Gina frowned as she heard doors slamming downstairs, raised voices, the sounds of a struggle, things crashing to the ground. Anxiously she twisted around in the chair to look at the open doorway leading out into the hall. She tried to get up from her chair – she hated the thing, she spent so many hours confined to it – but she was too weak. With her skinny, shaking, blue-veined hands she fumbled with the chair’s wheels, and managed to turn it so that she was facing the door.
‘Fidelia!’ she called in her querulous voice, a voice that had once made people snap to attention. Once she had been respected, even feared, because of her family connections. Not any more.
Fidelia didn’t come.
Suddenly, all was deathly quiet in the villa. Stillness. Silence. And then she heard it. The stealthy tread of footsteps approaching. Frozen there, her heart stuttering in her chest, she clutched at the blanket over her knees and anxiously watched the open door.
‘Fidelia?’ she called again, quieter, her voice trembling.
Then a man stepped into the doorway. He was carrying a gun. He was compact, muscular, with black hair and dark navy-blue eyes. He was aiming the gun steadily, straight at her. As he moved, he left faint bloody footprints on the marble floor. Two other men appeared behind him, both of them armed, both of them looking dangerous.
‘Who are you?’ she asked the one in front, her voice hardly more than a whisper.
‘I’m Max Carter,’ said the man, coming into the room. ‘You wanted to speak to me, didn’t you.’
‘No, I… it was a mistake. That’s all.’ She looked bewildered, then she remembered. A faltering smile lifted her lips back from her yellowing teeth. ‘Antonio has put it right.’
‘No. He hasn’t. Antonio’s in the hospital,’ he said.
Gina said nothing. If I say nothing, she thought, then I can’t do anything wrong. I can’t make another mistake. This mistake was clearly a bad one, far worse than everyone had previously thought. Antonio was in the hospital. For a moment, groping around in her mind, she couldn’t remember who Antonio was, and then she had it. Antonio was the one who had got very angry with her. Antonio was the one who said he’d put it right.
Max stepped further into the luxuriously appointed and sunlit room. He didn’t lower the gun. He was looking at a helpless, confused old lady in a wheelchair, but seeing something very different: the latent, deadly power of the Mafia. The old woman had secrets and in her confused state she had spilled them – and those secrets were dire enough to make her send two men to kill him so that they would never be revealed.
