Chapter 9
RUBY
Two months later
Compared to Italy, London is grey and drab. It’s raining as I leave work and make my way home to my house share.
Some days I imagine I see Dante in snatches. Through the doors of the bus on the way home, the shape of him walking past the hair salon, or at the end of the aisle at the supermarket. But when I rush to check if it’s him, my eyes have always been deceiving me.
But not today. It’s just wet and cold, and I hug my jacket tighter around me.
The silliest thing about being so down is that I have every reason to be happy.
Not only was the pay from the wedding better than I thought it would be—my boss told me I wasn’t going to get paid at all because I was gaining experience—but the landlord finally fixed the sticky front door, and I’ve been allowed to see more clients at the salon.
I escape into books, as best I can. Nothing holds my attention for long. Every hero reminds me of Dante, and the whole sting of his rejection re-emerges.
I messaged my mother about the wedding, telling her about the hair I did and sending her a couple of pictures in case she was interested, and that I met a guy, but it’s been a bit lonely since I’ve been home.
She messaged back “glad you had a nice time”. And that was that.
Getting into the soulless modern house I rent a room in, I check for the little lock boxes that all our mail is sorted into.
Snail mail really is the most tedious form of communication.
Email is bad enough, all that fuss, formality, and clutter of ads and bills and a chaotic mix of family and work stuff.
But with mail, there’s the whole opening the envelope, recycling it, unfolding it, there’s no text to speech, and you can’t change the font size.
But I spent a bit of the money from the wedding on some cute holographic stickers to cheer myself up, and I leaf through the pile of post in my box to see if they’ve arrived. I haven’t for a while, and there’s so much junk.
The stickers aren’t there, which is disappointing. I was looking forward to putting them on my ereader. The only interesting thing is a smart, thick, white envelope with a yellow sticky-note over the name and address that just says “Ruby?” and my room number.
Must be written unclearly, or maybe smudged, but for me.
Up in my bedroom, I flop onto my bed and rip open the envelope and tug out the contents.
There are two pieces of paper and one’s a letter. I ignore it and look at the other. It’s cream paper written in dark-green, and in black handwriting beneath.
Something that doesn’t make sense.
Certified Copy of an Entry of Marriage. Dante Angelini. Bachelor. 40. Ruby Wilson. 22. Spinster. And in the space for the witnesses are the names of Francesca and her husband, Henry.
What?
There are our addresses listed, and our professions. Mine says hairdresser, Dante’s says CEO. No signatures because, I guess, this is some sort of copy. Or hoax. Or… Am I hallucinating?
I flip to the letter.
Dear Mr & Mrs Angelini.
Uhhh? I scan down.
Unfortunate circumstances … enclosed a new marriage certificate. Congratulations on your marriage.
This is the re-issued one for the one Al Poochino destroyed. But instead of being for Francesca and her husband, it’s for Dante. And me.
My head swims. I observe, with an odd sort of neutrality, that I might faint. The man who I really liked, and felt was something special, but who rejected me… Is my husband?
This is a mistake of epic proportions.
Does he know? I check the letter.
One copy. Please keep in a safe place, blah, blah. Fee for extra copies…
No. It seems it’s up to me to inform Dante Angelini that he’s accidentally married.
The rain has cleared up and there’s early evening sunshine by the time I’ve taken the bus across London to Clerkenwell, which feels like unrequested commentary by the weather.
I walk through streets with tall buildings, using my phone’s map to find the address.
There are trees, and a very large house beyond a high wall when I get to what I think is the right place.
The lower part is brick with those old-school different colour brick patterns, and the upper is pale, creamy stone, and there are so many windows.
Turrets emerge from the corners and are flanked by dozens of chimneys.
It’s as big as a palace, and totally inaccessible, walled off. I curse inwardly that I wore cute shoes because I wanted to impress Dante, rather than something comfortable for being lost in a part of London I don’t know.
Dante’s residence must be close? But this place is huge. My anxiety increases with every minute I walk, trying to find an entrance. I get to a metal gate, but there’s no way of getting through, or gaining attention. I keep walking, tracking along the wall until my certainty wanes.
I check my phone repeatedly, and nervously take out the marriage certificate to be sure. But this is the right address.
And eventually I reach a huge set of impenetrable gates. There’s a prominent CCTV camera perched on top of the wall, a matte black grill, and one button.
A bell?
My palms are kinda damp, and my heart is racing. The button feels expensive beneath my finger as I press it. Solidly made.
“Name,” demands a tinny male voice.
“Uh. Ruby Wilson. I’m here to see Dante Angelini.”
“Address,” he snaps, and when I answer, he gets my phone number and email address, too.
I glance around, but there’s no one here. Hopefully he isn’t going to ask for anything else, because I think I might be in the weirdest identity fraud scam ever.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No…” I don’t know why I imagined I’d just knock on Dante’s door, and he’d answer.
“Return with an appointment.”
And this whole journey will have been wasted? It’s taken most of my evening, and although the bus isn’t super expensive, it’s not nothing.
“I really need to see Dante!”
“Come back with an appointment.” There’s no mercy from the disembodied voice.
“Please! Please, you have to understand.” Desperation grips me. “I’ve walked for ages, and I have a blister, and I really, really, need to see Dante.”
“That’s not—”
“Please. I’m begging you. I have to talk to him today. Just let him hear me out. I promise you can kick me out right after if he doesn’t want to see me. I won’t be any trouble.”
“Don Angelini is not—”
“I was the hairdresser at his niece’s wedding,” I try as a last-ditch attempt. “I need to talk to Dante about something that happened there.”
There’s silence.
I’ve probably made it sound like I’m either pregnant from a one-night stand and trying it on, or some kind of bunny boiling stalker with a crush on Dante after having met him once.
And sure, the second is slightly true, but sadly I am far from pregnant. I must be the only twenty-two-year-old who went to a destination wedding and not lost her V-plates.
The silence continues, and I realise I might have made a tactical error by mentioning that I’m a hairdresser, and about the wedding. I should have said I was the maid-of-honour. Stand-in, but still.
“Wait,” comes the curt reply.
“Hello?” I say after a while, and there’s no response, so I just stand there, the minutes ticking by. The marriage certificate burns in my pocket.
Then the gate slides almost silently open, with no invitation or anything. Bit weird, but okay. I step through, my anxiety spiking again. All the waiting has made me twitchy.
A walled courtyard is revealed, with paving nicer than the entrance hall in my shared house.
And a rough semi-circle of men in suits.
“All this for a slip of a girl?” a man with a Russian accent asks. He has grey eyes and his arms crossed, and regards me curiously.
I’m surrounded. Some are eying me speculatively, others are arguing.
“I don’t take risks with the Angelini family,” a man hisses.
The gate slides closed behind me with a clunk.
Terror grips my throat.
Several of the men are openly carrying guns. Mr “I don’t take risks” is pointing a gun at me.
I begin to tremble.
“Ruby.” Dante’s deep voice cuts through the various discussions as he steps forward. He goes as though to clasp my shoulder when at least two people gasp and several draw their guns.
“Don, she needs to be searched,” Mr “I don’t take risks” says respectfully, but pushes forwards, gun still in hand, almost between Dante and me, clearly trying to get Dante away from the perceived threat of a five-foot-three girl who’s now shaking.
It’s me. I’m the girl who’s shaking.
“Everyone calm down,” Dante says firmly.
“I have to talk to you.” I try to focus on Dante rather than all the shit-scary other men.
“Is this your daughter, Clerkenwell?” asks a man with a posh accent.
“No.” Dante’s green eyes flash as he throws the denial over his shoulder. He looks like he might spontaneously combust.
The posh-accented man says, “I’m sure this is important to you, young lady, but we do need—”
“You think it’s just a coincidence she’s arrived now?” A man in a blue suit regards me suspiciously.
My eyes go wide. Because yes. It is a coincidence. Whatever he’s talking about, it’s not my fault.
“She could be hiding a weapon, or a bomb,” Mr “I don’t take risks” says meaningfully.
“For the last time, I’m not strip-searching her, Giovanni, get a grip!” a woman’s voice says.
A strip search! Horror floods me. “No!”
I notice that one of the people surrounding me isn’t a man, but although she’s of a motherly sort of age, and spoke in my favour, there’s no sympathy in her expression. But there isn’t a gun in her hand, and she bats the arm of Mr “I don’t take risks” down, and grumbling he puts his weapon away.
“She’s not armed, for fuck’s sake,” Dante snaps. “She’s a hairdresser.”
“Scissors can be very sharp,” the man with a Russian accent says with an amused but deadly vibe.
“This is your hairdresser, Clerkenwell?” asks the posh-accented man.
Why are they calling him Clerkenwell? His name is Dante Angelini.
“She doesn’t cut my hair—” Dante replies.
“An assassin hairdresser is a nice idea, though. We could try it too,” the Russian-accented man says thoughtfully.
“She’s not an assassin,” Dante growls at the same moment that I exclaim, “I’m not an assassin!”
“That would be a bit Sweeney Todd, don’t you think?” the posh man says in a bored voice.
“Westminster, Sweeney Todd was a demon barber, not a hairdresser,” says the man in the blue suit. “And fictional.”
“I was aware,” Westminster snaps back. “Some of us have read the book, not just watched the film.”
This group is the oddest combination of casual power, seriousness, and irreverent humour.
“Don, a search would be—” Giovanni attempts again to interject.
“No.” Dante cuts off Giovanni with a dark look, and he puts his head down and steps away. He’s Dante’s employee, I think?
“I think Clerkenwell is onto something,” says the Russian mischievously. “Cutting costs, discount haircuts for your men, potentially profitable pie business—”
“Shut it, Mayfair,” Dante snaps, but doesn’t take his eyes off me.
Mayfair. Westminster.
Shock ricochets through me. I stare around. Guns. Suits. Inhumanly handsome men. Money and power. I don’t follow the gossip magazines, but I work in a hair salon. I’ve heard people talk about the London Mafia and Bratva bosses, including names like Mayfair.
“But the whole cannibalism and making pies? I don’t think my chef will go for that. And my brother would have a fit,” the man in the blue suit says.
There are two types of men here, I realise. Grunts, in plain black suits, mainly, and higher up men wearing perfectly tailored suits in expensive-looking fabrics. This is some sort of mafia boss meet-up that I have just walked into, and they think I’m here to attempt murder with a pair of scissors.
But Dante is one of the bosses, and everyone else is looking to him for their cue.
If I wasn’t convinced Dante was in the mafia, this would do it. I knew he was rich and influential, and yeah, the dangerous vibes are part of his appeal. But a mafia boss?
“What, he wouldn’t go for Spaghetti Carl’s-bony-arse?” mocks the Russian. Mayfair, I think.
I’m baffled. Honestly.
“I’ve told you about being disrespectful of Italian food before,” says Westminster, as the man in the blue suit grumbles.
“Ruby, why are you here?” Dante’s expression is grave and a bit worried.
“I need to tell you something. In private.” I flick my gaze around the squabbling, intimidating men. The blister on my foot is sore, I’m exhausted, I’ve been threatened. They all have guns.
“She’s just a kid,” the man in a blue suit says irritably. “Can we get back to our meeting?”
I don’t want to be seen as a threat, but I am not a kid.
“Please—” I step towards Dante, and Giovanni pulls his gun out again. Panic flares anew.
“Your security is over-the-top, Clerkenwell,” grumbles the man in the blue suit. “And this is a waste of—”
I blurt out the one thing that might save me. “I’m his wife.”