Bella preferred to keep her family close, under her control. She didn’t like Bianca being away so much, down on the south coast, but she kept her adopted daughter’s room just as she left it, so that it was always ready for her return.
Why should her sons and her daughter find places of their own when there was this big house here, with plenty of space for them all? Of course, Tito had kept an apartment over one of the clubs – she didn’t want to know about that, or about what he got up to when he was there, God forbid. Fabio, her youngest boy, still lived here with his Mama, and why not?
And Vittore!
Bella’s lip curled. Her favourite boy, the middle son, had shocked and upset her by insisting on marrying that whore Maria. He’d been ready to break his mama’s heart by moving out, setting up his own household with the slut.
Bella soon put a stop to that. She had cajoled, pleaded, cried, clutched at her chest. ‘I am losing my son!’ she wailed.
In the end, Vittore had relented, as she had known he would. Now Vittore and Maria had their own set of rooms – lounge, kitchen, wine cellar, bathroom, bedroom, even their own little patch of garden – in the big family home, and there was no more talk of them moving out.
The rain battered against the window and Bella gazed out at the dark sky, the lashing rain. She sighed then, and cursed the weather in this country. In Napoli, sweet hot Napoli, people sat outside, sharing grappa with their neighbours and laughing at the problems of the world under a brilliant, scorching sun. Here, they huddled indoors even in the summer months, and the air was never dry, it was always damp, humid: everyone went out in raincoats to dodge the showers. But there could never be any going back for the family; she knew that. This had become their country, their home.
Once it had seemed that nothing could touch them here, nothing at all: and then it happened. Her son Tito, walking out of the renovated Docklands one night. An assassin, lying in wait, striking when it was least expected. A single thrust with a long, narrow blade, and her precious boy, her eldest, was dead.
With trembling fingers Bella placed her long-dead husband’s picture back on the mantelpiece. She was so tired of it all: the fight, the struggle. Tired to death; all she wanted was peace. No reprisals, no beatings. She’d told the boys and she meant it. Tito was gone, nothing was going to bring him back. Let him rest.
