The Twelve Tables Ch. 23

"You don't understand that you need Emily and I and the connections we have already made. You can't do this alone. The family is far too important to leave the running of it to chance," Carmen had a pleading tone in her voice, "You must see that you can't do this without us."

"What I see, is that you don't know me at all, and you have never bothered to get to know me. If you had you would know that I have many connections in, not only this family and the extended relations but also other tables," Peri said trying to sound assertive rather than scared. "You both wrote me off as some commoner with no clue about how this family operated, but you couldn't be more wrong."

"How could you possibly have any connections beyond the immediate family," Carmen scoffed.

"I bothered to find and talk to the next leader of the Vitali family and his wife at Maryanne's wedding. I also know several of the wives, who may rise to that rank among the Battaglia. Though Josh and I never believed that he would be chosen, I was still learning and supporting him and this family by making those connections. I would question if you could say the same thing."

Carmen said nothing as she stared at her for long minutes in disbelief. "You have been busy haven't you, but it doesn't mean that you don't need us and our connections. Lucia can't possibly help you organise an event of this size," she said

"I thought we had come to an understanding yesterday when I extended the olive branch to you. I had thought we were able to respect each other. I can see that I was wrong now. You needn't concern yourself with the fact that I will ask for your assistance again. I understand that was a mistake. I can see that you have been placed in a difficult position, however, so if you would like to talk to me in a more appropriate place, I will be happy to listen. That place is not here, and this is not the time. Now if you will excuse me," she took a deep breath as she turned her back on Carmen and walked quickly toward the Athenaeum and the cottage beyond that.

"I don't think you understand," Carmen said waspishly. Peri ignored her and kept walking determinedly to get away from the confrontation she knew had to occur eventually. She wasn't ready for it to happen yet and she looked down at her phone seeing the still open line.

"I'm near the Athenaeum, I'll be at the cottage in a few minutes," she said lifting the phone close enough so that he could hear her clearly and continued to walk. She turned at the Athenaeum and saw that Carmen followed her at a distance. She turned the corner and could see the cottage and the solace it offered her. Someone would be there, and she wouldn't feel so afraid anymore.

She looked at the ring on her finger and smiled. She knew her easy acceptance of being tracked had surprise both Josh and Dante, but it made her feel safer. She had nothing to hide, so there was no need for her to worry about who knew if she was at home or work and she had been accosted often enough in the last year to make her wary enough of any clandestine meeting, to avoid anything like that.

"Ah there you are," CJ said as she approached the cottage, "Antonia said you wanted to see me."

"Oh gosh, I forgot for a moment," she said with a nervous laugh and looked over her shoulder.

"You okay, you look a little shaken?" he looked at her and frowned.

"Oh yes, I'm fine. Do you mind if I check on the babies while we talk?" she asked with a smile.

"Sure, I'm good with babies. They grow up too fast," CJ agreed easily looking back in the direction she had come and saw nothing there.

"I used some really good novel writing software to help create and collate the family histories I was working on. It was just a free open source one, and I was wondering how hard it would be to tweak it so that I could use it as a contact book but have the space to include other information about the family of that contact and link it to other contacts like brothers and sisters. It would need to be like a big spider's web I guess," she said frowning.

"Some of the open source stuff is better than the programs that can cost big bucks," he chuckled.

"I can find and use this stuff but I have no idea about the programming side and how hard it would be to tweak the way I want it. I mean I guess I could create pages that linked together in excel like I did for the repository but what I am wanting is probably a bit more complex," she tried to explain as they entered the cottage.

"So you want to be able to add a contact to a list but add information like birthdays, anniversaries, favourite colour and how many times they blink in a day. Then you want to be able to link that back to a family page that showed a tree-like structure of parents, siblings children so on and so forth," CJ got a general idea and expanded on it as she smiled at Josh and took her crying child from his hands.

"Is your Papa pinching you?" she asked the baby. "Come to Mama I understand, he pinches me too sometimes," she laughed as the baby settled slightly in her arms. "Ah I see Papa didn't want to change your nappy," she clicked her tongue and walked toward the nursery. "I'll just be a minute CJ, but you have a general idea. If you look at my laptop, you'll see the few programs I use. I like Freemind, but it doesn't have a text writing option. You'll see what I mean when you look at it" Peri said over her shoulder as she disappeared into the nursery.

"I'll to talk to Papa about what happened," Josh said once they were alone in the nursery.

"Not yet, please," she turned to look at him. "I was just nervous because she ambushed me like that. I called because I got a little worried and I wanted you on the phone just in case I needed help but I didn't. I'm just being safe; you know after..."

"Yeah, I know but you shouldn't feel unsafe here of all places," he said unhappily.

"If anything else happens you can get involved with no arguments from me but just for now let this one go, please Josh," Peri said calmly. "There's something else going on with her aside from me being the mother." She smiled at her son and spoke to him quietly as she changed his nappy. "Did you feed them their bottles?"

"Yeah D. was here until they all fell asleep," he said, "He got a message from Ang and had to go for a few minutes then you called, and then this little man woke up."

"Could you put him to sleep while I talk to CJ for a few minutes, I won't be long, and the girls will be back soon," she asked.

"Their back already," he laughed. "I told them they weren't allowed in the nursery until after midday. I think Heather is very put out not being able to look after Cruze while he's been crying."

"Oh, she must be beside herself," Peri laughed picking her son up in her arms. "I think you just wanted a little time to play with him by yourself."

"Maybe we just wanted some man time together," he chuckled taking his son from her and looking at the other two sleeping babies. "Go and see CJ we will be just fine," he encouraged.

Peri went out to the table and found that CJ had already begun tinkering with the program she had mentioned. They talked about what she wanted for some time with CJ offering solutions to some of the perceived problems with this type of software.

"Okay, I think this will work, to begin with, but I'll tinker a bit more with it once I'm home. We can always export the data later if you want to begin imputing it straight away. We'll put it in a networked file for now so we can both see it and work on it at the same time," he explained placing the altered software into a network file and named it P-book.

"Thank you that's a great start," Peri said happily. "I'm sorry I delayed your trip home."

"You did me a favour, Papa is pretty impossible when Con is here," he chuckled. "The kids are eager to see what Santa left them though so we have to get going soon."

"I need to go see what this is about," Josh said holding up his phone.

"We're all done now, go play with your brothers," she laughed and kissed him.

"I'll walk with you," CJ chuckled and stood from the table where they had been working.

"Cheeky," he lightly smacked her ass and kissed her again as she stood to walk them out. "Let the girls keep you company, I don't want you here alone," he said sternly.

"I just thought about that," she smiled.

*****

"Hey Ang," Josh said walking into the Athenaeum. "I thought you'd gone back to your place."

"Rosanna was adamant about going home early, couldn't work out why until Vinnie explained that she was doing the right thing and walking away from the bully," he spread his hands. "Rosie's a good woman. She likes Peri and was quite impressed by the way she didn't let the others steamroll her yesterday. Carmen planned to make her let them take over the women's business today, though," Ang said with a frown. "Rosanna didn't want to be part of it. She had an argument with them."

"Them being Emily, Bianca, and Carmen?" Josh asked not surprised that Carmen had tried to get the other wives onside.

"Seems they made some promises to the organisations they patronise they will have trouble keeping without access to the family money which was the main gist of the argument with Rosanna. They were trying to steamroll her too," Ang confided.

"Peri thought there was more to it than just sour grapes about the chair," Josh said nodding and filled Ang in on what had just occurred. "We'll keep her close to us today. We're staying an extra day or two so maybe Rosanna can spend some time with her tomorrow and clear the air. I think Lucia and Dino are staying too."

"Peri wants to sort it out without us interfering, and I think that's for the best," Dante spoke for the first time since Josh's arrival. "If she's going to be the Mother then she needs to show them that she's strong enough to lead and do it her way in these early days."

"If Rosanna can be honest with her about everything, I know Peri will appreciate knowing there is someone she can trust in the family," Josh said easily stopping short of telling Ang that Peri felt unsafe amongst her sisters-in-law. "What happened with Nik makes her more cautious than she might have otherwise been with the rest of the women in this family."

"Understandable," Ang said. He'd expected to see his brother's famous temper in action, and he wouldn't have blamed him. Maybe fatherhood had mellowed him or his relationship with Dante, which seemed to have replaced those they had with their missing twins. Whatever it was he liked this calmer more measured side of Josh and could see why he had been named as chair. "I imagine the three of us will be working fairly closely together from now on. Best to kick it off on the right foot."

"Sure is, thanks for letting us know. Let's go find some lunch surely everyone's back from the morning now," Josh said. "We'll have plenty of time to talk tomorrow."

*****