Redemption - Garrett Leigh Page 0,59

the wall, the desperation, the fear, all twisted up to make a man Paolo didn’t recognise.

A sob coughed out of his chest, dry and pointless. The fuck are you crying for? You pushed him into it. You laid hands on him first. As if that made it better. Luis had wanted Paolo to be scared of him, as if manhandling him and punching the wall would prove he really was the man Paolo had naïvely feared him to be.

But it didn’t work. Paolo was scared, not of Luis, but for Luis. Something had happened to push him like that, and as guilty as Paolo felt for tipping him over the edge, he knew it wasn’t him. He was a catalyst, not the source. Nah, that was Dante. It had always been Dante.

Paolo lifted his head from his hands and banged it against the door. White powder from the plaster Luis had pulverised drifted down from his hair and landed on his knees. He drew a clock face into it, then scrubbed it out. Anxiety like he’d never felt flared hotly in his chest. He was bone tired, but at the same time buzzing with enough nervous energy to power a space station.

The temptation to chase Luis down was so strong he almost choked on it. He clenched his eyes shut and banged his head again. God, I wish I didn’t love him.

But Paolo did love him, more than he could ever say. I need to help him. But how? Short of murdering Dante, there was nothing Paolo could do.

A humourless snort broke the silence in the empty flat. Paolo imagined himself storming Dante’s Moss Farm tower block and throttling him as he slept. It was a comforting image, but only for a moment. Hurting Dante—as if eating bacon every day had given Paolo the superpowers he’d need to take on a drug lord—would make him no better than the world Luis needed so desperately to escape. It would make him one of them, forever, and there’d be no coming back. No safe place for Luis to lay his head when it was all over. No warm arms to let him know how much he was loved. That he mattered. And that nothing he’d done, or could ever do, would change that.

He needs to know I love him, now more than ever. But as hard as he tried, Paolo couldn’t see a way he’d ever get to tell him.

17

The flat smelt the same as it always had: of boiled eggs and weed smoke. Luis hadn’t noticed the last time he’d been there, but as he traced the road map with a pencil, marking out escape routes if Dante’s exchange went south, it choked him.

“Why are you even doing that?” Dante called from the sofa. “You know we’ve got Google Maps and shit these days, right?”

Luis ignored him. He didn’t know how visible Dante was on the police radar, but he didn’t fancy carrying an electronic log of every search he’d made in his pocket. He could burn physical maps before he set off. Buy his train ticket with cash and his hood obscuring his face. It wasn’t a fool-proof plan, but it was better than nothing. And more than Dante had offered him. “Why Coventry?” he asked suddenly. “I thought the Albanians got their link from the Leicester boys.”

Dante kept his gaze on the TV. “They do. But only cos no one’s offered them a better price.”

“That’s because no one’s stupid enough to take on a crew that big.”

Dante grunted.

Luis eyed him from the kitchen table. “Please tell me you’re not that stupid?”

“What do you care?”

“I don’t care about you. But you’re not the one carrying, are you? You haven’t got the balls to run that shit yourself. You never have.”

“Don’t need to, do I?”

“If you did, you’d be working at McDonalds by now.”

Dante hauled himself from his couch and sauntered to the table where Luis sat. He peered at the maps with stone cold disinterest. “What’s the matter? Missing your boy toy? Fucking sap. You’ve only been apart a few hours.”

If only. It had been six days since Luis had walked out on Paolo, and he missed him so much he felt physically sick every moment he was awake. Sleeping forever seemed the ideal solution, but his brain wouldn’t play ball with that either. For days and days, he’d paced the bedsit and roamed the streets at night, but still he couldn’t sleep. Some nights, he passed the cafe and