Page 227 of Modern Romance January 2025 5-8

He opened up the envelope and stared at the two small rubies in his palm. Again he recalled his mother with the jeweller, insisting on the stones she liked.

‘Rubies...’

‘Not diamonds?’

‘I have so many diamonds...rubies are more beguiling...’

Then he remembered going back with his father.

‘Just rubies?’he had checked.

‘Si,’Signor Adino had said.‘She wants rubies only for her eternity ring.’

Dante had turned to Sev.‘What’s an eternity ring?’

Now he remembered his response.

‘Something infinite,’Sev had said.‘For ever.’

But Dante had frowned.

‘Even after you die?’

Dante had had a heart back then. He’d loved everyone so much. And at the thought of hismammadying, Papa too, he’d started to cry.

‘What have you said to him?’Papa had come over to them.‘Dante,’he’d scolded.‘Stop.’

Now Dante found he couldn’t stop.

He hadn’t cried at their death, nor at their funeral. Certainly he hadn’t cried when Sev had hit him, nor at the needle going in and out as he’d been stitched up. Nor when he’d walked away from his life.

The day when Rosa had run up to him on the walls, pitched him against his brother, he’d muted all feelings.

Only since Susie had appeared had they started to return.

He thought of her in Lucca, happy in her new job. There was too much damage there, too much left undone, and the foundations were too shaky for him to even think of returning.

Instead, he looked again at the rubies and took out his phone.

‘Signor Adino...’

A gift, Dante decided. And then he’d let her go.

‘Are you still sulking, Susie?’

Her mum had called her midweek.

‘No,’ Susie said—and she was being honest. ‘I’ve got a lot on my mind. I’ve been offered an apprenticeship.’

‘Susie! That’s fabulous. You won’t have to do that expensive course in Florence.’

‘I know.’

She looked at her new white uniform, hanging on the door; Pearla’s had had her name embroidered on the jacket and Cucou had handed it to her yesterday.

No, Susie wasn’t sulking—but she did have a lot on her mind.

When the call ended, she put down the phone and went to her bedside table to look at the result of her first ever pregnancy test.