Woman of the Hour // volturi kings

43. distrust

Months of planning had started coming to a head. Their wedding was only a week away and the castle had never been so busy. Claire had decorators and planners coming in and out all day, and the phone never seemed to stop ringing. She had everything planned down to the smallest details.

At the moment, she was anxiously biting at her thumb nail while waiting for Ryan and Layla's flight to arrive at the airport. Caius stood beside her as she fidgeted, his hands clasped in front of him, and his posture ridged. He dressed in black, as usual. A long coat over his dark dress shirt and pants, and dark shades on his face.

He insisted on accompanying her; none of the kings were fond of letting her wander around the countryside without at least one of them present, no matter how many guards shadowed her. They weren't making that mistake again.

But he didn't like crowds, and the airport was particularly busy today. He was itching to return to the comfort of the castle. The urge to drain every man that looked a little too long at Claire was getting far too tempting. If they ever showed up within the walls of Volterra, he wouldn't let them leave.

He noticed her shuffling halt, her gaze locked on the newly opened airport gate. There was a beat of silence, just as the first passengers began to disembark, but as soon as Claire spotted a familiar head of bronze curls, she cried out on joy and ran to embrace Layla in a crushing hug.

Ryan stood behind the reuniting pair, his stern glare scouring the crowd before settling on Caius, a foul expression taking over his face. Clearly, he still wasn't the biggest fan of the Volturi brothers.

Caius swallowed thickly and took a deep, unneeded breath. The long drive back to Volterra was going to be painfully tense.

--

Perhaps tense wasn't a good enough word to express the uneasy and anxious energy in the air. It was weighing heavy on Caius' shoulders.

Claire and Layla sat in the back of the sedan, chattering away happily and seemingly oblivious, while Ryan sat edgily in the passenger seat while Caius drove. They hadn't said a word to each other past a brief greeting, and Caius suspected that Ryan was more aware of the danger he was potentially in than he was consciously aware of.

Caius hated small talk, but he wanted the Malloys to feel safe with him, for his love's benefit.

"How was your flight?" He asked carefully, sparing him a quick glance.

"Long," Ryan responded, followed by a long, awkward pause. "Layla wanted me to thank you and your brothers for upgrading us to first class."

"It's our pleasure," he replied amicably. "You're important to Claire, so you're important to us."

Ryan nodded, seemingly drifting off into thought. Caius watched him from the corner of his eye, curious as to what he was thinking. He had given up trying to understand humans a long time ago, Claire being the only exception, but he hadn't met a human as wary as Ryan.

"She's been very excited to see you, you know," Caius continued, doing his best to make conversation. "She redecorated our guest wing three times over. She wanted you to feel welcome."

Ryan looked at him with a bewildered expression, one eyebrow raised in question. "Your... guest wing?"

He cringed in response. He forgot that Claire wanted to surprise the couple. All they knew is that their home was large enough for the young woman to move in comfortably.

"Yes," he replied sheepishly. "Listen, I'm not sure what she has told you-'

That was a lie, Claire told her kings everything.

"-But my brothers and I are... very well off. Generational wealth we've inherited. She doesn't like making a big deal out of it. Which pleases Marcus," he bit out his brother's name in barely concealed jealousy. "He likes to keep a low profile."

"What do you three do, exactly?" Ryan asked suspiciously. He had tried to dig up any information about the foreign strangers, but he couldn't seem to find anything substantial. A few newspaper articles about generous donations to a few museums and galleries in the states, but nothing that raised a lot of red flags.

"We deal mostly in classic art and antiquities, but we own a reasonable amount of real estate." They did rehearse a few finer points to the made-up story of their lives, they didn't want to be as underprepared as they were the last time. "We work with very... exclusive clientele."

It wasn't a total lie, they did indeed collect and distribute artefacts and artwork, and they did own a lot of real estate. Claire had managed to get their surprisingly messy finances in order somehow in between her wedding planning, and they are even better off than they thought they were. She was unravelling centuries worth of terrible records in her free-time, and they couldn't be more grateful.

Of course, Ryan did not believe a single word of it. He was convinced that the three brothers were nothing but trouble, probably heavily involved in some illegal activities. At least, that's what he hoped, so he could get Claire as far away from Italy as soon as possible and back in Alaska.

"Right," Ryan responded dully. "Sounds impressive."

"Did Claire mention she was thinking about going back to school after the wedding?" Caius was trying desperately to make themselves look like the good-guys here, he could tell that Ryan wasn't going to warm up to them anytime soon. "She was going to apply next semester."

"Oh, in Alaska?"

Ryan was very well aware of the scholarship Claire had been offered, he had tried to encourage her to return and enrol before she made it to Italy, but she was insistent on wanting to travel first.

"I don't think so," Caius lied. "She mentioned something about the University of Pisa. They offer English-speaking courses, she thought that would be easier for her to begin with."

"Yeah, I wanted to study Business Economics," Claire piped up from the back seat, both her and Layla now paying attention the men's conversation.

"You'd do wonderfully, sweetheart," Layla cooed, stroking a hand down her arm supportively. Ryan grumbled out an agreement, making Claire suppress a giggle. He didn't like the idea of her staying here, but he would never want to ruin anything that would make her happy. She had been through enough already. 

a/n: im back, kind of. i've had a lot going on for the past few months. it's taken me a while to feel up to writing again, so it may take a bit for me to get back into the flow of it. 

I have a Charlie Swan book in the works, it'll be short and angsty, similar to Gently. I should have the prologue posted tomorrow or the following day. 

love you all<3