Her eyes shrewd, she nodded. ‘And yet, even after what you did to him and his so-called crime, he still works for you, is trusted enough to handle large quantities of money on your behalf, and, if I’m reading this right, carries a gun that he has never turned on you in revenge.’
How did she do it?
She’d turned it round on him again.
‘Do not think there was any benevolence on my part,’ he countered harshly, before nodding a dismissal at Mario, who left the office with his colleague, leaving them alone.
Hannah remained perched on the windowsill, her hair now turned into a bushy beehive. She’d crossed her legs, her pale blue dress having ridden up her thighs. It was one of the most repulsive articles of clothing he had ever seen: shapeless, buttoned from top to bottom, clearly brought for comfort rather than style. And yet...there was something incredibly alluring about having to guess what lay beneath it....
‘What did he steal?’
‘He was a waiter at one of my father’s restaurants and made the mistake of helping himself to the takings in the till.’
‘How much did he take?’ she asked. Her former nonchalance had vanished. It pleased him to hear her troubled tone.
‘I don’t remember. Something that was the equivalent of around one hundred pounds.’
‘So you maimed him for one hundred pounds?’
Francesco drew himself to his full height. ‘Mario knew the risks.’
‘Fair enough,’ she said in a tone that left no doubt she meant the exact opposite. ‘Why didn’t you just call the police?’
‘The police?’ A mirthful sound escaped from his throat. ‘We have our own ways of handling things here.’
‘So if he stole from your father, why did you mete out the punishment?’
Francesco remembered that day so clearly.
He’d caught Mario red-handed. There had been no choice but to confront him. He’d made him empty his pockets. His father had walked in and demanded to know what was going on.
How clearly he remembered that sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach when Mario had confessed, looking Salvatore square in the eye as he did so.
And how clearly he remembered feeling as if he would vomit when Salvatore had turned his laser glare to him, his son, and said, ‘You know what must be done.’
Francesco had known. And so had Mario, whose own father had worked for Salvatore, and Salvatore’s father before him. They’d both known the score.
It was time for Francesco to prove himself a man in his father’s eyes, something his father had been waiting on for years. Something he’d been waiting on for years, too. A chance to gain his father’s respect.
But how could he explain this to Hannah, explain that it had been an opportunity that hadn’t just presented itself to him but come gift-wrapped? Refusal had never been an option.
And why did he even care to explain himself?
Francesco didn’t explain himself to anyone.
He hadn’t explained himself since he’d vomited in the privacy of his bathroom after the deed had been done, and only when he was certain he was out of earshot.
That was the last time he’d ever allowed himself to react with emotion. Certainly the last time he’d allowed himself to feel any vulnerability.
Overnight he’d put his childhood behind him, not that there had been much left of it after his mother had overdosed.
‘I did it because it needed to be done and I was the one who caught him.’
She kept her eyes fixed on him. There was none of the reproach or disgust he expected to find. All that was there was something that looked suspiciously like compassion.... ‘Twenty years ago you would have been a boy.’
‘I was seventeen. I was a man.’
‘And how old was he?’
‘The same.’
‘Little more than children.’
‘We both knew what we were doing,’ he stated harshly. ‘After that night we were no longer children.’
‘I’ll bet.’
‘And how many more hands have you mangled in the intervening years?’
‘Enough of them. There are times when examples need to be made.’
Violence had been a part of his life since toddlerhood. His mother had tried to protect him from the worst of his father’s excesses but her attempts had not been enough. His first memory was looking out of his bedroom window and witnessing his father beating up a man over a car bonnet. The man had been held down by two of his father’s men.
His mother had been horrified to find him looking out and dragged him away, covering his eyes. Francesco had learned only ten months ago that the bruising he often saw on his mother’s body was also from the hands of his father, and not the result of clumsiness.