111
Kit was helping Bianca to her feet.
‘You all right?’ he asked, pulling her upright.
‘Yes…’ She was staring at the dead form of her brother Vittore. Only he wasn’t her brother at all. And if he’d got her back… he would have punished her. Maybe even killed her when she defied him – and she would have.
‘God, Mama is going to be…’ She couldn’t finish the words. She was shaking too much.
Mama had lost her favourite, and she would be beyond grief, beyond consolation. Bianca hated the thought of Mama’s pain – but then she thought of all that Kit had told her. Her real mother was lying in an unmarked grave somewhere, murdered by Tito. Mama Bella had stolen her from that woman, snatched her true mother’s happiness away without a care, claimed it selfishly for her own.
Rob and Fats came over to where they were standing.
‘Look after her,’ Kit said to Rob, who nodded and took Bianca’s arm.
They watched as Kit went to where Ruby was sitting on the ground. Thomas Knox was standing over her.
‘She OK?’ Kit asked him.
‘I’m fine,’ said Ruby. She felt so choked up she could barely get the words out.
He’d come for her.
She couldn’t believe it, but he had. Her son, the son she had never thought would return her love, had come here to save her.
‘She’s a bit shaken up,’ said Thomas. He looked at Ruby for long moments, then at Kit. ‘You can take it from here?’ he asked.
‘Thanks. Yeah,’ said Kit, and held out his good hand.
Thomas shook it, briefly. Then he turned and merged into the darkness. Minutes later he was gone, taking his men with him.
‘Come on,’ said Kit, and gently got Ruby back to her feet. ‘You OK?’
‘I’m fine,’ she said, and now, seeing the concern for her right there in his eyes, she was fine, she really was. At last.
112
Fabio found Mama in the kitchen as usual. A real Italian mama, his old mother was, always cooking up the ricotta ravioli, the cozze gratinate e fagiolini, the cestini di patate con salsiccia e casizolu.
Now here she was, and he had to compose himself, break the bad news to her. He had to compose himself not because he was grief-stricken but because he felt like laughing out loud. This was delicious, this was as good as Mama’s food, this thing he had to tell her.
Her favourite boy was dead.
And funnier than that, better than that, was the fact that all that she had left of her family now was him. Fabio, the one who had always been such a disappointment to her, the one she had always pushed away, the one who should have been the girl, but wasn’t. Years and years he had endured the fact that his mother tolerated him, that she’d never loved him. She had loved big, ebullient Tito. She had adored that dull dead bastard Vittore. And Bianca! Oh, how she had fawned over that little cow, who was in fact a traitor to her own family, to the Danieris, preferring to get herself fucked by Miller than be true to her own kin.
‘Mama…’ Fabio said gravely, while inside he could feel laughter bubbling up, almost overwhelming him. He was about to deliver the worst news of this woman’s entire life, and he felt overwhelmed with sheer joy because at last, at last, he’d won. ‘Mama, I have bad news. Terrible news – I’m sorry.’
Bella’s face froze. She sank down into a chair, clutched at the table as if to steady herself.
‘What is it?’ she asked, wide-eyed. ‘Oh, Fabby, what’s happened?’
‘I am afraid that Vittore is dead,’ said Fabio, thinking of screwing Maria, who he firmly believed was dead, bricked up in the cellar now – and thank Christ he hadn’t gone the same way.
And then he simply couldn’t help himself. The laughter exploded out of him as if suppressed for a whole lifetime. He laughed until his sides ached, while his mother sat there and stared at him in abject shock and horror. Presently he staggered to his feet, left the room, went out into the cold night and got back into the car, still laughing, feeling lighter than he had in years.
He drove to the club – once called Tito’s, then Vito’s. First thing tomorrow he was going to have a new sign put up proclaiming it Fabio’s. He parked, went inside. Ignoring the hostesses and the patrons he made his way upstairs to the room where once Tito’s sex palace had been installed, and then Vittore’s dull little room of beiges and browns and ochres. Dull, dull, dull!
Fabio swiped the mustard-coloured cushions off the Habitat sofa and onto the floor. He was still laughing, he couldn’t stop laughing. It was over, it was all over at last. Everything was his now. He went to the drinks tray and poured himself a triple whisky, then moved into the centre of the room and shouted it out loud.
‘All hail King Fabio!’
And then he raised his glass in a toast to himself, the survivor, the least likely to succeed. And look, just look at what had happened: he’d done it, walked past two graves to do it. Three, counting poor stupid Maria. Just look at the huge favour Miller had done him tonight; he ought to go over there and kiss that fucker.
‘To me!’ he roared out happily, and he drank the whisky down in one gigantic hit.
113
‘You think Fabio’s going to come up against us again?’ Rob asked Kit as they sat in Kit’s living room.
Rob didn’t like loose ends. Vittore was done for, but there was still Fabio. And Gabe. Rob couldn’t help wondering whether he’d been right in thinking the guy was such a loser that the worst punishment would be to let him live. He only hoped he wouldn’t have cause to regret the decision to let him go.
‘Why should Fabio bother?’ asked Kit. He had the sling off now, his left arm was getting stronger. ‘Bianca says he always hated Vittore and despised her, what should he care if she’s out of the family fold and Vittore’s dead as toast?’
‘Never did like that little tit,’ said Rob.
‘Let it go,’ said Kit.
There’d been pieces in the paper about gangland violence, shots heard late at night and a businessman called Vittore Danieri and some of his employees had vanished, seemingly without trace.
‘How’s your mum doing?’ asked Rob.
Kit glanced at his watch. ‘I’m just off to see her. Come if you want.’
Rob shook his head.
‘Daisy’s with her,’ said Kit.
‘Dunno.’ Over these past weeks Rob had felt himself getting on far too well with Daisy. Maybe it was time to step back from that. She was a posh bolshy cow, there was no doubt about that. She’d always want to be in charge.
‘Ah, come on.’
‘What are you two deliberating about?’ asked Bianca, coming in from the hall and sitting down next to Kit.
Rob watched them, thinking what a striking couple they made. Bianca so pale, Kit dark like his mum. Kit kissed her cheek, grabbed her hand and held on.
‘Rob’s scared of Daisy,’ he told her, sending a smile up at his number one man.
‘Scared? In what way?’ Bianca looked puzzled. There were big dark shadows under her eyes and a strained thinness to her lips. Rob thought that the news about the Danieris, the stark facts about her real family, the knowledge that it was Kit who had finished Tito – all that had eaten into her and was hurting her still.
‘Scared in the way that he finds her fucking irresistible,’ said Kit.
‘I didn’t say that,’ said Rob.
‘You didn’t have to.’ Kit looked at Bianca. ‘You going to be OK here on your own for an hour or so?’
He worried about her. She’d had some terrible shocks and upsets, and while she seemed to have taken it all with her customary nerve, he wondered what the true impact of it all was going to be. Somewhere out there, maybe she still had real family, people who had been missing her for years. And he suspected that she still felt something for Bella Danieri, who was now mourning her favourite son. Bianca must be in turmoil.