“Did she make you stay in hostels, even when she had money?”
Ruben only ever shows his age when his face breaks into a full-on smile, but he never looked more handsome than right now, his laughter lines prominent.
“She would,” he says with a chuckle, “and we’d ask why. She’d say it was because real life is art and that you don’t get real life at the Ritz or the Savoy or the George V or the Negresco.” Ruben laughs and I see his eyes conjuring images as he continues, “It never meant anything at the time, but it’s all stayed with me. I think she knew what she was doing. She was preparing us for what’d be expected of us once we got older. She was schooling us, teaching us to see that life could be good without all the frills. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate luxury now I’ve reached the grand old age of thirty, but I still wouldn’t be averse to slumming it again if I had to. If it came to it, I’d do it. She was right, you see. It was much more fun at a hostel. Mum would speak to people in one of the four languages she knows.”
“Wow, four?” How am I ever to live up to such a woman? Such a role model…
Such a survivor. A warrior, even.
“She’s lived, that’s for sure,” he says, chuckling again, and I notice talking about his mother and those times they had does make him seem a lot more boyish. “She speaks English, Portuguese and Spanish, and a little conversational Italian, although she says their grammar often gives her a headache.”
“Well, I know how to ask for food and directions in several languages, but hell, sometimes I don’t fully understand the answers.”
“Mum can write down Portuguese but as for anything else, she’d have a hard time. She only knows these languages from visiting these places. Quite funny really. Try asking her to spell Westminster Bridge. She wouldn’t be able to. Amazing, isn’t it? What the mind can hold onto, without even having seen it written down?”
“Really, yes!”
I notice we’re almost back where we started, when Ruben whispers in my ear, “You have never looked more beautiful.”
We approach our apartment building at speed, having ran most of the way home. The famous Medici Chapel is still there around the corner, having remained where she was since we left earlier. I don’t know why it seems wondrous that it’s still just over there, a stone’s throw away from our place, but it is. Ruben stabs the code into the main hallway door just as the skies are about to open. I didn’t think we’d make it home dry but somehow, we have! Normally I’d be all for running in the rain, but this one time, I’m good. The weather is a sudden reminder that actually, yeah, it is still February in Florence and it does feel much cooler this evening than it did yesterday when the sun was out in full force.
While Ruben checks the mail slot for any post, I watch through the glass doors of the apartment building as huge raindrops splash against the dusty roads and pavements, reinvigorating the air. The gathering clouds make the city look demonic for the first time since I’ve been here, and even Il Duomo appears eclipsed. I’d like to go out there, run in the rain, feel it saturate my hair and clear away the demons still hounding me—the demons which always return come morning. Those demons being my fears, my regrets, my mistakes… my lost family… if I ever really had one.
“Ah, good. We’ve got a newspaper,” he tells me, offhand.
He scoops his arm around my waist and leads me to the staircase so we can begin the climb up three flights of stairs to our place on the top floor.
“You can get newspapers here?” I peer down at what he has in his hand and notice it’s a copy of today’s Telegraph. Impressive.
“We can get anything,” he says, chuckling.
The apartment is in complete darkness when we enter. He instinctively flips the switch on the hallway light, whereas my first instinct is to head for the bathroom.
I use the loo, remove my make-up and undress before pulling on my favourite robe, which now lives on me, and when it’s not on me, it remains on the hook on the bathroom door.
I’m ready for our nightly ritual of one last glass of red before bed, all while we chat on the sofa by candlelight as the Florentine skyline stares back at us through the windows, glowing.
As I’m pouring two glasses of wine in the kitchen, however, the apartment feels empty and sort of hollow. I stand and listen, but apart from my own breathing, I can’t hear a single thing else.
“Ruben,” I call, but there’s no answer.
I leave the kitchen area and scan the apartment, but he’s nowhere. Rushing through the place, I find our bedroom empty. He can’t be in the bathroom because I just left that room, but I dash around all the rooms once more, just in case.
Still, nothing.
Where is he?
Then as I’m about to start panicking, I notice a shadow, out on the balcony. It looks like he’s talking to himself. Strange. What’s he doing?
He turns around and I notice the glow of a phone, pressed against the side of his head. He’s speaking with someone… even though we agreed not to use our phones.
I find my wineglass and wait on the sofa, wondering what the heck is so important.
Eventually, after what feels like an age of waiting for him, he re-enters the flat.
The first thing I notice is that he’s avoiding my eye.
He picks up his wine and drinks it down in one.
I’m on tenterhooks, scared out of my mind, when he slams today’s Telegraph on the coffee table in front of me. He’s earmarked a page and I scan everything, wondering what he’s even trying to show me. I can’t see anything that might explain his sudden need to connect with the outside world.
Then a certain headline catches my eye: ‘Man Stabbed Leaving Pub’
“I didn’t do this,” he tells me, a tremor in his voice. “I swear, I didn’t. I didn’t, Freya.”
Frederick Kitchener, 69 of Mayfair, a retired cab company executive, became London’s latest victim of knife crime last night. He was leaving McGivern’s Pub in Kensington when he and his bodyguard were attacked. Police are looking for more information. Please call […]
I look up and into his eyes, seeing how haunted and tormented he looks. “Who were you on the phone to?”
“Mum,” he whispers.
“How did she seem? Is she okay?”
“She was rational, making plans. It might be a while before we get the body, though.”
“Who did this, Ruben?”
“I don’t know, but maybe they did us a favour.”
“Freddie. This is Freddie. He wants you to come running back so he can get you out of the picture, too. This must be him.”
He kneels in front of me and takes my hands. “I can’t let my mother do this alone.”
“This is a trap, Ruben.”
“I know, but…”
“But, what?”
“My mother…”
Then something hits home.
The newspaper.
In the time I peed, washed my face and undressed, he read an entire newspaper, did he? And happened upon this article—then was prompted to call his mother? Coincidence… or maybe not.
Gut feeling is a powerful tool, a weapon even.
I lift my eyes slowly and catch him in my grasp. “You did this, Ruben.”
Indirectly, yeah, but he still did it.
He holds my gaze and doesn’t flinch or blink for an absolute age.
“Yes,” he says, resigned, aware he can no longer lie to me. “Yes.”
That explains the early morning breakfast runs on his own—chance for him to call his henchman, or whomever he employed to do this. That explains this morning and how he fucked me. He wasn’t his usual self and didn’t fuck me with his usual style. He was beastly, hyped up on adrenalin and pure lust. Nothing else.
I stare into his eyes, but there’s nothing there. It’s like he’s flipped a switch or something. Maybe this is who he really is, or… he expects I’ll leave him. He thinks I’m disgusted. Truth to tell, I don’t know what I feel right now. A li
ttle numb, if anything.
“What are we going to do, Ruben?”
His stare is cold and his eyes look dead. “Freddie’s next.”
Air scratches my throat.
Isn’t it enough that the snake at the heart of all this has been annihilated? Why does he need more blood?
“Why?” I growl.
“Because he is the last remnant of my father’s legacy.”
“Why not let sleeping dogs lie? Nobody could possibly be as bad as your father, surely?”
“Wanna bet?”
I’m mildly panicking, not sure what to think or say or do. “Listen, I’ll stay with you here, anywhere. We don’t ever have to go back. Let’s live frugally. I’m up for it. If you never earn a salary again, it doesn’t matter. I’ll start my hotel, earn money for the both of us. You can become a painter, if you want. Please, Ruben. Let Freddie rot. He doesn’t have his father’s protection anymore… he’ll be tested. Rivals might kill him. Let them. I understand killing Fred, I do, I really, really do, but we can’t be sure of your half-brother’s crimes, can we? Let someone else be the messenger when it comes to Freddie.”
Ruben furiously bites his lip. “Let me think about it?”
“Okay, shall we go to bed?”
He nods and follows me into the bedroom.
I slip out of my robe and slide under the covers.
Ruben takes his clothes off without a care for where things land, then slides into bed beside me and curls his body around mine.
He silently cries into my hair. He cries and cries, and while he’s doing so, I realise something.
Death… might just be the beginning.
Chapter Thirty-One
Disappeared
The morning after, I’m groggy and feel hollow. Sleep came to me in small doses throughout the night, and each time I woke, I’d discover myself in a sweat, worried someone had broken into the apartment to steal Ruben away from me. Each time, he would whisper, “I’m here,” and I would reach for his hand to check he was. Still, the nightmares continued.
The reality this morning, as I wake to a new day, is that Ruben killed his own father to protect us from the future Fred Kitchener had mapped out for us. Or was it pure and simple revenge for Laurent? I don’t know. I think that’s what bothers me.
After all, how well do I know Ruben? Aside from meeting him in a pub every week for two years—a setting where you can hardly develop anything deep and meaningful—I’ve been going out with him for such a short time. He could be evil beneath it all. He could be as rotten as all the other men in my life.
I roll over and find he’s not here in bed with me. How could he leave me this morning of all mornings? After what I went through last night… the shock… horror… gripping fear, which even now a new day has dawned still has me in its clutches.
“Ruben!” I yell, but there’s no response. “Ruben, are you here?”
Nothing.
I shake my head, bite my lip.
I scrunch the sheets in my hands.
Then I punch the mattress in anguish.
“RUBEN!” I scream, but no response still.
I fly out of bed and pull my robe off the chair by the window, knotting it at my waist.
In the living room, I locate my phone on the dresser and switch it on. I haven’t had it on since we left London, as per Ruben’s request. In this moment, I couldn’t care less for his wishes. I’ll use my phone if I bloody well want to.
After my phone goes through the whole process of realising it’s in Italy and syncing up to some foreign service provider, I dial Ruben, only to be sent straight to voicemail.
My blood boils.
I scour the apartment but it seems he must have woken early this morning, thrown on last night’s clothes and taken his wallet, phone and keys with him.
I lurch for the safe, my heart pounding, and discover his passport is contained within.
I take a deep breath, my hand against my burning, sagging heart. He didn’t leave this morning with the intention of abandoning me, at least.
But where is he?
Hopefully he’s gone out to get breakfast, but the clock is telling me it’s eleven in the morning already and the only reason I slept in was the exhaustion of last night.
I wish I had Alexia’s number. I might be able to call her then and ask if she’s heard from him. Obviously without his passport he can’t get home to console his grieving mother, but he wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye, would he? No. He wouldn’t…
Fearing something terrible has happened, I check the door is locked, that the windows are closed and that there’s nobody on the street below scoping this place out.
In fact, it’s as quiet as the grave both in here and out there, what with him gone.
I take a deep breath and run myself a glass of water in the kitchen, clinging to the counter.
He’ll come back, right? He has to.
By evening, I’m in a state of blind panic… it’s been hellish, waiting… waiting. I’m shaking all over, my blood is up and I feel perpetually sick. When lunchtime arrived and he still hadn’t returned, I climbed into the shower and scrubbed myself raw. I made coffee and added a few measures of brandy, hoping that would ease my worry. It didn’t. I haven’t been able to eat all day. I’ve cleaned the whole place from top to bottom. I started wiping the kitchen sideboards and it escalated from there. The hinges in the cupboards were rusty and full of cobwebs and dead insects. In fact, the more I scrubbed the house, the more everything felt and looked like an insect apocalypse. As well as scrubbing every surface in the kitchen, I’ve also had all the linen in the washing machine and outside on the balcony to dry. Now it’s evening and we don’t have a tumble dryer, the slightly damp bedclothes and table cloths and towels and cushion covers are scattered around the apartment on clothes airers and hooks, just anywhere they might finish drying off. I’ve been telling myself that when he gets home, at least he’ll be welcomed back by the fresh smell of fabric softener, then tonight he’ll be able to sleep in clean sheets.
When the doorbell rings, I jump out of my skin, my heart catapulting out of my chest in a single moment of pure terror and elation that this might actually be him, returned from some inescapable errand or something.
I rush on spaghetti legs to the door and peer through the spyhole.
All I see is a uniform… the polizia.
This might not even be about Ruben.
How would anyone know we’ve been staying here?
Ruben paid in cash when we arrived.
The bell rings again and in a fury, I open the door and it flies open so hard it hits the wall.
The officer stands staring at me. I must look a mess. I’ve been cleaning all day in my sweats and haven’t even brushed my hair.
“Miss Carter?” he asks, apparently able to speak English, though with a thick accent.
“Yes, what I can do for you?” I pretend like nothing’s wrong, even though my whole world is collapsing around me right now.
Without Ruben, what is there?
Nothing.
Nobody.
I’m cast out.
Again.
He shows me his ID and asks, “May I come in?”
My eyes travel the length of him. I could probably escape this man if I had to, just a little punch between the eyes and I could render him stunned before legging it. He might not expect that I have a feral side.
I catch his eyes and that’s when I see it… foreboding.
He’s not here to question me about a robbery in the area and whether I saw anything. He’s not here to inform me there’s a drug dealer in the building who’s under surveillance.
He’s here with news.
I reluctantly step back to let the officer inside and he carefully pads across the freshly scrubbed floors until finding himself in the living room. He remains standing until I ask him to be seated.
“A drink, officer?”
“No, but perhaps one for you…”
I move to the patio windows and stand with my back to him, arms folded.
“Just tell me,” I beg.
What falls from his lips are words I don’t want to hear but must. I catch little things like, “I’m sorry,” and “we’ve identified him,” and other little phrases that are simply hateful to every atom of my being. I let the officer drone on and on, asking questions I don’t have the answers to.
Eventually, while staring at the floor, I ask, “May I see him?”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible. As I said, we had to use dental records sent over from London to identify him. He was… shot in the face.”
An image of my love broken beyond all recognition crosses my mind and knocks the wind right out of me, taking me to my knees.
I wrap my arms around myself and try to breathe, but it’s no use.
The officer hauls me up and plonks me on the sofa, then there’s more brandy, stinging my nostrils first before my throat. It awakens me. Revives. Just that slight burning sensation as the brandy goes down.
Once I’ve stopped shaking, the stranger looming over me moves across the room and seats himself in an armchair.
“How did you find us?” I ask him. “How did you know I was… here? I’m not family. Isn’t his mother the first person you’d contact? You speak good English, too… not many people here do. I don’t expect special treatment, just because he had money. I don’t understand any of this.”
Kismet Page 28
