CHAPTER THIRTY
“ONE-DAY SURPRISED”
SCARLETT DEL GATO
Vito was seated in the recliner seat, playing on his phone when I entered the living room with my tote bag slung around my shoulder. Wolff picked me up from school today.
It seems like Giovanni took my advice to let his shoulder rest a little bit.
“Ah, you’re home.” Vito smiles.
I nod slowly, making my way to the couch beside the recliner before plopping myself down onto it. My tote bag was on the floor beside my feet.
“Where’s Giovanni? I hope he’s resting that shoulder of his.”
“He’s upstairs doing some paperwork.” Vito says, placing his locked phone onto his thigh. He uses his fingers to toy with the ring on his finger. “And yes, he did rest his shoulder today. He started working an hour before you came home, the rest of the time he rested his shoulder.”
I nod at him. “That’s good.” I tell him. “His shoulder has healed fairly well the past few days.”
Vito chuckles and runs his fingers through his black hair. “Like he said before, it wasn’t his first rodeo. The first time he was shot, he didn’t heal for quite some time, but that’s only because he wanted to exceed his own limits. He kept tearing his stitches and he never really properly healed. He still has a few scars here and there.”
“That’s Giovanni for you.” I shake my head. “But what exactly is he doing? What paperwork if I may ask.”
“We’re busy repairing the bakery the White Pistols torn down.” He says. “He’s trying to figure out what we want to do with the place now that we can start from scratch seeing that there was absolutely nothing left to save.”
Damn White Pistols.
“Ah, I see.”
“Yeah.” Vito replies, his voice was barely above a whisper.
“What’s bothering you, Vito?” I ask him, turning on the couch so that I could look at him better. “You have not been yourself for quite some time now.”
He looks at me. His eyebrows were knit together in confusion like my question caught him off guard. I don’t think anyone ever asked him if he was okay before. “What?”
“Come on, Vito.” I nudge his foot with mine. “I know you better than that. I know there’s something wrong. Tell me. I want to help you.”
“There’s nothing wrong.” He says. “I’m okay.” He gets up from the couch and walks out of the living room without another glance my way.
I sigh loudly and shake my head before getting up from the couch too.
I wanted to take a quick shower before dinner tonight.
I grab my tote bag up from the floor and walk towards the staircase. I ascend the staircase, feeling the hairs at the back of my neck standing all of a sudden and without warning.
That’s when I heard it: the hushed whispers coming from Giovanni’s office. Although he was somewhat whispering, he sounded angry even through the door of his office.
I wanted to let it go, but the bigger part of me wanted to know why he was so angry in the first place, so I tip toed to his office and paused right beside his closed door to listen in on the conversation.
It wasn’t very proper to eavesdrop, but if it concerned me, I needed to know what was said.
I hear a chair scraping against the marble floors and not long after someone sits down onto the chair. “She is the sister of the traitor.” Their dad says. “How many times do I have to tell you that?” His voice was loud and angry.
“She might be Antonio’s sister but she is nothing like him!” Giovanni argues. My heart warmed yet again to know that he was sticking up for me even when I shouldn’t know that he was sticking up for me in the first place.
“I’ve given you boys a lot of time to throw her out. But neither of you did. You disobeyed a clear order, multiple times. And now you’ve built her a pool house? In my backyard? She is a snake and she can’t be trusted. How do you know she’s not plotting to kill all of us in our—”
Pool house? What pool house?
“That’s absurd.” Giovanni cuts him off.
“No.” I can just imagine their dad shaking his head. I can imagine his lips setting in a firm line and I can already just feel the anger radiating through him. I didn’t even have to look at him to know that he was angry. “It’s not absurd. She cannot be trusted.”
Giovanni slams his hand onto the desk and I can just imagine all the papers and ornaments he had resting on his desk flying off. “I trust her!” He yells. “She is nothing like her brother.”
“I don’t give a damn if she’s like her brother or not.” Their dad says. “It’s in their blood to betray. I won’t let that snake live here a second longer!”
“That’s why we built the pool house!” Giovanni yells. “So that she lives in there instead of in the mansion. That way she’s not in your way!”
“I want her out of the entire premises or I’ll show her where the door is myself.” Their dad says, ignoring Giovanni’s previous statement. “I’ve been lenient this entire time. We gave her food. We gave her a bed to sleep in. We bought her brand new clothes and school supplies. She has taken enough from us. So I dare you, Giovanni, I dare you to disobey me again.”
I hear a chair being scraped backwards yet again and I quickly run to my room. I close the door behind me right when I heard the door to Giovanni’s office opening and closing again.
I throw my tote bag onto the floor and walk over to my bed. I sit down onto the soft mattress and wondered what I did for their dad to hate me as much. I know he doesn’t like my brother very much, but I never showed any of them not to trust me. I didn’t once try to kill them in their sleep.
Yes, I’m keeping secrets from them.
Secrets that can lead to death at some point, but it was my burden to carry.
If my brother truly is still alive, they will understand who the real enemy is.
The White Pistols.
If they know why my brother did what he did, they’ll see that my brother only had good intentions this entire time. Yes, Giovanni did sit in jail for a year, but he was safe all this time. He could’ve been six feet under right about now if it wasn’t for my brother.
Their dad must be glad that I didn’t go on a killing spree on their asses for trying to kill my brother in the first place. I never once tried to kill any of them, not even after Giovanni threatened me a million times.
“Hey.” Giovanni’s voice pulls me from my thoughts and I turn to the doorway, seeing him standing there with a small smile on his mouth.
He didn’t look angry at all, not even after the talk he had with his dad.
“Hey.” I greet back, returning the smile.
“How was your day?” He asks, walking over to my bed before plopping down onto it. His feet dangled from the bed, and his shoulder looked much better than it did last week.
“It was okay.” I tell him, picking at my cuticles.
“Did anything exciting happen?”
I laugh half-heartedly. “Nope. Nothing exciting happened at all today.”
Just the fact that I made a deal with Diablo yet again. And that I lied to his face about going to kill you guys. Oh, and don’t forget that I just eavesdropped on a conversation of you and your dad earlier.
“What’s wrong?”
Everything.
I sigh, turning my head to look at him. “I don’t feel welcome here anymore, Giovanni.” I tell him honestly. “And I don’t like it if you and your dad keep fighting because of me and my presence inside this mansion.”
I could see it on his face how much his father’s actions were affecting him.
He was chirpy before his dad arrived and now he’s walking on eggshells each and every day around his dad, afraid to upset him.
He was trying to shield me from his father’s wrath. But I don’t think I could handle it anymore. I need to leave before his father takes me out himself.
“You heard us, didn’t you?”
I nod, inspecting my fingernails instead of looking at him. He places his finger underneath my chin so that I could look at him directly. “I’m trying to change his mind about you.” He says. “I’m trying.”
“I know what you can do.” I tell him. “You can just let me stay over at Eden’s. I can even go back at my own house. I just don’t want to be a nuisance anymore.”
“No.” He says. “I am not letting you leave this mansion just because my dad has some kind of grudge against your brother. He thinks you’re like him, but I’m trying to tell him that you’re nothing like him.”
“Leaving is the only way for your dad to calm down, Giovanni.” I tell him. “He won’t rest until I leave. Eden said she has an extra room for me so I need to just pack a few things and I’ll be on my w—”
“I said no.”
“Giovanni.”
He shakes his head. “No, Scarlett. You’re not going anywhere. End of discussion. I’m not letting you out of my sight, not after everything that happened in the past. I am not going to put your life in danger by letting you leave. I just won’t allow it. I won’t.”
My heart warmed yet again.
He really did care about me.
“Your dad’s going to throw me out. You can’t also afford to disobey him again, Giovanni. I won’t let him disown you because of me. I won’t let it happen.”
A smirk appears across his mouth and he extends his hand out toward me, palm-up. I look down, seeing a set of keys in the palm of his hand.
“What’s this?” I ask with a frown.
“It’s the keys to the pool house.” He says with a smile.
I completely forgot about the pool house.
“He said he wanted me off the premises, Giovanni.” I tell him, not taking the keys from his extended hand. “It’s not going to work. He wants me out of the mansion.”
“The pool house is my final decision, Scarlett. He needs to come to terms with me not wanting you to leave. He just needs to accept that you’re now going to live in the pool house because you are not leaving.”
He drops the keys in my lap.
“I can keep you safe here.” He says. “And I’ll talk to my dad again. He just needs to accept it. If he doesn’t, it’s up to him then. I’ll leave with you.”
“He’s going to kill you for disobeying him again.”
Giovanni shrugs. “Let him.” He smirks. “Now, do you want to see your new room?” He asks, reaching his hand out toward me.
I take it and I let him pull me up from my bed. Well, I guess it wasn’t my bed anymore seeing that I had a pool house made for me.
Giovanni leads me out of the mansion, to the backyard where the pool house was. It wasn’t big, but it was just enough for me. It already felt homey and I didn’t even step foot inside of it yet.
“I made all my men and Vito help me construct this for you. It’s small and might be very cramped on the inside, but it’s at least something and you would have your own privacy.” Giovanni says.
“You did this in what, one day?” I ask, jerking my hands toward the pool house. “Are you a secret superhuman or something because one cannot make a small house like this in one day?”
“Like I said, it’s small and not even painted on the inside yet.” Giovanni says, placing his hand on the small of my back. “I’m leaving that for you. You need to decide the colour you want.”
I turn to look at Giovanni. “You did this for me?”
He nods, smiling at me. “I got fed up with my dad so I decided to take things into my own hands. He knew about the pool house, but I think he’s slowly but surely starting to understand that I won’t let you go anywhere.”
I pull him into a hug. I had to stand on my tip toes just to throw my arms around his neck, but I managed just fine.
I feel him hugging me back, his hands rubbing my back. Even through the material of the shirt I was wearing, I still felt how warm his fingers were.
“Thank you, Giovanni. This is amazing and still beyond me to how you managed all this in such a short time span, but I am so grateful for this.”
He gives me the keys to the pool house again after he pulls away from me and I take the keys happily. Giovanni opens the pool house door for me, moving out of the way so I could enter first.
It was small on the inside, but it wasn’t cramped at all.
It was perfect for me.
There was a single bed in the middle of the pool house, a small TV on the west side of the bed, a small desk and chair right by the door to the pool house and then lastly a small dresser where my clothes can be packed into.
There were enough windows all around, giving the small pool house natural lighting, and a sunroof where you can watch through at nights, staring at the moon and stars, or see the rain falling onto it.
The floor was covered with hardwood flooring and a small carpet just in front of the door when you enter.
“And,” Giovanni’s voice comes up from behind me, “do you like it?”
“Are you actually telling me that you managed to do all this in one day? One day and it looks so beautiful like it’s been designed by interior designers?” I turn around, looking at Giovanni with tears threatening to fall.
He did this for me. The Castiglione brothers constructed a pool house for me to live in so that I don’t have to get kicked out of the house by their dad.
They did this for me.
“It must’ve cost a fortune!”
“Money wasn’t an issue. It’s your safety that truly matters.” He says, stepping forward before he kisses my forehead ever so gently like I was some porcelain doll going to crush if he kissed me too hard.
“Giovanni?”
“Yes, Scarlett?” He asks, his minty breath mixed with nicotine washing over my face.
“Thank you for this.”