Бесплатный фрагмент - Metanoia

Reunification

Life, filled with perpetual opposition to hegemony, slowly turns into a rejection of any norms and authorities imposed by society ─ this realisation came to me as a child, when, as a child with an angelic pale face on which glassy blue eyes resembled two of the rarest sapphires, looking up timidly through strands of blond hair, I stayed behind the strong wooden doors, behind which men discussed important issues. My father had taught me to ignore the words of the men around me, constantly rebuking and condemning ─ his cruel words became lessons to me, every tear I shed after his shouts like a hammer hitting the young iron, forming a sword. He was from sunny Naples and, having fled to misty London with his family after a police investigation, had become a hostage to greyness and primness, melting inside a rotten hatred of all that was legal and right. A genetic predisposition towards Italy eventually caught up with me on the day I entered university in my father’s homeland, the same day I got a tattoo on my right wrist ─ the sign of Mars¹ as the planet of masculine energy, strength and assertiveness, which they tried to eradicate, to beat it out of me. Growing up in a conservative and traditional family, even before I was born, I was destined to marry, have children and spend the rest of my life pleasing my husband, hiding the bruises of his beatings ─ this was fundamentally different from my nature: the submission, indulgence and unconditional consent inherent in the women in my life were signs of the weakness and victimhood that my father hated so much. Having chosen a side, I became Mars (or Ares), who destroyed in a bloody battle all those who opposed me, I turned them into the horror of war, the likeness of my cruel father. (¹ ─ ♂)

Returning home had always been difficult for me. In the last years that I lived in Italy, I managed to adapt there and create something more than I was allowed to do here, in London, where I spent all my childhood and youth. I lifted my head, noticing my deputy’s intent gaze on the folder of documents he took with him on the plane. A few strands of his blond hair fell over his eyes, making it difficult for him to read. I turned my head to the left, looking out the window: a private jet was approaching the London airport, which means it brought me closer to my family. The faint smell of sandalwood mixed with leather created the familiar work atmosphere that I am always in ─ old offices in mansions, luxury car showrooms drowning in piles of documents.

“The Empire was set on fire yesterday,” Thomas said, sipping his coffee. I furrowed my brows, turning sharply to the man, eyes wide. He slowly lifted his gaze from the papers and continued: “The third and fourth gambling halls burned down completely,” Thomas held out the papers to me, and my eyes began to run between the lines. The insurance company’s damage report showed that one-fifth of my restaurant had been seriously damaged by an unforeseen fire. Photographs confirming these words were attached below, in colour, though the rooms had turned into huge black patches of ash, resembling the cauldrons of hell. My fingers crumpled the edge of the sheet and my jaw clenched harder ─ I knew it was arson. It would take a huge toll on me, knowing that the insurance agency would not pay compensation, or would demand such a bribe for it that it would be cheaper to rebuild at my own expense.

“This,” my finger pointed at the papers, “will attract the police,” I said, pursing my lips. This had already attracted a lot of the noise the patrons of my establishment dislike so much. “This is the second fire in the restaurant in the last two months.” I put the papers down and pinched the bridge of my nose as Thomas went back to studying the insurance.

“So be it,” the man replied, gathering all the papers into one stack and pushing them aside. He pulled a cigarette case and lighter from his jacket pocket, then took a sip of espresso, “if the insurance company confirms it’s arson, then their expertise will be useful to us.”

I felt anger creep up my throat like nausea, which made me swallow. My legs crossed under the table and began to shake, which I tried to hide by putting my cold palms on my knees. It felt like the blood in my system had turned to hot lava, burning me from the inside out; I tried to breathe slower, to make my heart stop beating so fast, and to make the anger pass as quickly as possible. Closing my eyes, I slowly exhaled, listening to the sounds around me, then took a deep breath, remembering why I was on the plane. Bad news like the second casino arson in a month was a frightening omen before my little brother’s wedding.

I could take a legitimate weekend off and spend a happy holiday with my family without thinking about work, if I lived by the rules in this world. To stay alive, I had to be constantly aware of what was happening to my possessions, to my people ─ otherwise I could easily become a victim. However, I didn’t want to ruin my brother’s idyll with his newlywed wife ─ I didn’t have time for the marriage registration as I was so busy explaining powers to my partner, so I only got to attend the celebration. My brother is very reverent about the event, this was clear from the soft and protective tone with which he informed me of his decision, from which any mention of business would have made him upset and angry. I had been sceptical about his intentions to tie his fate to a girl I did not know, as I thought he would shun Mafia tradition, but my brother had convinced me that she knew nothing about our business.

It was quiet in the beige leather cabin of the private jet; Thomas had asked the stewardesses in advance not to disturb us during the conversation, from which the silence after his words was diluted only by quiet jazz. I stared at my empty cup of espresso, beside which stood an ashtray with two smoked cigarettes.

“You know,” I began gloomily, pulling away from my thoughts and looking into the grey eyes of my companion, whose face had well-disguised apprehension on it. I understood him ─ my reactions were unpredictable, more often than not, even to myself, which made Thomas ready for anything. It was moments like this that made me feel sorry for the people closest to me, as if they were communicating with a bomb, so the severity of my self-control increased manifold, “I bought this plane for work, but so far I haven’t heard any good news here,” I shook my head disappointedly, feeling my legs stop shaking under the table and the blood rush to my palms. “Does Antonio know about the restaurant?” I asked slowly, touching my long dark hair.

Antonio Pelegatti was my business partner in Italy (our regions bordered — the territory of Napes was under his control), but also an Italian man who always obeyed his mother. Our ideas about the management of the provinces were fundamentally different, Antonio could cornily cause irreparable harm to my business, although he’d be sure that he did everything right. This was the main difference in our ideas about management: while Antonio was devoted to his Italian blood, I recognised the leadership of Japan’s achievements and put the knowledge I had gained at university into practice. The differences were minimal ─ instead of organisation, I had the entire province under my authority. I genuinely believed that the Japanese management model adapted to Italian mores was more sustainable than the ones I had encountered in my experience: relations based on respect and cooperation, focus on quality, reduction of bureaucracy. Although the risk I took in leaving the province for another manager was a deliberate one, I had my doubts about the staff’s reaction to the situation. Nevertheless, I didn’t have anything business-related planned for the next few days in Amalfi, from which I was able to attend my brother’s wedding. Nevertheless, I needed my deputy here, in London.

“No,” the man said, “and I’m not sure he should. I nodded silently ─ he was right. I respected Antonio with all my care and devotion to Italy in my blood, though I realised that this man could turn my misfortune to his advantage ─ that was how my world worked. Pelegatti was the first people I worked with in Naples (Thomas was the second), we were on an equal footing then and we both worked for his father, and years later we maintained our friendship which has ensured a warm partnership over the years; he was the one who helped to keep my province under control when I could not.

Thomas sighed heavily taking another sip of coffee, “I’ll work until the end of the flight. You can sleep,” I told my deputy, to which he nodded, going to the other end of the plane. He took off his black jacket, rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, revealing his tattoos. I knew he’d had them done while he was still at the police academy, some of them even drunk ─ I’d forgotten in the last few months of uninterrupted work how swaggering Thomas could be. Exhaling disdainfully, I took my laptop from the next chair and opened it, immediately taking up the work I had left.

Among a lot of unnecessary information, I found several letters from the police that my father worked with, they wrote about “suspicious missing luxury cars”, impudently hinting at an increase in my donations to the personal lives of each of the employees.

I was surprised by the news of the burning of restaurant in London; it had already burned before, without causing much damage as now. However, my people still didn’t find anyone who could be involved in this case — it was clear that the work was done by a professional, so it wasn’t easy to catch him. The Empire has always been full of guards and the security system was top notch. It was very delicate work to avoid it. I knew that this man, who was behind all this, could do much more than an innocent arson of the. The text scattered before my eyes, I couldn’t concentrate on work, no matter how much I wanted to. Out of anger, I slammed the laptop lid shut, fingers squeezing the septum of my nose. Thoughts could not be structured in my head, as if each part was thinking about its own: about a brother and his hated bride, about an expensive gift that was supposed to make amends for such a long absence, although I was sure that it would only make Jensen angrier about work. I bit my lower lip, throwing my head back against the back of the chair and closing my eyes.

I opened them in a car, while Thomas was driving me to the castle, where my brother decided to have a wedding. It was not safe at all: outside the city, an open aria, everything could end with a bloody wedding, which nobody wanted to, so I hired a few dozen more security men who would keep aloof and not appear in front of the guests, so as not to frighten them away. I did not know my brother’s bride personally but I had found some information about her. Lynette Carbyn was a twenty-year-old science student at a university in London. She comes from a poor family, as after her parents died, she was left with her sister in the care of her grandmother. In her final year, she created a chemistry-related project, for which she won a grant to attend a prestigious university. Lynette has not been seen in the police or the courts, moreover, she is not connected in any way to the illegal world.

“Is my present ready?” I asked Thomas, touching up my black tight floor-length dress that I’d worn on the plane before I left; I didn’t have enough time to fully think through my outfit, so I left my hair loose, tucked back and the casual makeup I’d done at five this morning. At the thought of seeing my brother’s wedding as just another meeting, I needed to show up for, I felt a prick of guilt in my heart ─ it was important to Jensen. But another part of me insisted that they would be divorced soon ─ the bright crush that had followed the proposal would fade as quickly as it had ignited.

“Yes, Alana,” the man gave me car keys, “exactly the same model you’ve asked.”

I left the car, when Thomas, as a gentleman, opened a door, and I walked on the high heels to the castle. I stopped for a moment, looking at the building my brother rented: a stone two storied building in the Gothic style with several dark pinnacles, as well as four gargoyles that looked at me as if with animal interest, even though they were cold and unreal. The doors of the castle were open, and I could see they had done the same with the doors to the backyard, the guards had already informed me that a table had been set in the garden, at which the guests had gathered. Taking a deep breath and frowning, I entered the building, knocking thin heels on the stone floor, with a brisk step I covered the distance between the entrances, again went outside. Stopping a step away from the bend behind which my brother’s wedding was hidden, I listened to the conversations at the table, which were difficult to make out because of the music in the background.

I did not want to undermine my older sister’s authority, but despite my affection for my brother, I desperately avoided this meeting. It was easy to guess that the new woman changed him: he began to work less, taking over the entire economic part of the business in the Empire and his small bar, but thankfully, as Thomas informed me, Jensen had not told his fiancée about the Wollstonecraft family business. My wedding was not as beautiful as this one, I was forced to hide and conceal my marriage from my father ─ I had no dress, no hair or make-up like Lynette, on whom the white silk fabric flowed like moonlight on a watery surface; my clothes were more suited to the long and painful road and, having registered the marriage in the United States, we went straight to Georgia, while Antonio and Thomas covered for me. Though I could now afford to buy myself jewellery at any price, stones the size of my head and red diamonds in unlimited quantities, the rings my husband had bought on his teaching assistant’s salary still seemed the most beautiful ─ white gold with a fine line of cubic zirconia in the centre. My breathing slowed and my chest heaved heavier, an unpleasant weight pressing down on my stomach; lowering my eyes to my pointy-toe shoes, I frowned, blinking rapidly to get rid of the uninvited tears. Suddenly I felt a burning sensation on my right shoulder, and turning my gaze to the inside of my elbow, I stopped at a wide stripe, a scar that, though over a year old, hurt as much as it had that day. I exhaled, shaking my limbs, and taking a step forward with a confident grin. All those present immediately paid me attention and only after a few seconds Jensen realised who was standing in front of him.

The melodies of our souls sounded similar, but had so many differences that it was hard to believe we were siblings. We both had blue eyes, only mine were dimmer, the darker colour of his skin, the deadly blue patches under his lower eyelids, and the smoky dark shadows. His irises were literally illuminated by the short blond hair, becoming so bright that they could replace streetlights, his smile was radiant and kind, and the freckles that he disliked so much made him look younger than his twenty-four. But he didn’t have a bright mole on his upper lip like me. This pure, unconditional and eternal feeling that lives in my heart and allows it to beat faster at the mention of his name, this strong and unbreakable soul bond, this oasis, this trust in his blue eyes. The care Jensen showed in his every word, action, touch ─ that security I was deprived of in the world around me. His smell was the most beautiful thing in the world, the most intimate; his voice the most melodious; his touch the most loving.

“I thought you wouldn’t come at all,” he said derisively to the top of my head, squeezing his palms tightly around my shoulders.

“I can’t help but be with you in this day,” I replied, slowly pulling back and making eye contact with the man.

“But you are late,” he raised his eyebrows as if scolding me, but he also quickly broke into a smile, placing his hand on my lower back and pushing me to the table, “Lynette is looking forward to see you,” he whispered, bending down to my ear, to which the smile immediately disappeared from my face, and the hand immediately rested on his torso.

I look up at him, “Are you sure? The last time we spoke you mentioned that she’s afraid of me,” but Jensen quickly walked over to the table, introducing me to the guests. The idea that Jensen kept his wife in the dark about our business on the one hand ensured the safety of not only my secrets, but also the girl herself from detractors who can use as profit, and on the other hand it was the appearance of disrespect ─ it would be better if she knew what she was going for. With an appraising glance, I walked over all those present, noticing the talking sisters of Carbyn, a man unknown to me and people whom I never wanted to see in my life again.

“Inessa,” I stretched out my hand in a cold greeting to this woman, whom she also quickly shook and looked away at my brother behind me. Her short, thin build made her look even more pathetic than she really seemed; her face was riddled with wrinkles that not even a beautician could help, her blue eyes and soft smile were the same as Jensen’s, and her short blond hair with untrimmed ends was the reason for my dyeing it dark brown ─ I did everything I could not to be like this woman. Contrary to my aspirations and stubbornness, Inessa was subservient to the traditions of conservative families and had insisted on my early marriage, my destiny as a decent mother and housewife, a trophy wife, all through my childhood. With all my heart I hated her and wished her a sincere death, I wished her what I went through, “Mark Lorenzo,” he was her boyfriend. They were lovers during my father’s life, officially got together in a few months after his death, he moved to our family mansion and behaves as if he was the owner there. The old Italian man, who was known for marrying rich widows, was a few years younger than Inessa, though he looked worse than my father on his deathbed — the medium-length dark hair with which he covered the baldness at the top of his head, the elongated body hidden by tailored suits, the wrinkled fingers and tired eyes were totally at odds with his lifelong idleness and, even less so, the demands he made on women. I had to keep my work and personal life separate, but I saw this couple as full-fledged enemies, despite the fact that Jensen respected this woman and her man. She was his mother and I couldn’t change it.

“Your sit,” brother pointed with his palm on a chair near his one and I sat down raising my head on an unknown man with thick and curly dark hair. The nighttime abyss that surrounded the castle was illuminated by small bulbs around the perimeter, from which emanated a warm and muted light that cast glares across the relaxed man’s face. His confident chocolate eyes, full of mystery, struggled invisibly with mine and probably my expression was languid and sleepy, if not deadly, while the stranger radiated silent confidence. His face was symmetrical and well-proportioned — a high forehead, expressive eyebrows, a straight nose, cheekbones and short stubble gave the impression of shrewdness and intelligence.

“Alana Wollstonecraft,” I nodded in greeting, without smiling, but with the respect I was accustomed to.

“Dante De Rosso,” he responded in the same manner. His voice was deep and confident, combining gruffness and firmness with softness and expressiveness.

“We met a few months ago in my bar,” my brother said taking a glass of white wine and smiled a little, “Dante helped me sort out the logistics of beer, now it costs 15% less to ship,” Jensen looked at me. The pensive look on my face didn’t go unnoticed by my brother, but still, a wedding, as it had been drummed into my head all my childhood, was a family affair, and inviting a stranger was not traditional (though there were no guests at my wedding at all). I felt anger coursing through my veins at the thought of Jensen giving this man access to the financial records of the bar through which I’d laundered money from The Empire Casino. Clutching my fingers tighter around the knobs of the chair, I tried to calm myself, trusting my brother ─ he wouldn’t take such a step unnecessarily, he was no longer a child to rely recklessly on a stranger’s word; if Dante was immersed in the family business, then Jensen was bound to let me know about it. Thomas pulled back a chair to my right and sat at the table, distracting me from the flow of thoughts ─ I’d talk to my brother later.

Finally, I turned my attention to Lynette, she was sitting to Jensen’s left, whispering quietly to her sister. Her big green eyes on her round, doll-like face raised and lowered their gaze timidly to her intertwined fingers in her lap. Her frail shoulders, wrapped in white silk, were stiffened, giving away her discomfort, embarrassment or fear. The dossier Thomas had assembled contained characteristics of Lynette from her classmates, classmates, even teachers ─ according to this information, the girl was often withdrawn and taciturn, while having an excellent academic record (which allowed her to win a tuition grant). As if sensing my gaze on her skin, she glanced quickly in my direction, but, trembling, also turned briskly towards her sister.

I saw how Dante was looking the burn scar on my shoulder from afar, “Car accident,” I lied. A crash would have been the best outcome, especially if I hadn’t survived it, “Let’s drink to the newlyweds,” I said loudly, raising my glass full of orange juice up and without waiting, taking a long sip of the drink. I would love to get drunk right now.

The further celebration proceeded quietly, as I expected, because. The music in the background gradually increased its volume, the bride, who continued to be afraid of me and didn’t dare to say an extra word in my company, left with her sister to dance, then Inessa and her man left. Their presence increased the atmosphere, because I did not want to spoil, even such, a wedding for my brother because of my aggression and quarrels with this woman, who had long ceased to be dear to me.

I was too busy with thoughts in my head to notice how Dante periodically throws his glance at me. Biting my lip, I glanced out of the corner of my eyes at the man who was drinking whiskey measuredly and watching the party like me. Throwing my hair back, I opened my neck and the protruding collarbone.

“You don’t look interested in this wedding,” Dante said with his seductive voice. He slightly compressed his lips and turned his amazing eyes to me. I quickly pressed my fingers on the scar on my shoulder to calm down so he wouldn’t notice it.

“Same as you,” I answered confidently, grinning. He was more relaxed now than he’d been at the beginning. I smiled from the corner of my lips, lowering my gaze to the red on my short nails.

“You aren’t like your brother,” he said more quietly, looking into my eyes.

“I’m like my father,” I replied politely, although I was smiling softly inside. The thought of Jensen has always made me feel warm. In response, he again impudently grinned at my answer, getting up from the table.

“Yes,” Dante said, resting his palms on a wood, leaning closer to me and riveting my eyes to him, “I wish you not to die of boredom tonight. Perhaps you should get some drink,” He nodded slightly to me, got up from the table with a glass of whiskey in his hands, banging on it with a fork. I took a deep breath. Dante narrowed his eyebrows as everyone gathered around and took their places.

“Today Jensen and Lynette have become a family, sealed the knot,” his gaze was directed at my brother, “despite the fact that we have known only a few months, and I only met your rest of the family today, “his gaze slid over my face, and then returned to my brother’s wife, who had shy smile on her face, “may this union bring you one happiness and so that you don’t know sorrow.” At the last words, the man raised his brown eyes to mine, then raised his glass of whiskey and finished the contents in one gulp. We continued to maintain eye contact, when everyone around began to applaud, when the brother began to calm his wife, who was ready to cry at any moment, after which I lowered my eyes, and Dante left.

In hours, sighing heavily, I rolled my eyes out of boredom and got up from the table, heading towards the fountain, which was a few meters from the dance floor. Taking out a cigarette from my clutch, I immediately went in and breathed in the tart smoke, from which my lungs hurt a little from deep breaths, and a mint taste formed in my mouth. The mind became a little stupefied, the movement ceased to be as clear as it was before, it was the usual effect of any nicotine on the nervous system, so I just continued to smoke aside and observe the guests, studying the actions of each.

“Is Thomas already tired?” my brother asked, appearing in front of me with a glass of wine.

“He is full of work,” I made another cigarette puff. Thomas will obviously be busy with business, dealing with the consequences of Jensen turning a blind eye to his bar for a long time and trusting the unknown.

“You may not have fully understood this,” his courtesy evaporated on the spot. He came closer forcing me to look into his eyes, “but this is my wedding, not another deal of stealing cars.”

“You know I am not interested in something that doesn’t benefit me,” I replied measuredly, feeling family feelings and meeting, after the long-awaited separation, evaporated from thin air. We became work partners again.

“You didn’t even give her a chance to show herself,” he said calmly, but I detected echoes of concern and injustice in his words.

I exhaled the smoke from a cigarette in his face, showing my dislike for this dialogue, “She’s afraid to raise her head and tell me her name, what can we talk about?”

I didn’t like people like her. She seemed miserable to me.

“Your own mother is afraid of you, how can you expect confidence from a person who just met you?”

My face was still unshakable; in such situations, it seemed easier to gouge out my eyes with my high heels than to show emotions. Those words would hurt me if I had a mother.

“I don’t give up on words I said that evening, “I remembered every insult and threat thrown at this woman.

Conversations about Inessa and his pleas to forgive her never ended well. Like this time, so Jensen decided to change the subject:

“I want you to answer one question as honestly as possible,” he said seriously, thrusting his palms into his trouser pockets, “Thomas told me about the Empire.”

For Jensen, this night was more than just important, and like his infatuation, he wanted the rest of us to respect his wedding. Even though most of me thought his behavior tended toward childishness and sensitivity, I realized that the crush that had acted like an intoxicating gas had penetrated to his heart, like a puppeteer pulling his strings.

“Did you come to London because of my wedding or because of the casino?” stubbing out my cigarette on the stone fountain, I raised my blue eyes to his face, “Of course, Alana Wollstonecraft doesn’t think about anything other than how to steal expensive cars, kill some bad guy and make a lot of money.”

“Don’t make me angry, Jensen,” I warned in a cold tone, so that his face turned neutral in an instant, “You’re right, I have a deal here, but this appointment was made before you met your sweetheart. London is still my motherland. I came to this wedding, despite my dislike for Inessa and your fiancée. And remember, I had to take on a lot more work, including money laundering, while you were apparently handling the logistics of the fucking beer.”

“Since when you’re caring about family?” he exhaled heavily, dropping his head down. Jensen had cut his workload in three, putting all the responsibility on me.

“I don’t judge you for the wedding or your feelings for this woman, but remember that you have responsibilities to fulfil. I hope Lynette won’t interfere with your work, otherwise you’ll have to make a choice,” my voice sounded firm, not tolerating objections, my brother just nodded at all I said, looking straight into my eyes. Putting the car keys in his palm, I mentioned that it was my present for his wedding, and returned to the guests, “Happy wedding.”

The night was long, but I could not sleep at all. I opened my laptop and tried to work again, answering to all email I got and planning my deals on tomorrow. Jensen was right, I needed to visit an even related to car I was going to steal and, in addition, a meeting with insurance agency about The Empire. After working on the computer for several hours, I noticed that the time was approaching dawn, but I still did not feel like sleeping. The quick knock of the buttons while typing was already beginning to squeeze the head unpleasantly, bringing pain. Deciding to take a break, I quietly opened the door and went downstairs to the kitchen. Finding a coffee machine, I quickly made myself a bitter espresso.

“A long night,” a voice I heard a rough voice behind me, which made me turn sharply.

“Thinking about work,” I replied, walking closer to the bar, where Thomas was already sitting, arms folded, “want some coffee?” I asked, surprising my interlocutor a little. Perhaps at nights I was less aggressive than during the day.

“No, I’ve drunken already three cups,” Thomas answered modestly, “I’m trying to find who set Empire in fire.”

“How is the situation around?” I asked, biting my lip. I had to think about work while Jensen was having fun with his wife in bed.

“Everything is calm. You have nothing to worry about, Alana” my deputy nodded.

Sighing heavily, I studied Thomas’s face: his disheveled hair and heavy eyelids, which now and then wanted to close his grey eyes, indicated that the man needed rest, but his hyper-responsibility never allowed him to leave a case unfinished ─ he would not rest until the culprit was found.

“Tomorrow I’ll go to the restaurant,” I said in a cold tone, wanting to focus the deputy’s attention on my words, “I don’t like the games like this,” without saying the last word, I was interrupted by a sound indicating that the coffee is ready.

“I’ll be ready by eight,” he replied, nodding. I calculated that I had less than five hours to sleep, but the cup of espresso in my hand meant that I wouldn’t fall asleep for the next hour. On the plane I never managed to sleep a wink; before that, in Amalfi, I had slept another two hours a night, drowning out my urges with coffee and cigarettes. Sleep was a luxury I could not afford.

Having poured myself a small cup of a bitter drink, I turned around and headed upstairs, having previously warned Thomas about the necessary rest and a possible change of bodyguards for that night. However, the guy resisted, saying that the responsibility for my life lied only with him. Passing the rooms on the first floor, I noticed one door ajar. Behind it stood a new acquaintance, Dante De Rosso, whose name I remembered distinctly. His torso was naked and at night, in the moonlight, he was talking quietly and engrossedly on the phone, completely oblivious to me. Dante’s broad shoulders, powerful arms, pecs, and mountain-like biceps gave the impression of a sturdy man, but as I turned away, I noticed deep scars of various sizes on his back, which made me hold my breath. The skin, studded with long cuts and large burns, gave me genuine consternation and revulsion-the unevenness at his shoulder blades and lower back, the red and purple hues at the massive scars. Frowning, I clutched the cup harder in my hands, turning on my heels and heading back to the kitchen. I was completely uncomfortable with this state of affairs ─ an unknown man with an unknown background and a lot of unusual scars all over his back has been in close contact with my brother for months and has access to his bar’s accounting department. The deputy met me in the same place with a surprised expression on his face, apparently intimidated by my brooding.

“Thomas,” he was adjusting his weapon on his belt, “I need all information about Dante De Rosso.”

Oasis

“The Empire” is a loud and dignified name for an appropriate establishment located in one of London’s most expensive areas. During the day, as the sunlight streamed into the restaurant through the panoramic windows on the first floor, and classical music spread softly through the walls, drowning out conversations about business or new purchases, I found myself thinking that the place, with its ceiling frescoes, sculptures, marble walls and gilded, colourful furniture made by Italian craftsmen at my father’s personal request, was transformed at night, behind massive doors, into a place of lust and money. I saw people’s faces change as they touched the notes of their winnings, as they inhaled their scent, as they kissed and shook the bundle in front of everyone. The stuffiness of the closed and dark windowless room, the clouds of cigar smoke on the ceiling, the ashes on the blood red gambling table — these people were different from the visitors who came in during the day, these were real lunatics with the urge to inflict pain and intimidation; here they became slaves to their own desires and vices, martyrs of their own world of immorality and misery, an endless escape from the meaninglessness of existence to the inner destruction of colossal loss.

My father had to make a name for himself from scratch when his once influential Neapolitan family was reduced in an instant to a handful of ashes, worthless. It was the restaurant that became an oasis for people like him — immigrants forced to leave their homeland to escape the police and endless persecution, heartbroken, clad in cold-blooded masculine faces, desperate to recapture their childhood. Here they were young men, arguing loudly, hurling insults (some even with chairs and money), drinking, freeing their minds from the cage of everyday dullness in which they were strict dictators, eliminating their enemies, punishing their subordinates and beating their wives. Their true selves were revealed, where in a world full of death, all they cared about was how to make money out of it. If the blood on their hands were imprinted on the surface of the furniture they touched, my restaurant would become the epitome of an infected soldier’s wound on the battlefield.

The Empire also became my oasis. As a child, I had little idea that one day I would run what I thought would be a powerful restaurant, but as time went on, and my interests shifted more and more towards my father’s business, my desires collided with the reality that no matter how much I proved my worth by going to the lair of the worst criminals, no matter how much I proved my effectiveness as a leader by organising magnificent car thefts, I was still a woman. By inheriting The Empire, I permanently cemented my name in the mouths of the disgruntled men who still insisted that I had made a grave mistake in preferring the cold weapons to the warm bed of my husband, as well as the women who clearly condemned my desire to bring my death closer. But I knew that I had begun to end the mindless reign of cruel men who equated their daughters with a bargaining chip — it took me to become as cold as the ice their wives applied to their bruised faces.

In defiance of the law, my father, Robert Wollstonecraft, set up a restaurant where he ran unofficial games (often poker). It was a kind of protest against the legal system that had banned him from his home country for many years. In the beginning there were only three gambling rooms, discreetly located on the first and second floors, opening their doors only late at night; his father used to boast that half the British government sat at the gambling tables, confirming his theory about the relativism of justice that had caught up with him as a child. In the short time I have been running the restaurant, I have added two more rooms in the basement.

The sharp nose of my black heels was stained with ash, which lay in small piles on the hard pavement — neither the icy wind that blasted my cheeks and tangled my hair, nor the morning rain had carried away the remains of the fire. Thomas told me of two completely burnt out gambling halls that would take at least a month and a half to rebuild — forty-five days that promised constant losses and an endless stream of nightly customers to the remaining three rooms.

“He was not joking this time,” I said, standing on a burnt desk. Attempts to identify the culprit always ended in incredible failure, it seemed he was slipping through my fingers. His method of operation was too crude, perhaps even sloppy and revealing, though I was confused by the marked difference between the two arsons — a toilet cubicle (as a warning) and two poker rooms (as punishment). Whoever he was, he knew exactly how to bypass the restaurant’s security system and exactly where the entrances to the hidden rooms were.

“How much did we lose?” Jensen asked, frowning and shoving his hands into his pockets. I was surprised by his encouragement to spend the first morning of his married life in the company of a restaurant he hated — the sudden decision to join me on an early trip into central London, though motivated by guilt over yesterday’s dialogue, was still the starting point for his return to the routine of work, which meant the extra responsibility and stress of working overtime was off my shoulders. Jensen was not only the owner of the Shoreditch bar, passionate about business development and keeping the inflated customer numbers in check, but he was also responsible for the digital security of my entire estate — from The Empire to the entire province of Salerno.

“Millions,” I replied, pulling from the pocket of my straight black trousers a silver cigarette case with a hand-engraved W after my surname (it was a gift from an old Neapolitan man who had a fierce desire for a Mercedes-Benz W198 in his wealthy garage, which is why he turned to me). The heavy nicotine pierced my lungs with a sharp pain, immediately hitting my head and relaxing me; blinking slowly, I exhaled the acrid smoke into the sky, where it mixed with the frosty morning air. There was a terrible rumble on the street that pressed against my temples, passers-by hurried, stumbled and ran red lights — they all had ordinary lives filled with routine: work, university, home, family, children, they had stress and worry, joy and momentary happiness — all the things I was deprived of. Growing up in an illegal world, my life from childhood was fraught with the risk of death — blackmailing and threatening my father was best dealt with by kidnapping his children — except that these people had no idea that a passing bus could be booby-trapped and an SUV stopped at a traffic light could be packed with thugs rolling down their tinted windows and shooting at anything that moved; most likely their lives had meaning, their existence was not aimless — or so they thought.

I took another deep puff of cigarette smoke, lowered my eyes and tried to shake the traces of ash from my patent shoes. I really didn’t care about the money that would be spent on renovating the two gaming rooms — last month’s (not very profitable) casino turnover reached a billion pounds, of which only a fraction went into the players’ pockets as winnings, the rest belonged to the casino itself; truth be told, most of the turnover was reckless betting by angry men, so I have to give them credit — only people like them could win hundreds of thousands and lose tens of millions, making me richer. Except that the time it would take to rebuild the rooms was very different from what I could afford — the reduced playing space meant fewer potential customers and therefore less profit; disgruntled players were the worst people I had ever worked with (not even Antonio’s lavish compliments annoyed me that much), because if they were disappointed, my reputation would suffer and they would not want to come back.

“Bad news,” he sighed heavily and touched his hair. I bit the inside of my cheek, trying to hide the anger inside me. I took a deep breath of cigarette smoke and raised my head to the sky. It was bright and clean, which was more than I could say for my head, I slept for several hours, drank a few cups of espresso.

I buried my fingers in my long dark hair. My gentle glance in his direction was enough to let me know that Jensen was indeed involved in the problem, even if this abrupt plunge might have felt like a bucket of ice water being poured over his head. My brother’s stern face with its brooding blue eyes did nothing to break his relaxed mood, judging by his slumped shoulders, the unbuttoned top buttons of his white shirt (he’d left his jacket in the car, still pretending that the wind blowing all around his body was no colder than the flames of a fire), his legs spread wide. I took a puff from my almost new cigarette, suppressed a gust of anger and threw it to the floor, stomping on it with my right foot — such bad news is made worse by the lack of sleep: the cup of espresso only intensified the intrusive thoughts of Dante De Rosso’s scars, leaving me with a measly three hours of restless sleep, which felt like torture in the form of a stabbing headache in my temples and dry eyes the next morning.

Frowning, I turned to Thomas, “Did the arsonist leave a trail?”

He shook his head thoughtfully, “Nothing yet.”

I cursed and kicked a charred piece of wood with my heel. I had to close my eyes and breathe heavily to dampen the outburst of anger that had become a veil before my eyes.

“We’re looking, Alana,” Thomas assured me, still standing a few metres from the main entrance to the restaurant. He didn’t take his eyes off the smoky black streaks on the stone walls outside, constantly shifting from foot to foot. The Empire was one of the last businesses my deputy handled, as I preferred to handle the restaurant myself, long and painstakingly; it wasn’t my first big business, as before the casino I’d successfully handled car theft and managed to get my place in Salerno, but it was the Empire that was the forbidden fruit I’d been fighting for most of my adult life; I’d been fighting to inherit it to prove that gender had no effect on brain size. Jensen pursed his lips and lowered his head.

“I’m going to burn that bastard alive,” I replied rudely.

“You don’t even know who did it,” the brother sighed deeply, rubbing his eyelids with his fingers, “this man is clearly not going to give us a quiet life.”

His words amused me. A life full of death, suffering and pain, the heartbreaking cries of mothers who have lost their sons in a bloody shoot-out, the tears of stolen children, bags of dirty money, cannot be peaceful a priori. I have often wondered if I would find peace after death, because long reflection has always led me to the necessity and inevitability of eternal sleep. The possibility of finding peace was illusory and utopian in my mind, which is why it seemed so attractive. In fact, the morbidity of birth and death frightened me with its meaninglessness; an existence of suffering ceased to be felt as such and was transformed into a routine, a beginning and an end to the cycle called life, an aimless wandering through my own mind in an attempt to find meaning and value. In recent years I have stopped believing in rest — I can’t remember if I ever felt it. Fighting all my life for recognition, forcing my name down the throat of every disgruntled person, I have lost the meaning of my existence. Each day, filled with confrontation with the conservative entrenchments of the mob, so exhausted me that there was no better desire than to turn into a transparent haze that vanished into thin air in the blink of an eye. Faced with powerful and dangerous people who continued to impose their will, they lost their meaning in my eyes; they no longer seemed like unquestionable authorities, and the traditions they had so carefully guarded no longer made sense. But it was as if I was on their side, continuing to prove my worth in this world, until I realised that I could not convince everyone, and so I would continue my pointless struggle until I disappeared completely.

“The quiet life is a myth,” I told Jensen, looking over my shoulder at his face. For my brother, my words had a completely different meaning. He was now responsible not only for himself, but also for his wife, who didn’t even know that from today her life was in constant danger, and Jensen, who didn’t want to tell Lynette about the business, was doing everything he could to keep her out of it.

Every time I looked at the Empire, I felt a sharp tingle in my heart: although the outside of the building showed traces of fire in the stone, I didn’t dare go inside; I knew I wouldn’t like what I saw, and I preferred to stay in the dark — the frescoes and bas-reliefs might have suffered, the Italian furniture certainly. My father’s legacy had been burnt, and all I had to do was replace the objects that would no longer contain a particle of him. There were no more bright signs of the gourmet kitchen that hid the gambling dens where London’s rich could try their luck. I was both pleased and puzzled by the fact that the restaurant was virtually undamaged (the fire from the gambling rooms had spread to the curtains and tablecloths among the guests, leaving traces of ash on the window), as the arsonist clearly knew where the hidden rooms were. The room itself was unusually large, occupying two floors, and under the guise of a gourmet kitchen in Baroque style, but hidden from view, the greatest poker games were held in five rooms: two on the first floor (which burned down), one on the ground floor and two more, the most massive, in the basement. In this way I was able to organise all five underground games, undetected not only by the guests but also by the police. In order to legalise the income from the casino, I combined it with other sources of income and distributed it according to ownership: some went to the restaurant’s accounts department under the headings of internal or visitor, another part went to Jensen’s Bar in the same way, the remaining money continued to exist in Salerno. Suddenly I remembered an email from the insurance agent I’d been looking at that night — as I’d unofficially assumed, they wouldn’t pay for the restaurant’s repairs unless I gave them financial compensation (a bribe) for keeping the details of the affected rooms secret. Trying to control my anger, I slowly clenched and unclenched the fist of my right hand, breathing heavily. It seems I need to remind the insurance company what ‘keeping secrets’ really means.

“I don’t think we should go back to Amalfi until things have calmed down,” Thomas said thoughtfully, coming closer. Jensen raised his eyebrows in surprise as I exhaled quietly, resisting the urge to yawn. It was getting harder and harder to work when you keep forgetting to sleep.

“I can run the restaurant, and you can go back to Salerno,” Jensen suggested, and at first I liked his idea, and ready to agree, I opened my mouth before thinking. I had a lot of business piled up in Italy, and would probably have more problems after Antonio, but my brother’s motives weren’t driven by selfless help, but by a desire to continue his modest life in London, rejecting the fact that he was involved in illegal business.

“No,” I said softly, forcing myself to keep my eyelids open, “I need your help in Amalfi,” Jensen had informed me a few weeks ago of the need to analyse the software that maintained the digital security of not only my personal accounts, but the finances of all the companies I owned, as he had noticed an attempted hack by an unknown party, “I have a meeting tonight, we return to Salerno tomorrow afternoon. No need to stay here for long,” I scowled at the ashes — — it would be better if other people took care of the repairs and restored all the rooms.

Despite the defiant displeasure in his eyes that stubbornly burned through my skin, the man nodded in agreement, hiding his hands in his trouser pockets. As much as he wanted to stay in this little idyll with his new-found wife, Jensen’s father’s honour would not allow him to break his promise.

“I’m not going alone, Alana,” his voice sounded harsh and hard, in contrast to his soft, heavenly gaze. I lowered my eyes thoughtfully.

It was to be expected — falling in love can act on the mind like a poison, slowly disarming. The trip to Salerno could be a long one, and the last thing Jensen wanted after the wedding was to leave his wife in another country for an indefinite period of time.

“Lynette isn’t a threat until she finds out about our business,” I warned slowly, blinking. Sooner or later the girl would find out about all the criminality that permeated our family, but inwardly I hoped she would escape before that moment came.

Jensen nodded again and exhales heavily.

“You have a responsibility, Jensen,” I reminded him, stepping closer and putting a hand on his shoulder, “you’re not just the husband now, you’re the bar owner and digital security manager. Get back to your duties.”

The man nodded, pursing his lips. I could understand his feelings now: Lynette had given him hope of a quiet life without guns and fights, where he was a simple bar owner and she a student. Now, after six months of blissful happiness, it’s hard for Jensen to come back to reality. He needs time to adjust.

“I’ll go back to my duties and keep working, and Lynette will think this is our honeymoon,” Jensen replied seriously, taking a few steps to the side. “And Mum will return to our family home with Mark.”

I had to roll my eyes in anger. I hated that woman as much as I hated her man.

“How dare she return with her lover to the mansion where our father died?” I spat reluctantly, but got no answer.

Every thought of that woman filled my throat with bile, my heart with disgust and revulsion at the realisation that her genes were in my blood, that my hair and eyes were part of hers (I had changed the colour of my hair, but if I could have my eyes gouged out, I would definitely do that too). Even the word ‘mother’ was not to be used in her direction — a traitor who was alive because of Jensen, who supported the ideas of patriarchy, who convinced me that my only chance for a better life was to marry a powerful man, did not deserve my recognition and respect, and even my father’s surname did not protect her position. Brought up on the literature of Jean Jacques Rousseau, she had no choice but to grow up subservient to a man. Once, when I was a child, she tried to read me one of his works: before she could even begin, I began to fret and cry, not wanting to listen to what he had written. I only felt an unpleasant shiver run down my shoulders when I thought that a man should be the head of the family and have complete control over his wife and children, and a woman should be a subordinate and serve her husband.

At the thought of marriage, I lowered my eyes to my unadorned left hand — it had been empty since Nicholas had died in the fire. Clenching my fingers into a fist, I looked up to where the clouds hung heavy like grey walls, obscuring the bright blue sky. The morning dampness spread through the city in cold gusts of wind that blew litter and flyers across the ground. The thickening clouds created black patches in the sky, inspiring a ghostly desolation that churned to the bone. Tangled hairs formed at the back of my neck as I frowned thoughtfully into the grey distance, longing building in my soul. An unbearable rattle echoed through my heart, making me oblivious to the pain that had hardened inside me over the past few months. It seemed impossible to escape the endless sky, that the impenetrable clouds, like a maze, would not allow me to find a way out — fear was devouring me from within, waiting to meet its own Minotaur¹. (The Minotaur¹ is a legendary creaturefrom ancient Greek mythology, half man, half bull, who lived in a labyrinth onthe island of Crete and ate those whom fate threw into the maze.)

“Alana,” Thomas’ loud voice came from behind me, pulling me out of my own thoughts. I swallowed hard and ran my palms over my face to bring myself back to reality. Tapping my heels on the stone pavement in front of the restaurant, I stepped closer to the man who was sitting by the fallen planks next to the stairs, staring at them thoughtfully.

“Do you think this is evidence?” Jensen asked, sitting down beside him and holding out his hand for the object. I had to slap his palm lightly.

On the floor, between the burnt planks, lay a silver heart-shaped pendant. Its chain was broken and the small stones that decorated the metal had almost fallen out, leaving only empty notches.

“Prints,” I replied to his questioning look, without taking my eyes off the pendant. Employees weren’t allowed to wear jewellery, and visitors often didn’t wear such simple and silver ones. I stood up and motioned for Jensen to take the pendant for examination, “I need the results as soon as possible. I received a nod.

Sighing, I raised my head to the sky and noticed the clouds. Jensen came up behind me, gritting his teeth, “The guards were talking about the evening event.”

“That’s right,” I replied a little more quietly, feeling the onset of a headache, “I have an assignment in London.”

“Another businessman,” he began.

“Another car,” I replied with a chuckle, “you’re coming with me.”

“Of course,” Jensen smiled brightly, forcing me to lift the corners of my lips, “you always need someone to cover your ass.”

The guards surrounded the castle and surveyed the area around it. Inside the building itself, the maids were bustling about, carrying dishes and laundry, scrubbing the floors to a shine, cleaning up after the previous night. After reminding me of our meeting tonight and kissing me on the cheek goodbye, Jensen quickly made his way to his upstairs bedroom and took off his jacket, where Lynette was probably already. My brother’s wife didn’t interest me as much as her sister, about whom I had a bad feeling — Skye’s appearance resembled a sickly, if not fatal, skin condition, thinness, dye-burnt hair; perhaps the Carbyn sisters weren’t as simple as they seemed at first glance.

Standing at the entrance to the castle, the wind blowing in through the open windows and doors, I lowered my gaze to my shoes, crossed my legs and took a deep breath. I felt like I missed Amalfi — the Italian town had become much more at home to me in recent years than my native London. The greyness around me was killing me, plunging me into a gloomy reverie that I could only try to shake off by increasing my workload. The sea, with its tranquillity and silence, the peace to be found in the crashing waves, in the spray of cold water, reminded me that in a world where there is hell, there is also heaven. Here, apart from my father’s shop, which burned with some periodicity, I had nothing. A slow, throbbing pain began to pound in my temples as I realised how many problems I would face on my return to Italy, even though I still couldn’t figure out who had caused the two restaurant fires: I had made enough enemies over the past few years who were determined to take not only business and territory, but also the title of “the man who destroyed Wollstonecraft”.

A gust of cold air hit my face with the clear smell of earth before rain, forcing me to look up. The glass doors to the courtyard were open, as they had been the night before, and Dante was sitting at the large table where a few hours earlier there had been large Italian dishes and bottles of dry white wine. His large back, the intimidating scars on it hidden by the thick fabric of his charcoal jacket, looked dull and lonely against the grey sky. Tapping my heels on the tiles of the house, I approached the man and saw a laptop and a cup of espresso in front of him.

“Is there a problem with the bar tab?” I asked, stepping around Dante and sitting to his right, the man sitting on the edge with only the corner of the table between us — so I could study his face. Tilting my head slightly to the right and squinting my eyes, I watched as he slowly lifted his gaze from the laptop screen and turned coldly to face me. Taking a deep breath, Dante leaned back in his chair and picked up a small cup of espresso with his large hand; I could see the turquoise vein lines through his skin.

“Some vitals didn’t add up,” he replied blankly, taking a sip of his drink. The piercing look in his brown eyes slowly began to ignite a fear in me that chilled me to the bone, “Nothing serious”.

“You should be more careful,” I said slowly, realising that our small talk was turning into a cold verbal battle for me.

“Just helping Jensen out,” De Rosso said as he set his empty cup down on the saucer.

I crossed my legs and squeezed them tighter — to control my aggression, which pierced my skin with a sharp heat that made it hard to breathe. The man sitting in front of me had full access to the financial records of the bar through which I laundered my illicit earnings; I had a right to be angry at Jensen for such reckless behaviour.

“And what caused this altruism?” I asked, narrowing my eyes slightly.

“The usual help to a friend,” the man replied evasively. Talking to Dante, I had the oppressive feeling that he was controlling his every word, trying to keep me at a distance. His piercing brown eyes and bushy eyebrows were lifeless and vacant, giving the impression that the man was incapable of smiling. De Rosso’s demeanour was, in my eyes, arrogant and unapproachable, as if he had absolutely no interest in other people, not even his so-called ‘friend’ in the person of my brother. His monotonous voice, devoid of any emotion, and his stilted gestures gave the impression of coldness. Realising that it would be impossible to establish a dialogue with such a man, let alone extract information from him regarding access to financial figures, I lowered my eyes in frustration as I rose from my chair. Smoothing my white shirt against my body, I cast a final glance at Dante, who immediately returned to his computer, losing all interest in our conversation. Straightening my back as if my spine were a bar of steel, I dismissively reminded the man to lock his doors for the night, then retreated.

“Who are you, Dante De Rosso?” I whispered.

The clear night sky, devoid even of stars, was slowly being replaced by grey and cloud, revealing a different London beyond the reach of the naked eye. The old mansion, rather small compared to my father’s residence in Italy, was indeed old — the bright red brick that made up the walls of the building was illuminated by the xenon headlights of the sports cars parked at the foot of the stairs. The tight black fabric of my long dress squeezed my ribs as I breathed; my feet were beginning to ache from walking in heels (I had to soak my feet in a shower of hot water to be able to dress for today’s event). The front strands of my hair fell in large waves across my face as I leaned forward to adjust the belt on my hip that secured the sharp knife to my skin. I had gotten used to this kind of protection: I had no intention of killing anyone today, and I generally did not encourage close combat, but the knife was not only a means of self-defence in critical situations, but also a tool that could be used to pick a lock, cut a rope in the event of a kidnapping, or damage a pocket to get a phone out. Although my appearance was in keeping with the theme of the party, I was met with puzzled, interested and even judgmental looks — apparently neither Luca nor his guests expected me to accept an invitation to the event.

“We came to steal a car,” my brother said, leaning into my ear. A few minutes earlier, Jensen had been telling the valet exactly where to park his car, constantly smoothing the fabric of his black suit, “but I think if such a beauty disappears from the party, everyone will notice.

I grinned back and took his arm. We walked back to the manor together.

Luca Ronald was the epitome of a rich youth who had not yet met the fate of early family life and business. I did not investigate his finances, although there is no need to, because I knew that his spending was irrational (the diamond pool table, which he broke a week after installing it), but the man himself had repeatedly claimed a recent purchase — a Bugatti Centodieci, a limited edition car of which there are only 10 in the world. My client contacted me a few minutes after he heard about the deal between Luca and the sheikh, wanting to get his hands on the new sports car without any unnecessary witnesses. Car theft was not my main source of income, but the money it generated was shared between me and my team, excluding middlemen, staff and so on. It was probably an extension of what I had been doing with Antonio’s father; I really liked cars, in a way this part of the job gave me pleasure, because while most cases were standardised and universal, each one was unique, with different cars, people and circumstances everywhere. It was important to choose the victim first: a banker with a shady past, a politician involved in illegal business, or men who looked like pathetic parodies of Capone or Gotti, but according to the statistics it was the children of such people who most often fell under my influence. They paid no attention to the cars, which made it easier to rob them. Then came my team: Xiaomin, a Chinese girl who was on holiday now, and Richard, a tall man with blue eyes that looked very deep against his dark skin, who had served time in one of London’s prisons for stealing a cabriolet. These two, professional thieves, would gradually trace the victim and the car using the technique I had taught them, and when the time came, they would disappear with the car without a trace. I gave each member of the team an increased percentage of the sale in exchange for the fact that they were responsible for the theft — victim, police, mafia, it doesn’t matter, they were looking for my guys, but not for me, formally I was not involved in their activities. This helped to avoid conflicts between the families that rule the illegal world, as well as unwanted wars and shootouts, but when my boys were being hunted, I stood up for them. But there was one memorable moment: when the case of the theft of two sports cars came up for trial, which was supposed to take place in Molise, I managed to move to Naples, where Antonio kindly did not interfere in my business and allowed me to finish what I had started. All the witnesses from the court suddenly disappeared and I had to pay my partner in Naples part of the proceeds from the sale of the cars.

“The car key is on the second floor,” Jensen said softly in my ear as we entered the villa, smiling and nodding to the butlers and other guests, “third door from the left,” he reminded me, “don’t forget.”

I mentally rolled my eyes in annoyance and suppressed a sigh of flow of emotions.

Objectively, this case was different from the others, at least in that I was directly involved in the theft, I had to show up at this dinner tonight to quietly steal the keys and then quietly hand them to Richard who would be waiting for me outside the grounds of Roland’s mansion. Luca, for reasons unknown to me, had hired a large number of guards and strengthened the pass system; now each guest had an individual code, and forging it, though possible, was still disproportionately energy consuming. After discussing this with Thomas, we agreed that I should accept the invitation to the ball.

Behind the massive doors blocking the entrance to the mansion, the Ronald family’s grandeur was concealed: a grand foyer with a high ceiling and stucco on the walls, an extended bar with a variety of drinks around which guests were already gathering. Most of the young people remained in the lounge to the right, sitting on leather sofas, not hesitating to place on the coffee table whatever illegal drugs they could steal from their parents. The wall behind them was empty — it used to be a display case of crystal china and silverware that Luca had broken at another party.

I walked on, still holding my brother’s arm, keeping a calm face and discreetly inspecting the guards. The preconceived plan was to disappear unnoticed from the lobby where the main event was taking place, find the office on the first floor and get rid of the car.

Although people like Luca contributed a great deal to my financial well-being, I genuinely hated them — having inherited the business from his mother, he spent money recklessly and irresponsibly, while his hapless deputies tried to avoid bankruptcy. This approach to work irritated me: while I had struggled all my life to get a place in my father’s restaurant, Ronald had just been born; every time I had to deal with him, I felt a genuine disgust.

I didn’t notice Luca right away: the dark-skinned man stood eccentrically in a circle of his friends, swaying from side to side as if he couldn’t stay on his feet. His hands waved incoherently in the air as if trying to prove something, his face was puffy, his hair a mess; Ronald’s clothes looked sloppy and unkempt, as if he’d dressed with his eyes closed.

I’d heard about his family for a long time; even the mansion the guy had turned into a nightclub had once been the home of generations. Despite such an ugly idea of Ronald’s, he had aristocratic roots, but I could not understand if that had any meaning. In the light of the night, the dark wood from which almost everything in this house was made added charm and mystique, but these thoughts quickly disappeared as I noticed the people standing around the new pool table. I had no doubt that it was worth several hundred thousand pounds, unless it was a fake that his grandmother sometimes used — aristocrats had rapidly lost their influence in the last half century and were more status than real proof of the presence of money.

I took a deep breath and gripped Jensen’s hand tighter with my fingers. It took a lot of effort to turn the contempt in my eyes into polite arrogance (Luca was one of those people who used his family name shamelessly, having nothing to do with this success. He often reacted positively to my hubris because he had a high ego, believing himself to be more intelligent, wealthy and influential).

With a disdainful sneer, I glanced at the young man coming our way. I exhaled immediately and the muscles in my back tensed.

“Alana,” Luca said immediately, “I’m so glad you’re here,” the man leaned over to my palm and planted a light kiss on it. I swallowed, feeling the pungent smell of sweat and alcohol from the man in my nose.

“I couldn’t miss such a bright event,” I replied politely with flashing eyes and a small grin, “I think you know my brother. Jensen,” I turned to him as he reached out to shake Luca’s hand.

“I heard about the casino,” he frowned as he expressed his regret, “I hope you recover soon. Maybe if it was run by a man it would be all right, who knows?”

I smiled dismissively, realising that my behaviour had gone unnoticed by Luca. I had no idea how much alcohol he’d had since this morning in order to recognise who was standing in front of him.

“I hope you’ll be our first guest after the refurbishment,” I nodded and Jensen, pushing my lower back, led us to the bar.

The vanity parade that had opened its massive doors that night weighed heavily on my head and made it hard to breathe. The lies in the air were becoming absurd, and as I sat far away at the bar with a glass of water, I could barely contain my laughter as I watched people trying to appear better than they really were — everything had turned into a competition that everyone was trying to win at all costs. The colourful lights and sounds of music that reminded me of fun and joy now seemed dull and artificial. Jensen looked suspicious, obviously afraid the guards would find out the real reason for our visit; his voice was distant, disinterested.

Jensen set the whisky down on the lacquered barstool, pursed his lips slightly and lifted his eyes, “The insurance company is questioning the restaurant’s case.”

I covered my eyes with the palm of my hand and shook my head wearily. This reaction from the agency was unpleasant, but expected — another problem to deal with, but they don’t go into total denial. Maybe I should meet someone from the insurance company.

“I’ll sort it out,” I replied calmly, taking a sip of cold water, “I need to get back to Italy as soon as possible.”

Jensen nodded slowly and swallowed the entire contents of his glass with a jerk, causing me to raise my eyebrows in confusion. There was no trace of yesterday’s happiness on his face; not even the ring on his finger made him smile. My phone vibrated quietly, causing Jensen to look up at me. I slipped the device into my clutch and stood up.

“I need to fix my make-up,” I smiled, squinting, and my brother nodded as he got up and walked towards Luca.

I gave my brother’s demure gait one last wary look, making sure my absence would not arouse suspicion, then made my way up the massive staircase to the first floor. Nimbly rounding the corner, I lurked and waited for the guard to pass; quietly rounding his back (my heels muffled the soft carpet on the floor) without him noticing, I walked along the wall of antique tapestries and counted out the third door. Leaning my shoulder blades against the cold wood, I tugged gently on the handle with my left hand, which unexpectedly boiled away. Once inside, I closed the door quietly behind me, feeling my heartbeat echo in my ears. After all these years I’d never managed to cultivate a coolness, like a child doing something inappropriate, I could feel the adrenaline raging through my veins, the fear of being caught feeding through me. The guards Thomas and Jensen had bought told me that the keys were here. Luca’s office was small, different to the ones I’d seen before, empty. A desk with a laptop, a chair and a bookshelf. With a quick exhale, I began to look around the room for the car keys — first checking all the chests of drawers under the desk, but finding nothing, I turned to the books, imagining with interest that Ronald was reading. In fact, it didn’t fit his lifestyle at all. Fingering the spines of the books, I noticed a different one, and when I opened it, I realised that instead of pages, there was a recess where the keys were neatly placed. Grinning, I shoved them into my bag and put everything back where it belonged.

My throat was dry and I swallowed hard, feeling the pressure of my dress against my ribs. My heart was beating so fast I could feel the blood pounding in my temples. I wanted to laugh, loudly, to drown out the music below. It had been a long time since I had experienced such pleasant feelings, the joy of my work. Boundless liberation, accompanied by a violation of the rights of others, of every possible order and norm, a release from responsibility and worries about not conforming to the expectations of others; I was doing what I was not supposed to do and feeling in my place. My fingers grew cold with the anticipation of being behind the wheel of one of the ten sports cars in the range. But what excited me most was the thought that someone like Luca Ronald would lose his beloved car in a matter of minutes; that I had taken something precious away from him, that in time, when the alcohol no longer affected his body, he would realise his level of irresponsibility.

Cautiously, I opened the wooden door and looked out, scanning the long corridor in the dim light of the warm lamps. There was no one around, no guards or guests, which gave me a safe route to my car. The stairs leading to the garage were on the opposite side of the corridor and I quickly shifted my high heeled feet across the carpet, looking back often and listening for any sound. It was dark ahead, perhaps this part of the house had been neglected for so long that even the burnt-out lights in the wall sconces were of no interest. Gradually the reds of the carpet and tapestries faded into colourless patches of unlit corners. I felt something warm on my right shoulder, pulling me towards it — it took me a moment to see the cold gaze of Dante’s eyes in the darkness. My insides clenched at the realisation that I was in an uninhabited part of the mansion, sandwiched between the cold wall and the tall man. I swallowed, interrupting the sudden dryness in my throat, and silently watched De Rosso study my face — we were at an unacceptably close distance.

“What are you doing?” my angry whisper broke the silence between us. Along with the realisation that a familiar face was standing before me, I felt anger begin to seep into my consciousness, acting like the lava of an erupting volcano. An uncomfortable but long familiar energy rippled through me, taking control of my body. The pain in my ribs disappeared, while my chest began to tighten with tension, making it harder to breathe. I tried to control my emotions but they were beginning to take control of me. I knew I had to calm down and find the strength to keep my temper, but it was so hard. The blade on my leg burned, pressing against the heated skin of my thigh — the desire to drive the knife down Dante’s throat grew with every breath.

His cold gaze betrayed no emotion — the stale, unapproachable man continued to scorch the exposed skin of my neck with his breath until he stepped back, letting me inhale more deeply. “I could ask the same question,” he replied, burning me with his icy gaze.

“You’d better get back to the guests,” I mimicked his manner of empty dialogue, turning to my right with the intention of walking out of the dark corner of the corridor, but with a sharp movement the man grabbed my arm and pulled me back, only now it was him against the wall.

The desire to drive a blade as cold as his brown eyes into that stiff neck had never been stronger. I clenched my palms into fists and breathed heavily, furrowing my brow. My gaze became heavy — slowly moving my eyes to his face, I kept the last shreds of patience with a full sense of seriousness. I took a few steps back from his grasp; my desire to finish the task had been replaced by a desire to prove to Dante that excessive liberties had to be paid for.

“You left the office of the owner of this mansion to look around,” the tone of his voice was merciless, and it only added to my anger. His deep, husky voice echoed in my head, the scent of cologne emanating from his skin, from this distance I could smell the sour ginger.

“I left my card there,” I parried irritably, noticing Dante’s eyes fall on my leg. Taking a small step forward, he crouched down and lightly touched my ankle, buttoning one of my shoes — in a rush of adrenaline, I didn’t even notice the shoes being unbuttoned. When he finished, Dante lifted his brown eyes to mine. Without taking his eyes off me, the man began to raise his palm higher until it touched the skin near my knee, the warmth of his fingers piercing me. I tried to pull my leg out of his grip, but De Rosso held me too tightly.

“I can scream,” I hissed, preparing to kick him with the other leg. I wasn’t joking. Irritation, aggression, ignorance and disrespect for De Rosso could be felt in the venom of my voice, in the sharpness of my movements, in the tightness of my muscles.

“They won’t hear you,” he said, as if giving orders, “and what would you tell them?”

“You want to rape me. Who do you think you are?” I continued disrespectfully, catching myself thinking that I shouldn’t have continued the dialogue with such a cavalier man wanting to explore my body under my dress. He knew that if I screamed I would attract unnecessary attention that would jeopardise my mission, but it was beneath my pride to tolerate his behaviour in silence, knowing that he was trying to get to the knife. Still, my name would allow me to get away with it (if I were caught in a dark corner with a man at my feet).

He lifted his fingers higher up my leg, touching the holster, and at the same moment I kneed him in the chin, sending him staggering backwards and falling. Straightening up, I looked at him with disdain as Dante quickly got up to shake himself off. His fall made unnecessary noise, causing the man to look out quickly and peer into the light part of the corridor.

“I think it’s time for you to run,” Dante chuckled, not hiding his seriousness. I frowned, surprised by the sudden change in mood, but when I heard hurried footsteps outside Luca’s office, I took a few steps towards the nearest stairwell. Pausing for a moment, I glanced over my shoulder:

“Better for you to leave my family and never come back.”

“I would love that,” he replied briefly, stepping out into the corridor and heading towards security, leaving me staring at his back in disbelief. Dante had put me in this situation, but he’d also saved me.

I shook my head in confusion.

The adrenaline had had a terrible effect on my memory — I walked down the dilapidated stairs as if in a fog, kicking my feet up and down in my high heels. There was a sound in my ears, I couldn’t tell how loud I was tapping my shoes, but it didn’t bother me at all. Through my blurred vision and the lack of lighting in the cool garage, I could see the car I needed. With my meeting with Dante, I had absolutely no time to admire the rare Bugatti, so I quickly got behind the wheel and opened the garage, glad that the exit was in a part of the house where there were no guests and the windows were closed (at least Jensen stayed inside and had my back).

There was no sense of speed behind the wheel of the French car as I sped towards the rendezvous point with Richard, cutting through the night air of London. Angrily gripping the steering wheel with my bony fingers, I breathed heavily and pressed the accelerator, which helped me to control my anger a little. Dante De Rosso would have been more tactful if he’d known who was standing in front of him. This man really didn’t know who he was dealing with and that was why, despite the confidence in his voice and look, he was behaving so arrogantly. My cheeks tightened and I bit down hard with sharp teeth, swallowing a groan of pain. The sickening, oppressive feeling in my chest kept me from forgetting Dante’s arrival in my family — why Jensen had gotten involved with him. His behaviour, his touch, his scars haunted me. There was something about his existence that was closed off, inaccessible to everyone else, but at the same time attractive, giving the impression of an unnecessarily and undeservedly confident man. The fresh London night air, mixed with the smell of the clean leather and wood of the car’s interior, gradually pushed my unwanted thoughts to the back of my mind and brought me back to work. Richard would be on a freighter to the United Arab Emirates and the goods would be at the client’s door by tomorrow, along with the rest of the fee for the kidnapping.

“How did it go?” he asked, shoving his hands into his jeans pockets. In the moonlight I watched the tall, dark-skinned man hover over the sports car.

“He was drunk and probably won’t remember his car tonight unless he decides to show it off to his friends,” I smiled slightly and rather forcedly. Richard noticed my confusion and just nodded.

“That Arab you promised the car to,” the man lowered his voice as he came closer, “are you sure about him? My boys say he’s already cheated the French, who gave him a Lamborghini from Monaco.”

I closed my eyes and exhaled heavily, feeling a severe headache in my right temple. A light breeze ruffled my hair and made me take a deep breath. The night is an amazing time, people become more sensitive, I loved the night, I could be alone with my thoughts, which I might have feared, but I certainly could not avoid it. The beauty of the night is amazing, mysterious, so much is hidden under its cover.

“Alana,” Richard repeated, making me open my eyes to see his face next to mine. From this distance, despite the darkness, the narrow nose, broad eyebrows and carelessly arranged short hair were clearly visible, “you are obviously tired.

“If this Arab cheats us, he will see his family cut out in front of him,” I said quickly but calmly. The car Jensen and I were driving pulled up behind me, my brother’s blond head at the wheel. It was as if I’d been dunked in ice water, and for a moment I came to my senses: “A cargo plane is waiting for you at the airport. As soon as you deliver it, let me know.”

Richard nodded and got behind the wheel of the Bugatti.

London night

The grey harshness cut into my eyes as I tiredly scratched my forehead with my short fingernails, reading through the emails that had flooded my inbox since this morning. The insurance company I had contacted late into the evening had informed me that the agents were aware of the fire at The Empire restaurant, they expressed their deepest regret and understanding that the current situation was taking a toll on my life, but they had no jurisdiction to assist me in dealing with the aftermath as the arson version was unproven and therefore not suitable as an insurance case. I clenched my jaw, rolled my eyes and felt a stabbing pain in my eyeballs. I honestly didn’t understand why my father had decided to work with an insurance company — there hadn’t been any such incidents in the restaurant during his lifetime, but in the case of arson, I would have to pay the insurance agents to make the claims. Opening another letter, I quickly scanned the lines informing me that if the cause of the fire was not covered by insurance, the company could refuse to pay compensation. I pressed my fingers into a triangle and rested my forehead against them, closing my eyes and breathing out tiredly — although I had slept longer than usual today, I felt disgusted, and the gloomy sky, where the clouds stretched like grey cotton wool and merged into the horizon, plunged me into a bleak hopelessness and a sense of despair at the flood of endless problems. The damp morning air was uncomfortably cold on my shoulders and back, hidden behind my black turtleneck, causing an unpleasant stabbing sensation in my shoulder blades, forcing me to constantly distract myself and knead my muscles. I jerked sharply and pulled my cold fingers away from my face as a large black silhouette appeared to my left, which turned out to be Thomas in a charcoal suit.

“Are you alright?” he asked simply, raising an eyebrow in surprise as I looked at the folder in his hands, to which I nodded slowly, still dazed. With trembling fingers I reached for the shiny cigarette case, “As you asked,” he mentioned as I raised my eyes to his blond head, “information on De Rosso,” the beige cardboard folder landed on the wooden table next to my grey laptop.

A small orange tongue of flame bounces off the mirrored backdrop of the gold filter and after a moment the smoke begins to billow into my lungs. I feel it slowly pass down my trembling throat and fill my chest with warmth. I began to feel the pleasant dizziness and relaxation that comes with smoke, which my deputy watched with covert interest. Waving my free hand, I repeated that I was fine and thanked him for the file on De Rosso.

“I can go to the office of the insurer who’s been writing you letters,” he stubbed his fingers on the desk, leaned down to read the text on the screen, then straightened and stared at me with his stubborn grey eyes. I took another drag, squeezing the cigarette tighter between my index and middle fingers, and rested my chin on my palm, looking down the stone path beneath my bare feet, next to the heels that lay off to the side. The insurance agent’s health would depend on my word. I tapped the knob of the chair with the fingernails of my free hand, considering this decision carefully but quickly — I wanted to resolve this conflict peacefully, without resorting to violence, but the brazen extortion of a bribe, amidst other incidents, was increasing my irritability. The old methods are quick and effective, but not long lasting; by threatening once, I could ruin the relationship with the insurance agency forever, although whether it made sense, given that I wanted to end our cooperation, was a matter of course. It was difficult to explain my real reasons for wanting to keep the insurance — perhaps it had something to do with the fact that my father had made that decision, and although he was a complex character, he had more experience in business than I did; perhaps a luxury restaurant in an expensive area of London without insurance would have aroused suspicion. I took another drag. The smoke I exhaled created a cloud of white vapour that slowly wafted through the air, leaving behind a faint scent of tobacco. I watched it rise in thin swirls and disappear. The smoke seemed alive, moving and changing with the movement of the air, creating magical and beautiful images. I slowly nodded to Thomas.

I wanted to get rid of the blood that kept running down my cold and trembling hands, but it was impossible — to work with criminals and not become one was close to dreams. I avoided excessive cruelty. My father attributed this to my feminine and domestic nature, to which I attributed the uselessness of blood in most of its spills — if a man could be negotiated with, I had no desire to gouge out his eyes or cut off his genitals while listening to the pathetic cries and squeals. Instead of violence, I used intelligence and a cold strategy that convinced the other person that I was right and that our cooperation was effective — it often took longer, but it ensured longer communication. It did not reduce the blood on my hands. I did not stop using subtle methods of negotiation, but I could justify myself in this way. Like tar, the invisible blood stiffened my movements and made me feel dirty. I had put enough effort into developing the ability to dialogue and adapt to different people, which is very easy to devalue by calling it feminine nature, but I still did not understand — could I be proud of it?

I took a cigarette break and returned to my mail, deleting all the letters (read and unread) from the insurance agency, before concentrating on a message from Richard, reporting a successfully concluded deal and awaiting his share of the fee, and from a client who expressed his deep gratitude by enclosing a transfer of the negotiated amount to my account. Having made a note of the payment in my notebook, I was about to examine the information from my vineyard workers, who had noticed the appearance of disease in some of the vines, when my gaze shifted to the cardboard folder on my left. I swallowed hard and leaned back in my chair, picking up the file with “Dante De Rosso” written in large letters on a beige background.

I desperately wanted to find out more about this man and see how safe he was to work with, but that would mean distrusting my brother and his choice. When I opened the folder, the first thing that caught my eye was a black and white photograph of a man much younger than he was today: he was looking straight into the camera, his gaze was the same as I had seen at my brother’s wedding, so deep, so magnetic; his full lips, thick and furrowed dark eyebrows, short dark hair. I lifted the picture with two fingers and began to read the text fluently.

Mute shock froze my face when there was nothing criminal in the information Thomas found — Dante was born in Salerno to an ordinary family of an accountant, a teacher and his older sister. As a child he was quiet and obedient, completing all his homework on time and never complaining about his behaviour. His family was well-behaved: occasionally late with their mortgage payments, they were friendly, constantly attending parties and celebrations, some of which they organised themselves. But after the tragedy, when the car carrying his parents and sister plunged off a bridge into the water, he became withdrawn and silent, lonely, indecisive and nervous. The file described an episode in which De Rosso, in sixth grade, was bullied by classmates who called him “orphan” and “homeless”. Dante became very upset and locked himself in the school’s spare room and sat there until the evening when a security guard found him sitting in the corner with his knees pressed to his chest. His aunt Helen in London, who had left Italy when he was an adult, took him into her care and from the age of ten Dante lived in England, where he studied economics and began his career. There was nothing wrong. I hadn’t found anything in his file about illegal activities — for a long time he worked for a leading brokerage firm in London, but after a highly publicised scandal with his bosses he was sacked; since then he has been providing economic services as a sole trader. My intuition confused me. I exhaled sharply and threw Dante’s data onto the table, scattering the papers. I pinched the bridge of my nose with my fingers and closed my eyes, feeling the usual contradiction in my soul: my brain understood that De Rosso was harmless, my brother trusted him, but my soul understood that I could not trust him.

The reply from the lab still hadn’t arrived in my mail, which was beginning to worry me, since this decoration was so far the only clue in this mystical case that was destroying my business, while Thomas was dealing with the insurance. Gathering all the documents in a single file, not forgetting Dante’s dossier, I took the papers and a laptop, a notebook, on my way to my bedroom, where I intended to continue working on the documents. Still confused by the information I had received about Dante, I quickly staggered barefoot across the cold floor, abruptly opened the door and angrily threw the contents of my hands onto the bed.

Hours later, Thomas texted me, giving me a time and place to meet the insurance agent who had recently taken over The Empire’s case. Jensen kindly agreed to lend me one of his cars, and a security man drove me to the restaurant. Now, looking out the panoramic window of one of the The Empire’s working halls at night, I was even more convinced that city life was wearing me out — having lived permanently in a seaside resort on the Tyrrhenian Sea, I was used to the peace and quiet, the slowness that was so uncharacteristic of the metropolis, even of its people. The population of the capital was eighteen hundred times larger, so as I drove through the crowded streets I began to appreciate the sparseness of the roads, which allowed me to hear the sound of the waves and to stare at the water for long periods from the balcony of my hotel room. Even in the evening, which quickly turned into night, people were still in a hurry, chasing something. There were also many disadvantages to living in a small town, as most of my partners preferred to live in the capitals, the megalopolises, and one can understand them, because there is business and therefore money. Exhaling deeply, I looked up from the picture window and stared at the empty chair opposite me. Just a few minutes ago, a man had made me happy with the news that I wouldn’t have to spend money on repairs. Of all the businesses I owned, the restaurant held a special place in my heart — not because of the size or the money, but because my father, who chose not to take the patriarchy into account, had left me The Empire as a legacy; getting the place meant winning the fight for my rights, but that was the reason I had lost everything.

I wore a loose black suit that didn’t constrict my body, but no sooner had I regained the skin on my legs after the last few days than I had to put on my high-heeled pumps again, which felt like nails under my heels. I continued to drink my coffee, glancing occasionally at the view out the window; I’d given Thomas a few errands to run, including transferring payment to Richard and contacting the lab, Jensen was unavailable all day — because of his wife or the bar, I didn’t know. All I had to do was contact the guard who’d taken me to the restaurant, because I had no other safe way to get to the castle. Licking my lips, I closed my eyes and leaned back in my chair, not letting my back be as flat as usual.

“Is it free here?” a man’s voice came over my head, the coldness of his tone making my spine tense and my shoulders quiver.

“Depends on your intentions, Dante,” I cautiously opened my eyes and pulled myself out of the chair. I hadn’t thought about De Rosso since I’d read his file, and since then I hadn’t been able to decide how I should feel about him. His appearance was attractive, but the coldness in which his personality was wrapped made me doubt and mistrust him; although there was nothing unusual about his life, I could feel the intuition manifesting itself like a heavy lump in my stomach, an uncomfortable and pressing feeling.

“The worst ones,” he replied with a grin. The man pulled out a chair and sat down, looking at me relaxed.

“Is this really a chance meeting? You, me,” I furrowed my brow slightly, confused by his grin, locking my fingers together and leaning against my chest, “my restaurant,” I clarified, looking back at the small number of diners in other parts of the restaurant (few people wanted to dine in a half-burned building where the walls and floor had absorbed the smell of smoke). I didn’t like his appearance here.

“No, actually,” he leaned back in the upholstered chair, adjusting the collar of his white shirt at the back of his neck. I noticed how casually he touched the rough fabric with his fingers, how his chest heaved as he inhaled. I raised my left eyebrow, expecting him to continue, “I saw you in the window.”

“And to what do I owe that encounter?” I nodded, picking up a cup of coffee. Although Dante’s voice was softer and more relaxed, I couldn’t help but feel his coldness and distance, his superiority over me in the dialogue, which obviously frustrated me — it made it difficult to find the right strategy to expose this man. Squinting slightly in the dim light of the old lamps, I could make out a small dark spot under his chin, the darkness of the night making it difficult to see the colour, but I was sure it was related to the blow I had dealt him yesterday.

“Decided to remind you that walking in dark corridors can end badly,” was probably the first emotion I could read on his face. Primal superiority followed by mockery. Either Dante had felt confident enough to speak to me too soon, since he’d decided to speak so bluntly, or he was amused by the situation — I found it hard to laugh when De Rosso tried to touch my thigh under my dress, jeopardising my mission.

I decided to mirror the man’s behaviour and, placing the cup with the brown stains on the table, I leaned back in my chair and relaxed, “Then you shouldn’t get under the dresses of innocent women,” I replied with a slight smile.

“I don’t remember a single innocent woman that night.”

Our eyes locked, both of us feeling superior to the other, even though we both knew it was a lie. My irritation with the man grew, as did my desire to know him — what could be hidden behind the happy life, if one can call it that, of a child from Salerno? Dante is not to be trusted. Despite my unconditional loyalty to my family, I could not allow a stranger, rejected by my body and my mind, to get under my feet. Unwilling to tolerate the man’s presence a moment longer, I held up my left palm, whereupon the young man in uniform approached me.

“Bill, please,” I asked the waiter, to which he quickly nodded and left.

“Leaving so soon?” Dante’s voice meant I had to tell him everything I knew and I had no right to demand reciprocity, “You still haven’t told me why you were in Luсa’s office.”

“I’m not even going to,” I arched an eyebrow, resting my elbows on the table and pushing my shoulders forward.

Dante chuckled as he rubbed his chin. I picked up the phone, intending to contact the guards.

“I can take you to the castle,” the man suddenly suggested. Noticing the confusion and disbelief on my face, he repeated the same phrase in a more familiar, colder style, nodding slowly. I blocked the screen of my phone and tucked the front strands of my hair behind my ears, revealing my face — my security was matched by my curiosity; by talking to Dante, I could cunningly get the information I needed from him, including one that would make my exposure easier.

“Your bill,” the waiter held out a terminal, to which I quickly swiped my card without opening my eyes from Dante’s night gaze. Despite his distance, which felt like a cold tingle on my skin, the man looked immersed in the lights of dark London; his chest rose slowly, the thin cashmere of his pullover enveloping his massive ribcage. Exhaling softly, I found myself clenching my lower lip between my teeth, burning De Rosso’s gaze. I squeezed my eyes shut sharply.

At the same time, I got up, straightened my jacket and, squeezing my bag between my fingers, we headed for the lift. The small room smelled like a diffuser, with an apricot scent that made me close my eyes for a moment and think of Italy; if not for the sharp pain in my legs, I would probably have fallen asleep standing up. Lately, coffee had begun to have the opposite effect on me, draining all my energy. The coldness of my fingertips felt like a touch, and I felt the warmth emanating from the man to my left. Even with my eyes closed, I caught the scent of his spicy perfume, which tickled the tip of my nose, reminiscent of ginger. The sound that signalled the arrival of the lift to the ground floor was so loud in my ears that a headache pierced my temple, and the man quickly raised his hand, pointing me towards the opening doors. In the fleeting moment when our fingers were a few millimetres apart, I felt a sharp jolt of electricity running from the tip of my nail straight to my heart; opening my eyes wide, I realised that this closeness, though unintentional, had affected me more than the strongest espresso, making me breathe more frequently.

Dante had a black Audi, and the city’s night lights reflected off the glossy paint of the SUV, catching the eyes of passers-by. The man drove the car quite skilfully, his brown eyes following the road, one hand resting restfully on his hip, the other turning the wheel. Dante remained at a distance from me, not trying to engage in dialogue, which was characteristically different from his behaviour in the restaurant, while my thoughts returned to my incomprehensible reaction to his proximity, to the minimal distance between our fingers. I was confused by this unexpectedness — I’d never felt this way about a simple touch, a feeling I couldn’t explain. My eyes began to close, my lids falling slower and slower like cobblestones until I was plunged into darkness. With one last glance at De Rosso, which he noticed, I relaxed in the car seat, immersing myself in the scent of Dante that surrounded me all around. Too exhausted to analyse the behaviour of the man on my right, I began to doze, my head resting on my shoulder, having heard the man grin earlier. I opened my eyes from time to time. Although the slow speed of the car was more soothing than the bed in the castle where we were going. My eyes opened again when Dante abruptly turned to the side of the road and got out of the Audi. I followed him.

“Why did we stop?” I asked, moving closer to the man hunched over the wheel. Looking around, I noticed that we had already left London, which meant the castle was a few kilometers away. There was only a road and a forest, and I was on my guard. This was the perfect opportunity to kill me.

“The tyre is damaged,” Dante said briefly, sighing deeply. He stood up and met my gaze, “I’ll change it in minutes,” he added, walking to the boot while I looked at the flat tyre. Exhaling deeply, I raised my head to the dark sky, then turned and took a few steps away from the Audi, walking along the road in my high heels.

“You look like a master of your craft,” I chuckled, crossing my arms over my chest and tilting my head to one side. Even on his back he felt my smile.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve changed a tyre, but still,” Dante replied, handling the jack, “I prefer a different kind of car.

“Did you set all this up on purpose to show off?” I squatted a few metres away from the man and narrowed my eyes. He had no idea how much information I knew about cars.

“You found out,” he said with a hoarse laugh.

“So my theory is correct,” I raised an eyebrow, not taking my eyes off Dante’s movements. He was working slowly but effectively with the tools and the new tyre was already in place of the previous one. I could see his muscles tense through the fabric of his shirt.

“What theory?” the man frowned, checked the strength of his work and, making sure everything was in order, picked up the tools and put them in the boot.

“About your conceit.”

The man who built a wall of ice around himself must have had a great past, especially if his life was never associated with crime — talking to Jensen, he showed no friendly warmth, continued to keep his distance not only physically but also psychologically, and combining these observations with his insolence at Luca’s house and his relaxed attitude today, I concluded that this indifference in his eyes was due to pride; Dante thought he was better than everyone else, so he did not get involved in the events going on around him.

“Really?” the man was surprised, scratching his cheeks and coming closer to me.

“Absolutely,” I nodded.

Coffee, cigarettes, insomnia, stress or the intoxicating scent of Dante’s perfume that I could inhale so deeply at close range had turned my head. His brown eyes, slightly squinted, wrinkled at the corners, studied my face intently as I breathed slowly, feeling my lips tighten and my heart beat frantically. The early morning in the forest, the dawn, the time when bright rays fell on the sturdy tree trunks, golden streams illuminating the bark — these were his eyes. I saw little moles, like they were drawn on with a pen. The silence between us didn’t go unnoticed and Dante looked down, coughing.

“Your eye,” the man said, not hiding his embarrassment, shifting quickly from foot to foot, pointing to my left eye, his movements jerky, as if he didn’t know where to go, “red,” he added. Absorbed in my thoughts, I didn’t notice the stinging pain and raised my hand to my face, stopping just in time to realise I was wearing make-up. It was probably a burst capillary. Dante leaned closer, one hand opening the car door behind me, “Sit down”.

Something flickered in his gaze. As Dante closed the door on my side, I followed his movements. Despite the fact that I used the same tactics with him as I did with other people, he remained cool and relaxed with me at the same time. But he was anything but Italian. I had lived in Italy long enough to understand that. Another contradiction.

We arrived at the castle ten minutes after changing the wheel, without saying a word. I could barely pay attention to the man, concentrating on my own feelings — my eye kept hurting, my heart kept beating fast, the blood pounding in my ears; all I could dream of now was a soft bed.

The man got out and slammed the door. I did the same, but immediately saw small holes in the stone walls of the castle. There were bullets all over the floor. De Rosso watched me cautiously, and when he decided to come anyway, I put my hand in front of him and pressed my finger to my lips. The man’s gaze turned sharply serious and we were both silent for a few seconds before I bent down and took off my high heels, using one of them as a weapon. I walked quietly up the front steps, feeling Dante quickly following behind me. When I opened the front door, I immediately noticed drops of blood on the stone floor. My first thought was of Jensen. I knew he could protect himself, but I didn’t understand how he would behave with his wife. The attackers could have been many times more than the local guards. I glanced to the side: several men were lying on the ground, and more were inside the house. A massacre had indeed taken place here, the results of which made my heart beat wildly. I couldn’t lose Jensen. My jaw clenched, I let out a choked breath and squeezed the heel in my hand harder. I took a step forward, trying not to step on the blood. It was dark all around, the red footsteps leading to the back door, so I crossed that distance quickly. Step by step I heard a soft female scream. I was about to leave the house when Dante stood in front of me and gestured for silence. He was the first to leave and, feeling the muscles tense throughout his body, he began to breathe heavily in an attempt to contain aggression and panic. There was a muffled scream in the street and I ran out into the yard to see the bloody body of my brother and his weeping wife. My eyes widened in horror and my breathing stopped. I couldn’t even move. The shoe fell from my hands. I didn’t care what Lynette was saying, what Dante was doing, my brother was lying on the cold ground, his back resting on the castle wall, his head pointing to the place where he had been married a few days before.

Blinking quickly, I realised I had to act quickly, I ran over to Jensen and felt his pulse, “He’s alive”.

His body was covered in blood. I couldn’t see his blue eyes because they were closed and the eyelids twitched slightly. There were drops of blood on his blond hair and all over his body. His clothes were drenched in red. I didn’t recognise this man as my brother. There was a wound in his shoulder. I immediately tore off my white shirt and wrapped the piece of cloth around his shoulder, causing my brother to exhale heavily. The colour immediately turned to dark blood. The bullet had hit a vein.

“They’re coming back,” Lynette cried as Dante tried to figure out what had happened, “I don’t know who they are. Lots of guns, people came here and died.” She was definitely hysterical. I had not recognised most of her speech.

“We have to go,” De Rosso said, getting Lynette up and then coming to me. I nodded and put my brother around my waist. He began to regain consciousness.

“Explain to me who these people were,” she said as Dante and I carried my brother to the car, “why would anyone want Jensen dead?”

I just frowned and shook my head. We had no time. Lynette quickly opened the passenger door and De Rosso put my brother in the back seat, the girl did the same. I turned to Dante who was standing thoughtfully by the closed door, his hands on his hips. I understood that if my brother’s life was threatened, I would have to tell a stranger details about my life, but there was no other choice. My heart was beating fast and his lips were covered in blood. My brother’s life was hanging by a thread, I couldn’t lose him.

“I can’t take him to the hospital,” I breathed quickly, “the accessible part of the restaurant has all the necessary first aid and enough security.

“If they came here, they know about the casino. They may already be there.”

I looked away in panic, quickly thinking of another solution. But Dante did know about the casino. The light from the headlights of several cars suddenly appeared in the distance, the man next to me also noticed, “I’ll drive,” I said abruptly and ran to the driver’s door. Dante was already sitting on my left, checking the condition of my brother who was breathing heavily.

I started the engine, backed up abruptly, pulled the handbrake and turned the Audi around. As soon as several cars entered the castle grounds, I drove onto the road and turned towards the city.

“Be careful, Alana,” Jensen clears his throat from the back seat. In the rear view mirror I noticed the blood on his face from the movements. Lynette was there, but she seemed so frightened by the situation that she didn’t notice anything around her.

“I’m not going to let you die,” I said, noticing the two black SUVs approaching.

“You’ll kill us faster,” the brother coughed again, trying to laugh, and didn’t say another word. Lynette held the bandage around his shoulder, still bleeding. I didn’t know what Jensen meant, the fast car I was driving, or the people who shot him. I understood that the one who set fire to the casino was behind it all. Anger built up inside me by the second and I began to lose control, gripping the steering wheel with incredible force until Dante’s husky voice echoed in my subconscious:

“Brake and turn here,” he said, pointing to the left-hand bend that led into the unknown. I did as he said and only one car missed us, the driver of the second car managed to swerve in time. The speed increased and so did the risk of losing control. Ahead I saw a road repair sign, behind it a special asphalt paving machine.

“Lynette, close your eyes,” I said loudly, knowing she wouldn’t survive another death. As I picked up speed, I noticed Dante’s grip on the door handle tightening. I took a deep breath and steered the car straight for the sign, knowing that the size of the Audi meant the car behind wouldn’t notice it. I quickly turned the wheel to the right and was pulling out onto the open road when the car behind me crashed into a car on the tarmac. Sparks appeared in the rear-view mirror, indicating that the driver had not survived.

“You can open it,” I breathed. Dante relaxed visibly in his chair, but his eyebrows knitted quickly as he looked at the road.

“Straight for a few kilometers, then uphill,” he replied, panting.

“Where are we going?” I asked, noticing in the distance the rise De Rosso was talking about.

“To my house.”

There was no information on his property. Without another word, I quickly followed the man’s route. As I approached a small two-storey house, I slammed on the brakes, which could have seriously damaged the car, but my brain could only see my brother’s blood. My blood. Dante grabbed Jensen’s good arm and dragged him into the house, and Lynette quickly followed. Running into the house, I immediately noticed a small dining table, from which I immediately threw everything away, and De Rosso placed my brother there. The man took off his jacket, unbuttoned several buttons and rolled up his sleeves. I took the opportunity to remove the homemade bandage from Jensen’s shoulder, carefully pulling it away from his skin. An unpleasant smell of meat, to which I had long become accustomed, immediately hit my nose, but once I had finished with the cloth, I began to look around for what I needed. Lynette was sitting on the floor with her back to the table so as not to see anything. I didn’t pay any attention to her.

Dante took a first aid kit from the kitchen cabinet and quickly placed it on the table. When I opened it, I immediately saw a small bottle of hydrogen peroxide; while the man was washing his hands in the sink, I decontaminated the tools that De Rosso was going to take out the bullet, after which I treated Jensen’s wound. My brother began to quickly move his injured arm and shoulders, to which I abruptly took a step back.

“Damn,” I hissed, setting the bottle down and holding my brother’s body. Dante began to work professionally on the wound, not a single muscle in his face shaking. He disinfected the tweezers again and leaned closer to the hole, starting to pull at the edges, looking for the bullet itself, after a few moments the man nodded, pressing his thumb to the spot where the metal was obviously located. I didn’t look away as Dante removed the bullet. From time to time I rubbed a cloth over Jensen’s skin so that the blood didn’t completely flood the wound and Dante didn’t lose a bullet. I had done the same for my father on more than one occasion. Finished quickly and successfully, De Rosso tossed the bullet onto the table and began disinfecting the needle, ready to stitch it up.

Forgotten Feeling

Sickening, sticky blood dripped down my cold hands and onto the wooden table. There was a musty smell of metal and moisture in the air, pressing heavily on my stomach and making me gag. Jensen fell silent, his movements no longer so abrupt, but his labored breathing echoed in my ears, squeezing my head; his whole body was covered in blood, and where Dante had searched for the bullet there were scalpel cuts where red flesh remained beneath the layer of skin. I refused to give my brother alcohol as a painkiller, despite the pity I felt every time I looked at his tortured face — by reducing his body’s response to pain in this way, we risked damaging the wound and bones even more, and not even knowing it. De Rosso looked focused on the painstaking work of the tweezers — trying to minimise my brother’s suffering by carefully withdrawing the needle and thread; focused on his work, he could barely breathe, concentrating on the stitching, and then there was the sharp sound of metal.

“It’s done,” Dante said as he finished bandaging the wound. My brother was breathing heavily, most likely he had already lost consciousness and would be tormented by a fever for the next few hours, “there is a bedroom on the first floor, you need to take him there and wash out the remaining blood.” The man looked at the shaking Lynette and I shook my head.

“I’ll do it,” I gasped, grabbing Jensen’s waist as De Rosso grabbed the other shoulder. Together we carried him to the bed and laid him down neatly. Now his life was only threatened by the risk of the wound festering. Lynette followed us.

She looked no better than Jensen at the moment — tired, tortured, covered in blood. Her eyes were like two large green orbs, staring terrified at everything around her. The girl’s hands were shaking so badly that she couldn’t hold anything in them.

I found a small bowl in the bathroom off the bedroom, emptied it of unnecessary supplies and poured water into it; after wetting a towel, I returned to my brother and began gently running the cloth over his skin, feeling him flinch at each touch. There were drops of sweat on his forehead, his forehead furrowed and his eyelids twitching, his chest heaving heavily as if an animal were sitting on it. The water had quickly turned red and the towel was tattered, but there was less blood on Jensen’s face and body, which probably eased his condition.

I put the bowl on the bedside table and sat down on the edge of the bed, my legs spread wide and my elbows on my hips. Tired, I lowered my head onto my palms and clutched the roots of my hair, trying to adjust my psyche to the situation — I had grown up in a murderous family and such encounters with my father were not uncommon, but to see my brother struggling with life was too much for me: weakness and hopelessness overwhelmed me, there was nothing I could do to take away his misery. A rustling sound was heard in the corner of the room and an amorphous silhouette dissolved into the shadows of the room, sobbing.

“Alana,” Lynette whispered in a choked voice. Emerging from the darkness, I noticed the glare in her malachite glass eyes; the tip of her nose was trembling, as were her lips and fingers. She shuffled from foot to foot, turning her head across the room to avoid looking at the bed where Jensen lay. Her hair, clinging to her damp face, prevented Lynette from speaking or breathing, “what just… what is…” her tears almost made her gasp, “going on?”

Sighing heavily, I lifted my head and pressed my fingers to my face. I really didn’t want to talk to the girl right now, to calm her down, let alone explain what had just happened. Lifting my heavy eyelids to the frightened girl, I stared at her for a long moment in silence; she gave in to the pressure of my gaze and stepped back, sitting on a chair against the wall and pressing her thighs together with her fingers, waiting for my answer. Dante stood silently by the door, leaning his shoulder against the wall and crossing his arms over his chest.

“I don’t know,” I admitted honestly, nodding slowly. There was silence — Lynette was waiting for me to continue, and I was keeping the secrets of the illegal business as much as I could in this situation; she was unlikely to believe that the castle had been shot by accident.

“Jensen,” she sobbed, wiping her nose with the edge of her sleeve, “he said that… he works with,” the girl exhaled loudly, gripping her fingers tighter, “with bad people, but I didn’t think it was that serious.”

My restaurant was set on fire twice, and then, by a happy coincidence, the building where my brother and his wife were staying was shelled. Jensen could hardly have been the target, he was a tool to influence me, but who was in the shadows and in charge of the process remained a mystery. A cough in my chest brought me back to reality, where Lynette, shaking like an aspen leaf, was rocking from side to side in her chair, while Dante watched silently, without interfering.

“Jensen said he was laundering money for some illegal associates in his bar. We met there,” the girl whispered, pausing. I pulled down the corners of my lips and tucked my hair behind my ears.

“He does a lot more than you want to know,” I replied groggily, clearing my throat.

“I don’t understand,” Lynette got up from her chair, arms raised to her head, “Jensen almost got killed today,” the fear in her eyes turned to panic and her drooping voice to a falsetto.

“He should have told me about our family sooner. I’m sorry you found out this way.”

“But how?” she exclaimed, getting up from her chair, “How could Jensen be involved with weapons?”

I exhaled loudly, beginning to lose patience with Lynette’s tantrum. Slowly rising from the bed, I straightened my back and took a few steps in her direction, frowning. Even though anger coursed through my veins like lead, I was too exhausted to pay any attention to the girl.

“He is my brother, Lynette,” I reminded her in a deep, raspy voice, “and therefore bound to me. My enemies are his enemies too,” I looked stubbornly into Carbyn’s green eyes, I could see her awareness of the situation changing, the reason for the attack on her husband right in front of her, “you will see Jensen in blood many more times, my dear, until he is dead. That’s the price of being called Wollstonecraft.”

“Jensen almost died today because of your damned business,” Lynette tried to push me, but I quickly caught her hand and pulled her close to me, causing the girl to frown from a strain in her shoulder.

“Don’t blame me for what you don’t know,” I hissed through clenched teeth, gripping her wrist so tightly that my fingers turned white; animal rage rose in me. Footsteps were heard and Dante’s fingers fell on my hand, forcing me to release the terrified Lynette.

“You’re safe in this house, you can take a shower and try to calm down,” De Rosso said, “we’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

I exhaled heavily, trying to get rid of my anger, and left the room, giving my brother one last worried look. Lynette didn’t like me, but she would look after her husband. I felt like I was about to lose my mind.

Once up on the second floor, I began a quick search of the rooms, looking for another guest bedroom, it was very close to the stairs. I quickly made my way to the bathroom, not bothering to close all the doors. I mindlessly tore off my wet and dirty clothes and kicked them into the corner of the room, trying to get rid of the smell of sweat and blood around me. I turned on the water and stood under the hot jets, forcing myself to breathe slowly and deeply. The drops burned the skin on my back and my hair immediately stuck to my body; pale red streaks ran down my legs, carrying Jensen’s blood to the drain in the floor. The clear glass that separated me from the rest of the bathroom fogged up in an instant, causing me to close my eyes.

The thought of death hadn’t bothered me for a long time, hadn’t frightened me. I had become so resigned to my death that I no longer attached any sadness or negative emotions to it. Death was inevitable, and there was no longer any value in allowing it to happen — no matter what I did, I was going to die anyway, especially if I worked with people who disliked me and threatened to use their new weapons in practice. The meaningless dragging of my existence condemned me to a silent wandering in search of my end. I no longer knew happiness and joy, moments of smiling came when I forgot that I was searching for non-existent answers. I lived with the feeling of a cast-iron cauldron on my chest, as if my own thoughts were weighing it down and adding the necessary ingredients for poison.

Tonight brought back long-forgotten feelings — fear for my own brother overshadowing my worries. It was unbearable to see him on the brink of death, exhausted, wounded, in a pool of his own blood. Now that the fear for his life had receded into the background, an unbearable rage rose in my throat. The stench of rotting flesh and decay reappeared around me and hit my head with a new attack of migraine. The anger was replaced by tears, which came out and hid under the drops of hot water. Resting my hands on the glass wall of the shower cubicle, I began to breathe heavily, feeling a burning sensation on the skin of my back from the high temperature. On top of the threat to Jensen’s life, there was the fight with Lynette: there was always a fear inside me that one day I would not be able to control myself and would hurt someone close to me because of my own aggression. I almost hurt her today.

“Did you run away because you were afraid of public condemnation?” Dante’s deep, tired voice echoed through the bathroom, fading into the sound of running water. Reluctantly, I opened my eyes and swept my palm across the fogged glass to see the man in front of me.

“I was afraid I’d hurt her,” I replied quietly.

“But you held back.”

“I don’t know if I would have resisted if you hadn’t been there,” I admitted. Dante was silent for a moment, pondering my words. I must have frightened him with my capriciousness, which was for the best — if De Rosso was frightened of me, it would speed up the process of his release.

“I’ve brought a towel,” he said.

“How do you know about the casino?” I said, ignoring his words. The sound of the water faded into the background.

“I’ve worked with people like you, Alana, you all walk among yourselves, I heard about you before I met your brother and the accounts in his business confirmed all my suspicions,” Dante said slowly, “and millions don’t pass through a little known bar in London.”

I really should have been wary of De Rosso, his intelligence and charm could kill my business. Over the years I had learned to think strategically and control my impulses, but this man made me feel the same way I felt about my husband.

“You need a rest, Alana. Your things are on the bed,” Dante said huskily, then turned and left the bathroom. Yes, I definitely needed a rest.

It was past one in the morning when my back hit the headboard. I couldn’t remember how long I’d been standing under the scalding jets of water that had sliced through my skin since Dante had left. I ran my fingers through my wet hair, letting black strands fall out, and pulled the heavy blanket and soft plaid over me tighter, feeling a shiver run down my shoulders and shoulder blades. Despite what I’d been through today, and the terrible pain in my eyes, I didn’t want to sleep; I just twitched my leg nervously, but sleep wouldn’t come. I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling the rough skin on my forearm with my fingertips, and pulled the blanket down to look at the scar. I’d told Dante a few days ago that it was from a car accident. I caught my lower lip between my teeth and nibbled at it in a throbbing motion, pressing my fingers harder against the bump.

The crackle of the fire and the sound of the embers spreading through the walls of the small house in the distance of London. My knees pressed to my chest, I sat on the soft sofa, wrapped in my own jumper, until the man handed me a plaid.

“Thank you,” I replied in a hoarse voice, covering my legs with the fluffy material. His long, pale fingers held out a cup of tea with lemon, hot steam rising and hitting my nose.

“You look tired,” Nicholas said worriedly, putting a hand on my shoulder and pressing me against his chest. The steady beat of his heart had a reassuring effect on me, weighing down my eyelids. I had never felt so safe, so relaxed; in my husband’s arms, I didn’t worry about the work I had to do tomorrow, about the people I had fought with — I was happy with my lover, and the little world we had made for ourselves was enough for me. His cold fingers stroked my blond hair in a circular motion at my temple. Nicholas was thin and tall with pale skin; born in Korea, he had moved to Naples for reasons unknown to me personally, taking a job as a teaching assistant at the university where I was studying. I took a deep breath of the man’s citrus scent and smiled softly as I opened my eyes and took a sip of hot tea.

“My father has given me a lot of work, my love,” I admitted honestly as I continued to drink my warming beverage, “I haven’t had time to rest. It’s different here than in Amalfi — more work, faster people and more aggressive. It’s just a stream of endless problems,” I hummed. Nicholas coughed and frowned.

“Mr Wollstonecraft, Robert,” the man began slowly, “is training you to run the restaurant. He’s thinking of an inheritance and he needs an heir.”

I dropped my eyes to my fingers and bit the inside of my cheek, “Dad’s still hoping for Jensen,” I grinned sadly. Nicholas was silent for a moment.

He didn’t like what I was doing, and my husband had mentioned it more than once — he was worried about my safety, which was constantly threatened by the business and my stroppy nature; he didn’t want to wake up one morning to find his dead wife dumped on the Amalfi Coast. But Nicholas’s fear was as strong as his love for me; the man knew how important it was for me to get The Empire, to prove my worth in this world, so he continued to support me. His plump lips dipped to the top of my head and he lightly buried his long fingers in my blonde hair, causing me to exhale in a relaxed manner as a pleasant warmth of intimacy with my husband spread through my chest.

“Hey, darling,” Nicholas reached out and touched my chin, forcing me to look into his eyes. I bit my lower lip and exhaled heavily as I felt him pinch my chubby cheek. There was a chuckle in his dark eyes that made me smile embarrassed; the man took my right palm in his and slowly ran his fingers over mine, stroking them. We didn’t tell each other much about ourselves, but that protected Nicholas more than it did me. I didn’t want my father to know about my love, or I would have lost my chance to rule the casino forever. Still, it was almost impossible to hide my father’s business, especially here in London, so I had to tell Nicholas about the illegal part of my life. “Even if Mr Wollstonecraft gives the restaurant to Jensen, your brother will give it to you,” he said.

I nodded slowly. Jensen had mentioned more than once that he didn’t see himself as a full participant in this business, thus creating an alternative scenario in my favour.

“When this is over,” the man continued, leaving kisses on my knuckles, “maybe we could go to Vietnam?”

“What about there?” I asked with a smile. He shrugged.

“Something new.”

In those moments when Nicholas was by my side, I forgot the cold-blooded murders, the thefts, the blood on my hands — nothing existed, just the two of us. In his eyes was my whole world, my black sea that gave me hope for a better future; his smell took me back to my childhood, where security and love reigned; his smile made my chest swell with warmth, his casual touches, his caring voice, his tender kisses — all of this made me a different person. Next to him, I was just Alana, unharmed.

Suddenly, there was a vibration in the walls and the sound of explosions and gunfire in the distance. Frowning, I pulled away from my husband and jumped up, dropping a cup of boiling water on the floor, which shattered into tiny shards all over the floor. In an instant, the peaceful idyll turned into a terrifying battle with the attackers, who kept bombarding the walls of the house, trying to get inside. The windows shattered and I quickly began to look around for weapons; guns were often hidden under tables and I took two, handing one to Nicholas (the man was a terrible shot, having held a firearm three times in his law-abiding life). It was happening faster than I could have realised — several men had already made it into the house before they quickly dropped dead from the bullets, but, distracted, I didn’t notice as one of the attackers grabbed the hot poker Nicholas had used minutes earlier to stir the wood and coals in the fireplace and struck me in the forearm, sending a wave of sharp, stabbing pain down my arm. Giving in to my reflex, I fired a bullet in his direction, noting the black spots all around. Nicholas was exchanging fire with three men.

“Too many,” shouted the man hiding behind the wall. He was out of bullets, I had a few left.

“Cellar,” I shouted back, he was right, we could not defeat so many people.

Nicholas nodded and took a few steps to the left towards the stairs, I fired the last shots at two of the men, then threw the pistol at the head of the third and followed my husband. We had about a minute. A hot stream of blood ran down my forearm and over my fingers, leaving marks on the floor, but the shock prevented me from feeling the pain of the wound. He quickly opened the iron door and let me go first, staying close to the stairs.

“I’ll call my brother,” I said, turning to Nicholas, “he’ll get help,” I put my arm around the man’s shoulder and led him into the concrete-walled room. He jerked sharply at the doorknob, which didn’t budge, and then it snapped open. Frowning, I looked up at his pale face.

“There are guns here,” my husband reminded me. I nodded quickly, catching my breath.

The noise around me pressed on my head, making me panic and lose my mind. The man turned towards the stairs as I squeezed my fingers tighter around his hand, noticing the black ball rolling down the steps. It all happened too fast — one moment I was holding Nicholas, feeling the warmth of his skin, and the next he was running out of the bunker, slamming the iron door in my face. A second later there was a huge explosion that knocked the whitewash from the ceiling onto my head. I stared at the door with a frozen look of shock on my face, my mouth open and tears in my eyes, I couldn’t breathe out and the blood kept dripping onto the floor — Nicholas had just been here and now he was gone.

Grenades had saved my life more than once in firefights, but on this ominous night they played against me, taking my husband’s life with a shuddering explosion. The bunker was not a bunker at all — a small room in the basement with concrete walls and an iron door was a torture room, so it was only locked from the outside. I still remember how, seconds after the explosion, I felt a strong urge to empty my stomach, but a flood of tears, which I wiped from my cheeks with trembling fingers, prevented me from even taking a breath.

The months of searching for the culprits had turned into a nightmare for me.

The trembling in my body, the stabbing pain in my heart, and the thoughts flooding my mind made me exhale heavily and get out of bed, exposing the exposed skin of my arms and legs to the cool breeze of the night. I ran my fingers nervously through the strands, picking up the loose hair in a wisp and leaving it on the bedside table. There were no cigarettes nearby, nothing to stop the voice in my head that had been telling me all these years that I was to blame for my husband’s death, that I was unworthy of him, and that he died, died, because he fell in love with a terrible person like me. He died for an unworthy person. My heart began to beat so fast that I had to sit on my knees in front of the bed and grab the blanket. I couldn’t breathe, the tears were choking me, my head was spinning. I covered my mouth with my hands to muffle my sobs. The pain in my chest grew rapidly. All these years this pain had lived inside me, every night I thought about what could have prevented Nicholas’ death, that I could have been in his place, that I should have been in his place. Just like today, I had to be in my brother’s place. Tears filled my eyes again and began to trickle down my cheeks, forcing me to cover my mouth more tightly so that no one could hear the sobs. So that no one could hear that I was in pain. I hated myself for it and was scared at the same time, because wherever I go, I bring death with me, my hands are soaked with blood and dirty money. Even the place of Jensen’s wedding was covered in blood, the castle where he and his wife laughed and were happy in their marriage turned into darkness and bullets. I was afraid to admit that years of self-control might be wasted. It was frightening to realise that I could have lost my brother. He was my blood and my soul. I would have been burned a thousand times if it would have eased his suffering.

I didn’t sleep that night. I lay with my back against the bed, staring at the night sky and crying because I had no other choice.

I was awakened by the strong vibrations of my mobile phone. An agitated Thomas, in a feigned calm manner accompanied by occasional coughing, inquired about what had happened last night and my current location. After informing my deputy of Jensen’s health and Dante’s (unreported) home, I hung up. Pressing the corner of the phone to my lips, I closed my eyes and felt the stinging pain of inconsolable tears pouring down for hours; my nasal mucosa was dry and my throat ached for water.

Emotional exhaustion based in the chest area accompanied me throughout the morning and when I got out of bed and went to the mirror, I realised that the inner pain was beginning to take its toll on my appearance — lack of sleep, too much coffee and nicotine, the tears made me look like a dead man with sunken cheeks and swollen eyelids, a red nose and dry lips, the tips of my hair were split and I looked more like a haystack. I used to look in the mirror and smile at my own reflection, in those days my family was together, my father and Nicholas were alive; my blue eyes, like a bright sky, radiated life, and my cheeks and blonde hair added to the radiance. I didn’t know what I had become.

The hot shower didn’t cheer me up, but it warmed my limbs and the blood rushed to my face, hiding my discomfort. My suspended state prevented me from lifting the weight on my chest, and wiping my skin sharply with a towel, I tried to wash away the feeling of being involved in yesterday’s incident. My head was heavy and ached intensely, making me want to sink into a soft bed and not move for hours or 24 hours, but a boring feeling in my stomach reminded me to eat, so with a conflicted feeling I made my way to the ground floor. Weakness in my body slowed my movements and black spots began to reappear in front of my eyes, but in the kitchen I managed to find some hard-boiled eggs, which I quickly peeled from their shells and popped into my mouth, barely managing to chew. I washed my breakfast down with water and took a deep breath, feeling the tremor slowly fade and leave my body. The weakness remained, but I had the grace to make my way to my brother’s bedroom. I noticed the half-open door to Jensen’s bedroom and hurried over. Lynette was sitting on the edge of the bed, Dante was standing with his back to me in his usual position: arms crossed over his chest, but I could see how tense his muscles were. I was sure he was frowning. For a second I thought my brother was getting worse, but later Jensen started to talk. He was awake.

“Good morning, sista,” Jensen said with a sudden cheerful smile. I moved closer to his bed and sat down in Lynette’s place, who turned away reluctantly at the sight of me and stood by the window; the girl hated me after last night, her psyche needed time to adjust to the family she was in.

“Morning, Jensen,” I blinked suspiciously, rubbing his short blonde hair, “how are you feeling?” my innate concern for my brother’s life receded into the background at the sight of his bright sea blue eyes glowing with happiness as if yesterday had never happened.

“Like a mosquito bite,” the man grinned back, continuing to gnash his teeth, to which I only lowered my gaze and pressed my lips together to hold back a chuckle, “as usual,” he waved his good hand, to which I imperceptibly breathed a sigh of relief. A pleasant warmth spread through his chest from the fact that his brother was all right, despite the wound in his shoulder, “you’ve improved your driving. Have you been taking lessons?” Jensen clarified, not missing the opportunity to end with a joke that made me roll my eyes, which I immediately regretted because of the sharp pain.

“Yes,” I picked up on his joke, “how to drive with a bleeding passenger. A special course,” Jensen nodded happily, glad I wasn’t hyperactive, then turned to the window where Lynette was standing — I wasn’t sure what caught his attention more, the view out the window of the unknown room or his wife, “Do you remember anything from last night?” My insides tensed at the change of subject, Dante came a little closer, stopping in the same position near the wardrobe. He knew more about my business than I suspected and that made me wary of him. Lynette was silent.

The laughter in Jensen’s eyes didn’t disappear, but the smile slowly faded, leaving only soft lines like marks on his face; he took a deep breath, patting the soft blanket with his palm as if searching for the right words, his feet twitching nervously, “I was in the kitchen when I heard an unintelligible noise. I saw the guards getting nervous, checking their weapons,” there was a grim expression on my brother’s face, evidenced by his straight gaze and slightly frowning eyebrows, his head tilting depending on the part of the sentence, “the guard opened the door as they immediately started shooting at him. There was no chance.” I continued to listen in silence, “I picked up the gun, tried to get an idea of the situation outside, saw only black cars and men in uniform.”

“Military uniforms?” I shook my head incomprehensively, squinting my eyes.

“Looks like it,” the man said confirming, “black, no camouflage, there was also some strange embroidery, like,” Jensen wanted to raise his other hand, but the pain made him drop it back on the bed, “like two zigzags superimposed on each other.”

Confusion froze on my face. I had to bite down on the inside of my cheek and knit my eyebrows to keep my emotions in check.

“Can you draw?” I asked as if in a trance, quickly finding a notepad and pencil in the room.

“Give it to me,” he drew curved lines like three triangles with two strokes, “the guard was hit hard. I was hit by a bullet as I ran to the other side of the castle, they were shooting absentmindedly, must have gone through the window.”

“None of the guards survived,” Dante said stoutly, twiddling his thumbs. He kept his head down, as if he were watching from the outside.

“They went into the house,” Jensen’s words made my insides twitch, “then I was about to pass out, so I don’t remember anything. But it was as if they saw the wound and left.

If they knew who I was, they wouldn’t have left so easily. It took a lot of effort not to roll my eyes at that moment. Lynette stalked out of the room and I gave her a disapproving look for being so blunt, then looked at Dante and nodded towards the door, keeping eye contact with him. The man rose from his seat and followed the girl, leaving me alone with my brother. With a relieved exhale, I turned back to Jensen and looked stubbornly into his tired face.

“Can you draw a portrait of someone?” I asked, raising my left eyebrow, and my brother shook his head negatively. Apparently all the people were wearing masks and he couldn’t remember their faces. “Did you hear what they were talking about?” Jensen shook his head again and I lowered my eyes and exhaled loudly. I had the task of finding a grain of sand between the dunes in front of me.

Thoughts scattered in different directions, like invisible threads carrying each idea for finding the attackers — at least I knew their symbolism, and that made my path much easier. I had to get back to Amalfi to avoid irreparable consequences, but at the same time I had to deal with the restaurant and Jensen’s injury as quickly as possible. The warmth of my brother’s hot palm burned my cold fingers, which I unconsciously clenched into a fist on the blanket. Looking up at the man, I could see the worry on his face, mixed with guilt for the trouble he’d caused. There were so many guesses as to what had happened that it made nonsense of everything.

“If the mafia wanted to destroy me, they would do it through you in the most perverse way,” I said bitterly, nodding slowly.

“Maybe they didn’t want me dead,” Jensen replied. I looked up at him in surprise, “Maybe it was a warning.”

I paused for a moment to consider his words. If Jensen’s consciousness hadn’t been distorted at the time of the wound, and if he remembered exactly what the enforcers had done when they’d spotted the bullet, then their goal might have been to scare me through my brother.

“Or cars?” the man continued, listing options as I listened in silence. He began to elaborate, but the longer he spoke, the more I realised that the source of the threat could come from anywhere. Disgruntled farmers, greedy car owners, disgruntled arms dealers — they could all be the cause of the attack; they could all get together and start a war against me, and they’d have a much better chance of winning.

There was a knock at the bedroom door and Thomas came in, his blond hair dishevelled and his white shirt creased as if he’d dressed in a hurry. His long fingers were clutching a folder that immediately caught my weary gaze. The man walked quickly over to the bed, wished Jensen a speedy recovery and then showed me the documents.

“An unknown client has hired a private military company to take down the castle,” he pointed with his fingertip at the text on the sheet, which listed the members of the attacking group, the time of the order and the signatures of both parties to the agreement.

“Who’s the customer again?” I asked, frowning at the papers that lacked this information. None of the names listed were familiar to me, but on the last page was the inscription V.B.

Thomas sighed, “Unknown.”

“What do you mean ‘unknown’? ” I quickly raised my angry eyes to him. I really was ready to kill anyone who had any part in the attack on my brother — anger was building in my solar plexus, coursing through my veins.

“This military company has a very cunning chain of command,” Thomas handed the documents to Jensen, who took the folder with a healthy hand, frowning as he read, “so far only the names of the people involved in the attack are known, but not the masterminds. There are the initials V.B.,” Thomas put his hands at his sides and exhaled tiredly. I hadn’t realised from the start how anxious and suspicious my deputy was — he was considered part of my family, even though he didn’t have my last name,” the man added quietly at the end.

“Private Military Company, according to the documents. VB,” I replied, “bloody mercenaries,” I suddenly remembered.

“You know them?” asked Dante, crossing his arms over his chest, standing at the door without entering the room. I frowned slightly, feeling an inner reluctance to talk to the man — he knew about the casino and probably had access to Jensen’s bar finances, which meant he understood how I laundered money, but I had no desire to tell him more. Thomas and Jensen’s expectant gazes pressed against me, forcing me to choose my words carefully:

“This company offered to work with my dad,” I said carefully, crossing my arms over my chest as the cold began to run through my palms, “I saw the offer document, but my dad didn’t take it. He didn’t,” I corrected at the end, looking down at the floor.

V.B. was the name of a private military company that provided mercenaries for assassinations, threats — contract killers who did their work for money, often used as extra soldiers in military conflicts. Although the organisation was mainly known in British circles, it was registered in South Africa, where it is not illegal, and had been in existence for at least five years. I had no information about its founders and owners. One day, while talking to my father in his office in Salerno, I noticed among the many papers scattered on the table an offer from CVC, about a month before my father died. He had thought about it for a long time and, although I did not support the idea, he was going to accept it out of personal conviction; at a time when my father’s only business was a restaurant, he was convinced that mercenaries would provide better security and, however much I tried to dissuade him, pointing out that the cost would not pay off and that there was no point in hiring high class killers to protect an ordinary building, the man stuck to his guns. I turned down the military company’s offer as soon as The Empire came under my authority.

I sighed heavily and rubbed my face with my palms. My head still hurt, but I understood that the people in front of me were waiting for a decision that they would have to act on.

“Do you know their boss?” Jensen asked.

“No,” I shook my head, “I haven’t contacted the company directly,” I glanced at Thomas, who was sending a letter to V.B. about rejecting the offer, “I’ve just hired other people,” I shook my head frowningly, biting the inside of my cheek.

I had to find a solution right away, which made me stare at the wall and withdraw into my own thoughts. An injured brother, the dodgy Dante De Rosso constantly on the prowl, an unknown private military company, a burnt-out restaurant, the looming problems in Salerno — it seemed that my head was ready to explode at any moment from the amount of turmoil, to which I exhaled heavily, biting my lower lip. Returning to Italy would allow me to manage my own affairs while The Empire was being repaired at the expense of the insurance company; it meant that while I was away from London I would have to increase security at the restaurant to reduce my worries. Things were more complicated with the mercenaries, as their names were no guarantee that they would be caught and able to divulge information, but I had to try.

“Thomas,” I breathed out, gathering my thoughts into a coherent sentence, “get the castle cleaned up: all the bodies removed and all the stuff moved here,” I got up from the bed and took the folder from my brother, “and you get the restaurant security and this list,” I pulled out the paper with the names of the mercenaries involved in the attack, “get information on the company owner and the client.

I scratched my upper lip sharply with my fingernail, hitting a large mole.

““Okay,” he nodded, folding the paper in half and walking out of the bedroom.

“Lynette,” I said louder than usual as the girl appeared in the doorway and walked through Dante closer to me, “take care of Jensen’s condition,” my voice was harsher and rougher, most likely her tendency to take offence annoyed me greatly, “we’re flying to Naples tonight. When Thomas arrives with the things, you’ll pack everything up and redress the wounds.”

Lynette’s sharp exhalations, which I could tell by the way her chest was jerking up and down, were accompanied by wide, doll-like, green eyes that stared at me, frightened but stubborn. She clasped her hands behind her back and stood a few feet away from me.

“No,” she said quietly, which I didn’t even notice at first as I was about to turn to Dante. I straightened my back, bringing my shoulder blades together and furrowed my eyebrows, revealing a few wrinkles between them. The girl continued, looking around the room, “He’s badly injured and hasn’t received proper medical attention. Infection could set in during the flight,” she exhaled nervously, “there’s a risk of thrombosis. Decreased pressure causes the air cavities in the body to expand, which could have a negative effect on Jensen,” I lowered my head slightly and looked at the girl ruefully.

“I didn’t ask you, Lynette,” I said sternly, stepping closer to cut her off, “I gave instructions.”

My heavy gaze slid down the girl’s frail body, her shoulders trembling slightly. Her doll-like face looked innocent of the events she had endured yesterday; most likely she feared for her life. The girl pursed her lips and lowered her eyes to the ground, and I turned away in annoyance. I felt Dante’s cold, piercing gaze on my skin, and then he spoke, still in the role of observer:

“You can stay here as long as it takes,” his distance, his closeness, did not allow me to understand this man: a man who had experience of working with people on the other side of the law, and who had perfected the art of first aid for gunshot wounds to a mechanical level, was still an ordinary financier. De Rosso could be relaxed and boastful one night, not allowing himself to go beyond his own coolness, while on other days he preferred to be detached.

“You heard me, Jensen,” I said, ignoring Lynette’s comments and Dante’s offer. I couldn’t stay in London any longer, and I had a much better chance of protecting my brother in Salerno than here — he would be back in Amalfi anyway. Clutching the folder tighter in my hands, I swallowed, glanced at the man on the bed one last time, and then left the room.

I intended to go back to the kitchen to get something to eat and then to the restaurant for more work. I tossed the file onto the table where Jensen had been yesterday, but stopped when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I gently lifted my right hand and turned to break the contact with Dante. He towered over me and took a step back, forcing me to raise my head to maintain eye contact.

“I wanted to talk to you,” I admitted, “about the bar,” suddenly my heart began to beat fast, causing me to pause briefly to take a deep breath. The man nodded expectantly, his lips pressed together and his arms crossed over his chest, “Since Jensen has introduced himself to the bar tab, I’d like you to continue running things in his absence,” my offer shocked De Rosso as much as it shocked me. Although he didn’t show it, I could see his eyes widen slightly.

“You want me to launder your money while you and your brother are in Italy?” he asked calmly, the cold tone in his voice returning.

“You’re part of the business, aren’t you?” I raised an eyebrow sarcastically, tucking my palms into the pockets of my trousers from yesterday, which showed cherry stains of clotted blood, “Then do your job,” with a hard stare that tolerated no indignation, I looked into the icy brown eyes of the man who blinked slowly, then tilted his head to the right.

“I saved your brother’s life,” he reminded me, “I deserve a little respect.”

It took a lot of self-control to keep a single muscle in my face from shaking, instead I just sighed loudly and nodded.

“That’s why I’m giving you the chance. For a good job, we should try to be nice to each other,” despite Dante’s demonstrative acceptance, I didn’t abandon my plan — — giving this job to a third party would reveal his true intentions by how he would handle the money and the information, while the man I’d checked would keep an eye on him. However, if my intuition proved correct and De Rosso was a fake agent using the attack on the castle to gain cheap credibility, then Jensen would bear his own punishment.

“Then take some advice from your partner, Alana,” he took a step forward and leaned into my face, “You won’t get much information from the mercenaries,” Dante was full of seriousness and confidence, resembling a threat, to which I stubbornly looked up.

“Remind me again, what’s your connection to the mercenaries, financier?” I asked wryly, narrowing my eyes, to which the man just grinned, “I have my ways of conducting a dialogue.

He calmly held his palms up in defeat, “You know better than that, Miss Wollstonecraft,” Dante said as he turned and started to leave, but at the door he turned back, “There’s pastitsio¹ in the fridge, you can heat it up in the microwave.”

I raised my eyebrows in surprise. There was indeed a glass jar of pasticio on the shelf, so I took it out and put it on the table, picking up a vibrating phone with a call from the lab.

Pastitsio¹is a traditional Greek dish derived from the Italian, pasta baked with minced meat and bechamel sauce

Hell

After stopping Jensen’s car in the car park outside the bar, I got out quickly, pulling down the collar of the sweater that felt like it was pinching my neck. The guards nodded at me as I entered, checking emails from Antonio, who was interested in my arrival in Naples; after writing a quick reply, I locked my phone screen and looked around — the smell of hops and malt from the beer kegs behind the bar immediately hit my nose; the place was opening in a few hours, so the electricity was off: There was no music playing and the TV was off; the wooden floor creaked under the weight of my heel, making me stop and look around at the leather chairs and round tables around the perimeter, the pool table in the middle, and I opened the first door on the left and went down the stairs. The bar was not very popular with either the Mafia or ordinary Londoners, despite the amount of effort and money that had been put into it, but the business kept afloat and even paid off. Two security guards opened the iron door as soon as they saw me and let me in.

The place, often used for ‘intelligence gathering’, was disguised as a concrete warehouse — the shelves, crates of alcohol, mops and tools scattered around the corners matched this — but the basement had been renovated, creating a room with improved soundproofing, ventilation and a sewage system. In the middle of the room, tied to a chair, sat a man. His face was completely disfigured, his skin was like a chopped-up steak, and there were several open wounds on his chest, oozing scarlet blood. The man was breathing heavily and grunting with every movement, saliva dripping from his mouth in a long stream. I pulled back the collar of the jumper. A headache spread through my body, as if I’d received a severe blow to the back of my head with a heavy object. I had to stop at the table against the wall to cover my eyes for a moment and take a deep breath.

“How’s it going?” I asked, pulling a cigarette case out of my pocket. I’d changed and showered about an hour ago, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling of my brother’s sticky blood on my skin.

Thomas looked tired. His skin was sweaty, strands of blonde hair stuck to his face, his unbuttoned shirt with the sleeves rolled up stained, his chest heaving, and the man himself, dropping his heavy knuckles to the concrete floor, which hit with a metallic clang, began to wipe his hands of the blood.

“He told me about the company,” Thomas sucked in air noisily, swallowed and shook his head, “about a lot of things in general. But nothing about the owner or the client,” he opened a bottle of water and began to gulp the liquid greedily, spilling a few drops on himself.

I took out a cigarette, tapped the tip several times on my thumb and then, clenching it between my teeth, lit it. The acrid smoke immediately lodged in my larynx and lungs, causing a stinging pain, but at the same time interrupting the nauseating metallic smell of blood, damp and urine. An unpleasant place that reflected the reality of the Mafia.

I stared at the mutilated man for a long moment, pulling in my cheeks and squinting, my heels clattering deafeningly on the floor as I approached him. Tilting my head towards the man, who looked more like a piece of meat smelling of iron, I blew cigarette smoke into his face, shaking the ash onto the open wound on his chest. The prisoner twitched, a tightly compressed moan escaping his lips as he tried to free himself from the straps holding him to the chair.

“Are you in pain?” I asked, feigning sympathy. Clamping my cigarette between my teeth and taking a few quick puffs, I raised my right hand to the man, pressing my thumb to the wound from which blood was oozing in a long stream down his cold skin. Thomas tore off his dirty shirt in a tearing motion, wiped the sweat from his face and brought it up to his neck, pressing him against the back of the chair — so I could see his painful eyes. I couldn’t make out a word of the many noises he was making.

I grinned in horror at such stubbornness and looked up at Thomas. The devils were playing in my head.

I slowly lowered my eyes to the battered face of the man whose name I didn’t even know, “In ancient Greece and Rome there was an execution,” I began slowly and evenly, taking a few steps back and nodding to the guards, “the man was placed in a special wooden structure that fit tightly around his body except for his head, arms and legs, “The men in the black t-shirts quickly grabbed the man’s limbs, pressing harder against the straps as Thomas continued to hold his shirt around his neck, “The victim was force fed honey and milk,” I squinted sweetly, then hovered sharply over the man’s ear, whispering, “causing severe diarrhoea,” the prisoner froze at the chill of my deep voice, eating his breath.

Running the tip of my tongue over my lips, I took a deep puff, exhaling the thick smoke into the ceiling; the nicotine began to numb my mind, causing my eyes to blur. My heart was beating faster, my chest slowly rising with each inhalation.

“He was doused in honey,” the measured tapping of my heels began to circle the man, “and released into the pond, perhaps left out in the sun sometimes,” I shrugged idly, shaking off the accumulated ash on the prisoner, “the incoming insects would devour the flesh of the victim, “I said a little more quietly, leaning closer to the man whose breath came out in a thin and pitiful squeak, “and left their larvae inside,” I broached, then laughed sharply and loudly, clapping my hands together, “you don’t want to die in a pool of your own wasp shit, do you? “Smiling brightly, I stood before my prisoner, “It’s a good thing we don’t live in the days of ancient Rome, isn’t it?” I opened my eyes wide and looked at Thomas, who gave me a stifled laugh. I crouched down, noticing the mutilated body blinking motionlessly, and pressed my lips together in pity, exhaling loudly. I took a last drag and extinguished the cigarette against the man’s calf, feeling him twitch under my fingers, hissing and grunting.

“Ples,” breathing heavily, swallowing nicotine air with his mouth, the captive was on the verge of passing out, “please.”

“No, no, not at all,” I raised my voice in surprise, looking at the man in shock, “I’m not going to torture you with diarrhoea,” I looked at the guards like they were fools, shaking my head negatively, “electricity is much more effective,” I nodded.

The guards backed away from the prisoner’s body, frightened eyes showing through the layers of blood on his face. No matter how stubborn the man was — the current would make him talk.

“Strip him,” I ordered, stepping aside. I did not want to look at the mercenary’s naked body, “attach the connector to his genitals.”

“Do you think that will help?” Thomas asked, taking hold of the wires. I shrugged.

From time to time I glanced at the screaming man, many wires attached, his body convulsing, the flow of blood and saliva increasing. I reminded Thomas that the mercenary would be useless if he died, and my deputy stopped the current, noticing the light mist emanating from his exposed skin. If I continued this procedure, I threatened to turn the prisoner’s brain to mush and destroy his consciousness — either way, I remained my father’s daughter, who knew far more about torture than I did; the mercenary would tell the truth either from pain or exhaustion.

“Customer,” I have said the word a thousand times. Approaching the man, I squeezed his bloody face, pressed the open wounds and forced him to raise his head: “Your brain will turn into a shapeless mass and your body will no longer carry out any commands. While you are still conscious, tell me who ordered the attack on the castle.

His face, drenched in tears, blood, saliva and sweat, finally brightened and the mercenary, exhaling heavily, relaxed his neck, lowered his head and closed his eyes.

“That was it,” he began, coughing blood. Every movement brought him murderous pain, every cell of his body forgiving death, “a personal mission”.

“Whose?” I asked more rudely. You attacked my brother,’ I breathed angrily, ‘if you don’t tell me, you will beg for death.

I clenched my hands into fists and waited for the man’s answer.

“I work through a curator, he gathers a group, talks to the boss,” he spat out the words with blood, “I really don’t know anything,” he replied hoarsely, coughing, “the curator said it was a personal order from the boss.

“Name!” I shouted menacingly.

“I heard,” the man surrendered, lowering his head, “I heard some men talking about Liam W…” he started coughing up blood, smearing it all over the floor, “Weber”.

An icy shot coursed through my veins, making me freeze at what I heard — I stopped breathing and blinked for a split second, staring into the void. My mind had erased the name from my memory, but hearing it now made me feel every nuance of the pain he’d caused me in moments. Thomas touched my arm, jerking me back from the shock; apparently my eyes were so wide open that the man frowned in ignorance.

“Shoot him,” I said forcefully and loudly, my voice reverberating off the concrete walls. Turning on my heels, I walked quickly out of the room and up the stairs, clenching my trembling fingers into fists so that my short nails dug into my skin, leaving a mark. A faint gunshot rang out behind me, but as I slammed the door shut I walked quickly over to the pool table, placing the cold palm of my hand on my chest where my heart was beating wildly. I stopped controlling my breathing, as if an invisible wire was squeezing my neck, burning with heat. An uncomfortable sweat ran down my back, causing me to wriggle slightly to keep my wet skin from touching the fabric; sour nausea began to creep up my throat, and I lost my clear vision before me, clutching the table with my thin fingers. An unfamiliar feeling of dread coursed through my veins, causing fear and trembling throughout my body, and tears welled up in my eyes. No matter how hard I tried to run away from the inner monster that had overtaken me, it kept catching up with me, crushing my lungs. The reality around me began to feel false and distorted, creating amorphous images all around me.

In the midst of all the darkness of my own senses, I felt that sour and viscous taste on my tongue, which knotted bloodily in my stomach. Rage spread like fire through my body, like thousands of raging sparks of madness that flooded my eyes. I picked up a pool cue and began to smash the bar with it, smashing all the glass jars, which at the same moment were scattered in tiny shards on the floor, crunching under my shoes; I picked up the cue balls and began to throw them one by one into the bottles of alcohol on the wall, howling wildly and raising my voice. Hot tears welled up in my eyes as I noticed Thomas standing against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest. I stopped and began to breathe heavily, burying my fingers in my dishevelled hair.

“What the hell is he doing back?” I asked angrily, resembling a snarling lion. The man pursed his lips in silence and bowed his head. The lowered blinds blocked the light from the street, leaving Thomas and me in the semi-darkened room — I could barely make out his silhouette against the furniture and brick walls.

“Alana,” the deputy exhaled, raising his palms, “you need to calm down,” the man said slowly and quietly, moving carefully in my direction, which made me much angrier.

“You’re telling me to calm down!” my voice became hoarse with anger, and I turned away from the window for a moment, clutching my fingers in my hair. The heavy breathing allowed me to temporarily extinguish the inner fire that was burning inside me, after which I turned back to Thomas and approached him quickly, “Weber came back for a reason,” I hissed, touching his chest with my index finger.

Closing his eyes, the man nodded, thereby confirming my words. Turning away, I pointed my hands to my sides, biting the inside of my cheek.

“He’s the one who set the casino on fire,” I said grimly, staring at the made-up dot in the floor, “Jesus!” I exclaimed, throwing up my hands, “I last saw him before my father died.”

Anger turning to rage was swiftly replaced by inner desolation, robbing me of any feeling. Weber was the epitome of everything terrible that could happen in this world, and to fight him now, without my father’s support, seemed suicidal. My head was so heavy that I couldn’t find the answers I needed, couldn’t think of a plan of action — I needed to protect Jensen, but I felt powerless.

“You destroyed him once,” Thomas said finally, placing his large, though bloody, palm on my shoulder and squeezing softly, “you’ll do it again.”

“Liam Weber is a man with no principles or values,” I breathed out tiredly, feeling a flash of emotion leave my body, “obviously revenge isn’t over until one of us is dead.”

We each fell silent for a few minutes, gathering our thoughts that swirled relentlessly around in our heads, exhausting and killing. All the previous problems I had tried to solve in a few days turned out to be dust in relation to Weber’s reappearance in my life, even though he was the cause of them. I vaguely remembered the moments of our previous meetings and struggles, my memory severely impaired, but I knew for a fact that Liam had paid for my blood with his own. This news threw me into a daze, I expected that with the man gone my life would get better and that he wouldn’t show up again, but I was wrong — he had come to get his.

“Weber is still in hiding, but we got information on VB,” I shifted my gaze to Thomas after his words, “Vincent Boyd,” I frowned, not understanding what the deputy exhaled, “my men said he is currently hiding in Asia, not sure where yet, presumably Thailand,” the man explained, “I will find the rest of the information on Weber’s family, his associates and let you know. We’ll get to Liam through Boyd.”

I nodded, swallowing.

“The lab said the pendant is badly deformed, they’re trying to find traces,” I added, before I left the bar, “though I already know who set the restaurant on fire.”

A cool breeze hit my face, making my lungs clench a little. Trying to breathe fully, I rested my arms at my sides, pacing from side to side before getting into the car. I gripped the steering wheel with my fingers so hard that my knuckles turned white, then rested my forehead on the steering wheel.

The meeting with Weber, which had begun with my mistake, had caught up with me because of my work for Antonio’s father. While still studying at university in Naples, I, inspired by youth and freedom, imagining myself as one of the charites¹, organised a party in a rented house and with loads of alcohol — it was no surprise that something went wrong, alcohol mixed with the swagger of students is capable of impossible things. One of the guests, who I remember had been acting aloof and pessimistic all night, approaching a pre-conscious state, but he did not attract my attention until two men in strict black suits approached the door, behind which lurked drunkenness, liquor pouring down a river, naked young men and loud music. My university friend reported the situation to me, and, to avoid dampening the mood of the night, I went out to meet the new guests without letting them into the house itself — I had been born into the mob, so I knew that dancing students could collapse to the floor in a pool of their own blood. (Charites¹ are three goddesses of fun and joy of life in ancient Greek mythology, the personification of grace and attractiveness. Correspond to the Roman graces.)

“Is there a problem?” I asked confidently and with a smile then, though my insides were clenching with excitement. My acquaintances and friends had no idea what I had protected them from that night, so they continued to amuse themselves by rolling down the stone stairs and jumping out the windows into the pool, while I talked to the two men. Their voices were cold and as stern as their suits; they hardly expected to have to deal with me at the time, but my insistence and adamant refusal to let them in was not so much infuriating as interesting in my persona.

As it turned out, that night they were looking for a relative of one of the business members who, having broken out of treatment, had taken drugs and hid at my party, where no one cared about him. After getting Antonio and Thomas to acknowledge the true story, rather than a made-up story or the oppression of their egos, I brought them a young lad who was literally on his feet as I dragged him to the car. The men quickly loaded him inside, slamming the door shut.

“What’s your full name, Alana?” asked Antonio when Thomas had already sat down in the passenger seat and, judging by his opening mouth, he was still talking to the lad. I could clearly see from the Italian’s eyes his interest in me as a woman, but his face quickly changed when I said my last name — after all these years my father was known in Naples.

From then on I began working for Father Antonio, who never missed an opportunity to boast that Robert Wollstonecraft’s daughter was on his staff. I was given the task of organising car thefts; I had expressed a similar desire myself, having taken part in street races on more than one occasion, which enabled me to recruit people who knew how to be fast and agile. I’ve done some great things. I managed to steal cars from inaccessible, hidden places, devise the most ingenious plans, and everything went perfectly for several years until I made a mistake — by which time I was no longer working for Father Antonio, but had influence over the entire province of Salerno, centralising power in Amalfi, was married, and was probably at the height of my fortune. While sending people on yet another mission, in which a vintage car was being transported in a lorry, I was so full of my own confidence and infallibility that I failed to notice the difference between the vehicles. I was horrified to imagine the shock of the drivers when they found a few dozen women and children instead of the Mercedes, but I remember vividly the lingering feeling of devastation and disgust with myself; the firm belief in myself blinded my eyes and forced me to face the consequences of my mistake years later.

The lorry was being used by Liam to sell people into sexual slavery; one of the princes wanted to see a number of European girls of various ages at his birthday party, and Weber was going to collect them in Naples and ship them out. My men thwarted his deal, resulting in the loss of a huge amount of money (the men were worth far more than the weapons I was selling at the time), the payment of damages and harassment — which meant I had made an enemy in his person. A man who shamelessly uses people as bargaining chips has spared no effort to make me regret my existence, often rebuking me for being a woman.

It is winter in my soul now — so cold and damp, so frightening and lonely. I kept control of my body as best I could — my fingers continued to tremble feverishly every time I stopped moving them, and my heart beat quietly in my chest. I was responsible for hundreds of people, for my family that I had to protect, but Weber’s appearance was like the worsening of a long-neglected illness that, despite the years that had passed, reminded me of itself with a piercing pain in my body. I didn’t know if I could cope — it had happened so quickly that I hadn’t had time to adjust. Liam was back where it all started and now I had to put an end to it for good. I wasn’t ready for him to come back, and I don’t think I ever would have been, but with no way to change it, I had to force myself to accept it — the first thing I had to do was get Jensen out of the country, get him away from Liam as quickly as possible.

Minutes of concentrated speeding brought me to Dante’s house, where with a quick step I rolled up the sleeves of my sweater and walked inside, nodding mechanically to the guards to say hello. I spoke my brother’s name out loud as I entered his bedroom and slammed the wooden door behind me; the harsh tone of my voice made Jensen jump in bed and give me a confused, startled look.

“I hope you’re feeling better, because we’re going back to Italy tonight,” I said quickly, picking up the half-empty travel bag the guards had put his things in from the castle from the chair.

“What’s wrong?” my brother sat up worriedly on the bed. He was startled by my abruptness and confusion, “What’s the rush?”

I slowly exhaled through my mouth and lowered my trembling hands. My panic was a bad sign and an even worse example to those around me; I needed to pull myself together so that the others could feel safe and trust me, I needed to take control of the situation. There was a discreet knock at the door, which I ignored.

“Unexpected guests,” I replied briefly and coldly, changing my face as Lynette entered the room. To avoid any unnecessary dialogue with her, I told my brother to “get your things” and then went into the kitchen to get a drink of water.

The girl followed me as I took my phone from my pocket and checked the message I had received.

“Jensen’s not going anywhere,” Lynette said in a desperate tone (whether from adrenaline or fear) that made me stop in place, my back to her, close my eyes and exhale noisily. A little more and my nerves would be like the strings of a violin, with others playing more aggressively than Vivaldi, “you can’t make it go away”.

I angrily threw the phone on the table, causing it to bang with a violent sound, and turned to the girl, “You,” I hissed, “and Jensen,” out of the corner of my eye I saw Dante and Jensen enter the kitchen, cautiously watching what was happening, “you will do as I say,” I waved her away, looking up to meet my brother’s tired gaze as he slowly walked into the room.

“It’s dangerous,” Lynette continued, speaking quickly, “if the pressure drops, he’ll have to amputate his arm,” she gestured modestly, nervously nibbling at her lips, “why can’t we go back to our house? The place she lived with Jensen was the Wollstonecraft family mansion where we’d grown up.

“Enough,” I shouted, looking into her frightened green eyes and trembling shoulders, “where are the guards that protected you in the castle, Lynette? Where are they? Every last one of them is dead!”

“Alana,” Jensen jerked sharply in an impulse to protect his wife, but also quickly grabbed his arm. His tone urged me to show her more respect, but my mind was on nothing but the approaching Liam Weber.

Leaning close to the girl’s ear, I hissed in a measured and unyielding manner, concentrating all the power and authority in my voice, threatening as if my every word was a bolt of lightning: “People obey my orders, do not argue with them.”

Dante, unfamiliar with the dialogue, turned his head towards my brother and frowned suspiciously, “Your hand,” the man said briefly, stepping closer.

I looked at Jensen, the previously white bandage on his shoulder slowly turning red. His wound had opened. Lynette sprang to her feet and took the man into the bedroom, where the first-aid kit was, while I turned back irritated, my hands over my head. “Think, Alana,” I said, my mind spinning relentlessly; as I pressed my cold fingers to my forehead, I could feel my temples throbbing hard from trying unsuccessfully to come up with a solution to all the problems — if I’d hoped for a quick recovery earlier, allowing Jensen to reschedule his flight to Naples, I wasn’t so sure now that the situation was different. I had to get back to Amalfi as a matter of urgency, for the place was now threatened by Weber’s appearance and my absence, especially as Antonio could no longer manage my territory. Leaving the country had already put Jensen’s restaurant and bar in jeopardy, but having my brother in London without my protection would make him easy prey, with Liam’s whereabouts unknown. Biting my lip, I grabbed my phone from the table and sprinted from my seat, darting past Dante.

Still feeling a terrible heartbeat, I ran up the stairs to the second floor, passed several rooms and went into my bedroom. Several things were lying in various corners. Throwing the phone onto the soft bed, I took the suitcase Thomas had brought from the castle from under the table. I quickly threw my things into it and looked at the clock, which read six in the evening. My anger knew no bounds and the emotion overwhelmed my insides, causing my hands to shake violently and things to fall out of the case. I cursed loudly, kicked my clothes off the bed, rested my palms on the soft covers and breathed hard. My heartbeat pounded in my ears and I had to slowly stretch my neck so that the bout of uncontrolled aggression would pass. Before my eyes it slowly began to darken, the air began to run out, I wanted to ruin everything around me, to destroy. It seemed to me that at any moment the ground might give way beneath my feet. My head was dizzy, but I tried to control my aggressive impulses. Suddenly a warm hand fell on my lower back, and in a fit of self-defence I quickly grabbed it, but the man was ahead of me.

“Calm down,” Dante said, squeezing my wrists tightly to stop me pulling away.

It was the first time a man had ever been so close to me. Despite the constant cold that surrounded him, his fingers were rough but warm. The strength of his hands could have easily broken my thin, bony wrists, but Dante had no such intention — he wanted to stop my emotional actions, perhaps even to protect me from myself. For the first time, his eyes were so close — they seemed so dark now, reminiscent of bitter chocolate — that they stared stubbornly into mine, trying to convey unknown information to me.

“Don’t tell me what to do!” I said roughly, trying to pull my hands out of his grasp, but failing. I hated the commanding tone; it made me do impulsive things, which was a good way to manipulate me. The man tugged sharply at my arms, pulling me closer, but my angry glare, furrowed brow and flared nostrils continued to wage an invisible battle against his icy mystery.

“Anger makes you stupid,” he said stubbornly but distantly, “stupidity gets you killed.

For a moment, everything around us stopped. We walked on in silence, breathing heavily, glaring at each other with our mysterious eyes. I could hardly understand Dante, the reasons for his actions and such impulses to silence my emotions, to stop me from fighting, but the force with which he gripped my wrists, the look with which he stared into my soul, frightened me, I did not like such intimacy — perhaps because I saw in his eyes the reflection of my own war I was waging in my head and heart.

“Don’t forget who you’re talking to,” I whispered, closing my eyes and trying to control my breathing. I clenched my palms, still held by the man, into fists, returning to the familiar state where I was responsible for the safety of a hundred people and De Rosso was suspected of being an accomplice.

“You’re welcome,” he loosened his grip, allowing me to free my wrists and get a lung full of air.

“You can go,” I looked at the chaos in the room, realising that I was the cause of it. My heart was still racing and I tried not to look in the direction of the man who continued to study my body with cold interest.

“This is the second time you’ve argued with Lynette,” the man began, and I exhaled tiredly.

“I don’t need your guidance,” I replied sharply.

“I’m not going to give you psychological help,” he continued the dialogue in the same cold way, only this time I didn’t look up at him, “you’re worried about Jensen’s safety.”

“Yes, but if you, like Lynette, think the flight could be dangerous for him, then you have a rather strange idea of caring.”

“Strange?” a sincere, muffled laugh burst from his chest, “That’s not the problem. You and Lynette,” Dante pointed out, “have radically different ideas about caring, which is why you fight.”

I rubbed my face wearily, pressing hard against my eyeballs. My blood was boiling in my head — the last thing I wanted right now was to have a relationship with my brother’s wife, in whom I had no interest; Jensen hadn’t deigned to introduce us before the wedding, to inform me in any way; he had no right to demand that I have a positive relationship with her; he must be glad that our father was dead, or he would never have allowed a woman from outside the ‘family’ to marry him.

“I give you my word that Jensen will be fine,” Dante said slowly, crossing his arms over his chest, “I will take care of his health and the bar.

Clenching my lower lip with my teeth, I added, “Thomas will stay with you.”

I needed a permanent deputy, especially in a crisis like this, but my brother’s safety was my priority at the moment; in Italy I would be busy with business, while Thomas would be my eyes here, alerting me to any changes in Jensen’s health or the state of the restaurant and bar. In Amalfi, I’ll take care of things myself.

“Thank you,” I nodded, “for everything,” I circled my finger in the air, hinting at his attempts to reassure me.

The man looked at me, nodded and left the room. I was alone. I sat there for a few more minutes, got out of bed, picked up my clothes from the floor and continued packing my suitcase. My intentions towards Dante were not based on trust; I was forced to pretend to initiate him into the details of my work — since the man himself was unwilling to admit what Jensen had revealed about the family business, I reasoned that my brother was sharing all the information with his new friend, which meant his actions were putting us at risk. Liam’s associates could be anywhere, and even if my suspicions didn’t pan out, I couldn’t be sure that there weren’t traitors in my own circle. It would be better if, for the time being, I could keep Weber’s return to London a secret not only from De Rosso but also from my own brother.

The warm evening air of Naples gently enveloped the exposed areas of my body, spreading the pleasant scent of flowers on what I, stepping out of the small plane onto the street, only closed my eyes, raising my face to the cloudy sky. The clatter of my heels disappeared amidst the noise of the vehicles around me — people flying in, flying out, flying out — while I stood silently a few metres from the stairs, distinctly aware of a moment of emptiness in my head, when not a single thought entered and nothing bothered me. Exhaling softly, I smiled softly, lifting the corners of my lips slightly — Naples was not my homeland, it was the place where my father was blood-born and I found a chance at a new life, he found himself exiled, while I chose to leave on my own. I didn’t say goodbye to my brother, in general I left Dante’s house silently, having previously indicated a plan of action to Thomas; I didn’t want to meet anyone from that house, knowing that Lynette would do the opposite, that I would get angry and have a fight later, that Jensen would be like running between two fires from his sister to his wife. The steward carefully placed my suitcase and bag near the stairs, which made me open my eyes as I noticed the black SUV approaching the plane. Antonio made sure his guards picked me up and brought me to the hotel.

The Neapolitan scenery caressed my tired eyes as I stared out the streets through the tinted windows. I’d managed to sleep on the plane, but I felt worse after my encounter with the mercenary in Jensen’s bar — as if my head had been buried deep in the sand for hours — London had taken its toll on my already frayed nerves. Slowly blinking, as if wiping fatigue from my short eyelashes, I noticed the fanciful buildings approaching, one of which was Antonio’s hotel. The driver turned the wheel toward the driveway at the main entrance, stopping. So I noticed a familiar man of medium height whose charcoal-black hair of medium length stood out against the solid white walls; he wore an informal (typical Pelegatti) suit with a light top and a gray bottom, the top buttons of his shirt undone with a few hairs sticking out.

“My beautiful Alana,” he said loudly in italian, opening his arms for a hug when I just stepped on the stone tiles with my heels. I could hardly restrain a smile, but came closer to the man, hugging him tightly by the neck, his chin resting on my shoulder, “I missed you so much,” he whispered in my ear, stroking my shoulder blades.

“Stop this affection,” I answered frowningly, taking a step back.

“Britain kills all the senses in you,” Antonio said offendedly, but waving to his people to take my things to the room, he stretched out his hand forward, offering to walk.

“Trust me, London has nothing to do with it,” I gasped, “the enemies will kill me faster than British conservatism.”

“Italian blood wins in you,” he chuckled.

“I’m only a quarter Italian.”

Antonio Peligatti was, in my eyes, the epitome of Italy — a relaxed, stylish and sophisticated man who preferred to do business when his heart called and who completely denied my cold mind. He had broad shoulders, the result of constant wrestling, although he lacked muscle, which did not prevent his popularity with women from growing (most often using his favourite tactic of flirting with his water-blue eyes and what I thought was a funny twitch of his moustache). Antonio’s lifestyle matched his appearance — he didn’t care too much about what was going on around him, which made him overly concerned with his personality, but nothing was a priority for Pelegatti like his mother. He would rather kill himself than leave her.

“I didn’t think so when we first met”, Antonio opens the door to his office. Nothing has changed in the room: dark wallpaper, dark parquet, paintings of modern art. I ran my fingertips along a wooden table on which stood a computer and several cigars on a stand.

“You didn’t reveal the details of the case while I was busy,” I said, sitting down in a soft leather chair, Antonio sitting at his desk, one leg crossed over the other. A glass of whisky was quickly in his hands.

“There is nothing special to reveal,” he lifted the glass, hinting at the alcohol, and twirled it a little. Antonio knew I was not allowed to drink, “You have been away for several days,” he said calmly, taking a small sip of the drink, “everything is in order with your territory, there have been no raids, the deliveries have been made on time, the money is in the accounts.”

I breathed out imperceptibly, hiding my relief. The fact that Antonio was doing his job made me very happy. But the man continued to tap the arm of his chair with a measured finger. He was lying.

“What about Naples?” I asked, looking straight into his eyes, and the man swallowed. He smiled, pursed his lips and put down his glass.

“And my territory is no concern of yours, my love.”

I glanced warily at Antonio’s face, noticing that he was looking down at the floor when he said that last sentence — the man often did that when he didn’t want the others to know. I chuckled, getting up from the chair and resting my palms on the wooden table.

“Yes,” I replied, “is that why you’re lying to me?”

The smile faded from his face and his gaze immediately turned serious. At first Antonio looked away from my face and stared intently at the painting on the right, then, clenching his jaw, he stood up and came closer to me. He put his hands in his pockets and licked his lips before answering me:

“Liam showed up,” Pelegatti said quietly, afraid of my reaction. I exhaled heavily and rolled my eyes.

“I know he’s back,” I said harshly, resting my hips on the wooden table so that the man was standing directly in front of me, the tight fabric of his jacket touching the bare skin of my shoulders, “he organised the attack on the castle where my brother and his wife were,” I spat out the words like poison, “I think he set the restaurant on fire.”

“How is Jensen?” Antonio tilted his head towards my face, his forehead furrowed in anger.

“Alive and possibly hating me,” I crossed my arms over my chest and shrugged tiredly, “he took a bullet that I had to remove myself,” Pelegatti placed his left hand on the table behind me and leaned closer, “Lynette fought me, told me not to take Jensen to Amalfi, pressure, amputation, blah blah,” I said irritably, “eventually the wound opened and I had to leave Thomas with them.

Antonio sighed heavily, clearly overwhelmed by the information I had just given him.

“It could have been worse,” he said uncertainly. The man moved closer to the table, leaning his face against mine as I continued to watch his actions without emotion.

“Are you an idiot?” I asked quietly, raising my weary gaze to his blue eyes, which he instantly rolled back.

“Do you have to be so insensitive? I only want to support you,” he began to get indignant in Italian, Antonio throwing his hands up reluctantly, “when are you going to agree to marry me, Alana? I’ve been asking for your hand for so many years and you keep refusing.

Leaning my cold palm against his cheek, I stroked his moustache carelessly, “When will your mummy let you marry me,” I pursed my lips in feigned sympathy before pulling my hips away from my desk and heading for the exit of the office, “I need to rest.”

“You’re breaking my heart,” the man began to play up the drama, holding up his index finger and leaning against his chest. I stopped paying attention to him.

Antonio’s attempts to get me into bed hadn’t stopped since we’d met, but I was glad he understood that it would never happen — he liked his relaxation, and besides, he’d never marry anyone his mother didn’t approve of. I was too complicated for him.

I put my hands in my pockets and walked slowly out of the office to the lift that took me to the top floor. The room was open, the key on the table next to the coffee machine. The setting sun reflected in the glass and a warm breeze came in through the open balcony door. I sat down on one of the green sofas to the right of the entrance and covered my face with my hand, rubbing my eyes and smearing my make-up. I was damn tired.

There was a mirror in front of me in which I looked at my reflection and saw a woman with a painful skin colour, bright bruises under her eyes, dry lips, I was like Salvador Dali’s “Permanent Memory”, spreading like Camembert in the sun, which inspired the artist. Smiling sadly, I unconsciously remembered myself a few years ago. I looked exactly the same then.

“No! Don’t touch me,” I shouted as loudly as I could, hoping that the nurses would stop wringing my hands until my back hurt. Again I refused to take the pills the psychiatrist had prescribed. They made me worse. My face was flushed with tears, and my eyes were red from burst capillaries. Blood began to flow from my nose, dripping onto my clothes, “Please! Enough!” I choked on my own sobs, swallowing blood, “Stop!” four orderlies grabbed my limbs and began to tie them to the bed.

Once again there was nothing I could do. It was exactly two months and three days since I had been admitted to a London psychiatric hospital. They did not cure me. They tortured me.

“Open your mouth,” one of the nurses asked me quietly, bringing several pills to my lips. I furrowed my brow in despair and shook my head. I sobbed as one of the men squeezed my neck hard, restricting my access to oxygen. I had to open my mouth and the pills went into my mouth, “now go to sleep,” the girl said in the same soft voice, stroking my hair.

They tried a new treatment on me, new pills that only made things worse. The antipsychotics caused me the worst side effects, they made my skin look bad, my head ached all the time, I wanted to sleep, some pills made me want to have sex. The psychiatrist saved me from aggression and drove me into a terrible apathy, and psychotherapy seemed like an empty phrase. The orderlies and the nurse left, but they didn’t untie me, my limbs hurt. I closed my eyes and dreamed of liberation, of a better life, of a family, and I was glad that I wasn’t going to be subjected to electroconvulsive therapy or similar torture. And then I would wake up and everything would repeat itself over and over again. The constancy of boundless pain and devastation exposed my mind to constant reflection on what was going on around me, which became much harder to do. My speech was not as beautiful as before, I often confused words, used the wrong meaning, missed letters; my voice became hoarse from the violent, almost daily screaming that accompanied taking the pills. It was a very strange feeling, a violation of my boundaries: before people did not try to penetrate my body by force, now the staff had every right to do so, they were doing the psychiatrist’s bidding. The helplessness and defencelessness created an inner discomfort and distrust in everyone around me, a disgust not only with myself but with the world — with my brother who had locked me in the asylum, with the nurses who forced pills down my throat, with myself.

The doctor didn’t help me. In truth he was a complete idiot, using his personal technique as a one-size-fits-all approach to his patients, completely forgetting that in suppressing aggression he had to add medication to avoid apathy. The psychiatric hospital was indeed hell; I couldn’t imagine any place on earth that would destroy so much of what is alive in a human being, using him instead as a guinea pig to test treatments. I never prayed, though I tried to remember Inessa taking me to church — I didn’t remember much of my life, I had my memory wiped, which I’m still trying to recover. After I was discharged, I never went back to therapy or took medication, I never went to a specialist or expressed my feelings, I still couldn’t admit that living with this illness was too hard for me, even though I don’t know what I was like before. I knew I could succumb to my emotions, I knew what it could lead to — people around me would suffer, people I cared about could be hurt, the consequences could be irreversible. I could end up back in a mental institution and never get out. But I became a completely different person when I was released, just because I was able to pick myself up in pieces, without God, without faith, without family — I was alone. I had re-created myself and there was no way I was going back to that hell.

Family mansion

Through my closed eyes I felt the cold sea breeze ripple, unfold and flirt with the sheer tulle separating my bedroom from the open door. Large raindrops fell, hitting the floor and furniture on the balcony, spreading moisture throughout the room I’d lived in for the past year. Antonio’s father had started the hotel business (the hotel where Pelegatti had put me up when I arrived in Naples was his father’s legacy) and years later I decided to build my own in Amalfi. It seemed a promising idea because the coast was very popular with tourists who wanted to wake up with a view of the sea, walk up the stairs carved into the rock, visit the roof gardens — the town itself is quite small, so my job was to do my best to ensure that visitors not only stayed as long as possible, but returned again and again. In my hotel, I have combined classical architecture, which allows people to enjoy the picturesque views while having a cup of coffee at breakfast or dinner, expensive furniture made of high quality materials and decorated with harmonious details, with the Italian spirit, which means passion for life, love of beauty, art and food; every millimetre of this building was the embodiment of the uniqueness of language and music, cinema and fashion, design and cooking. My father once created his oasis in London to make exiled people feel at home. I wanted people to see Amalfi as I see it — quiet, free, vibrant, alive.

I opened my eyes slowly, sinking into the familiar greyness of the past few days. My hotel room was large, or rather, it was a combination of several rooms — a bedroom, a bathroom, and an office. My body was pinned to the bed with a plaid, as I had been too tired last night to spread the blanket and remove the decorative pillows; leaving the door to the balcony fully open, I fell asleep to the sounds of rain and crashing waves, I think I even heard seagulls. I closed my eyes again, listening to the steady beat of the drops, so unremarkable but significant — the overcast weather had not left Amalfi since my arrival. I threw off my thick blanket and got out of the soft bed, heading barefoot to the balcony, where the cold wind instantly blew my hair; my silk pyjamas were immediately wet, making large stains, but I continued to breathe deeply of the sea air, watching the city from high above, as I could see it. The streets were empty. Tourists preferred not to leave the confines of the hotel in this weather, and the locals stayed in their homes, only the rough raindrops cutting through the stones.

Six hours ago, just as I was about to fall asleep, Thomas had sent me a message saying that Jensen and Lynette had left for Naples. I couldn’t stop worrying about my brother’s safety; the week I’d spent away from him had kept me guessing about Weber’s next move, and even though my deputy was keeping me updated not only on the situation at Dante’s house but also on business, I felt uncomfortable, out of place, not in complete control of what was going on. Liam hadn’t turned up: not a single trace, not a single clue — apart from the dead mercenary’s words, I had nothing; he’d disappeared as suddenly as he’d appeared, which sometimes made me doubt that the man had ever been involved in a shooting or arson. But Thomas had managed to locate Vincent Boyd, the man who had organised the attack on the castle; he was in Thailand, and all that remained was to get the exact address, after which I would be able to catch the man and get Weber through him.

I exhaled noisily and took a few steps back, walking back to the warm room and closing the balcony door tightly. I knew where Jensen was going. I needed to get ready.

I didn’t tell my brother about Weber’s return. Thomas did. My deputy was able to structure all the hunches into a coherent sense and relay them to Jensen, from Liam’s first appearance in London to the attempts to burn down the casino and shoot up the castle.

The Aston Martin’s wipers were quickly wiping away the raindrops hitting the windscreen as I overtook the old VW once again. I had to try to make nimble movements and manoeuvre the car, as the narrow streets of the small town made it difficult for me to feel at ease behind the wheel. Finally, I drove out of Amalfi, where the risk of an accident was lower, and accelerated towards the old house my father had bought before I was born, the Wollstonecraft mansion where he had died.

Opening the door of the sport car, I pulled my black umbrella outside, opening it and slamming the door loudly. Stepping over puddles, I took a few steps towards the main door of the mansion, raising my eyes upwards. It was a long, two-story building with high ceilings and narrow, old-fashioned windows, reminiscent of Jane Austen’s books. The mansion, which had stood there for more than two centuries, was the work of Italy’s finest architects, as my father had often said — though he had been able to return to his homeland, he had never felt at home here again. Stepping quickly with thick-heeled shoes on the small stones that lined the long driveway to the house, I tried to keep my balance, occasionally glancing at the dry trees and overgrown shrubs on the sides. As a child I’d spent a lot of time here, running around the garden, hiding among the flowers, but as I got older I stayed in London more and more, studying at the public school my father had chosen, and when I went to university in Naples I forgot all about the family mansion. And then my father was diagnosed with lung cancer.

He died in his study, sitting at his wooden desk, clutching with his fingers the lit cigar he loved so much. That picture still stands before my eyes — his calm face, so peaceful, as if asleep, and the thick smoke rising up towards the ceiling. I could not enter that house for a long time. Biting my lip, I quickly smoothed my light-coloured trousers and headed inside, quickly running up the long stairs. The butlers have not worked here for a long time, of the total number of employees, only the necessary security and a couple of maids remained, because Inessa was too pampered to cook and clean herself. My heels tapped on the marble floor, and I exhaled quietly — it was deathly silent, and even though Jensen and Lynette and the staff were in the building, it seemed as if no life had ever knocked on the doors of the empty mansion in so many years. Everything was in place: the leather sofas, the bookshelves, the tables, but the greyness of the sky through the windows only killed the walls of the house. It seemed as if nothing had been the same since his father had left. In the corridor, on the stairs I slowly climbed to the first floor, there were family portraits, from my great-grandfather to childhood pictures of me and Jensen. The stern gaze of my father’s dark, slightly squinted and tired eyes sent shivers through my heart, even from afar, even from the colours on the canvas. I sucked in air with my mouth, trying to force the tears out of my eyes-life without him was more complicated than I’d ever imagined.

Jensen was in the guest bedroom, since my brother had long outgrown the nursery he’d lived in a dozen years earlier. Opening the wooden door, I entered the office, immediately noticing my brother’s blonde head.

“Alana,” the man with a big smile rushed to me in his arms, squeezing my shoulders tightly. I could not see the bandages through his shirt, which means that they had already been taken off and my brother could move around without much pain.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I whispered softly in his ear, gently stroking his back.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Jensen pulls away from me, still smiling but keeping his hand on my back. Blinded by anger and fear, I’d actually forgotten that when my brother was sick, there was nothing I could do but suppress the strong urge to shout at everyone around me (which manifested itself as barbed and rude responses).

I slowly walked over to the leather sofa and sat down on it, covering my eyes.

“Did Antonio tell you something?” I asked.

“Nothing new,” Jensen shook his head dismissively as he sits down next to me, “do you think Boyd and Liam are accomplices?”

“More than likely,” I replied dryly, rubbing my temples with my fingers, “Vincent owns a private military company,” I pondered aloud, “one way or another they had a partnership, and if Boyd is from England, he probably knew who he was sending his mercenaries to kill,” I opened my eyes and looked at my brother, “one way or another he’s connected to Weber, otherwise why would he hide in Asia?” I raised an eyebrow questioningly.

“It’s not like they killed me,” Jensen tried to laugh, slapping his hands on his thighs loudly, but not getting a reciprocal reaction, he hastened to add, “it’s not like they had the intent to shoot me on sight, or kidnap me, or torture me, “he began to list the possible scenarios in a loud voice, not forgetting to add sarcasm to his tone, which made me stop listening to his words for a moment, “they can’t even be called mercenaries, they just scratched me,” the man finally exhaled.

Retracting my cheeks and crossing my arms over my chest, I turned towards my brother, “Boyd’s men took out everyone in the house, including the servants,” I reminded him, frowning, “what would have happened if I hadn’t hired extra security?”

“They would have stopped anyway when they saw my injury. You’re just exaggerating,” Jensen exasperated as if I was contradicting a law of nature by proving absolute nonsense, “I thought your vendetta was over,” said my brother, without looking up at me. He was too inept to change the subject, though I was grateful for it, for I could already feel the growing storm of anger in my stomach.

“I hoped for it too,” I exhaled tensely, thinking of Weber, “I drove him out of this country once, and I will do it now.”

“A ticket to the afterworld is guaranteed to him,” the man chuckled, to which I smiled.

“It’s not hard to guess that Weber was behind the burning of the restaurant, but the lab was able to find traces of someone who actually got into the building and made his plan a reality,” I said firmly, crossing my legs, “it was a woman,” I turned towards my brother, who was finding the company of birds in the tree outside the window more interesting, which made me put my palm over his head, giving him a shove, “are you listening to me?”

Jensen grumbled unhappily, putting a hand to the sore spot. Let him be glad I didn’t hit him on the shoulder with a stitched wound.

“I’ve beefed up security at the restaurant and provided you with the information security reports in the mail, so do some research on the last hacking attempt as a matter of urgency — it might have been one of Weber’s or Boyd’s men,” I stood up from the couch, heading slowly for the door. Resting my arms at my sides, I turned towards my brother, who was eager to see me off, “I also spoke to my father’s deputy, he’s going to take over running The Empire temporarily while we deal with Liam. What else?” frowning, I shifted my gaze to the ravens outside the window, trying to remember the next instructions, “Talk to Dante,” I exhaled, “I found someone to take over your bar in our absence, so tell him my thanks and let him know we no longer need his services,” pursing my lips I smiled demurely and turned away to open the door.

“Alana,” Jensen said a little louder than usual, causing me to turn in his direction. The man fell silent, scratching the back of his head nervously with his hand, “I sent Dante to Naples.”

It took me a moment to realise what he meant.

“What the hell, Jensen?” I asked furiously, taking a few jagged steps towards my brother, “Why did you bring him here? What were you thinking?” my voice was lightning rough and rising. My brother continued to remain meekly silent, at which the anger grew stronger inside me, “You let an unknown man get close to you, told all the secrets of our business and for what, Jensen?” I was already openly yelling at my brother, feeling the anger bursting out, ripping through my throat, “Do you understand what could happen to us if Dante turns out to be a dummy? What if he is related to Weber? Or any other person whose car I stole? Have you thought about it? There are thousands of people who want to kill me and my family.”

“I didn’t mean to let you down,” the brother replied quietly, without looking up.

“You’ve put our businesses at great risk!” I kept my tone, “Why did you initiate him into our business? Why did you turn to a stranger for help? You could have taken any accountant from the Empire!” my forearms ached with active gesticulation.

“You trusted him the bar, didn’t you?” Jensen asked.

“Don’t compare our situations!” I said imperiously, poking my index finger into his chest, “You were afraid to screw up in front of me and admit that you weren’t doing business, and I was afraid of losing your life because of this damn wound that could open during the flight. So, I left there Thomas! I knew that you were not telling me something and I was right!” I had to move away from the man so as not to harm him in any way. I rested my hands on my hips, breathing heavily, aggression seethed in me, I was angry with myself, for not controlling it, at my brother, because he behaved frivolously towards everything that did not concern his wife, on Dante, who could be my potential enemy.

“I’m sorry,” the brother managed quietly, “I knew you’d be angry if you found out that I wasn’t coping, and your people were telling you everything, so I couldn’t contact them.”

I grinned viciously.

“You’re sorry,” I repeated ironically, “in that case, if Dante turns out to be Weber’s man, I’ll shoot you in your head.”

Without waiting for a reaction from my brother, I left the room, slamming the door shut with a force that made it shudder on its hinges. It wasn’t new to Jensen; though I’d never taken the threat seriously, I wanted him to understand how disappointed I was in him. Among the many people who could have helped him, he’d chosen a stranger.

I ran out of the mansion, knocking down a tall woman who turned out to be Inessa. I hadn’t expected her to come back here. Throwing her a dismissive glance, I continued on to my car. Clutching the leather steering wheel in my hands, I closed my eyes tightly, willing myself to deal with my aggression. Jensen had acted recklessly, he had absolutely no thought for the consequences, endangering the lives of so many people. I’d done everything I could to raise my brother in an environment removed from the society we’d grown up in, maybe that was why he didn’t realise the consequences of his decisions; If I was punished by the law, I could get a minimum of life in prison without parole. I couldn’t tell what I felt more right now, resentment, sadness or anger; all the emotions jumbled together to form ornate lines, a lump of feelings that hurt and bled badly. Starting the car, I drove out of the grounds of the house, which once again brought me sad news.

The weather had not improved in the slightest. Thomas was wearing sunglasses even though it had been raining all morning, he was wearing his usual suit and had a toothpick between his teeth. We had dinner in the restaurant of my hotel, on the terrace, breathing in the fresh air, admiring the scenery and discussing everything that had happened while I was in London trying to get back on track. I noticed again the large amount of flowers that were growing on the slopes, making them look completely green even on such a grey day. Exhaling heavily, the man raised his glass of red wine to his lips, took a long sip and set it back down.

“The workers finished renovating the Empire and the first game was played yesterday,” the deputy said, looking out at the sunset, “Luca was there. Apparently he didn’t know you stole his car.”

“Definitely,” I nodded, pushing the salad aside, “His mother was the sole heiress to a multi-million dollar business, so his father forced her to marry some idiot. The son has adopted his father’s genes.”

“Nothing to worry about, the casino is safe and so is Jensen’s bar,” Thomas continued in a measured tone. I listened to him intently, absorbing every word.

“That’s not good enough. Thanks to Jensen, De Rosso is part of the family business,” I rubbed my lips with my fingers, gathering my thoughts, “Weber won’t have the courage to show up in Salerno, but that doesn’t mean he’ll sit this one out.”

“Dante is clear, I’ve checked his files twice. Seems like he’s safe for business,” Thomas said, “Liam’s target isn’t the casino,” the man added firmly, “as soon as he gets caught by the government, a lawyer will charge him with arson. Evidence will have to be falsified,” he thought immediately, ahead of my orders. The image of the found jewelry, which had undergone severe deformation, surfaced in my head.

“That’s right,” I breathed, “here we are safe, everything that happens on my territory is strictly controlled. And keep looking for Boyd, find all the information about him, you will have to act on him through weak points, ‘he could not hide forever,’ I will get him out of the ground.”

Thomas nodded, “I’m setting up a team to be sent to Thailand later. We can’t even identify the city yet,” he exhaled, and then, as if remembering something, he looked up, “we’re having trouble with the lack of guns,” I shook my head perplexed, “okay, listen,” the man rested his elbows on the table, “the guys want you to re-engage with Molis, and before you start to complain,” he added a little louder, noticing the change in my face, “they say he had better quality; now the guns are coming off like sand, jamming all the time.”

“Their weapon price is too high, it’s easier to get started with a military company” I shook my head, tapping my finger on the wooden table next to my cup of tea, “what’s wrong with their new supply? The weapons are just as good.” I ran my fingers over my lips again, thinking about the state of affairs. While the situation was stable, this could easily have changed with the advent of Weber. I had to be prepared for any outcome. Even war.

“There are rumors among the fighters that I’m not coping,” I said unexpectedly, drawing the attention of Thomas, who turned to me in surprise, “Antonio said”.

“Not all fighters trust the female boss,” the man replied more calmly. He always reasoned logically and strategically, “all structural divisions do their job efficiently, no riots were noticed. Everyone is in a fighting mood.” Sometimes Thomas spoke like a robot.

“Perhaps I should check their readiness for war myself,” I stood up from the chair, straightening my back. Taking the phone from the table, I finally nodded to the man, “if the soldiers don’t understand the meaning of diplomacy, I will have to show them my superiority with violence. Dinner at my expense,” I walked slowly into the building.