‘You were there when it happened? And you didn’t stop it?’ roared Fabio, leaning in and jabbing the glowing cigarette against Donato’s face again, then again. Donato screamed.
One of the other men made as if to intervene. Fabio saw the movement and lifted his arm and pointed a rigid finger at him.
‘I really wouldn’t,’ Fabio hissed. Then he turned to the room at large and shouted: ‘Place is closed, folks. Everyone out now.’
No one moved. Everyone stared at the stricken Donato.
‘Off you fuck!’ yelled Fabio, full volume.
They started moving then, the women gathering up their clothes, grabbing handbags, edging away, their eyes still on him, the way you would keep your eyes on a dangerous animal that could turn and attack.
Fabio pressed the point harder: ‘Get out of here! Show’s over!’
Slowly, everyone started to move toward the door. Fabio stood glowering until the last guest closed the door behind them, leaving him alone with the cowering Donato.
‘You stupid cunt,’ he said, and grabbed a heavy marble candlestick from a table and waded in.
Then, when he had seen to Donato, taught him a lesson he would never forget, Fabio went through to the office next door. With hands that shook with a mixture of excitement and terror, his knuckles sore and bloodstained, he phoned his brother Vittore. He didn’t know what to do, but he knew that Vittore would. And the irony of this did not escape him.
This is a nightmare, thought Bella Danieri. She couldn’t believe that she wasn’t asleep and dreaming this horror. Her boy Tito was dead. In the small hours of that same morning, she sat with Fabio and Vittore in her kitchen. Maria had come in, briefly – she knew she wasn’t welcome, she was never welcome at any family occasion – and she’d hugged Bella and said she was so sorry about Tito, was there anything she could do?
‘Go to bed,’ said Bella, shrugging off her daughter-in-law’s embrace as if she were an annoying insect to be swatted aside.
Maria stiffened, glanced at Vittore; he nodded and she left the room. Presently they heard the door across the hallway close loudly, and Bella slopped brandy into three glasses.
‘Who did it?’ said Vittore into the sudden silence. ‘That’s what I want to know.’
Fabio glanced at his older brother. ‘He had a lot of enemies.’ Even you, brother dear. And me. Neither of us could wait for him to be out of the way, so that we could have our turn.
But he didn’t say it; Vittore would flatten him if he did. Instead, he sipped the brandy and stared at Mama Bella. Earlier, when Vittore had confirmed the news, she had sobbed and shrieked and clutched at her chest. Now she seemed calmer.
