who didn’t care that I could’ve killed a dude just doing his job? I don’t fucking know.” Luis wrapped his arms around himself and rocked back and forth. His eyes were damp, but no tears fell. “Dante ran away. He was screaming at me to follow him, but when I looked down and saw the blood by my feet, I couldn’t move. I fell over—I don’t know if I fainted or just lost my fucking mind—but Dante didn’t come back for me. He got in the car and left me there, and I didn’t even care.”
Paolo had stopped breathing. His head pounded, and his cheeks felt numb. He let out a shuddery breath. “I can’t believe he left you.”
Luis hissed through his teeth. “I can. And I’m glad he did. I stayed with the Securitas men and tried to stop the man I’d hit from dying. When the police came, I gave them the phone, and told them the man with the red mask was me.”
“You never told them who Dante was?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Luis finally lifted his red-eyed gaze to meet Paolo’s. “Because he doesn’t deserve redemption.”
14
It took Luis a week to figure out Dante had got his phone number from the teenage girl who worked in the bank, the one who wouldn’t unlock his account without photo ID. He’d asked her three times. Begged her. Then he’d just so happened to be outside the bank when it had closed, and she’d left. A blacked-out car had picked her up and driven her towards the Moss Farm tower blocks and guided her towards Luis’s childhood home. Good for you, sweetheart. He won’t be banging you for long.
Or maybe he would. Maybe nothing had changed about Dante except his propensity for treating women like shit. Perhaps he’d marry this one.
“What are you raging about?”
“Hmm?” Luis refocussed. Paolo was beside him, face caught between a frown and a glare. “Sorry, what?”
“You look really pissed off.”
“Find a mirror, dude.”
Paolo’s scowl deepened. “I’d rather find the order slip for table four. She reckons she’s been waiting half an hour for beans on toast.”
“You don’t do beans on toast.”
“We don’t do beans on toast. I don’t remember anything that happened in my life before you.”
“That’s sweet.”
Paolo huffed. “If you say so. Where’s that fucking order?”
Luis didn’t have it. Since Paolo had been ill, he’d forced himself back to the grill, and he kept every slip of paper Paolo passed him in a bulldog clip by the bacon. The beans on toast order wasn’t there. “Do you want me to cook it anyway?”
“Fuck no,” Paolo snapped. “She didn’t bloody order it, and we don’t even have beans, remember?”
He stomped away, leaving Luis to marvel at how someone so bad tempered could make him feel so damn good. But the further Paolo was away from him, the quicker his humour faded. His thoughts returned to Dante and the barrage of messages he’d sent since Luis had stood him up. They’d all come from different numbers, but even though he’d dropped the “bro” bullshit, Luis knew it was him.
Who else would warn him it was only a matter of time before the “pretty boy” in his life found out who he really was?
Luis didn’t want to think about what Dante would do if he found out Paolo already knew. That Luis had told him everything about that fateful day and more.
Paolo came back with the order slip he’d found by the till. Luis took it without gloating and cooked the plate of tomatoes on toast it had been amended to. Paolo didn’t appear to collect it straight away. Sighing, Luis picked it up and turned around, facing the cafe for the first time since it had opened. Table four was at the back. It was occupied by the girl from the bank, and she wasn’t alone.
Fury darkened Luis’s vision. He gripped the plate so hard it tipped sideways, sloshing hot, olive oil slick tomatoes over his hand.
He barely felt it. In his head, he crossed the cafe, throat punched Dante, and hurled him out onto the street, but in reality, he didn’t move. Couldn’t. It was the third time he’d faced his brother since he’d got out, but seeing him here, in Paolo’s cafe, chilled him to the bone.
Paolo was at the next table, clearing it onto a huge tray. He hadn’t noticed Dante yet, but other people had. How long before they saw Luis too? Dante wouldn’t be ignored, and what then? Paolo had told him a dozen