Chapter 13
SUNSHINE
Ihad no idea what V was going to do to fix this.
I didn’t think the night was salvageable unless she had a whole second collection hidden away somewhere, but I trusted her.
I trusted her more than I trusted myself or anyone who had ever entered my life.
On the way back home, I wondered when it had become my home; yet somehow, that’s exactly what it was.
I called the caterers, waiters and other vendors to explain that there had been a break in, but they were still supposed to carry on as rehearsed.
In the meantime, I rushed back home to find new clothes.
It was the first time in a long while that I felt comfortable being by myself, but knowing Jason was with Zane, I had nothing to fear.
He had already tried his best and failed.
The house was oddly quiet after the commotion of this afternoon, but it didn’t take long to find some clean clothes for the pair of us.
Sliding out of my blood-soaked satin gown I pulled on one of V’s power suits, red like the lingerie I wore the first night I met her and fitted in all of the right places.
I pulled out a second one for V; this time, it was white.
She had darkness lurking within her, but in my chaotic life, she was a bright light of hope.
It wasn’t long before I was back on the road, heading to the gallery. I found V taping ripped paintings back together. Some of the broken sculptures had been slightly repaired and glued together, but they were still half crumbling.
‘Step back, Sunshine. I can’t have you ruining your clean clothes.’
I quirked a brow, not understanding what was coming, but then I saw it.
A large paint pot of blood-red paint. She poured it over the broken edges of the sculptures and painted it across the gashes in the paintings she had pieced together.
She streaked paint across the ground from each piece she had, which now looked as though they were bleeding onto the floor, culminating in a giant pool of blood.
What no one else would know is that Jason’s blood lay there, mingling with the red paint.
In the center sat a silver serving tray with a lid on top.
‘What do you think?’ she asked.
My eyes lingered on the serving platter. Was this some joke about how she would be serving Jason’s death to him by the end of the night?
‘I think it’s slightly more morbid than we had initially planned and that you need to change. The catering staff is nearly done and visitors will be arriving shortly.’
She smiled at my obvious, creeping anxiety. ‘It will be okay; trust me,’ she reassured me, taking the bag of clothes from my hand before placing a chaste kiss on my forehead.
None of this is what I had envisioned for our first show, but I knew it would work out. Nothing in my life ever had, but here with her, it was a certainty.
The first visitors began to arrive while V was getting dressed after a quick shower in the bathroom upstairs. Waitstaff with wine circled the room as finger food made its way around.
Xav was the first of V’s brothers to arrive. I didn’t know how to approach him in public, let alone after all that had happened. I felt seconds away from losing my mind without V next to me to ground me.
‘Namazzi, it looks incredible,’ Xav said. ‘Not the show I was expecting, but V has always had a talent for pulling beauty from chaos. I suppose that’s how she found you. This collection, it makes more sense now than the snippets I saw before.’
I was slightly too stunned to speak, but before I could find the words, V stepped into the room, and she was glowing.
The atmosphere in the room lightened as she strode in, eyes darting to her, with everyone wanting to approach her, but her focus was single minded.
She came to me first where I was ushering in the visitors.
She placed a gentle kiss behind my ear before turning to her brother.
‘Update,’ she demanded, not bothering with pleasantries.
Xavier stifled a smile but indulged her. ‘Z is on his way back. He has an IV drip keeping him unconscious; should he wake, he is chained down, and no one would be able to hear him isolated in the desert.’
‘Good, and the police?’
Fear gripped me. What police?
I gripped V’s arm, but she squeezed me back reassuringly.
Xavier jumped in quickly before my mind ran away from me. ‘The police on duty when the gunshots went off are in our pocket. No one called in the sound; there’s construction on the other side of the block so it would be easy to think it was coming from there.’
I exhaled, releasing tension I did not know I was holding on to.
‘Thanks, Xav. Will you be there tonight?’ she asked.
‘Of course. For now, enjoy all of this and we will do what comes next together.’ With that, he took a glass of champagne as a waiter walked past and folded into the crowd to examine the pieces more thoughtfully.
We greeted the visitors as they came in; some were there for me, from my college classes, including my professor.
This was the first time I had met any of them in person, as all my classes had been online, but I was shocked they had made the effort.
V held my hand through it all, unable to let go of me given everything that had happened.
‘So, this is the woman who has had you hidden away, V? I can see why you forgot about me now. So much for nothing and no one.’ A familiar face that I couldn’t quite place stepped forward, embracing V in a hug that had me riling with a touch of jealousy.
‘I remember you!’ he exclaimed, pulling me in for a far too familiar hug. ‘You work at the Velvet Room. How on earth did you lock her down, V?’ The bucks party, the night I had met V—he was the groom.
‘Worked. She’s my gallery director now, and I wasn’t hiding her; it was you who chose to go on a two-month-long honeymoon across Europe and it was also you who got married first so shove your nothing and no one, we aren’t kids anymore.
Besides, I didn’t want to disturb your happy little bubble. Is the wife here?’ V asked.
Matt laughed, seeming unphased by her bluntness.
I had heard a lot about him and their friendship.
He was like another brother who had been there for her through the social isolation being a De Luca brought, one of the few who didn’t fear her family and its name.
The tension in my body faded as I took in the warmth with which he looked at V.
‘You know Ash; she’s working late—doctors and their ridiculous schedules. So, what’s your lovely lady’s name?’
‘Namazzi,’ I replied.
Matt quickly ushered me away, ignoring my protests as well as V’s and the fact that I was working, instead pulling me into a corner and thrusting a glass of champagne into my hand.
‘Now, here comes the obligatory threatening speech. Her brothers won’t openly say this because their faces alone will strike the fear of God into anyone sane, but I will.
Don’t hurt her. Please. You can’t hurt her.
She’s been through too much, been abandoned one too many times.
I’ve never seen her with anyone, at least not seriously, and I need to know that you’re serious about her too. If you hurt her—’
‘If you hurt her, what Matt? Are you threatening a member of the family?’ Zane stepped forward, crowding over Matt.
‘I was just setting the ground rules. Looking out for V is all.’ He looked sheepish and slightly intimidated.
‘It’s okay, Zane; it was far from scary. If anything, it was touching and slightly amusing.’
Matt looked between us in disbelief as Zane’s admission of my being family sunk in.
‘You are serious, thank fuck!’ Matt clasped me around the shoulder, grinning and shaking his head. ‘Why didn’t you just say so? You had me looking like a fool, trying to play the macho big brother act.’
‘V said you could be overzealous at times and just to roll with it, so I wanted to see what she meant; it didn’t disappoint. Besides, I’m sure of her you know. I won’t hurt her. She’s mine just as much as I’m hers.’
‘You know she’s going to marry you, don’t you? If you’re here, you’re part of the family. She’s not letting you go.’
‘Here’s hoping.’ I grinned.
The gentle clink of cutlery against a wine glass rung out in the gallery, and conversations halted as people gathered toward the center of the room.
There V stood before the pool of red paint at her feet.
She held out a hand, gesturing for me to step forward and take my place as the director of this show.
‘Thank you all for coming. This collection means a lot to the two of us,’ I said, stepping into the crook of V’s arm.
‘As you walk through these walls, you will see how love changes the soul and how it changed me. Everything in me was surface level, but it was Valentina who brought my strength, confidence and hope to the surface. As you step through, you will see the weight of the past dragging us back, trying to intervene in something that was destined. But here we stand, together as one. Even as the wounds of the past try to pull us apart and bleed into our present, we still remain everything to one another,’ I finished.
V looked at me with such admiration that I barely registered her talking for a moment so swept up in her eyes.
‘When you find your everything, you hold onto it with both hands. Even if everything falls apart around you, as long as you have each other, you will find beauty in the darkness.’
She bent down to the silver platter that lay in a mixture of blood and red paint and pulled off the lid. There lay a red velvet box. V picked it up carefully, opening it as she sunk her white satin knee into the blood before me.
‘Sunshine, you are everything. Without you, I am nothing. Let me hold onto you with both hands and be that ray of light that pulls me from the grime and darkness of this life.’
Tears dripped down my cheeks as I sunk to the floor with V.
We were reborn, starting something new and beautiful from the ashes of something old and broken.
I slammed into her, our lips colliding as we fought to hold on to each other, not drowning in the darkness that lay at the edge of the night.
This moment being our north star to one another always.
At some point, V pushed the ring onto my finger, but by the time we were done, we were a mess of red paint and blood smeared over our limbs and faces.
Right back to how we looked at the start of the night.
The crowd cheered and soon we were enveloped by Matt for a hug as he whispered I told you so in my ear.
Xavier hugged his sister in a way I had never seen from the cold and detached man before, warmly.
Zane pressed his forehead to hers and whispered something to her that made her punch his arm as he laughed.
I had never seen her brothers so at ease, defences down and filled with joy—joy for their little sister. For us.
Xavier and Zane turned to me, each hugging me kindly; it was the first time either had dared to lay any kind of hand on me aside from the tattoo that laced my neck.
I had always thought my skin would crawl under their touch, as scary as they were, but it was comforting in a way I had only ever felt from V—my family.
That’s who they are now. They welcomed me from the first day, fought for me, and even helped more than I ever expected them to with Jason.
The rest of the evening went off without a hitch.
We made the rounds, and I spoke to a few journalists and critics.
Many were impressed by the spin and the performance art nature of the proposal to tie the show together.
Many promised glowing reviews, and it sent a pang of pride through me.
My girl was incredible, and soon everyone would know it. Not just her name, but her talent.