Lawless (17 page)

And now Lattarullo’s family would be anxious to discover why their formerly placid kinsman had sliced Corvetto’s throat from ear to ear – and what had become of his only daughter, who would soon be reported as missing.

Someone was going to link it all to him, he knew it. And when that happened, the Danieris were finished; they’d be hanged, every last one of them, in the local square, Bella included. The Carabinieri would turn a blind eye as a lynch mob beat their door down, dragged them out one by one, and killed them.

He had known this would be a possibility, this outcome. His hometown was no longer as he remembered it; the place had been ravaged by war, wrecked by it, with desperate beggars in the streets and out in the countryside. There was no such thing as safety in Naples these days. So Tito’s rash input had made Astorre’s decision easier. The whole family – Astorre and Bella, twenty-two-year-old Tito, fourteen-year-old Vittore and Fabio, Bella’s despised boy-child – would have to flee.

39

‘I have to go back soon,’ said Kit sleepily, lying in Bianca’s bed with her – both of them naked and clinging to each other.

He kissed her silky white-blonde hair. He didn’t want to move from this bed in a century, that was the truth. After losing Gilda, then Michael, he had felt cursed: but here tonight in Bianca’s arms, he felt
blessed.
This was so peaceful, so
right
, a time outside of reality. But he could feel that reality starting to press upon him. Soon, very soon, he would have to go back, pick up the reins again.

Find out who did that to Michael.

Yes, he had to do that.

‘Up to London,’ said Bianca, her eyes closed.

‘Mm.’

‘No! Stay here,’ she said, a frown forming between her brows.

‘And do what?’

‘Dunno. Be my willing sex slave. Anything. Don’t care.’

‘Honey, I
am
your willing sex slave.’

He’d never known anything like this, as
intense
as this. They’d spent the past couple of days mooching around town, then they’d fallen into bed at night to feast on each other like wild animals. He had never felt so tired, or relaxed, or completely happy as this before. And he felt like an arsehole too, because he still hadn’t told her his real name; some slight remnant of his usual caution refused to let him enlighten her in that respect. To her, he was still Tony.

And
he hadn’t checked she was on the Pill. He’d broken his own rule, hadn’t used a condom with her once. Crazy. He thought about it and found that he could shove it to the back of his mind in a compartment marked
don’t care
. He knew very little about her and she knew nothing about him, but what the hell? If she got pregnant, he’d marry her. He wouldn’t hesitate, not even for a moment.

‘If you go, you won’t come back,’ she said, and her eyes opened and gazed sadly into his.

‘Yeah, I will.’
I couldn’t keep away.

‘Will you give me your number?’ she asked, kissing his shoulder, inhaling the scent of his skin.

‘Nah, I’ll phone you. And I’ll be back as soon as I can, OK?’

Bianca heaved a sigh. ‘OK.’

Kit turned to her. ‘Don’t be sad,’ he said, nuzzling his nose into her throat. ‘This is only the beginning, you silly mare.’

‘Talk’s cheap,’ said Bianca, wrapping her arms and legs around him, holding him to her.

‘There are things I have to do,’ said Kit, feeling the excitement building again. He just couldn’t get enough of her. ‘Important things. But
listen.
Nothing comes between you and me. You got that? So shut up for fuck’s sake, and kiss me,’ he murmured against her mouth.

Bianca smiled, and obeyed. She didn’t want this magical time to end. She had a fear of abandonment, of being left. She’d often wondered where that fear had come from, because it didn’t make sense. She was a strong, self-sufficient woman. Whenever she probed her memory, trying to account for the fear, the same hazy images came to her: a blonde woman, smiling; a strong, tanned arm furred with blond hairs, holding her. Some sort of foreign language.
Lefse
, she thought. Was that even a word? What did it mean? And
aquavit.

Now she looked at Kit and felt that old deep-buried fear all over again. Would she lose him, like she’d lost her darling Tito? She was so afraid that he would turn out to be just another man, taking his pleasures and moving on. And she wasn’t even on the Pill.

Bianca dismissed the fear, kissed him, gave herself up to the emotion of the moment all over again, and refused to think about the future, because this was so good it couldn’t be real, it couldn’t last. She knew it.

40

Almost a week after Simon’s death, Daisy bought a bouquet of flowers. Then she drove to the white house in Berkshire where for a while she had shared married life with Simon. She didn’t want to go up to the house, she couldn’t
bear
to see the garage where
it
had happened, so she parked up the Mini at the bottom of the drive and got out.

For days she’d been wanting to come here and pay her respects but it had taken her until now to gather up the courage. The lane was very quiet. She could hear a robin singing high up in the huge bare willow beside the gate. With a heavy heart she walked over to the verge. The wind gusted, and she pulled her mac more securely around her as there came a spattering of cold rain. Shivering, she took the bouquet and laid it on the ground beside the gate.

The robin stopped singing. Suddenly, there was only silence. Was Simon here, watching her?

‘I never meant to be such a rotten failure as a wife,’ she murmured. ‘And I think I almost loved you, once.’

No answer came.

Of course not. Simon wasn’t here, he was dead and gone. He’d
killed
himself. She hated the thought that he’d been so miserable, that he’d had no one he felt he could turn to. She swiped angrily at the tears on her face. God, she was so fucking hormonal; half the time she didn’t even know what she was crying
about.
At least today she did. She was crying for Simon, for their sons, for all the hopes and dreams that now would never be.

She could hear a car coming along the lane from the direction of the town, the same way she’d just come, and it sounded as if it was travelling quite fast. Daisy stepped onto the verge so that it could easily pass by.

The car that approached was long and dark with tinted windows. And instead of passing, the driver pulled in on the verge about ten paces from where Daisy was standing. She felt a prickle of unease, but told herself this must be someone who’d known Simon and was coming to pay their respects, just as she was. She braced herself to make polite conversation, to receive commiserations. She didn’t want to, but one had to be polite.

The car’s powerful engine fell silent. Then all four doors opened, and four bulky men got out, dressed in heavy black coats. Daisy’s heartbeat picked up speed. These weren’t mourners, they didn’t carry any flowers. They looked like thugs, like the men she often saw hanging around Kit, and around Michael when he was alive. She knew what Kit was into, the life he led. In the past, she’d experienced frightening things in his company. Yes, she knew what he was, what Michael had been too, and what Rob was, and it did alarm her – but, at the same time, it fascinated her too, and excited her more than she cared to admit.

Slowly, the men walked towards her. The driver hung back, as did the man who’d been in the front passenger seat, though he was close enough for her to see that his face was hideously scarred. The two men who’d got out of the back of the car kept walking until they were standing right in front of her. They were both dark-haired, but one of them was square, blockish, with a sinister vulpine look, while the other was thinner, taller, younger with film-star good looks, marred by vicious intent in his eyes and the cruel smile on his face.

What is this?
she wondered in a paroxysm of fear.
What do they want?

She was out in the middle of nowhere, utterly alone. The Mini was twenty yards away. If she ran, right now, would they try to stop her? But Daisy didn’t think she was capable of running. She felt frozen with terror.

The handsome mean-eyed one moved in closer. Daisy took a stumbling step backward, her breathing unsteady. Then the other one, the bulky one who seemed to be in charge, spoke.

‘Daisy Darke, right?’ He gave a smile that chilled her to the bone. ‘Formerly Daisy Bray,
then
Daisy Collins, and after the divorce you changed your name, didn’t you? To Darke. Same as your birth mother, Ruby Darke.’

‘Who the hell are you?’ asked Daisy shakily. She had never felt so vulnerable.
Oh my God the twins,
she thought.
If anything happens to me, they’ll have nothing left. No parents at all.

‘He’s Vittore Danieri,’ said the younger one, who was standing too close, unnervingly close, to her. ‘And I’m Fabio, his brother. Such a pity about your ex-husband,’ he said, smirking.

Daisy felt her mouth go dry as dust. ‘How do you know about what happened to Simon?’

This amused all four of them greatly.

‘How do we know about what happened to Simon Collins?’ Fabio asked his brother with a grin.

‘You mean the Simon Collins who was the brother-in-law of Kit Miller?’ asked Vittore.

‘
That’s
the one,’ said Fabio, striking his head as if it had just come to him in a flash. His eyes grinned into Daisy’s as he came in even closer to her.

Daisy shrank back. They were going to hurt her, she was sure of that now. She was powerless to stop this. These were Tito’s brothers, and they wanted revenge.

‘Simon Collins was father to Miller’s nephews, too,’ said Vittore, looking straight into Daisy fear-stricken eyes.

‘Such a shame, what happened. Hung himself, didn’t he?’ said Fabio.

He leaned in till Daisy could smell his breath, could feel the heat and the hatred radiating off him like poison gas. She glanced behind her: she was on the outside edge of the verge, there was nowhere left to go but the ditch. She could run up the drive, but there would be no one in the house to help her. Simon had lived here alone after they split up.

They were going to attack her. She knew it. They’d followed her out from the town to this place, where Simon had killed himself.

But had he?

For days it had been tormenting her, the sheer weirdness of Simon’s death, given his fiery aggressive nature, his business successes, his clear and very genuine delight in his twin sons. She’d been struggling to believe that he could have taken his own life. And now . . . these men. These horrible people. They
knew
how he’d died.

Because he didn’t hang himself: they murdered him. They must have forced him to write that suicide note . . . how? Threatened his parents? Threatened to harm the twins? Yes. Then he would do whatever they told him to. And then . . . they killed him, and made it look as if he’d killed himself.

Daisy swallowed hard. She knew she daren’t let on how terrified she was. You didn’t show fear when you dealt with wild dogs; you faced them down.

The robin started singing again, high up in the tree. Was that the last sound, the last beautiful thing she would ever know, that haunting birdsong? She hardly dared breathe. She was afraid she was about to faint, drenched as she was in cold sweat and sick with fear. The four men were silent, watching her. She felt they could smell her terror, like pheromones drifting in the gusty spring air.

Then Vittore spoke: ‘This time, you can go,’ he said.

‘But maybe not next time,’ said Fabio with a grin. And he leaned in closer, closer.

Daisy shrank into herself. But he wasn’t reaching for her. Instead, he was bending, snatching up the bright bouquet of flowers, the one she had laid there for Simon. With a final triumphant sneer, he whacked the bouquet against the trunk of the tree, scattering the blooms, shredding them, killing them. Daisy flinched. Then he tossed the remnants of the bouquet onto the verge. Gave her a twisted smile. And turned away.

Vittore touched his fingers to his brow in an ironic salute. The four men left her standing there, and got into their car. One of Vittore’s heavies started the engine, then the car shot forward, missing her by inches. Soon it was gone, roaring away into the distance.

The minute it was out of sight, Daisy fell to her knees on the mud-churned verge, clutching her hands to her face, amazed that she was still in one piece. Breathless with fright, she crouched like that for long minutes until the fear started to grip her again, the fear that they might come back, change their minds, do dreadful things to her.

Like they did to Simon.

Simon’s death hadn’t been an accident: Vittore had wiped Simon out, and in so doing he had deprived Matt and Luke of their father.

Somehow she managed to drag herself to her feet and stagger back to the Mini. She had to get home, to where she was safe.

But would she be safe? Could she be safe
anywhere
now?

They must have followed her out here. They’d been watching and waiting their chance with Simon, and they’d got it. And now they were watching her.

She started the engine and drove, very carefully, trembling like a leaf in a high wind, back to Ruby’s place.

41

‘Where the
fuck
did you get to?’ demanded Rob, hurrying across the minute Kit showed up at Sheila’s restaurant, said hi to the head barman and ordered a pineapple Britvic.

It wasn’t the welcome Kit had been expecting. He blinked in surprise. Rob looked agitated, and that was a surprise too. Rob was solid, usually. The barman set down the juice in front of Kit.

‘There you go, boss,’ he said.

‘Get you something?’ Kit asked Rob, watching him curiously.

Rob shook his head and the barman moved off to polish glasses.