The Mafia Lost His Queen novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Bermondsey

I stood at that round window until her father's car came and took her away.

She never looked up again.

She didn't have to.

Fourteen hours later I was sitting in a kitchen in Rotherhithe, in south London.

I had a mug of tea I hadn't asked for and a plate of buttered toast cut into triangles.

The kitchen was yellow. The kettle was older than me.

Rory's mum stood at the counter in a cardigan and slippers, watching me eat.

"More toast," she said. It wasn't a question.

"I'm all right, thank you."

"You're not all right, love, you're see-through. More toast."

She put two more triangles on my plate.

Rory leaned in the doorway with his bad eye and his arms folded.

He hadn't told her anything on the phone except that he was coming home and bringing someone who needed feeding.

The front door banged open.

"Where is he? Where's my idiot brother?"

A short blonde woman in an apron came down the hall. There was flour on her jeans and a ring in her nose.

She stopped dead when she saw Rory's face.

"Oh, you absolute muppet. Who did that?"

"Walked into a door," Rory said.

"A door with a fist." Then she saw me. "Hello. Who are you?"

"This is Gianna," Rory said. "Gianna, my sister Jess."

Jess looked at me for a long second.

She looked at my hands around the mug, and my mother's ring, and whatever was in my face.

Then she pulled out the chair next to mine and sat in it.

"Right," she said. "Has Mum done toast? She thinks toast fixes everything."

"It does," said their mum.

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