed to insult my fiancée in my house.” I lean closer, maintaining eye contact. “No one.”
Uncle Vinny’s eyes narrow.
“I never took you for a fool, Elio. But your behaviour recently is making me rethink things.”
“Rethink whatever the fuck you need to,” I tell him. “If you want to make Curse your heir then go ahead.”
Uncle Vinny freezes, looking momentarily speechless. A damn rare occurrence for him.
“You would give up your inheritance of the empire we have built,” he says slowly, like he barely believes the words coming out of his mouth, “turn your back on your family responsibility, just to marry the Irish girl?”
We’re still standing in the entry way. Something beyond us catches my gaze. It’s Deirdre. She’s standing beside the kitchen island, a cup of tea clutched in her hands. When her eyes meet mine, I feel physical heat. An erupting throb of sensation.
I have no doubt she heard my uncle’s question.
And I answer loudly enough so that she can hear my answer, too.
“Yes,” I say, returning my gaze to my uncle.
“I’ll move aside for Curse to take over if you want.
But I will marry Deirdre. That is non-negotiable.
” My voice gets lower, my words more pointed.
“And no smart man is going to stand in the way of that.” My jaw ticks.
“Good thing I know you’re a smart man, Uncle Vinny. ”
Our uncle’s face is beet-fucking-red. This conversation probably isn’t good for his blood pressure.
It’s good for mine, though. Every person who admits to my impending marriage, every person who bends to my will and acknowledges Deirdre as my wife, makes me feel like I’m one step closer to everything being right in my world.
Valentina’s on board, I got Darragh sorted, now Uncle Vinny.
The trickiest person will probably be the bride herself.
But I can handle that.
Uncle Vinny jams his big hands into the pockets of his expensive wool coat.
“ Merda ,” he mutters. “You know as well as I do that I can’t turn anything over to Curse if I wanted to cut you out. That boy wouldn’t take a fucking shit in the morning if you didn’t authorize it.”
“He seems to shit just fine without my say so,” I reply.
I raise my eyebrows at Curse, who’s standing right fucking beside us and hearing everything.
But he just gazes steadily back and then shrugs, because we both know that, though the wording was exaggerated, Uncle Vinny is right.
Ever since we were kids, when I pulled Curse out of that fire with my bare fucking hands – ruining them in the process – he’s been loyal to me with the kind of quiet ferocity that no amount of money could ever even hope to buy.
“Well, you do what you need to do, Uncle Vinny. And I’ll do what I need to. Starting with marrying Deirdre.” I look over my uncle’s head to catch a glimpse of her, but she’s no longer in the kitchen.
I’m cool. I’m calm. And Uncle Vinny knows he can’t fucking win here.
He lets out a rattle of a sigh.
“Well, you were right about one thing. I’m real fucking smart.
You’re a Titone through and through, and I’m not stupid enough to stand in the way of a Titone when he’s got his sights on something that he wants.
And I’m also too damn old to start a war with my own flesh and blood, my own fucking heir , over where he decides he wants to stick his fucking dick. ”
He rubs his jaw, studying me with hard, dark eyes.
“Just tell me one thing, Elio. You owe me that much. And it’s the one thing I still don’t fucking get.”
I nod. I don’t know if I’ll have an answer for whatever he’s about to ask, but he’s right that I do owe him at least an attempt at a reply.
He dragged Curse and me out of the fucking muck and helped make us into men, and that’s gotta count for something.
Even if I’m willing to blow it all to hell for the girl I plan to marry now.
“So, I parade these Italian girls in front of you,” Uncle Vinny says.
“Girls from good fucking families. Nice racks, nice asses, and they know when to shut the fuck up. Culture, cooking, upbringing, everything . And you don’t give a single flying fuck.
” He shakes his head, like I don’t make any sense to him, and maybe I don’t these days.
“What else could you possibly want in a bitch?” he asks.
“What could that Irish girl possibly fucking possess to send you so out of your goddamn mind? To make you give her our fucking name?”
Yeah. He really doesn’t get it. And I can forgive him for that, because I wouldn’t have gotten it either. Not before her, anyway.
It’s got nothing to do with tits or silence, power or pussy. Nothing to do with any of the things we normally value.
It’s about something ephemeral and eternal. Ruinous and glorious. The exquisite agony in my chest every time I hear her fucking voice. Every time I see those eyes. Get a glimpse of the music that’s inside her.
It’s about something I wasn’t even sure that I believed in anymore. Until her .
“Soul,” I tell my uncle, and it feels so pure, so good and true to say it, that the word comes out like a goddamn prayer. “It’s about her soul.”