Thanks for all the reviews, favourites and follows! I'm glad to see there are some of you out there that are enjoying it.
If you have any questions or suggestions feel free to drop me a DM or a review about it and I'll happily consider it. Who knows when I'll need it when I run into some sort of writer's block.
Anyways, as always, please enjoy!
Within the next few weeks, the newly dubbed Renato Sinclair had begun his school adventures. Despite her concerns at how he might fit in, Lilith resolved herself to stay out of it unless something actually happened, or he came to her himself.
It seemed completely fine so far so she didn't intervene.
For his first day at school, Daniela informed her that the principal had kindly accepted Renato's late application to join the school mid-year but had asked for an audience with his parents. "Parent's" might be a little difficult to provide but she would definitely pull something out of her ass to manage the image.
Naturally, she dragged along the "father" along whom didn't volunteer for the position at all but resigned to tagging along after physically being dragged out of his office. Dante had long gotten used to her eccentric ways of trying to make Renato's life decent and had not given a fuck for a long time.
He had also been persuaded to drive them to school. Daniela managed to smuggle both her own brat and his storm into the sleek-looking black car before they left for a free and convenient ride.
Lilith gave Renato a comforting pat on the head when they had to part ways, leaving Timoteo and Coyote to help ease himself into his new school life.
The receptionist lady helpfully escorted them to the headmaster's office. Dante held the door open like the gentleman he was and walked in shortly after the Shinigami.
The headmaster's eyes bulged at the sight of the pair as they walked in. It was obvious to them that he hadn't actually read the enrolment papers at all, let alone thoroughly because they both had their names written clearly on the front page as Renato's emergency contacts, Daniela being the required third.
Beads of nervous sweat were visible across his face, "H-hello, Sir Dante of the Vongola and Lady Reaper. How may I be of assistance to you both?"
Lilith was unimpressed with the first impressions of the school and sent the cloud, whom was standing beside her, a flat stare.
"…are you sure this was a good idea? Maybe I should've just home-schooled the kid."
Dante paused, he was equally as unimpressed with the headmaster and flipped his wrist to glance at his wristwatch before replying with an even tone.
"No, I'm half convinced this is a terrible idea but having Renato get comfortable around other kids might be for his own good. Having connections for the future is always useful."
"I guess so," She grumbled under her breath.
Lilith craned her head to look straight into the eyes of the headmaster. Her intentional intimidation tactics made him visibly tremble.
"We're here because you called us in for an audience regarding Renato's enrolment."
"A-ah, yes!" The middle-age man started, fumbling around his papers with shaky hands before settling on a certain file. "I just need you to sign some documents and his enrolment will be completed."
She shot him a suspicious look before storming up to the desk and swiping the file off the top. She flipped it open and glanced over the words before closing it and chucking it at Dante like a frisbee.
He expertly caught it and scanned it over before passing it back.
"It looks fine, sign it. If anything goes wrong just get Daniela to deal with it because it was her idea in the first place."
Lilith shrugged, "Okay, sure."
She scribbled her signature at the bottom of the page and placed it on the desk on turning on her heel to walk out.
"T-thank you for your time!" The headmaster called after them. Dante returned the gesture with a polite nod before closing the door behind him.
What a waste of time and effort.
Lilith was in quite the irritated mood when they returned to the mansion and decided to plonk herself on one of the couches in Dante's office to relax and read a book.
Her peace was interrupted several times by guests and/or staff wanting to speak with the Vongola Cloud guardian for whatever reason. Every single time she ignored it but this one was the final straw of her patience.
Her peace was once again interrupted by three clean knocks on the door, she grumbled a few unheard vulgar words under her breath. After a few moments of silence, it was clear that Dante hadn't found the will to respond or was dead tired or was distracted with his work.
"Yes, what is it?" she drawled out in reply in his stead, slowly pulling herself up into a sitting position.
"Ah, Lady Reaper! Good day to you, is Lord Dante in?" The voice asked cheerfully from the other side of the door.
Lilith craned her head to the cloud and raise an eyebrow in question. He propped his chin in his palm and shrugged before going back to work on his ever-growing pile of dreaded paperwork with a deep and tired sigh.
Well, he clearly didn't care right now.
"Yeah, he is. Why?"
"Oh, we just needed to talk to him." The person behind the door informed her, vaguely.
She let out an aggravated sigh, what is with these people? They're going to have the meeting with the resident cloud in front of her anyway, why not just say it straight?
"… and how many of you are there?"
"There's just the two of us, Lady Reaper."
She dropped her back, back down on the couch and reopened her book to the bookmarked page. She was so done, no more interruptions to her precious reading time.
"Then fucking talk to each other."
Dante, the ass, just blatantly snorted and ignored the spluttering that emerged from the pair on the other side of the door. Two pairs of footsteps finally faded into the peaceful silence that it was like before.
She let out a happy sigh of relief.
"Lilith." He called out for the woman's attention. She shifted her head to hang off the side of the couch and craned her neck to look at him from an awkward angle.
"What?"
"You can stay here for as long as you like, whenever you want, if you brush every person that comes along off like that."
She pulled her head back into its original comfortable position, "Okay, sure."
Dante was satisfied with less social interaction and Lilith was satisfied with a comfortable and less lonely relaxing space. Everything was simply satisfactory.
She got annoyed after the first three set of people and ended up putting up a door sign instead. It read:
'Do not disturb unless someone is dying or you're as cute a Renato. Much thanks. – Lilith'
No-one had the guts to come inside after that and try to prove that they were a cute as the kid because everyone knew that no-one was nearly as cute as her brat in her opinion and no-one ever would be.
Several hours later, the children had safely been returned to the Vongola mansion via a lovely retired old chauffeur that had volunteered to do the job. He was a kind old man that used to serve as Daniela's own chauffeur when she attended her schooling as a teen, so she trusted him quite a bit.
Lilith was taking a nap when the news came around that the young masters had returned home. The residents had decided to leave her be and informed Renato of her current situation. The kid shrugged and sat in the Timoteo's study with him and Coyote to finish their assigned homework.
When she awoke, she rolled off the couch and landing gracefully in a standing position. Dante was no longer in his office, having finished his current stack of work and was nowhere to be seen. She glanced briefly at the clock in the room.
5:00pm
Renato should be home by now.
The Shinigami peeked her head into her own room, then Renato's room, then the study area, the kid was nowhere to be seen. She had barely missed him as the trio of kids had finished their homework about 10 minutes earlier and had moved on to other activities.
She furrowed her eyebrows, she never liked to needlessly abuse her soul locating abilities, so she was going to do this the manual way.
It was rather late but not yet dinner time, so where could he be? She assumed that he wouldn't be in the kitchen, given how close to dinner it was… perhaps Timoteo's room?
She popped her head into the Vongola heir's bedroom only to be disappointed with the flawlessly clean and empty-of-kids room.
By this time the resident maids, staff and guardians were giving her questioning looks as she wandered around the building, poking her head into random rooms.
She huffed in annoyance and ended up storming down to Daniela's office, where the sky always was, and shoving the door open.
Much to her surprise, there her brat was in all his adorable glory alongside the Vongola kids playing cards on Daniela's coffee table. Dante was also there, standing beside the Vongola Sky's desk discussing some sort of business.
All five pairs of eyes snapped to her form as she entered the room.
"Oh, there you are." She greeted Renato.
The brat was there eating a small pack of chips, much like the other two kids were doing as well.
She sighed and closed the door behind her before leaning back on it, she cocked her head to the side, "And how was your day at school?"
Through a mouthful of chips, he replied with some incoherent words.
Lilith frowned, "Chew and swallow before you talk." She scolded.
He quickly did so and tried again. "It was fine." She hummed in contemplation.
"And what are you doing now…?" He glanced at the cards in his hands and then to her, expecting her to connect the dots but she just kept staring at him flatly, waiting for a reply.
Renato huffed, "I'm playing cards and eating a family-sized bag of chips."
She eyed the tiny bag of chips in his lap, "Ren, that's a small bag. It's definitely not family-sized."
He stuffed another chip into his mouth, chewed and swallowed before placing a card down and picking another up from the deck.
"Every bag of chips is family-sized if you're an orphan."
The air in the room froze, everyone froze. Timoteo's hand that was in the middle of picking up a card just paused in time. They all gaped at him and Lilith looked absolutely mortified.
She puffed out a short breath before storming out of the room to who knows where. Renato's shoulders slumped in regret.
Maybe that wasn't the correct way to answer that.
He stared at the bag of chips in his lap before dropping his hand of cards on the table and standing up.
"I don't wanna play anymore…" he mumbled sadly before walking out of the room, but not before he crushed that bag of chips in his fist and dropped it in the trash.
Guilt was digging into Renato's conscience as they gathered in the dining room for dinner. Lilith was late and Renato felt terrible and blamed himself for her not joining them.
He had taken the seat opposite Dante in hopes of being able to sit next to her and apologise but was significantly disheartened when she never made an appearance.
The residents seated at the table didn't know what they could say to make the tense and depressing air of silence that surrounded the dinner table disperse at all.
But they didn't need to do anything as the thick silence crumbled like glass when the doors swung open loudly.
Lilith stormed right in and straight to Renato with a stack of papers in hand.
"I'm having a baby." She announced shortly as she made her way to the boy.
Everyone at the table blanched at her announcement and snapped their necks to stare at Dante who, in turn, simply sipped his tea, leaned back in his chair and sighed out a "No".
Renato just stared at her when she stopped right next to him, "Uh, okay that's gre—"
She slammed down the stack of papers on the table next to his plate, resonating vibrations throughout the long dining table and making several plates jump but not spill.
Renato's heart pounded against his ribs.
"It's you," she informed him sharply and slammed a pen on top of the papers, "sign here."
He spluttered for a moment with his eyes widening. Lilith tapped her foot impatiently, "Well?"
Renato fumbled slightly, his eyes welling up with tears, before scribbling his name onto the document through the blur. A satisfied smile spread broke across her face as she swiped the papers up and eyed the signature.
She grinned and skipped back out of the dining room. The newly adopted kid rubbed furiously at his eyes after she left.
He was still stunned in disbelief.
"Did that really just happen?" he asked in a hoarse whisper to no-one in particular.
The cloud gave him a small smile and a nod whilst Daniela positively beamed at the kid in happiness for him.
"It sure did!"
When the first weekend after his first week of school arrived, Lilith sat Renato down in the Vongola training grounds. Since he was now officially her kid, she was going to start his training. Even though she probably would've done it without the paperwork she sure knew how much it meant to the brat after seeing his tearful smile.
She planted her hands on her hips and looked down at her new kid.
"Ok, now we're going to try and teach you a cool trick or two."
A broad grin split across his face, "Okay!"
"First things first, I'll need you to remember some of my life mottos." She raised a finger to count them as she filtered through them all.
"My first rule is always 'Don't strike unless the clock is low.' but you can't see nor feel clocks anyway so you can ignore that one. Instead, my second rule will be your first unless you can think of something that makes more sense."
Dread started the fill the pit of his stomach when an evil grin started to form slowly on her face.
"No pain, no gain." She pulled out a bag of water balloons, "Now, start running, Ren!"
He paled a few shades and scrambled to his feet before bolting as far away from her as he could. A splat of water hit his shoulder making him flinch in surprise, but he never stopped running.
"Run in an inconsistent zigzag motion, never run in a straight line! It's way too easy to hit you that way." She advised him from behind and lugging another water balloon into his back.
He struggled to break and maintain an inconsistent running pattern, but he quickly got used to it after being hit by another couple of balloons. A quick learner, Lilith grinned.
"Good! Now run faster, Ren. You're too slow!"
Renato huffed and puffed, completely exhausted. "But, I'm tired!" He whined.
She popped up behind him and leaned to whisper in his ear, her hot breath against the freezing condition of his body did not make the contrast feel good.
"Then, don't be~" She sang and reeled back for a slow and obvious throw.
His eyes widened and he dove and rolled off to the side of the building to dodge before disappearing behind the corner.
Lilith's eyes flashed and she broke out into a hearty laugh, "Good, good!"
Oh, this would be fun.
Renato was dead on his feet every weekend night when he came to dinner. At one point he was so tired that he was falling asleep at the table and Dante had to catch his head before it flopped into his dinner.
He sent the not-guilty Shinigami a look, "Maybe you should tone it down if he's this dead."
She looked up from her meal and shrugged. "No pain, no gain. He'll be fine, I went through it too."
Dante deadpanned and gently leaned the sleeping kid back in his chair.
"I truly pity him."
Lilith scoffed, "He'll thank me in the future."
She didn't lie, the results started showing after the first month of his training. Renato stopped coming to dinner half dead, still tired but his stamina was rapidly increasing, and he could feel it.
His morning weekend runs were getting easier and easier to complete, it even got to the point where Lilith was extending them and making him finish them faster to get him to the next stage. He eagerly accepted the challenge and thrived off the successful feeling of getting stronger.
His P.E. grade was getting higher, he was climbing the confidence course ranks and carrying his heavy textbooks no longer felt like a challenge.
It did wonders on his self-esteem but not on his school life.
Despite both his active and academic grades going up, his social life seemed to be plummeting. Other kids were getting jealous of his progress and he didn't know exactly why he was in the wrong.
Timoteo let him stay with his group of friends but soon enough Renato started to drift.
The terrible comments he heard about him trying to use the Vongola heir as a means of money or how he didn't deserve to hang out with the Vongola heir because he wasn't a guardian and he was just intruding, just tore him apart inside.
He didn't want to hear it any more so he started to eat his lunch by himself on the rooftops, study by himself in his own room or in Dante's office instead of Daniela's where he used to go and he moved himself from his normal desk in the middle of the room to the far back corner.
He honestly didn't want to go to school any more but sucked it up because he knew that overall It was good for him.
The next morning, he went to Dante to ask him personally to drive him to school instead of going with the other kids. The cloud didn't question him and silently drove him to school before the others left the house.
Renato mumbled a goodbye to his father figure before dragging his feet through the school gates. Dante sat in the car for a few moments just watching the kid walk into school with a frown, he watched him cringe away from other children that were obviously attempting to assert dominance over the boy. This caused Renato to end up speeding walk his way straight into the main building with his eyes locked on the ground.
That wasn't a good sign at all.
When Dante returned to the mansion after a few moments of waiting and went to deliver an update to Lilith. Not finding her in her own bedroom he assumed she must've been in his office and he was correct.
"Renato's being bullied." He informed her shortly, closing the doors behind him.
The Shinigami sat up and looked down with a frown, her hair shadowing over her eyes, "That's not good…"
Dante walked over to his desk and leaned back in his expensive leather chair, "Are you planning on doing anything about it?"
She breathed out a deep sigh.
"I don't want to be babying him." She told the cloud, "If he wants to survive in the Mafia, he needs to be able to survive school at least or ask for aid."
Dante stood silently, just listening and lending an ear.
Her jaw clenched, "I'll let him deal with himself until he asks for aid. He needs to know when to ask for help too." She looked him straight in the eye, "If he asks you, though, would you help him?"
"I would, but as you said, he just needs to ask."
Lilith's eyes fell to her lap once more, "…thank you."
A touch of a smile graced his face.
"You needn't thank me, after all, he took my name. He's basically my son too."
That smile soon spread throughout his features when Lilith burst into gentle and appreciative laughter.
"Yeah, I suppose that's true too."
School every day was getting worse and worse.
Renato had completely stopped trying to make friends with and associate with the Vongola heir that he was supposedly friends with and preferred to be by himself.
Now, he knew that the original reason why Lilith was paying for his schooling was because she wanted him to have future connections and friends his age, so he couldn't help but feel extremely guilty about not being able to fulfil her wishes.
Isolation soon turned to bullying but only from one specific group of older kids with the rest of the school remaining bystanders. This school was the best and most well-known mafia school in the whole of Italy, hence why Timoteo was sent here and it wasn't an uncommon sight to see other heirs of smaller and weaker familglia try and cosy up to the boy.
The bully, as Renato had found out, was another heir of a mafia famiglia that was looking to pull the Vongola into an alliance. No-one in the school, sans Timoteo, Coyote and likely the other guardians, knew that Renato had a presence within the Vongola household, so they probably saw him as easy picking that was trying to drag himself up the mafia hierarchy.
Renato refused to become someone's punching bag but at the same time refused to trigger a fight within the school and make issues for his caretakers.
When the bullies approached him, he chose to evade. He wasn't the top of the class in athletics for nothing. They couldn't touch him, and this only made them more and more angry.
Internally, he was wondering when they would start pulling the 'My dad's a Mafia boss' card on him and it seemed like he jinxed himself when he found himself cornered in the bathroom.
The older kid had the entrance and exit completely blocked off by his own lackeys.
Renato breathed in and out deeply to calm himself, "What do you want?"
The other boy crossed his arms over his chest and stared him down with a glare. "I can't let a younger and unknown name kid take over the overall ranking boards. It's humiliating for me as a the famiglia heir of the Carcassa famiglia!"
Renato cocked his head to the side and stared flatly at him. His life suddenly turned into a white girl American chick flick.
"And this concerns me, how?"
The bully's face flushed red in rage, "Sabotage your scores or I'll-"
A burst of high-pressure killer intent flooded the room. Renato's eyes darkened under the blank stare that he wore on his face.
"And you'll what? Kill me? Destroy me? Any other human being could do that. So could a dog, even a really dedicated duck. Oh wait, that duck could do better than you. Sorry, my bad, bad example."
The boy hissed through his teeth, "I'll destroy you and your unknown family if you even have one. My famiglia can easily overrun yours. Can you imagine it? Your mother laying on the ground, bleeding out because you refused to sacrifice your grades for her."
Renato glared him down, amplifying the pressure of his released flames and sending the other boy to his knees.
"You can't touch my mother." He growled darkly and walked up to the bully. His eyes glinted in a silent threat and he ran his nail against the thick veins of his throat.
"Touch her and I'll fucking kill you myself."
The head bully, who Renato now knew was known as Matteo Carcassa, had gone and complained directly to the head master about the situation that had occurred after running away with his tail between his legs. He explained that Renato had attacked him in the bathroom, flaunting his rank and was threatening his life.
A complete lie.
Much to the headmaster's own dismay, he had to act on the incident and held both boys in his office while they waited to their respective parents to arrive. The students in the room were forced to sit and listen to the one-sided phone call that connected their principal to their parents.
Matteo's call had gone directly to his father and was smooth and short. Renato's went initially to Daniela then referred to Dante who chose to receive the message.
Renato was furious with himself and completely ashamed. He had done what he had consciously trying not to do and that was cause more issues for Lilith. Now he could only sit and wait to deal with the consequences but with how the situation was going he would likely be put in the wrong and placed in severe discipline.
Matteo's father was the first of the parents to arrive. He was a very visibly buff man with a bald head and a default grouchy look. There were sidearms laid out attached to his belt in plain sight, likely an attempt at intimidation.
Matteo grinned at Renato with a smug glint in his eye, "Where's your mommy, Renny-boy? Too scared to come face a real mafia boss?"
Renato chose to exercise his right of silence triggering a flush of rage through the other boy's system. Matteo's father was equally as outraged at the mini-shinigami's blatant refusal to converse with his heir and only son.
The headmaster flailed in a panic as the Carcassa famiglia boss stormed up to the boy and dangled him by the collar. Once again, Renato chose to remain silent and received the flow of insults and threats with immense grace and minimal eye contact.
"You little brat! Obey, my son or I will destroy your-" blablablabla. Renato drowned the rest of it out, Idiot-Matteo's father was equally as idiotic as his son.
Empty threats, he reasoned with himself that they were all empty threats. Lilith and Dante were super strong and could take care of themselves.
But a little bit of him felt flooded in worry. What if they were caught off guard or sleeping or sick and they get hurt? What if it was all his fault?
He let out a strained and light breath due to the restriction that was being placed on his airways. His eyes widened in realisation and dilated in panic. If he didn't do something soon, he was going to die.
Renato kicked at the significantly bigger man over and over to try and make him loosen his stubborn grip but it wasn't working. The wooden doors that led into the headmaster's office creaked open as he reeled back and slugged the mafia boss in the face, finally freeing his aching airways.
Renato fell to his knees and clutched his chest, panting hard. Matteo's father was recovered from the momentary stunning of Renato's punch and was clearly ready to launch himself at the child so Renato instinctively braced his head for the impact that never came.
The Carcassa mafia boss had frozen in place, his eyes locked on the doors behind the kid he had just physically and verbally assaulted.
Renato forced his heavy eyelids open to see what was going on and saw not Lilith, but Dante standing in the doorway absolutely seething. Dante had always been a calm and rational part of his life that it was somewhat terrifying for Renato to witness his fury even if it wasn't directed at him.
His well known to be extremely powerful flames flooded the room with releases of high levels of heavy pressure upon everyone but his little sun.
The Vongola Cloud hissed at Matteo's father, who flinched at the sight. The Carcassa boss grew pale and began to tremble, a rictus grin appearing moments after.
"A-ah, Signore Dante of the Vongola, how pleasant it is to see you here. What brings you here today…?" he attempted, pathetically.
Dante growled darkly, "What did you do to my son?"
The other man stumbled back and away from the cloud's ward and Renato stared at him in wonder. How he was addressed made him have mixed feelings, did Dante say that for the appearance? or did he— no. Renato shook any hopes off his mind, he didn't want to get hopeful.
"Y-your son?"
Dante let out an aggravated sigh, completely ignoring the other man. He was useless and very much below him, associating with him would bring in no benifits. The cloud lightened up the killer intent that flooded the room.
He kneeled before Renato and gave him a quick once over, raising his joints one by one to check for injuries. Outside of the glaring bruise that was soon forming on the little sun's neck, he seemed fine.
A displeased frown spread across his expression as he stood up. "What happened at school today, Renato?"
Matteo scowled a warning 'discretely' at the other student, but it did not go unnoticed by the Vongola's resident cloud whom, in turn, presented the boy with a warning glare of his own. He mimicked his father's flinch for earlier.
Renato dropped his eyes to his hands that were limp in his lap, a habit that he had adopted from Lilith when she felt ashamed or embarrassed, she would always look away.
"He threatened Lilith, so I sort of threatened to kill him if he hurt her…"
A sympathetic yet amused smile bloomed on Dante's face. How, cute. He just wanted to protect his mother from a potential threat, there wasn't anything wrong with that. How he dealt with the following situation was what was wrong.
"Your mother is powerful, Renato. You know who she is, her reputation and how strong she is."
The boy mumbled his reply, "Yeah, but still. Now, I screwed up and made more issues for you and her because of my stupidity."
Dante gestured for him to stand up and Renato stumbled obediently into a stand.
"Defending family from potential threats was not wrong of you. What went wrong was how you went about to do it. The Carcassa heir and boss were threatening your loved ones and you let them step all over you, next time, don't do that."
He nodded in understanding, unaware of the rapidly paling faces of the father-son duo from behind him. Dante eyed them up and down with an unimpressed look.
"If they do it again, let loose and punish them. This is a mafia school after all. If they threaten you first you can place blame on self-defence, just make sure you have evidence or witnesses."
He looked up at the man with a mischievous grin, "Yes, sir!"
"Also, remember that it's not always possible to do everything by yourself so don't hesitate to ask for help if you need it."
All thoughts of Dante only acting like he did, just for show just vanished in his words.
"Okay, I'll remember it."
Well now, he had permission to assert dominance to the population and now nothing was going to stop him from putting the whole school under his thumb. They had made his school life miserable for the past couple of days, so he was going to fix it.
"Oh, and Filippo Carcassa? Consider your application for a position in the alliance declined. We do not accept those who threaten our family."
He was still going to fanboy a bit though. Holy shit, Dante—his Dad was so cool.
...if I have more than one chapter ready, should I like, wait to post it so there's approximately even spacing between chapters or just fuck it all and throw it out?
My initial thought would be to do the latter but I just wanted to see if anyone had a preference.