Authors: Jessie Keane
No
, thought Annie.
Let’s not.
She’d had a shed-load of shit dropped on her head. Someone had already tried to smother her in the hospital. Maybe one of Lucco’s people. Who knew? Lucco was the Don now. She was out of her depth here.
The only thing she
did
know was that she felt frighteningly alone.
She was still in the hospital bed, a drip attached to her arm. Just waking, feeling heavy with all the bandages and the cramping in her stomach; ah, God, she felt so weak, so drained. And there was Constantine, standing at the end of her bed . . . only it wasn’t Constantine at all, it was a blackened shell of a human being; there was
smoke
coming off this poor semi-incinerated thing, this monster. Its mouth opened, and dust and ashes poured from it.
She tried to scream; couldn’t.
Hey, wonder what’s in this one?
it said in a voice like gravel, the words echoing around inside her head; and then the awful thing seemed to fall apart, its form disintegrating, breaking down, twirling into nothing but skeins of black smoke. She could smell it, the burning, the powder, it enveloped her where she lay, choked her.
‘Constantine!’ she shrieked, and all at once she was awake.
‘Mrs Barolli?’ Nico’s big face loomed in front of hers.
There were bright lights behind him, there was a background hum going on; they were in a machine, in a plane, they were . . . oh God, now she knew where they were. Light grey leather seats in front of her. A small, cylindrical cabin. People turning, looking.
‘Mummy?’ Layla was sitting beside her and her face was white with anxiety.
‘You all right, Mrs Barolli?’ asked Nico. ‘You’ve been asleep. Think you must have been dreaming. You cried out.’
They were flying back to England.
After the run-in with Lucco, she’d retreated; rented a place in the city and tried to get her head around all that had happened to her. She’d felt that Nico’s stoic presence, and that of Gerda, Layla’s nanny – who looked after Layla when she felt too weak, too grief-stricken to do so – were the only things keeping her sane.
She’d wanted to talk to Alberto, to phone Dolly or even Ellie, but she couldn’t do it. There was no way she could talk about losing Constantine and the baby without crumbling, without shrieking aloud. Her pride was all she had now, and stubbornly it wouldn’t let her break down in front of anyone, not even her closest friends.
Nico had tried his best to jolt her out of it. He’d driven her over to Times Square one day to look at the new Annie’s club venue, but she could only stare blankly at it, without interest.
‘You want me to have one of the boys get some staff on board – site foreman, a manager . . .?’ he’d suggested.
She’d turned to him with a sigh. ‘Yeah, why not? That would be good.’
‘You still going to open in September? Have you talked to the boss about it?’
Annie had given a shrug. ‘No. I haven’t. Maybe I’ll go ahead with the September date, I don’t know.’ She hated that Lucco was co-owner, even if she did have the controlling share. She didn’t want to see him, or speak to him, or even know the bastard was
breathing.
‘So what would you like to do now?’ he’d asked, watching her with concern.
Annie looked at him and all at once she knew what she wanted.
‘I’d like to go home,’ she’d said.
‘Home?’
‘To England.’
Nico had said he’d get one of the Gulf Stream company jets organized, but Annie had said no; she didn’t want the potential embarrassment of turning up at the airport and finding that Lucco had blocked that, too. So instead she’d asked him to book them on Concorde, which he’d done; and furthermore he’d said that he would travel with her, Layla and Gerda.
‘There’s no need for that,’ she’d said.
‘Bullshit,’ retorted Nico. ‘Constantine told me that if anything ever happened to him, I was to take care of you. I mean to do that.’
Annie felt almost weak with gratitude. Even from beyond the grave, Constantine was looking out for her. She’d thought of the penthouse then, the place where she and Constantine had made a life together.
Oh, he had often been away on business. So often he had arrived home weighed down by the worries of the world, to find her waiting for him, ready to make him smile. She never asked him about his business; she always kept it light; she was used to doing that. She had been married to another powerful man, another man with dubious connections; she knew how to play that particular game. You asked no questions and were told no lies.
She thought of the penthouse. She’d loved that place, been happy there. All right, she’d been homesick –
horribly
homesick – when she had first gone out to the States with him; but she had settled into life there because he was with her. Maybe she would even have stopped there, given the choice. But she’d
had
no choice at all. Lucco had seen to that.
‘I had to tell him what you’re doing, you do understand that, Mrs Barolli, don’t you?’ said Nico.
Annie had nodded. Of course Nico would have to tell Lucco what was happening, that she was going back to England, because Lucco was the boss now. To do otherwise would be both disrespectful and dangerous.
‘We’re just coming in to land,’ said Nico, and Annie gave Layla’s hand a reassuring squeeze. She looked out of the window. Loads of scudding grey clouds, they were flying blind . . . and then – suddenly – there was mild sunshine, a brilliant patchwork of small fields in tones of green, yellow and ochre. They were home, in England. It was only then, seeing the sweet little fields, the changeable skies, that Annie realized how much she’d missed it.
‘Take your seat sir, and put on your seat belt, please,’ said the stewardess, hurrying up behind Nico.
He patted Layla’s cheek and sat down across the aisle beside Gerda.
The stewardess went off to the front of the plane. They heard the aircraft’s wheels lower into place with a resounding
clonk.
Annie stared out of the window.
All right, she had to start again. Find her feet. She felt a little better now, just a bit stronger. Her life in the States was over. She would go back to open the Times Square club in September; she was still the majority shareholder, so technically she was still in charge of
that
, if nothing else. Maybe she’d even take her old mate Dolly with her for support, because, oh shit, she hated admitting this, even to herself, but the idea of coming up against Lucco again scared the crap out of her. He was right. There was nothing left there for her, not any more.
Now she was home. And suddenly, she was so glad of that.
She was betting that Lucco wasn’t quite as thorough as his father. That he would forget little things, little loopholes that he maybe ought to have closed up. Like . . . oh, like she still had the keys to the Holland Park mansion. Although Lucco had closed her off in New York, maybe he hadn’t thought it important enough to shut her down with quite such thorough ruthlessness across the pond in England.
The fact was, he thought she was whipped, finished. Well, maybe he was right. Nico had told him she was going home to England, and she could imagine the pleasure that had given him. But maybe here he would get careless.
What the hell
, she thought as their cab pulled up in front of the big, red-brick William and Mary house where she had first met Constantine. They piled out with their cases, Nico paid the driver and the cab roared off.
Annie paused there, looking up at the impressive frontage of the house, the identical bay trees in terracotta pots on either side of the elaborately stepped entrance where the door was painted a discreet and glossy dark blue and furnished with a big brass lion’s-head knocker.
Shit, I’m never going to see him again
, she thought with a stab of familiar anguish.
Only in my nightmares.
But Layla was tugging at her hand, hauling her up the path, Nico and Gerda following close behind.
Well, here goes nothing.
If everything was as it should be, the staff would be here. Maybe she should have phoned ahead, but she felt that might have given Lucco a tip-off. At which point the little slime-ball would quite likely have the locks changed and instruct the staff that she was not to be admitted.
Annie walked up the steps to the front entrance.
She remembered so vividly standing here once before, coming to petition Constantine for his help when Layla was snatched. People staring at her, wondering what on earth she was playing at. Cara had been getting married that day. But against all her expectations, that had worked out. Constantine had helped. Layla had been safely recovered. And . . . she’d fallen in love with him. Expecting never to fall in love again, not after Max. But she had, and it had been a kind of miracle.
And now look how it’s ended.
She got out the key with a shaking hand, inserted it in the lock. Turned it.
Oh please
, she thought.
Just this one break. Please.
There was a moment’s resistance.
He’s changed them, he’s already done it . . .
Then the door swung open.
She shot a look at Nico. He was watching her, his big friendly avuncular face carefully devoid of expression. Layla jumped and twirled between them, oblivious to the tension above her head. Gerda grabbed Layla’s hand and started talking to her.
Annie stepped inside and came face to face with Rosa, the squat Spanish maid, her greying hair scraped back in a bun, her dark eyes wide with surprise when she saw Annie standing there.
‘
Señora
Barolli!’
‘Hi, Rosa,’ said Annie, pushing into the hall before the maid had time to change her mind about the warm welcome. She didn’t know
what
to expect here. But she feared the worst.
‘But what you doing here?’ Rosa’s face clouded with sadness. ‘So sorry,
Señora
, about
Señor
Barolli. So sorry.’
Annie swallowed hard past the lump in her throat. Nico had phoned ahead, explained. And probably told Rosa to tell no one else Annie was coming. Not even Lucco. ‘Thanks, Rosa. We’re going to be staying here for a while.’
Rosa nodded and started fussing around with the bags.
It was as easy as that.
Lucco had dropped a stitch; she was in.
‘You know what?’ said Ellie. ‘If I’d known there was such a good living to be made out of galloping the maggot, I’d have started up my own place years ago.’
Chris, eighteen ugly, bald-headed stone of meaty muscle, put down his paper. They were sitting in the kitchen at the Limehouse knocking-shop, where Ellie – formerly prostitute and cleaner – now held sway as Madam. She
liked
being Madam. It was so much more fun dishing out orders than taking them. But Chris looked at her and knew this was all hot air; Ellie didn’t have the business nous to have launched her own place. Ellie was a worker who’d got lucky by being kicked upstairs.
To be fair, though, she’d made a pretty good job of it so far. This place – first under the command of Celia, then Annie, then Dolly – had always done a roaring trade in punters, and it was continuing to thrive with Ellie at the helm.
There had been major changes over the years, of course; brasses came and went, punters fell off the twig and new ones came in to have the old man given a polish or a whipping. Life went on. Now, he was doorman here once again and it was a job that suited him better than his last one, on permanent nights in security at Heathrow. This job kept him more fully occupied, since he’d lost his wife – who had also been a working girl, God rest her.
‘Yeah, but it’s not all profit, is it?’ he reminded Ellie.
Ellie shrugged. No, it wasn’t. Once this busy establishment had paid protection to the Delaney mob; now they handed a weekly wedge over to the Carter boys. The Carters kept the lid on any trouble, so it all ran like clockwork.
And today was party day! Friday. Her favourite day of the week. There were eats and drinks laid out ready for the clients in the front parlour, the music was playing, there were willing trollops aplenty, a new dominatrix occupied the Punishment Room upstairs; the whole place was abuzz.
The doorbell rang.
‘First punter of the day,’ trilled Ellie, and hopped to her feet to check out her appearance in the mirror behind the door. Once, she’d porked up like a mini barrage balloon, neglected herself, fed her anxiety and misery with biscuits and cakes. Now, she saw reflected there a still curvy but well-groomed woman of medium height, wearing a red skirt suit, her dark hair neatly coiled up in a French pleat, her skin pale and pearlescent, her pretty hazel eyes alight with the challenge of a new day.
‘I’ll get it,’ said Chris, and walked off down the hall.
Ellie watched him go with a sigh of longing.
All right, she still had a few problems. She was head over heels in love with Chris and she
still
couldn’t bring herself to tell him so. And she thought one of her prossies was meeting clients on the side, working out her own rates with the bastard outside somewhere and bypassing the knocking-shop.
However . . .
Apart from all
that,
things were good. She was still in regular touch with her old mate Dolly, who ran the trio of Carter clubs. Back in the day, they’d been called the Palermo, the Blue Parrot and the Shalimar; they’d been old-fashioned nightclubs, then seedy strip joints, now they were all called Annie’s and the clientele were decent people out for a night’s clean, wholesome entertainment; the dirty-mac brigade was long gone.
She hurried out into the hall after Chris, fixing her bright professional smile in place to greet the first punter.
Chris was blocking the doorway, and Ellie noted with a little irritation that he wasn’t saying hello, come in, kiss-my-arse or nothing. He was just
standing
there like a lemon. She came forward and peered around his bulk, smiling broadly.