Authors: Jessie Keane
Gary shook his head. ‘Clean shot. Straight through the heart.’
‘Take care of it,’ said Max to the two men, and grabbed Annie by the arm.
‘What the f . . .?’ she asked, as he dragged her off along the road. She peered back over her shoulder. They were manhandling Nico. Hefting him about as if he were no more than a piece of meat. ‘No. Nico!’ she wailed.
‘He’s had it,’ said Max roughly, hurrying away and taking her with him.
But that’s Nico
, she thought desperately.
That’s not just any thick-headed thug lying there, that’s Nico
. Constantine’s friend for all of his life. Her last true link to the man she’d loved.
‘Another few seconds and you’d have joined him,’ said Max, stopping by a black Jag, opening the passenger door and pushing her inside.
‘You bastard, that’s
Nico
,’ she told him as he got in the driver’s seat. She was furious, devastated, shaking. She sagged back into the seat and buried her face in her hands. Nico was dead. Oh God. Not Nico, she couldn’t stand it.
‘One of Barolli’s boys, right?’ he sneered, and started the engine and pulled out. ‘Holland Park, yeah?’
Annie dropped her hands and stared at him. She wasn’t going to cry. No matter what he said, no matter what he did, she wouldn’t cry in front of him. Just a few moments ago she had been afraid that he intended to kill her. She wasn’t about to show weakness. Not over Nico, not even over Constantine. She was determined to do any crying in private. ‘Well you should bloody well
know
,’ she told him. ‘You’ve had someone watching the house, watching Gerda and Layla when they walk in the park.’
He glanced at her as he steered the Jag through the traffic. ‘I haven’t,’ he said.
‘Oh please,’ said Annie wearily, ‘don’t
lie
.’
After that, he was silent and she was glad of that, all the way back to Holland Park.
Back at the house she went into the study and straight over to Constantine’s desk. She sat down in the place where he’d always sat and crouched there, shivering. Nico was dead. She couldn’t take it in. And he wasn’t even going to get a Christian burial. She knew how the boys dealt with things like this. Nico’s body would vanish; bold, loyal, brave Nico, to who she owed so much, would end up in the concrete foundations of a motorway, or deep in the English Channel.
‘Here, get this down you,’ said a voice.
She looked up, startled, thinking that Constantine would be there, blackened, charred, dead, reaching out his ruined arms to her. But it was Max. She thought she’d left him at the front door, but he must have followed her in. She hadn’t even noticed. He was holding out a glass of brandy.
‘Take it.’
‘I can’t . . .’ she said numbly. Talking was hard. Thinking straight was almost impossible.
‘You’re in shock. Drink it.’
Annie reluctantly took the glass and sipped the stuff. It burned her all the way down, and she started to choke.
‘Shit, you never could take a drink,’ he said, and poured himself one from the tray and threw it back in one hit. He turned and stared at her. ‘Unlike your pissy-arsed mother.’
‘Leave my mother out of it,’ she said, eyes watering, although he was right. Connie had died of the drink. Once, she had been frightened her sister Ruthie would go the same way, but thank God she’d pulled herself back from the brink in time.
Ruthie.
Suddenly she had a desperate need to hear Layla’s voice.
Annie reached out shakily and picked up the phone. Max was wandering around the study, eyeing the books, the couches, taking it all in. Annie watched him in disbelief. It was really him. She couldn’t believe it, but it was. Her husband. She told herself that.
Her husband.
But she couldn’t feel a thing; all she felt was numb.
‘You’ve done well for yourself,’ he was saying. ‘From a crappy little East End two-up-two-down, to a fucking great mansion.’
She longed to say that it wasn’t
her
mansion, Lucco had seen to that, but the words stuck in her throat.
‘But then you always were the ambitious type. Trust you to aim straight for the top.’
‘Hello?’ said a female voice on the other end of the phone.
‘Ruthie? It’s Annie, I just wanted to check that Layla’s okay.’ Max turned and stared at her as she said his daughter’s name.
There was a brief silence.
‘But . . . I thought you’d changed your mind . . .’
‘What? What are you on about?’
‘Well . . . she’s not here. When we spoke on the phone I got her room ready, but when you didn’t show up with her, I thought you must have changed your mind.’
‘
What?
’Annie gulped down a breath. For a moment, the whole room spun. Her head felt as if it was about to implode. ‘You mean . . . she’s really not there?’
Ruthie gave a slight laugh, but then her voice grew tight with concern. ‘Of course she’s not. Isn’t she . . . isn’t she with you?’
‘No,’ said Annie weakly. ‘She’s not.’
Now she was remembering Nico’s words. He hadn’t been happy about her choice of Ruthie to care for Layla. And he had tried to tell her that, earlier today. But she had cut him off.
He had been trying to tell her where he’d put Layla.
But Gerda was with her. And Nico wouldn’t have put either of them anywhere he wasn’t completely sure they were rock-solid safe. But Nico was
dead.
And there was no way she could ask him the question now, no way he could tell her the answer.
Fuck it.
‘What’s going on?’ Max was asking.
‘Who’s that?’ asked Ruthie.
Shit, did she recognize his voice, after all this time? And how was she going to break this particular bit of news to Ruthie?
She couldn’t face that conversation, not now.
‘Nobody. It’s okay, Ruthie. Just a mix-up. I’ll phone again later.’ She put the phone down.
Max was staring at her. ‘Where’s Layla?’ he asked.
Annie swallowed hard. ‘I don’t know.’
He moved before she even had time to blink. Suddenly he was across the room. He grabbed the front of her coat and hauled her bodily to her feet. ‘You don’t fucking well
know
?’ he snarled at her from inches away.
‘I told Nico to take her and Gerda to Ruthie’s. I thought there was cause for alarm.
Stop shaking me, will you?’
Annie tried to draw breath. ‘The man in the park. I told you about the man in the park.’
‘And
I
told
you
that it wasn’t me. It could have been one of the boys. Or someone else, who the fuck knows?’
‘And Nico was trying to tell me earlier today, he was trying to tell me that he didn’t think Ruthie’s place was a good idea and so he’d taken them somewhere else, but I wasn’t listening . . .’
‘Are you trying to tell
me
you’ve lost my kid?’ said Max through gritted teeth.
‘She’s
my
kid too. And I’m
telling
you that Nico’s put her somewhere safe, but I don’t know where. But Gerda’s with her. Gerda will get in touch.’
Gerda
had
to get in touch. But what if she didn’t? What if she
couldn’t
?
‘Jesus, this is a nightmare,’ said Annie, shutting her eyes, trying to blank it all out.
‘This Gerda – she trustworthy?’
Annie’s eyes opened. Oh God, he was still there, it was Max, it really was. Looking at her with such angry disdain; looking at her like she was shit on his shoe.
‘She’s trustworthy,’ she managed to get out. Her mouth was dry, and the brandy had given her heartburn.
She was afraid she was going to vomit. She was sick to her stomach of all this – sick of constantly having to be apart from her little girl because the life she led was too fraught with dangers. She knew that sometimes it was the only possible option, the only
sensible
thing to do. But she hated it; it ripped the heart out of her, every time she had to do it.
‘Then this Gerda will get in touch.’
‘Yeah. She will.’
‘And
then
I’m taking Layla.’
Annie stared at him, open-mouthed. She couldn’t believe her own ears. ‘You
what
?’
‘You heard. Better with her own father than with a sorry excuse for a mother who can’t keep her legs together for two minutes at a time.’
‘You
bastard
,’ hissed Annie, wild-eyed. ‘You’re not taking Layla away from me.’
‘Watch me.’
‘I’ll fight you in every court in the land,’ she spat.
‘Really? Try it. See how it goes down with the legal system. You’ve committed bigamy, after all. You seriously think they’ll overlook that?’
‘Bastard!’ Annie was struggling against him, trying to get free, but his grip was like iron. ‘My God, I can’t believe I loved you once. I can’t believe I actually wasted
tears
over a cruel, despicable piece of
nothing
like you.’
‘Yeah? Now I suppose you’re going to tell me Constantine Barolli is twice the man I was? And where is he, exactly? I’d like a fucking
word
with him.’
Annie froze. All the fight went out of her in an instant. ‘He’s dead,’ she said flatly. She saw the shock of it register on his face. She let out a cracked, bitter laugh. ‘You know what? I nearly died too. But I lived. I wish I’d died, but I didn’t.’
‘Why?’ Now he was staring into her face from inches away. ‘Because you loved him so much?’
Annie’s mouth was a quivering bitter line of hate as she stared into the face of the man she had once loved, once married, once had a child with; and once mourned.
‘Yeah,’ she said, wanting to hurt him as badly as he was hurting her. ‘Because of that. Yeah.’
Now she felt so empty, so spent. Constantine was dead. Nico was dead. Max despised her. She sagged against him and instantly, roughly, he pushed her away, stepped back, glared at her. His eyes swept contemptuously over her. ‘Don’t come the helpless little woman act with me. I don’t buy it. And you’re not
that
irresistible. In fact, you look like something out of fucking Belsen.’
Annie recoiled. She thought she heard the doorbell, but she couldn’t have. It was too late in the evening. It was only his words she heard, flung at her like weapons, clanging around her head. It was true, what he was saying. She knew it was. Her hair was unwashed, her clothes were shabby. She hadn’t been eating. Food had only made her gag in these past horrendous months since the explosion. She had barely even been drinking. She was a mess, inside and out.
‘I . . .’ she started to say, and then there were voices out in the hall. It
was
the doorbell. She frowned. ‘Who the hell’s that?’
She glanced at the longcase clock ticking steadily away in the corner. It was after midnight. Who would come calling in the small hours;
what
would come calling except trouble?
Oh my God – Layla . . .?
she thought, and rushed to the door and threw it open.
Rosa, in dressing gown and slippers, was ushering in a group of people.
Annie’s mouth dropped open as she stared at the back of the tall man standing there.
It was Constantine. Constantine alive and well, not blackened, not burned and blown apart.
Then the man turned.
It was not Constantine.
It was
Alberto
, taking Aunt Gina’s coat, and she was moaning on – as usual – saying oh this English
weather
, and Cara was depositing all her hand luggage into a man’s arms, a man who looked like one of the drivers Annie remembered from Montauk. Fredo. That was Fredo.
‘Take that up to my room, will you?’ Cara told him. ‘First left on the landing.’
Rocco was there, quiet and long-suffering as always, and there was Lucco’s new bride Daniella, looking around in awestruck silence at the grandeur of her surroundings, and there – oh shit – there was Lucco, smiling silkily as he saw Annie standing there watching the scene.
‘Annie,’ he said, his eyes cold as black ice. ‘How surprising to find you here. And how
nice
.’
Lucco was striding across the hall towards her. God, you had to hand it to the creep; he really was handsome as hell with his glossy black hair glinting in the lights of the chandeliers, his good height and his almost girlishly smooth olive skin; but his eyes were hard and pitiless as stones.
‘What are you doing here?’ Annie asked, wondering if she was finally going mad.
He was holding out his hand to her. He expected her to kiss it – because of course he was the Don now. He was in charge. She thought of Constantine, so regal, so intimidating, in the days when she had first known him. She had refused to kiss his hand, and she
certainly
wasn’t going to kiss this jumped-up little scumbag’s.
When she didn’t take it, kiss it, Lucco gave a twisted little smile and moved in and instead kissed her on each cheek. Annie repressed the urge to wipe her skin clean afterwards. She stared blankly into his eyes as he drew back.
‘I’m so pleased to see you making yourself comfortable in my house,’ said Lucco smoothly, his eyes moving past her to fasten on the man lounging in the doorway. ‘And who is this?’
Annie half turned and her eye caught Max’s.
Fuck, what could she say to that . . .?
‘Mark Carson,’ said Max, moving forward and extending a hand to Lucco. ‘Security.’
Lucco reluctantly shook Max’s hand, but Lucco’s expression was bemused. He glanced back at Annie.
‘I would have thought Nico would have provided all the security you need –
if
you needed any at all, which surely can’t be the case any more.’
He was saying that she was no longer worth bothering with.
Annie gulped.
What
had Max said? Security? What the hell was he playing at? ‘Nico’s gone back to the States,’ she said.
‘Really? We haven’t seen him over there.’
‘Just today,’ Annie managed to blurt out.