Jessie Keane - Ruthless

‘Fuck,’ said Max.

The lights changed. Tone took off again, full-speed, edging up as Junior came within distance. They were three cars behind, then two, then one. Then the lights again. This time Tone ignored them. Brakes squealed, horns tooted, people shouted and screamed. No one got killed, but it was only by luck. Tone was on Junior’s bumper as he headed over the North Circular. Soon as he came off it, Junior pulled the car to the side and with a chirp of brakes parked it nose-first against the nearest pavement. Then he tumbled out of the driver’s-side door, and ran.

Max was out of the Jag before Tone brought it to a halt. He hit the road and was off along the pavement after Junior. Thirty paces and Junior came to a brick wall. He was trying to hurl himself over it when Max caught up and dragged him down. Junior started yelling.

‘Shut up,’ snapped Max, shaking him. ‘We’ve got your sister in the car. You want her to come to grief? Keep that up and she will.’

Junior shut up.

Yeah, he thought a lot of his family, Max could see that. Shame that familial loyalty didn’t stretch to Annie. He knew his ex-wife was a crazy, maddening cow, but that had never stopped him loving her one hundred per cent.

He gripped Junior’s arm and marched him to the Jag. Then he threw him in the back with his sister, and Tone drove them all to Holland Park.

Annie was in the study when she heard the doorbell ring. Rosa was down in the kitchen, chances were she wouldn’t even hear it. But Bri was there on the door, he’d get it. She’d just got off the phone to Alberto, who’d rung in to say he had Layla with him, she was safe. She was worried for Alberto, but at a loss to know how she could help him. Soon, he’d warned her, he was going to have to run.

Christ, Alberto, please don’t leave it too late, she thought, shuddering. She went to the window, looked out. There was a van out there, a black van, it had been there for a couple of weeks now; people coming and going around it, workmen she had supposed. But now… she wasn’t so sure.

She felt bad about having called him. He shouldn’t be here, helping her. She shouldn’t have asked him to come.

When the Feds took Alberto, she knew the whole edifice of his organization would come crashing down. Without his rigorous control of the streets, Queens, New York, would be a zoo again, wide open to any little tosser with attitude. She thought of Naples, where only recently a whole host of Mafia godfathers had been arrested. Shortly after their trials and convictions, the police authorities had found themselves unable to cope with the sudden outbreak of criminal chancers running wild.

Alberto’s charmed life would be over. No more summers in the Hamptons, no more polo at Cowdray Park or in Argentina or Callien in the South of France, no more champagne and chukkas, no more racing in fiendishly expensive yachts, no more private jets and politicians and high-ranking policemen seeking favours from the don.

All that would be at an end.

Instead, there would be prison, for a lot of years.

Annie stood up. It was too painful to think that Alberto, her stepson, her friend and supporter over so many years, would be lost to her.

Would Max finally believe then, when ‘Golden Boy’ Alberto was behind bars, that there was nothing between them? She thought of Layla and Alberto. Thought of the transformation her daughter had undergone, and the way Alberto had looked at her.

Annie sighed. She didn’t want that pain for Layla. She wanted a straight, uncomplicated man for her. Not Alberto, who could be gone at any moment. But it wasn’t her decision to make. They were together, right now. It was out of her hands.

She went over to the door. Bri had let someone in. Who? He should have been tapping on the study door by now, letting her know who was calling. She opened it and glanced out into the hall – and froze.

Bri was lying on the floor by the closed front door. He was on his back, and he was twitching.

‘Bri-’ Annie was stepping forward, her heart racing.

That was when she saw the big man with the shock of red hair step out from behind the staircase.

She spun round, almost fell back into the study, slammed the door, ran for the desk. He was there, flinging the door open, sending it crashing on its hinges. Shaking, terrified, she fumbled to open the top drawer, grabbed the can of Mace. Somehow she held it ready, stared at Rufus Malone standing there in the open doorway.

He moved like an athlete, surprisingly light on his feet for a man that size. The long, curling red hair gave him a wild appearance. The dark grey eyes were cold. He was wearing jeans and a white shirt and a beige corduroy jacket that seemed too tight, stretched across his bulky frame. He was carrying something in his right hand: a black plastic item the size of a small transistor radio, with two buttons on the front.

He smiled almost gently as he pressed one of the buttons.

There was a sharp zapping sound. Two electrical probes shot out of the thing on wires and hit Annie like a thunderbolt.

Next thing she knew, all the strength went out of her. Her fingers went numb. She dropped the Mace. Instantly, she collapsed in a heap, every particle of her body short-circuiting.

Taser, she managed to think.

The shock danced all over her skin and nerves like a firestorm. Suddenly, nothing worked. Her limbs were dead weights, and the greater part of her brain seemed to be in the grip of a detached paralysis. She lay there, aware that her legs and arms were trembling but unable to stop it. She was breathing, but it felt as if someone else was doing all the work.

How many volts did those things carry? She’d read once that it was fifty thousand, which – if you were unlucky and had other health issues such as an undiagnosed heart condition – could kill you.

She wasn’t dead. Neither was Bri. But they were both about as useful right this minute as a couple of babes in arms.

Rosa, she thought, and screamed out the housekeeper’s name.

The sound that emerged was a tremulous whimper. What good could Rosa do anyhow? Nothing except get hit by that thing herself – and she was frail and old, the shock would most likely kill her.

Rufus pocketed the taser gun in a businesslike fashion, then came around the desk, bent and hefted her over his shoulder. She felt one of her shoes drop from her foot. Her brain was disjointed, sluggish to respond, firing a few synapses here and there.

He was going to carry her out the front door?

But there were men watching the house. Max’s men. They would see, they would come and stop him. And what could have been a curse could now turn into a blessing. Those men in the black van, the ones she believed were watching Alberto’s every move, would now come to her aid.

Wouldn’t they?

Rufus was out in the hall now, stepping over Bri, who was still shaking and helpless on the floor. Opening the front door, he casually hefted her in a fireman’s lift down the front steps. Someone was going to stop him.

She tried to see, tried to look around, but the world was upside-down and she couldn’t move her head, couldn’t move anything. She could see a car, and that was one of Max’s men in the driver’s seat. Why wasn’t he moving, why wasn’t he seeing this and hurrying towards them? His eyes were closed. Whether he was just asleep or had been zapped like her, she didn’t know. He wasn’t coming to anyone’s rescue, that was for sure.

Shit.

As if this was a normal everyday event, Rufus Malone opened the back door of a car, and unloaded her across the seat. She lay there, thinking How long until this wears off? Until I can move again?