Jessie Keane - Lawless

What he wanted was a home life, a real life, a family maybe.

Gilda…

He wanted her back. And he wanted Michael back too.

Ah, impossible dreams.

He looked at the bottle.

My little friend.

He picked it up, took a swig.

Hold it down to a dull roar, right?

There was still some left in the bottle. He placed it carefully back in the sink, went towards the shower. He’d clean up, and then there was that nice liquid treat waiting there, a little something in reserve, right?

Right.

And then… maybe he’d try and start to think. Or maybe… maybe he’d decide not to face any of it. Maybe he’d take a razor blade, skip the shower, have a nice deep hot bath instead, you didn’t feel it in a bath. Maybe that would be a plan: finish the drinking, finish with the whole stinking sorry mess that his life was these days, just open his wrists and lie there until it was over.

He thought of Vittore Danieri – those hate-filled eyes beneath that widow’s peak of receding dark hair, the guy looked like fucking Dracula or something – Vittore hissing at him ‘ I’ll rip the heart out of you …’

Vittore had marked him, like Cain. Vittore had made a promise, a solemn oath that one day, one day soon, he was going to hurt him, maybe hurt Daisy or Ruby too. But maybe, Kit thought with a grim little smile, maybe he’d jump the gun, how about that? Take himself out of this whole shitty scene before Vittore took the matter out of his hands and did it for him.

He looked at the bath for long, long moments.

Then he leaned in and started the shower running.

OK, maybe not today. Maybe tomorrow.

‘Please, Vittore, don’t,’ said Maria.

Ah, that was music to his ears. People begging, pleading, he loved it. What Vittore Danieri liked best about being the boss was seeing the abject fear in people’s – even his wife’s – eyes when he talked to them. He loved that. Relished it. He’d waited a damned long time for it, too, and would have had to wait a damned sight longer, if Tito hadn’t come to such an unfortunate end.

In Vittore’s eyes, Tito hadn’t been right for the boss’s job anyway. Like their father Astorre, Tito had been too easily distracted by bedding dirty puttas both male and female, and forging dubious connections to MPs and to the nobility, neither of which held any interest for Vittore.

What Vittore loved above all else was control, power.

As the middle son, he’d felt the lack of it for most of his life. Tito had been their father’s chosen one, his first born. Astorre Danieri had doted on his eldest boy: Tito could do no wrong in his eyes. Fabio was the one who hadn’t been the girl Mama craved.

No need to mention Bianca, the longed-for girl Bella so wanted. Girls didn’t even figure in Vittore’s mindset, beyond their obvious talents for keeping house and popping out babies – and Bianca didn’t seem prepared to settle down and do that . She wanted to fiddle in the business instead, and of course Tito had yielded to pressure from Mama and given her the Southampton place to try.

For years Vittore had occupied the middle ground, the dead zone of the sibling forever doomed to go unnoticed by the father he always tried so hard to impress. Oh, his mother adored him. He was her favourite. He knew people saw him as dull, blockish, but Mama cooed over him, couldn’t bear the thought of him marrying, desperate to keep him all for herself.

‘Those dirty girls, you don’t want to mix with them, my angel, my little Vittore,’ Bella told him as a child, a teenager, a young man, all the while the music of Italy, of their homeland, playing in the background as Mama wore the old vinyl out.

‘ Torna a Surriento ’, that was a favourite of hers. And ‘ O Sole Mio ’.

‘They carry on like puttas , like whores these days! This “permissive society”, I spit on it. You could catch anything from them. Diseases. Your cock could drop off.’

Mama was right, no doubt about it. He’d had no interest in women, until Maria came along, black-haired, doe-eyed, a body like a fallen angel. For the first time in his life Vittore had felt the strong sexual pull of a woman. Maria had seemed so pure and innocent, and they had dated.

‘She’s a nice enough girl,’ said Bella after the first couple of dates.

At this point, Vittore had been allowed to kiss Maria, deep and long.

‘Still seeing Maria?’ Mama asked after the fifth date, the sixth. Not looking too happy about it, not really.

Around about this time, Maria had let him undo her bra, gaze at her amazingly full naked breasts and touch her large dark nipples. It drove him crazy, touching them, feeling how soft her breasts were.

‘I heard she’s a putta ,’ came his mother’s warning after the tenth date. ‘You want to be careful. I won’t always be here to protect you, Vito. You know my health’s not good.’

Putta or not, he wanted this. When Maria let him lift her skirt and stare at the dark bush between her legs, oh God, he wanted all there was of this.

‘How come you’re still seeing that girl?’ raged Bella after the twentieth date, when it was obvious that Vittore and Maria were ‘going steady’. ‘Are you trying to break your mother’s heart? Didn’t I tell you what these women are like?’

There were hysterical tears from Bella at news of the engagement, and then a flat refusal to attend the wedding.

‘I may not live that long,’ sniffed Bella, clutching at her chest when they named the date. ‘I have this condition, as you know. My heart.’

I have a condition too, thought Vittore. It’s a pain in the arse, and you know what? It’s you, Mama.

He knew there was fuck-all wrong with his mother’s heart. Her nose had been put out of joint by her favourite son finally growing a pair, that was all. He wanted a normal life, a family. And whether his mother liked it or not, he was going to have it.

Not that it had all been plain sailing. His mother’s drip-drip-drip of acidic words seemed to have penetrated deep into the core of him. Girls are dirty, he heard in his head. You want to catch something off them, syphilis maybe? Your penis will rot with sores – you want that, Vittore?

Despite all that he wanted to bed Maria on their wedding night. Though he knew he was a bit undersized, on his own he could achieve a decent hard-on and jerk himself off to his complete satisfaction. But when they climbed into bed together, he couldn’t do a thing. She was so pretty, big-breasted, small-waisted, with opulent full buttocks. Jesus, he wanted to fuck her so badly! But his cock was limp.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Maria. ‘We have all the time we need, don’t worry.’

Maria couldn’t believe she’d finally got Vittore up the aisle. Bella had pulled all sorts of tricks to prevent it, but here they were at last – married.

Vittore’s little problem persisted for six, seven, eight months – by which time he was so desperate to have her that he felt he was going out of his mind. Then came the erections – full, amazing erections – but the mere sight of her naked body was enough to make him fire off too soon, before he could get in the bed with her.

Finally, a year into the marriage, consummation was achieved. He got drunk, fell into bed one night and there she was, his wife, and the drink relaxed him enough – not too much – to allow him to roll onto Maria – who was still a virgin – and shove his cock hard into her. It was over in three seconds.

Thereafter, that was the way it always seemed to be. And by that time, he suspected that Maria really didn’t care any more.