Chapter 18 Dante
DANTE
I return early to the house the next afternoon, and I tell myself it’s because Giovanni said there was another occurrence of a stranger skulking around.
And yes, there was someone in a baseball cap, sunglasses, and a shapeless coat in the video surveillance I checked.
He was gone by the time, only a few seconds later, Giovanni appeared in the footage, gun in hand, to check that everything was okay.
But although I’m concerned for my wife’s safety, I’m confident.
I’ve worked hard to ensure there’re no threats to us as a family.
The truth is, I’m a wife guy, now. I need to see my wife as soon as possible. Ruby is my first priority. I’ve spent all day thinking about her taste, wondering if she’ll let me make her come again, and berating myself for losing control and jerking off over her.
The alternative might have been that my balls exploded, because I crave her that much.
She’s not in the lounge or garden so I walk into our bedroom to check if she’s there, and instead of the familiar, empty, pale-yellow desert, and Ruby’s stuff on her bedside cabinet, there’s… Well. Chaos. Pretty clutter.
The bed is half covered in cushions, all in neat rows, and below there’s a soft-looking throw of some sort, in a deep-green. The bedside tables now have lamps, and in the corner, there’s a pot plant. There’s another leafy thing with little white stripes, on a shelf. That’s new, too.
“Hey!” Ruby says perkily, appearing at my side. Her hair is askew and she is glowing as though she’s been busy on her feet all day.
“What’s happened…?” I gesture at the room.
She takes one look at me, and her face falls. “You don’t like it. You said I could redecorate?”
“Yes, I remember saying that.” I meant it, too. But this pile of inconvenience? “Look, I don’t mind the plants.”
“They clean the air,” she says earnestly.
“Yeah.” I’m unconvinced. There are no filters on that leaf. It doesn’t clean anything. Oxygenate, sure, but there’s plenty of oxygen around. We have trees and shit in the garden. “The plants are pretty,” I concede.
“They’re good for emotional welfare, too,” she enthuses.
I know this house is a bit devoid of personality because I took down the photos of my parents and other family mementoes because it was too painful a reminder of what Lucia and I had lost, but seriously. Decorative pillows?
“Are these good for emotions too?” I gesture at the pile of green cushions.
“It looks like you’ll be building a pillow wall between us every night.
” I don’t like this. At all. I’m a sizable man.
I’m not sharing my bed with a dozen tasselled cock-blockers.
“There are better ways to tell me you don’t want my help keeping your feet warm. ”
She turns pink. “Oh no! They’re not… structural. Just decorative! Not for…” she trails off.
“But how am I supposed to get into bed?” I ask patiently.
“They don’t stay on the bed at night,” she replies quickly.
“Do they do night raids to hunt blankets and scented candles?”
Ruby huffs with laughter at my poor joke. “They’re very well behaved at night, no hunting or mischief.”
“Good, but what is the point of the cushions?” I’m honestly baffled. Why have a pillow you don’t sleep on? “And if I trip over them on the floor—”
“You won’t! I’ll move them before we go to bed.” She squirms a bit as she says the last part, as though talking about us going to bed is bringing up memories. Perhaps of last night.
Good. I want her remembering screaming as she came on my tongue.
“Look.” She goes over and tugs on a new horizontal mirror I hadn’t noticed on the wall. It flips down to reveal a shelf. “They go here.”
I blink at the ingenious solution to a problem she created. Rubbing my hand over my stubbly jaw, I nod. Okay, I suppose I asked for this by giving her a credit card and free rein.
“I’ll change it back to how it was.” There’s the exact mix of cheery sadness in her words to defeat all my objections to this absurd pile of prettiness.
“It’s alright. Pillow Mountain can stay if you like it.”
“No it’s—”
“Do you like it?” I ask more firmly.
Ruby looks up at me, and her brown eyes are full of uncertainty. “Yes?”
“Then it all stays.” If I still have access to the bed, and her, it can look however she wants it. “It’s your bedroom too.”
“For now,” she whispers the part I was hoping would remain unsaid, and eventually outdated by her falling in love with me.
I grunt what could be interpreted as an agreement, but is actually a wordless “Over my dead body”.
“I sorted out the annulment paperwork,” she continues hesitantly. “I don’t want you to think I wasted all my time today.”
“I don’t think that.” She wasted her time with one thing, but not what she’s assuming.
“I don’t want to change it to a style you don’t like,” she says. “I suppose you…” She hesitates. “I was wondering…”
“What?” I ask, curious.
“Why is your home so plain?” She sweeps a hand to encompass the pale-cream nothingness of the room, other than what she’s put here. “Not just your bedroom, but everywhere.”
I hesitate, because I don’t want to scare her. But this is the reality of being an Angelini.
“It was redecorated after my family died here,” I say simply, and I’m surprised to find it doesn’t hurt as much as it did.
“Oh.” She’s instantly stricken. “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“It’s okay,” I reassure her. “It’s time to move on. It was a necessity to redecorate then, but to try to put it back as it was didn’t feel right. I was hardly in the mood to discuss paint colours, so it remained…” I shrug. “Boring.”
She shakes her head, sympathy and distress all over her face, and guides me to sit on the bed as though I’m an invalid.
I go with it.
“Would you tell me what happened to your parents, and grandparents, and Lucia’s husband?” she asks gently. “I’d like to hear, if you’d…”
I meet her eyes, and almost refuse. It’s a grim story, and hardly portrays marrying into this family as a great thing. But her expression is so open, and she deserves to know.
“They were killed in a mafia turf dispute,” I say, as lightly as I can.
“The lines of territories sound very clean when you hear that ‘this person is the kingpin of that area’, but London is messy. Streets curl around, parks sprawl, roads lead in one direction then turn. There are an almost infinite number of small areas that have unique identities, and sometimes, they’re part of a bigger area, or overlap with another place.
The disputes are often financial. Others are ideological, that an area or street should belong to a certain mafia because it makes sense culturally. ”
She nods, but there’s a furrow in her brow, and I can tell she only partly understands.
“Eighteen years ago, when Lucia was a young mother and I was still learning the family business, there was an agreement between our enemies to squeeze us out, and take the spoils.”
“Oh. No.” Ruby’s face creases in horror.
My mouth flattens into a line as I remember the night I lost both my parents, grandparents, and my brother-in-law.
“They came for us at home. Here.” I pause as the old ache settles on my chest. “I was out at the time, and they posed as a normal sort of call, and pushed their way inside. My team are perhaps a little wary about unexpected callers to the house, even now. As you experienced.”
“Oh.” Realisation creeps across her face. “Yes.”
“They sent hit men from outside of London, but I tracked them to the families who should have been loyal to us. Italian families of Clerkenwell who had been here almost as long as we Angelinis have. Lucia and Francesca managed to hide in a hidden playroom Francesca had in her bedroom. But the rest… And by the time I arrived back, it was too late.”
The agony and rage that rise in me are just a faint echo of what I felt then, but still enough to silence me for a moment.
“They thought they’d found everyone. They were wrong.
I caught one of the mercenaries, who revealed the whole plot.
I took bloody revenge. Fair, but equal to what had been taken from me.
And those I allowed to live were my most loyal men.
I’m probably over-cautious, I know. But I can’t let anything happen to you. ”
“But I’m not really your wife,” she whispers.
“You are absolutely my wife, Ruby. And like my father before me, I would die to protect my wife.”
Getting out of bed in the morning has never been an issue for me, but it’s more difficult now that I have to tear myself away from my beautiful, sleepy wife.
After a second night of me giving her an orgasm with my mouth, we seem to have a silent agreement that what happens in bed stays in bed.
I’m not sure that it would extend to the morning though.
The light would scare her off, or it might, and I’m not willing to take that risk.
Whatever time she needs, we’ll progress at her pace.
So I get up, pull on work-out kit, and go down to the basement gym as usual. And the moment I open the door, I stop. My hand goes to my brow, massaging it gently.
My artistic wife’s reach is extensive, it seems. The simple, peacefully plain room has been decorated. Extensively.
On two walls there are floor-to-ceiling wallpaper or vinyl sticker-type things, of a rainforest.
On the other walls are bold motivational phrases.
“Ah fuck,” I say aloud. This isn’t how I imagined married life.
More sex. Fewer plant-based decorations. A lot more daily confessions of love. Kissing. Oh god, I’d love to have the right to kiss my wife whenever I wanted. And maybe guide her design choices.
I can live with the ridiculous bed cushions, but this? I hate it.
I spend an hour lifting very heavy bits of metal, and sweat out my angst. I determine to talk to Ruby about the redecoration of my gym. She was open to changing breakfast, surely we can compromise. Even if the green is quite soothing.
Giovani turns up, as usual, to give me a report.
“Don, the lawyers called. They say the annulment documents are waiting for you to sign.” Giovanni is regarding me with ill-disguised concern.
I nod curtly. “Let them know I’ll deal with it when I can.”
Meaning I’ll pile more paperwork on top of them for now, then burn them to ash and trample them to dust just as soon as Ruby agrees to stay permanently.
“What’s with the jungle vibes?” Giovanni asks, looking around critically.
That’s not acceptable. I won’t have any criticism of Ruby’s choices.
“It’s grown on me.” And I’m surprised to find that it’s true. The forest pattern is relaxing, and a nice reminder of Ruby. I’m not sure about the perky phrases, but imagining Ruby spending time selecting them for me warms my cold heart.
And maybe today is the day she falls in love with me. I have a meeting with the Italians of the London Mafia Syndicate, that I am refusing to call the London Pizza Club as Sev Blackwood has named it, and after that I have the afternoon available to spend with Ruby.
I have a good feeling. She bought plants and put up wallpaper. That means something, surely? Practically as committing as buying a dog. She wouldn’t leave her plants to die from lack of water.
“I’ll be unavailable for the whole day,” I tell Giovanni. “Ensure I’m not interrupted.”
“Yes, Don,” he says, but his brow says otherwise.
“What is it, old friend?” I ask, but honestly, I’m half thinking about what Ruby will enjoy as a romantic day out, and half of how to hasten my meeting with the Blackwood triplets, Marco Brent and the rest of the Italians.
Beyond attempting to erase pineapple on pizza from London’s restaurants, what is the point?
Community. Solidarity. All things I once wanted, but now Ruby takes up that space in my heart.
“You mentioned the marriage would be annulled. Temporary,” he says carefully.
“So is life.” I smile to myself. “And if I’m really lucky, Ruby will stick around.”
“Yes, Don.” Giovanni keeps his expression studiously neutral.
I clap him on the shoulder, then turn away. “She’s part of the family, or will be.”
I finish up my workout, and after checking up on Ruby, I decide to drive myself to the meeting of the Italian sub-group, taking the Ferrari, since nothing feels quite as Italian as a Ferrari.
Stuck in London traffic almost immediately I’m left tapping the wheel and thinking.
Giovanni seems to have not warmed to Ruby.
I suppose this is still about her not being Italian.
Once it’s settled that she’s going to stay, he’ll accept her as part of the Angelini family.
But maybe I can smooth the way. Perhaps she’d like more support, too.
Spend time with Italians, not just Lucia and me, but others.
It only takes a second, and I’m calling Marco Brent.
“What is it, Clerkenwell?” he asks as soon as the call connects.
“Hear me out. I’ve got an idea.”