Page 149 of Knottingley Ever After
“Santori,” I say, slowly. “Are you not worried. About the small senior-administrative tier that we have, in the past two hours, just confirmed is responsible for the literal murder of the literal last Omega goalie. Coming for me.”
Matteo is, for a careful long beat, quiet.
Then his mouth does, in the small slow unfolding way I am only just learning he does anything when the subject is, in fact, serious, the small dangerous smile.
“Maybe,” he says, evenly, “I would, frankly, like to see them try.”
Oh.
“Santori.”
“For the public record, Pinky. I am, technically, not in the stereotypical mafia family. We do not, in fact, run that infrastructure. My family is in the Italian trades. We are concrete, we are catering, we are commercial laundry, we are imports. We are, however, professionally connected to certain other Italian families whose infrastructure is, on a small need-to-know basis, considerably broader. And my mother, my father, and my four uncles are, when one of us declares an interest in something, or in this case in someone, professionally and emotionally serious. If protection is what we need, the request can be made. The request will be filled.”
“Oh.”
“I am not,” Matteo continues, quiet now, “going to let the rest of your career sit on a shelf because some small douches in small high places are frightened that an Omega is going to redefine the small private architecture of their sport. They can, frankly, go touch some grass. It is, on the calendar of the universe, about time the world saw an Omega in the senior leagues. That Omega is, on the small inner ledger of every Alpha currently sitting on this bed, going to be our girl. And she is going to be the small domino that triggers the rest of them.”
Santori.
Santori, I am going to cry in this hotel bed for the second time today.
“Matteo,” Rémi adds, beside me, mildly, “not incorrect. If we can pull more of the archived evidence around Saoirse Boyne, wecan, on a quiet timeline, identify who was specifically involved on the administrative side of the original incident. We can keep watch.”
“And,” Jude says, on my left, “if we get Marcus Vance involved, professionally, he is going to pull strings. The man is, by reputation, ruthless. He is also, by reputation, a man who has wanted, on his own private trophy shelf, the first Omega goalie in the senior leagues for the better part of a decade and a half. If signing Iris gets him the fame and the exposure that comes with closing a deal his industry has watched him chase for fifteen years, he will do, in the small dry accounting of his own self-interest, whatever needs to be done to deliver us what we need. I am professionally confident about that.”
“So,” I say, slowly, “he is not, in fact, a bad guy.”
Jude shakes his head. “He is a man wearing a facade he enjoys wearing with pride. My grandfather has done business with Vance for the better part of three decades, and the small private opinion in that house is that he is, on the substance, safe. We simply need to get Coach Declan, on his own private opinion, to land in the same place. That part of the project is, frankly, going to be the hardest part.”
They nod, the three of them, in unison.
And then Matteo, on a small theatrical pivot of his entire mood that should not, structurally, work on me, lies flat on his back, pats the centre of his own chest with both palms, and announces, brightly: “Right. Pinky. Cuddle time.”
I laugh.
Out loud. Properly. The small unmanaged laugh of a woman who has, in the past ninety minutes, gone through approximately fourteen distinct emotional weather systems and is, frankly, being asked by the universe to do another one.
“Santori.”
“Yes, Pinky.”
“We have just had a serious focused tactical conversation about my potential murder and you, in the immediate downstream of that, want to cuddle.”
“We need goodluck,” Matteo informs me, with absolute serenity, “for the game in the morning. The small empirical-evidence basis on which a goalie’s save record correlates to whether or not she has been adequately cuddled the night prior to a game is, on the small private analytics I have personally run, statistically robust. We are not going to break the streak. Come here.”
“What streak,” Rémi asks, mildly. “You have, in this current cohabitation arrangement, cuddled the goalie precisely six nights.”
“Six-game-zero-loss streak, Bellerose. The data set is admittedly small. The correlation, however, is, on the small inner ledger of a winger who has been keeping receipts, professionally robust. Come on, Pinky. The integrity of the experiment depends on you.”
Twenty-One, you are not, in fact, going to be the death of me. I am going to be the death of me, on the back of you.
I crawl across the duvet to him. The blood-orange-and-cinnamon-sugar-and-espresso of his scent comes up to meet me, the small warm chest-pillow of him available for the precise routine I have, in the past four weeks, started to recognize as a small standard service offering. I settle in. My cheek finds the small soft worn-fabric of his sleep T-shirt over his sternum. His arm comes up and folds across the small bracket of my upper back. He kisses the crown of my hair.
“Rémi.” Matteo, around the curl of my hair, lifts his free hand and pats the duvet on my other side. “C’mon. Snuggle up.”
Rémi, beside me, does the slow defenseman eye-roll of a man calculating the precise mid-bed cubic-foot allocation. “Santori. Stay on your side.”
“Rémi.”
