The curtains were drawn and a slither of sunshine peeked through the small crack in the heavy material. Alfie should have been at the bakery over an hour ago but he was having a hard time tearing himself away from Niamh. They had been awake for hours just worshipping each other's bodies over and over again. Alfie felt like bloody God himself as he watched Niamh writhing beneath him, her hair all mussed and splayed out across the pillow and her mouth parted in ecstasy as she came apart chanting his name like a mantra over and over again.
"Fuck," he groaned through gritted teeth, fisting the pillow beside her head and kissing her hard as moving hips teased the last of both of their releases.
Rolling onto his back, Alfie pulled her so that she was lying on top of him; her heart thudding wildly against his. He ran his hands up and down her back, tracing patterns he wasn't even aware of while Niamh kissed his bearded chin and just lay there, content and thoroughly sated.
"I love you, Alf," he heard her murmur and he knew that without a doubt she would feel his heart speed up at her words. He smiled. He couldn't stop himself.
"I love you too, love," he kissed the top of her head, wishing they could just stay here all day, wrapped up in each other and in their own little bubble where nothing else existed or mattered.
But that was not to be. Alfie had too much to do in the bakery and Niamh had plans with Karina and some of her friends.
"What time you going to Karina's today?" he asked her.
"About ten," she answered, climbing off of Alfie so that she could start rifling through the wardrobe for something to wear. Ten sounded like it was a long way off but actually by the time she had gotten ready, done a few chores around the house and then swung past the deli to pick up some things to take to Karina's, there wasn't actually all that much time at all.
Putting his hands behind his head, Alfie grinned salaciously at the sight of Niamh, stark naked and rummaging through dozens of skirts and dresses and blouses, pausing for a moment and tilting her head in thought until deciding against the item of clothing and continuing to search again.
"You know I'm certain I saw that mauve dress you like on the wardrobe floor," he commented. "If you bend down right there you'll be sure to find it."
You're disgusting," Niamh caught on to his game and threw a cardigan at him along with a playful glare.
"What?" Alfie exclaimed, his eyes alight with mischief. "Love, that fuckin' arse of yours looks best when it's stuck up in the air and I can see your shiny wet cunt just waitin' for my co-"
He cackled when she threw a shoe at him and he caught it easily with one hand, throwing it back towards the wardrobe floor, making sure not to hit her with it. Standing up, he reached for her, biting and nibbling at her neck when she tried to push him away. He dragged her to the dressing table and bent her over it, gripping her wrists with one of his hands while the other slipped through her wet folds.
"Love that don't you?" he murmured into her ear as his finger slipped inside of her with ease and he caught her eye in the dressing table mirror. He added another finger, the noise of his digits squelching inside of her sounding almost obscene and bringing a flush to Niamh's cheeks which made Alfie smile in delight. He loved how she could still be so shy around him when it came to intimacy. Bringing his fingers up to her mouth, he pushed them in between her lips, groaning when she licked them; tasting both her release and his own on them, and his eyes thundered almost dangerously when Niamh wriggled against the hardness now pressing at her entrance. "You're a very naughty girl this mornin', Niamh. And do you know what I do to naughty girls?"
Niamh shook her head, unable to speak as her heart rate accelerated wildly and Alfie's palm met with the pale skin of her bottom at the same time as he slid inside of her.
"I punish 'em is what I do," Alfie bit down on her ear lobe. "And I intend to punish you thoroughly, Mrs Solomons."
Niamh sat perched gingerly on the chair, her bottom hurting from where Alfie had taken his hand to it over and over again just a couple of hours before.
"Cyril left a half chewed bone on the sofa and I sat on it this morning. Didn't half bloody hurt me," she muttered with an awkward laugh when Karina eyed her with a frown.
Niamh knew it was a lame excuse, and she absolutely knew that Karina would find a reason to get her alone at some point during the day to get the truth out of her, but thankfully there was a knock at the door and the first of the seven or eight women who were invited to Karina's arrived. Niamh was always the first to get there, helping Karina to set up an area where the children could go and play, and then slicing up cakes and setting sandwiches and things onto serving dishes in the dining room where the women would gather for a few hours of adult conversation. Usually by the end of the gathering, Karina's house would look like an explosion had gone off. Toys would be flung around everywhere and there would be a stack of cups and dishes and cutlery at the side of the sink waiting to be washed up. On more than one occasion, Alfie had suggested that they hold the weekly chit chat at their house, which was much bigger by far, and that he could hire someone to do all the tidying up and what not, but Karina would hear nothing of the sort. She enjoyed being the hostess and she strangely enjoyed the chaos, but she most definitely didn't enjoy all of the washing up; which was why Niamh always stayed behind after everyone else to take on the role of pot washer.
Every few minutes the doorbell rang until finally all of the ladies, and the children who were too young to be at school, were present. The children took off playing in the small back garden because the weather was fine and as the ladies all began to settle down, the conversation started to flow along with tea and coffee. There was plenty of laughter and lots of gossip; most of which was about people that Niamh didn't really know but she still acted as interested as the rest of them. After all, being included by these women meant a lot to her. She knew that there had been quite an uproar in Camden when everyone had discovered Alfie had married outside of his faith, and she also knew that aside from Karina and Ollie, the majority of people in the area had only been polite to her out of respect (and probably fear) for Alfie. But as the weeks passed, and as Karina had forced Niamh to join in with these weekly coffee mornings, the women had slowly started to see her as one of them and they had loosened up around her considerably until it felt like they no longer saw her as an outsider. Well, most of them anyway.
"It suits you, Niamh," Loren, Karina's sister in law, commented with a knowing smirk that was shared by the other women as they watched Niamh holding one of the other ladies' two week old baby. "Should we be expecting the pitter patter of little Solomons feet any time soon?"
"Loren," Karina chastised her. "You can't ask her that."
"Why the hell not?" Loren scowled. "You asked me the same thing as soon as I got married. It's what we do. We get married and we pop out babies until we can't feel our downstairs areas any more."
The other ladies laughed, apart from Karina who was alternating between glaring at her sister in law and eyeing Niamh with an apology. Niamh just smiled reassuringly, knowing that the question had been coming at one time or another. After all, these women weren't so different from gypsy women in that it was very much seen as a female's duty to give her husband as many children as physically possible and that if a woman wasn't expecting within a month or two of being married then questions were asked.
"I can't imagine Alfie Solomons with children," One of the women commented with a sneer. Niamh knew that while the other women either definitely liked her or were starting to, this particular one loathed her and had made a couple of snarky comments the previous week too. "He just doesn't seem the sort. Then again, I didn't ever think I'd see him with a wife either. Although we all know he only married her because of some stupid deal with her brother."
"Oh shut up, Marcie," Angela, the woman whose baby Niamh was holding, rolled her eyes and picked up her two year old daughter to wipe her snotty nose. "We all know you're just being sour because you've fancied Alfie for years and he's never so much as even glanced in your direction."
"What would I want with a man like Alfie Solomons?" Marcie stuck her nose up in the air. "He's not the sort of man a decent woman would marry."
"Which was why you were always batting your eyelashes at him and turning up at the bakery to feed him whatever crap you'd made for him?" Loren smirked. "Or were you just hoping for a quick fuck? Because you wouldn't be the only one who's thought about getting amorous with Alfie Solomons."
"Well I certainly haven't imagined it," Karina looked disgusted by the very thought of such a thing as a murmur of agreement hummed around the room from the rest of the women. "And I don't think this conversation is very appropriate given that his wife is sitting right bloody there."
"Oh Niamh won't care, will you?" Loren grinned. "Imagine how good it feels to know all of us women have fantasised about her husband throwing us over his desk and having his way with us, but she's the one who actually gets to do it. Lucky cow."
Niamh could do nothing but flush bright red while the others began to giggle and murmur just exactly what they thought of Alfie. It was amusing and Niamh wasn't even the least bit put out by it. Actually, there was something strangely satisfying in knowing she was married to the local heart throb. Although heart throb probably wasn't the right word to describe her Alfie.
"Who says she does get to do it with him?" Marcie muttered. "I mean they've been married a few months now and she's still not pregnant. He's either fucking someone else instead of her or she's barren."
"That's enough!" Karina slammed her hand down on the dining table and made the baby in Niamh's arms start crying. "Sorry, but Marcie, if you're gonna be a bitch then I'm gonna ask you to leave because Niamh's our friend and we don't talk to our friends like that."
"She might be your friend, Karina, but she's certainly not mine and never will be. We all know though how you have a thing for those that no one else really likes; you collect them like little lost puppies," Marcie sneered. "After all, isn't that why you married Ollie?"
Loren opened her mouth to defend her absent brother from Marcie's verbal attack but Karina beat her to it.
"My Ollie's kind and he's decent and he loves me, which is more than can be said for that new husband of yours. How many times has he been caught paying for ladies of the night down by the docks? Maybe you're sour about Niamh and Alfie because you're jealous that not only did Alfie not want you, but neither does your own husband."
"I'm not listening to this," Marcie spat, standing up angrily. "In fact, I don't even know why I came here in the first place because I don't want to waste my precious time with scum like her ."
"Then you know where the door is," Karina growled, her eyes blazing furiously as Marcie gathered up her jacket and handbag and stormed out of the house with a misplaced self-righteous indignation. The front door slammed shut behind her, the whole house shaking, and Karina turned to look at the rest of her guests. "And if any of you other ladies have got something to say about Niamh or her marriage to Alfie then you can get up and get out, too, alright? Anyone? Hmm? No? Right then, carry on."
As the conversation picked up again, the women opting to talk about the new girl working in the green grocer's who couldn't count for toffee, Niamh handed the baby to its mother and excused herself to go to the bathroom. With a polite smile, Karina followed her half a minute after and tapped Niamh on the shoulder before she could make it to the bottom of the staircase.
"Are you alright?" she asked in a hushed tone, not wishing for the other ladies to overhear. "I'm sorry about that bloody cow."
"I'm fine," Niamh squeezed Karina's shoulder and nodded. "Thank you for sticking up for me, Karina. It's not like me to keep quiet but I didn't want to rock the boat and risk the other ladies turning on me."
"They won't do that," Karina assured her, pulling Niamh into her arms for a quick hug. "And I'd shoot down anyone else if they tried, I promise. Because we're family, you and I, aren't we? Ollie and Alfie pretend they're just boss and employee but they're more than that. Alfie's our family and now so are you, and family always takes care of family."
Alfie rubbed his tired eyes and let out a yawn. He was working a little later tonight, trying to rectify some cock up that Ollie had caused. He should have let the bloody runt do it himself but he had a feeling that would have only made the situation worse, so here he was at nine at night sat in his office, faffing about with paperwork and making phone calls when he should have been at home with his wife.
Picking up the phone, he decided to give her a quick call under the pretence of making sure she'd eaten her dinner instead of waiting for him to get home, but actually he just wanted to hear her voice. When she answered the phone, he smiled, feeling an immediate calm wash over him.
"You alright, love?" he asked, twirling the phone wire around his fingers.
"Mm," she yawned. "I was asleep actually. Nodded off on the sofa with Cyril. Bloody frightened the life out of me when the phone rang."
"Sorry," Alfie apologised. "I just wanted to speak to you. Missed you today, haven't I?"
"You big softie," Niamh chuckled, the sound warming him to the core. "I've missed you, too. I can't wait for you to get home. This house creeps me out sometimes when you're not in it. It creaks and groans and it's horrid. Karina keeps teasing me that maybe it's haunted, and I thought she was joking but now I'm maybe not so sure."
"Nah she's definitely having you on, love. Only scary thing in that house is Cyril's arse," Alfie grinned, motioning for one of the lads who had knocked on the glass window of his office to come in. The young boy placed two envelopes on Alfie's desk, and murmured that they had been hand delivered just a few minutes before. Waving the lad off, Alfie frowned and pulled on his glasses and saw that the envelopes were marked in the order of which they needed to be opened. "So, you never called to tell me 'ow your coffee mornin' thing was."
"Dramatic," Niamh sighed. "I'll tell you about it when you come home though."
"Nah, tell me now," he murmured. "'Cause when we get home the only thing I wanna hear out of your mouth is either 'I love you, Alfie' or 'fuck me harder, Alfie'."
"What about 'my bum's still fucking hurting so you'd best stay away from me tonight, Alfie''?" Niamh snorted.
"You loved it though," Alfie chortled, tearing open the first envelope and pulling out the handwritten letter.
Such a lovely home you have, Mr Solomons. And an even lovelier wife who sleeps like the dead.
You were warned.
Dread churned in Alfie's stomach, bile rising and settling uncomfortably in his throat. As Niamh prattled on about why she wasn't going to let him share their bed tonight if he couldn't behave, he yanked open the second envelope and when the bracelet Niamh wore every single day fell onto the desk with a clang, he leaned over and vomited on the floor.
"Alfie? Are you alright?" he could hear Niamh through the receiver. The room was spinning and his ears were swishing loudly. "Alfie?"
They had been in his home. They had touched his wife; his sleeping wife. So the war had begun. And it seemed that Levi Janowicz was already playing dirty.
"Love," he croaked into the phone. "There's a gun behind the fireplace in the panel underneath where the coal goes. Get it and don't open the door for anyone, yeah?"
"Alfie, what's going on?" Niamh's voice quivered as she heard Alfie banging about in his office, shouting for Ishmael and some of the other men.
"Listen to me, alright? Do not open the door and if you hear anythin', just shoot first and ask questions later, alright?"
"Alfie, please, you're scaring me," she whispered.
"I'll be home as quick as I can," he promised. "Just stay where you are, ok? And Niamh? I love you, yeah?"
"I love you too," she sobbed as the line went dead.
Alfie tore through the bakery like a man possessed; the panic he felt showing with every step of his frantically moving body. Jumping in the car, he screamed at Ishmael to go faster and faster, his mind imagining and preparing for all sorts of scenarios that could be awaiting him. But the dominant thought was of Niamh. He couldn't let anything happen to her; not now, not ever.
The car hadn't even properly come to a stop when Alfie was tearing down the path and kicking open the door.
He just hoped he had gotten there in time.