Chapter 5 Dinner day 1 act 5
It had started. My first gift and they were already breaking apart. If I just needed to look at them for the seams to fall apart, you had done a bad job sewing it together. To outsiders the Rimi family was powerful and strong. I would show everyone how weak they really were.
Alexander
What the hell was happening? I looked around me and I felt myself losing control of the situation. That was not going to happen.
“Mother?” Nero’s pleading voice made everyone look at him. Jessica looked like she would have been anywhere else but in this room. She swallowed hard and glanced at my father, then at Julius, and lastly back to her son.
“It’s true, darling,” she said. It wasn’t louder than a whisper but the room was so silent everyone could hear it.
“Whore!” my uncle exclaimed. I just wanted some peace and quiet to think things through. This changed things and I fucking hated it when things changed like this. My uncle had pulled Jessica up from her chair and was about to hit her. I didn’t care. He had a right to be angry.
“Don’t you touch her!” Nero screamed, got on his feet and hit his father, well, the man he had considered being his father, in the face. My uncle fell backward, onto the table. As no one had touched the main course, food was going in all directions. Miss Young screamed and I saw Milo stand up, pull her into his arms and back away from the table. Something told me I didn’t like that. I didn’t know why, neither did I have the time to figure it out. Nero had pulled his mother behind him and was glaring down on my uncle that was still splayed out over the table, holding a hand over his chin. “If you touch her again, I will fucking kill you,” Nero growled. Behind him, his sister was looking between her father and brother.
“I have looked the other way all of these years. I haven’t said a word about the women you have had on the side because I thought you were smart about it. Sticking that little cock of yours in your brother’s woman, that isn’t smart! How dare you humiliate me like this?” my mother was screaming at my father. I didn’t want to touch that with a ten-foot pole, but I needed to do something. I turned to the lawyer that was standing to the side, watching the chaos with a calm expression.
“When is the dinner over?” I growled.
“Conventionally, the dinner is over after the women have had their coffee, the men their port and the men rejoin the women,” he told me. I stopped a groan from escaping my lips. I should have known. I looked at Ava. She was busy watching my uncle trying to get up from the table, creating an even bigger mess.
“Ava,” I hissed. She didn’t listen. I had insisted she should be seen as my woman for this mess. In hindsight, this was a mistake. She was now seated at the other end of the table and she had no idea what being a hostess meant. “Ava,” I said a little louder. No reaction. I slammed my palm onto the table. Most of the people in the room jumped. The exceptions being, Milo, the lawyer and the butler. When I saw Ava looking at me, I spoke again. “Take the women into the drawing room for coffee,” I said. She looked at me like she had no idea what I was talking about. Then she understood and gave me a sharp nod and stood up.
“This way,” she said and left the room. I closed my eyes. That was not how you withdrew for coffee. I would have to talk to her about it before tomorrow’s dinner. I had a feeling we would need it then as well. At least the other women were too polite or didn’t care enough to point it out. They all followed her out of the room. I was left with the men.
“Port, Don?” Mr. Miles asked.
“Fuck the port, Bert. I need whiskey,” I told him.
“Of course, Don Alexander,” he said and started to serve the men.
“Sit down. We will talk about this as men,” I ordered everyone. The dinner table was a mess with food, broken plates and glass everywhere. Still, everyone took their seat with a glass of amber liquid in their hand. I drained half of the liquid in my glass in one go. Closed my eyes and enjoyed the burn as I let my thoughts settle.
“I didn’t...” my father started.
“Shut the fuck up!” I told him. My anger surfacing again. “The one thing we won’t be talking about is if this is true or not. Grandmother would never have done this if it wasn’t true. I have seen the original letters and the handwriting looks like the old man’s and Jessica’s. Besides, Jessica admitted it just moments ago. This is a fucking mess,” I told everyone.
“Why the fuck did you have to fuck my woman?” my uncle asked my father. I didn’t want this discussion, but it was unavoidable. We would never be able to talk about the important things until we had sorted the parts that belonged in the tabloids.
“Come on, Julius. No one expected that you would marry that woman! Be real. She was a dancer you met at one of our bars. She’s the type of woman you have a little fun with and then give a grand to disappear quietly when it’s time to find a wife,” my father pointed out. It was the unspoken opinion of the family. Jessica wasn’t the kind of woman you made a wife of.
“I had introduced her to the family!” Julius objected.
“Yeah, like the idiot you are, you didn’t understand what everyone else did,” my father told him. “We all thought you would come around eventually and see reason. In the worst case mother or father would talk some sense into you. But you just had to marry her.”
“And whose fault is that? I married her because she was pregnant and told me the child was mine. I married her to give my son a name! Well, he isn’t my son, is he? It shouldn’t have been me that married her to give the bastard a name! It was you!” Julius shouted.
“Father!” Nero objected. I felt a migraine start to form.
“Do you think you need to marry every whore you get pregnant? There are other ways to solve issues like that,” my father said. I was going to pretend I didn’t hear that, for now. One major issue at a time.
“Did you keep sleeping with her? Is Julia yours as well?” Julius asked.
“Fuck no! I took her to bed three times, while you were overseas. That was more than enough. I had expected more from her. It is what it is. Julia is yours, or someone else’s. Not mine,” my father told his brother.
“Screw you! And screw this family! I can’t believe father and mother knew and said nothing. They just watched me raise Nero as my own while you laughed behind my back.”
“What are you talking about, ‘laughing behind your back’? Do you think I knew Nero was mine? The fuck I did. I thought he was yours. If I had known, I wouldn’t have let you, of all people, raise him,” my father exclaimed.
