The Mafia Lost His Queen novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Not Running

The driver wiped the sugar off his mouth with the back of his hand.

Then he dropped the ten-pound note on the floor and walked out.

Rory watched him all the way to the corner.

When he came back into the kitchen, I was sitting on the milk crate with my hands between my knees.

"Did he see me?"

"I don't know." Rory crouched in front of me. "The window's small. Your hair's different. He might have been guessing."

"He wasn't guessing about the pastry."

"No."

Jess came in and locked the back door, then the front, and turned the sign to CLOSED at four in the afternoon on a Sunday.

"Right," she said. "What now?"

"Now she goes to Kent," Rory said. "Tonight. I've a mate with a farm near Canterbury. Nobody finds anyone on that farm. Not even the sheep."

"No," I said.

They both looked at me.

"I've run once," I said. "I'm not going to go hide on a sheep farm because Armando's driver liked my pastry."

"Gianna, he'll tell him."

"Then he'll tell him." I stood up. "Rory, I asked you to help me die so I could get out. I didn't ask you to help me hide for the rest of my life."

Rory looked at me for a long moment.

Then he looked at his sister.

"Don't look at me," Jess said. "I'm on her side. I'm always going to be on her side now. She bakes."

Rory scrubbed a hand over his jaw.

"What do you want to do?"

"I want to make a phone call."

He still had all the household numbers in his phone. Five years of them.

I called Serena from Jess's phone, on video, standing against the white tiles of the kitchen wall so there was nothing behind me.

She answered on the fourth ring.

She was lying on a white sofa with her feet up and a cucumber mask on.

She saw me and sat up so fast the mask slid.

"Oh my God."

"Hello, Serena."

"Your hair." She started to laugh. "You look like a cheap waitress."

"I am a waitress. And a baker. I've been busy."

Her face changed. She glanced over her shoulder, then back.

"Why are you calling me? Are you insane? He'll hear."

"I got your parcel."

"Then you know what it said."

"I know what it said." I kept my voice very calm. "Here's mine. I want my father's bakery back. And I want you to stand up in front of people and tell them what you did to me on those stairs."

Serena stared at me.

Then she laughed, a real laugh, with her head back.

"And who's going to believe you? You're dead. You're a dead woman with a bad dye job, calling me from a toilet in London."

"It's a kitchen."

"Whatever it is." She leaned toward the camera. "Stay in it. Because if you come back, you're not the one he'll shoot. It'll be your big English dog."

The screen went black.

I stood against the tiles with the phone in my hand.

Rory took it gently from me.

"She's scared," he said.

"She didn't look scared."

"She hung up first."

That night we walked back to his flat in the dark, three streets under the railway, not talking.

He unlocked the door and stood back to let me in, the way he always did.

Five years of standing back to let me in.

I didn't go in.

I turned around in the doorway and put my hands on his chest.

"Rory. You're not sleeping on that sofa tonight."

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