Redemption - Garrett Leigh Page 0,50
times he couldn’t have Luis’s bullshit in the cafe. What if he told Dante too?
Dante’s reputation was scary as fuck, but Luis knew Paolo well enough to know he wouldn’t give a shit if Dante wound him up. Which Dante would, because he was a manipulative motherfucker who’d always known Luis’s weak spots.
And there was no doubt that Paolo was Luis’s weak spot now. He didn’t care about his job, his crappy flat, his freedom. Nothing mattered more than Paolo.
Fuck. I love him.
The realisation nearly sent Luis to his knees. Only Dante’s presence kept him upright. He set the plate down, wiped it clean with a paper towel, and rinsed his hands. His skin was an angry pink where the oil had burned him, and the stinging pain merged with the rage building inside.
He took the plate to the table and dumped it in front of Dante’s girl. “What do you want?”
Dante’s grin widened. “Chicken sandwich. Mayo, no salad.”
Of course he did. That bland shit was all he ever ate. Luis bit back a sneer. “Don’t do them here. Read the fucking menu.”
He walked away, blood roaring in his ears, skin hot with the worst kind of heat. Instinct urged him into the kitchen and away from Dante, but that meant leaving Paolo alone with him, and Luis couldn’t do it. Not now, not ever.
More orders came in. Luis cooked without seeing the food he was putting on plates. Dante’s presence behind him burned every moment he was there, and Luis knew the second he wasn’t.
Tension flooded out of him with a dizzying sigh. He leant on the worktop and hung his head, ignoring the frantic sizzle of the bacon he was about to char to an inedible crisp. Bastard, bastard, bastard. He’d known it was coming but had clung to the hope that he’d had more time. That Dante would give him a little longer with Paolo before he took it all away.
Cos that’s what he did—what he’d always done. Given Luis enough rope to think he was free, then yanked on it so hard he broke everything Luis had ever touched. They’d told him in prison that Dante’s hold on him was psychological abuse. Even then, Luis hadn’t truly understood it, but he did now.
Paolo came up behind him, his hand first on Luis’s back, then his lips at Luis’s good ear. “He’s gone.”
Despite the warning, Luis jumped a mile. “Who?”
“Don’t give me that. I saw you talking to him.”
“I didn’t talk to him.”
“Are you okay?”
A week ago, Luis could’ve shrugged the question off, but ever since the night Luis had purged his soul, it had felt like Paolo saw every emotion that passed through him. He shook his head. “I wish he was dead.”
“Do you? Or is it the fact that you still love him that twists you up so much?”
“I don’t love him.”
“It’s okay if you do.”
“I don’t.”
Paolo sighed. “Sorry. That sounded super patronising anyway, so feel free to punch me in the face.”
The only thing Luis wanted to do to Paolo right then didn’t involve an audience of people eating the Italian sausages Paolo had put on the specials board. He shook his head again, the heat of the grill suddenly so fierce he couldn’t stand it. “Can I go out?”
“What?”
“Out. I need to go out.”
“Of course.” Paolo stood back to let him pass. “Take as long as you—”
Luis didn’t hear him. He took his apron off, dropped it on the floor, and fled the cafe. Outside, the cold winter breeze did nothing to calm him, and he took off at a run with no real clue where he was going. The high street passed him by, then the new build flats where Paolo lived, and the grubby alleyways he still knew like the back of his hand. The shopping complex at the base of the tower block he’d once called home, and the grimy stairs that led to the very top floor.
Muscle lined the stairwells of the uppermost floors. Perhaps they’d have stopped anyone else, but Luis breezed on by until he got to the top. There two faces he recognised were waiting for him, blocking his path.
Luis stepped up to them. “I need to see my brother.”
Asa, the biggest, meanest dude on Dante’s payroll unless you knew him the way Luis did, shook his head. “He ain’t seeing anyone.”
“Give a fuck. He’ll see me.”
“Nah, Luis. He told us you’d come and not to let you in.”
Asa and Luis had once been as close