The Mafia Lost His Queen novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Two A.M.

Serena walked out into Druid Street and got into a black cab.

The door of the café swung shut behind her.

Nobody said anything for a long moment.

Then the old man patted my arm twice with his dry old hand and went back to his corner and his paper.

"Too good for this street," he said, to nobody. "I always said."

Jess turned the sign to CLOSED for the second time that week.

Rory already had his phone out.

"Kent," he said. "Now. My mate can meet us at the station at Canterbury. I'll drive you to London Bridge myself."

"Rory."

"Jess, get her bag from the flat. Just the one bag. Her passport's in the kitchen drawer."

"Rory, stop."

"I'll come with you. I'll stay there with you. We'll be gone before he even gets out of the airport."

"I said stop!"

He stopped.

The café was very quiet. A train went over and the cups rattled on their hooks.

"I'm not going," I said.

"Gianna, he's here. He's in this city."

"I know where he is."

"He put a gun to my head for letting you drive a car." Rory's voice wasn't loud. It never was. But it shook. "What do you think he does when he finds you in my bed?"

"Then we don't let him find me in your bed. We let him find me standing up."

"That isn't funny."

"I'm not being funny." I went to him. "Rory, I died once to get out of that house. I drove into a river."

He looked down at me.

"I'm not dying twice," I said. "Not for him. Not ever again."

"And if he kills me?"

"Then he does it in front of people, in a city where he's nobody." I put my hands on his chest. "He's not a king here. He's a man in a good coat, in a country where he can't even carry his gun."

Rory closed his eyes.

"You don't know him the way I do," he said.

"I was married to him for nine years."

"Yes," Rory said, opening his eyes. "And I stood outside your door for five of them. I know what he's like at three in the morning. You only know what he's like at breakfast."

That stopped me.

We stood there in the empty café, looking at each other.

Jess cleared her throat from the kitchen door.

"I'll just. Go in the walk-in. For a bit. It's cold in there. Lovely."

She went.

Rory looked down, then met my eyes again.

"I'm scared for you," he said. "That's all it is. Five years of being scared for you, and I don't know how to switch it off."

"I don't want you to switch it off." I took his face in my hands. "I want you to stand next to me instead of in front of me."

He looked at me for a long time.

Then he nodded.

Once.

"Next to you," he said.

"Next to me."

"Right." His mouth twitched. "Then I'm going to need a better lock on that flat."

We went back to his flat at dark.

He put a chair under the door handle, and a cricket bat beside the bed, and then he looked at the cricket bat and laughed at himself.

"That's my mum's," he said. "From the garden shed."

"Your mum plays cricket?"

"My mum hits burglars."

I pulled him down onto the bed by his jumper.

"Come here," I said. "I don't want to think about him tonight. I don't want to think about anything."

He kissed me slowly.

"Then don't," he said.

I pulled his jumper over his head.

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