Lawless by Jessie Keane

did.’
    Kit shrugged and squinted up at her. His sister, his twin. OK, she might have got the glamorous end of it growing up – the pony clubs, the coming-out balls, all that hoity-toity shit, but she was no fool; you didn’t have to draw her any pictures. He had another slug of the coffee. It was still the pits.
    Daisy sat down beside Kit. ‘I loved Michael,’ she said quietly.
    ‘We all did,’ said Rob.
    Kit looked at Daisy’s face. Then at Rob’s.
    ‘So who’s going to say it?’ asked Kit.
    ‘What?’ asked Daisy.
    ‘What?’ asked Rob.
    ‘The bleeding obvious. If those Eyeties didn’t do it, who did?’
    ‘We all want to know the answer to that question,’ said Daisy. It tormented her, the thought of Michael dying alone in an alley, shot through the head – and she had seen the fallout, the heart-rending grief Ruby had suffered when she lost him. She wanted to find out who did this. Not for revenge. For her own peace of mind. ‘Don’t you want to know? Kit?’
    ‘Of course I fucking well do,’ he said. Took another swig, finished the coffee. His head still hurt. He still wished he could just sleep, die, anything rather than have to face what he knew he must, this thing that would hound him to the grave if he didn’t hunt it down and wring the truth out of it. It hurt him, destroyed him, that someone had killed Michael, rubbed out his life. And the thing that made it worse? It had happened on his watch.
    ‘So who the hell did it? If they didn’t?’ he said aloud, and clutched at his head.
    ‘We don’t know. But for sure we have to find out,’ said Rob.
    Rob knew how badly Michael’s passing had hurt Kit. It was as if he’d been locked into a downward spiral ever since, added to which he now had Vittore out for his blood. The way things were going, Kit wouldn’t live long enough to track down Michael’s killer. Kit and Rob had almost grown up together working for Michael. He didn’t want to lose him.
    I’ll watch his back, he promised himself. What more can I do?
    ‘Where do we start?’ asked Kit. ‘We don’t have a fucking clue, do we?’
    ‘He had enemies,’ shrugged Rob.
    ‘We all got those.’
    ‘We have to start thinking,’ said Daisy firmly. ‘And stop drinking.’

23
    Fabio was waiting, spying out the land, taking it nice and easy. He had his stake money together, his own money, nothing from the family coffers, nothing that Vittore with his smug superior smirk dealt out to him from petty cash like he was doing him some sort of fucking favour.
    He hated Vittore, always had. Tito had been OK, had a bit of life in him, but Vittore was like a wet tea towel over a chip-pan fire: he seemed to extinguish life wherever he went. Yet despite that, Vittore was Mama’s little darling. Not her youngest son, no. He’d been ousted by Bianca, the daughter Mama had always wanted – only she wasn’t a real daughter, just a bought-in one, a ready-made thing – like shop cake.
    Feeling the anger rise inside him, Fabio reminded himself that none of that mattered any more. He was his own man. Let Vittore worry about the family, the honour of the Danieris and that shit Kit Miller. Fabio didn’t care. He had other concerns.
    As he came downstairs into the hall, he could hear Mama in the kitchen making breakfast. From her sitting room drifted the sounds he’d grown up with, the sounds of old Italy, someone singing ‘ Bésame Mucho ’. Poor old Mama, clinging on to old ways and old days. Bella’s speech was still heavily accented, but her sons had quickly smoothed out their vowels and now sounded pretty much English.
    As he reached the bottom stair, pulling on his jacket, he paused to admire his reflection in the mirror there and was gratified to see that the caramel-coloured flecks of wool in his Donegal tweed jacket exactly matched the lustrous brown of his eyes. Then he saw Maria, wearing a pink silk house robe, come out of the hall door that led into the set of rooms she and Vittore