Then the limo edged forward and the man slipped out of her line of sight. She turned to look back, but he was gone.
Maria was taking her hand, squeezing it. Bianca snapped back to the present, looked at her sister-in-law, the poor cow.
‘He’s in a better place, you know. Tito, I mean,’ she said.
Bianca took her hand away.
A better place?
She knew that plenty of people would think Tito was destined for hell, particularly the one who’d killed him. And she wanted to know who that was; she was desperate to know who the bastard was who had robbed Tito of his life and brought such devastation on her family. Adopted or not, she had absorbed the culture she’d been taken into. She was a true child of the Camorra, and that was a proud and unforgiving heritage.
When she found out who was responsible, she would have her revenge.
She swore it.
It was freezing cold and windy as the mourners filed inside the church. Outside, some brave early daffodils were being tossed in the breeze and flattened into the muddy soil. It was scarcely warmer inside the building. The atmosphere was grim. The organist was playing a dirge, appropriately sad for a Requiem Mass.
Many had come to pay their respects, because they had to. The Danieris expected it. Tito might be gone, but there was still Vittore; there was still Fabio. Failure to attend would be noted, and frowned upon. Everyone knew that.
Loitering outside were a couple of plain-clothes policemen, noticed but ignored by the bulk of the mourners. The police had only recently released the body, and ‘enquiries were ongoing’ into Tito’s murder. But so far no one had been arrested and everyone knew that the police wouldn’t dig too deeply or trouble themselves too much: obviously it was another gangland killing, one of many that occurred every year around the city, nothing too remarkable.
Bastards, thought Bianca, walking up the aisle beside Maria, both of them curtsying and crossing themselves before the altar before joining Mama in the front pew.
‘Where have you been?’ demanded Bella of her daughter.
Bianca squeezed her mother’s hand. ‘Sorry. Traffic. Got held up.’
‘Have you seen Fabio?’
‘He’s just arrived, we saw him as we came in. He’s…’ Out there, unloading the coffin.
Bianca couldn’t bring herself to say the words. They choked her, cut off her breath. All the way here, she had felt sick with horror. Traffic slowing the cars down, holding her up, had been yet another twist to the torment, prolonging this when she just wanted it to be over.
