Black Widow (36 page)

Annie had an attack of nerves next day when she had to leave Layla again.

‘Fuck me,’ said Dolly in exasperation. ‘She’s got me here with her, and Aretha, and Ellie adores her—and Ross is her very own personal bodyguard. He’s soft as butter with kids, though he tries to hide it. Get your arse off out of it, she’ll be fine.’

But Annie had to really brace herself to do it, to kiss her daughter goodbye and go and pay her dues.

‘Are you coming back soon, Mummy?’ asked Layla, wrenching at Annie’s heart.

‘A couple of hours and I’ll be back with you,’ Annie promised, hastily scribbling a note. ‘Mummy has to do a bit of business, that’s all, and she’ll be right back.’

Unlike Daddy
, thought Annie as she walked out the door. She hadn’t addressed that problem with
Layla yet. How to tell her that Max was dead? She didn’t know how she’d face giving Layla that sort of pain to deal with. Layla was a daddy’s girl. Max was the moon and the stars to her: he was everything.

But Annie comforted herself with the fact that her daughter was a tough little thing. She’d withstood all this—she would deal with that, too. It would hurt her. It would hurt her horribly. But she would get through it, Annie would make sure of that. She would dedicate the rest of her life to keeping her daughter—
Max’s
daughter—safe. She owed him that.

The pain hit her again as she went out to the car and climbed in the back.

It always surprised her, how
physical
the pain of his loss could be. It hit her right in the gut again, made her gasp. But she had accepted it now. She knew he was gone. She had made her peace with that.

‘Where to?’ asked Tony, folding up his paper and half turning in his seat to look at her. ‘You okay, Boss?’

‘I’m fine, Tone. Couldn’t be better. Holland Park. Mr Barolli’s place.’

Tony nodded, gunned the engine into life, and eased the big car out into the traffic. They were silent all the way over to Constantine’s house, but it was an easy, companionable silence. No words
needed to be spoken. Annie sat back and relaxed. Relaxed completely, as she hadn’t for weeks.

In her mind she bid them all goodbye. Max. She had slipped his ring on to her thumb this morning, it felt right there somehow. She was comfortable with it and with what it represented. She looked down at it, blue and gold.
Oh, Max, how I loved you.
And there was Jonjo. A pain in the arse, but her brother-in-law, to be accorded respect. Dear, sweet Billy Black. She wished him the sleep of the just. And Darren, the unlikely hero, the golden boy of Limehouse.
God bless you, Darren.

She was half dozing by the time the Jag pulled up outside Constantine’s place.

‘Won’t be long, Tone,’ she said, and jumped out of the car and ran up the steps, feeling light, feeling free and airy all at once.

Everything was ahead of her now. She might reopen the clubs, but as what? She still wasn’t sure about that. Raymond’s Revue Bar was raking in plenty of dosh in Soho, but did she really want to go that route? Jonjo had made the clubs tacky and seedy; she wanted to bring the tone back up. But how to do that, and which market to tap into, was as yet unclear.

She might do anything—there were no limits, no obstacles. She smiled as she thought of her breakfast chat with Dolly. Even Dolly was catching
the bug of ambition from Annie: she was talking about expanding into the escort business.

Humming to herself, Annie lifted the heavy brass knocker. A middle-aged woman wearing a maid’s uniform and sensible shoes opened the door.

So where are the big ugly heavies?
wondered Annie vaguely.

‘I want to see Mr Constantine Barolli,’ she said.

‘Mr Barolli not here,’ said the woman in a Spanish accent, and made as if to shut the door.

Annie stuck her foot in the gap.

‘Hold on,’ she said. ‘What do you mean,
not here?’

The woman looked at Annie’s foot. Annie kept her foot right where it was. The woman’s dark eyes rose and rested on Annie’s face.

‘He gone airport.’

‘What?’

‘He gone airport.’

‘Which
airport?’

‘Heathrow.’

‘Not Gatwick? Not City?’

The woman shook her head.

‘I tell you—Heathrow.’

‘Is he going back to New York?’

‘
Sí
, New York.’

And without a fucking
word
to me
, thought Annie, feeling deflated, irritated, disappointed to her bones.

He was going, and he hadn’t told her.

‘And the rest of the family?’ she asked.

‘They go days ago,’ said the woman.

Lucco would have been sorry to have missed another opportunity to snipe at her, that was for sure. Annie glanced at her Rolex. ‘Has he been gone long? What time’s his flight due to leave?’

The woman told her.

Fucking
hell.

Annie skidded back down the steps, wrenched open the back door of the Jag and threw herself in.

‘Heathrow, Tone. Step on it, will you?’

Constantine was just about to go through passport control at Heathrow to board his private Gulfstream 111 jet when he heard a shout. He turned—and so did the meaty mound of black-suited muscle beside him. They saw Annie Carter running full-pelt towards him. She was all in black, dark hair flying out behind her as she ran. Actually
ran.

Constantine stepped out of the queue.

Annie skidded to a halt in front of him, looking breathless, venomous, disbelieving.

‘You
bastard
,’ she said when she could get her breath. She glared at him standing there, looking annoyingly good as usual. Immaculate suit, thick silver hair. Dark tan, startling blue eyes.

Bastard.

Constantine gave the heavy a ‘give us a minute’ look, and the man walked several paces away. He kept watching his boss with a protective eye.

‘That’s some greeting, Mrs Carter,’ said Constantine. ‘Care to try again?’

‘Oh don’t give me all that smooth stuff, I’m not impressed,’ snapped Annie, shooting a glare at two women who turned and looked at them. ‘I can’t believe that you were just going to fuck off and not even say goodbye, you bastard.’

‘I’m going home to do some business, catch up with family. We’ll be landing at Teterboro. On the way, we’ll stop in Goosebay—that’s Newfoundland—to refuel. Is there anything else you’d like to know?’

‘No,’ she said, feeling unreasonably rattled by all this. ‘I can’t believe you were going to do that, just clear off out of it without a word.’

‘Well I can’t believe how
upset
you are about it, Mrs Carter.’ Constantine looked at her and then grimaced. ‘For fuck’s sake, I can’t have endeared myself to you by what I’ve done.’

‘And
stop
calling me that. Can’t you call me Annie, for God’s sake? Everyone calls me Annie, why don’t
you?
And what do you mean by that? You helped me get Layla back. Ain’t that what matters?’

Constantine looked down at the floor and back up at her face.

‘Mrs Carter—okay,
Annie
—you and I both know what my motivation was for helping you get Layla back. And you’d have every right to
despise me for it. Christ knows I made my intentions plain enough.’

Annie was silent, staring at his face.

‘I want to ask you a question,’ he said, staring right back at her.

‘What?’

‘Have you ever wanted something so much that you tried to grab it and then you held it too hard and crushed it?’

Annie thought of Max and of her ruined relationship with Ruthie.

‘Yeah,’ she said slowly. ‘I suppose I have.’

Constantine heaved a sigh. ‘Look, I’m used to getting what I want,’ he said. ‘No one says no to me. Ever. So all right, hands up: I mishandled things. I got right to the wire, knowing what I wanted, but suddenly I couldn’t do it. You were in a corner. You’d lost your husband and you were in danger of losing your daughter too. I wanted you so much I thought I was willing to exploit that. Turned out I wasn’t. But I knew you’d hate my guts for what I put you through.’

Annie took a breath. So he hadn’t been turned off by her frigid behaviour. She thought back to the time when she’d wondered if she should appeal to his better nature. She’d decided that he didn’t have one. But she’d been wrong. He
did.

‘I don’t hate your guts,’ said Annie, frowning. ‘But what was that note all about then? The one
that said,
Come Friday, early.
I thought you meant…’ She faltered to a halt.

‘I
meant
I had the money waiting there for you, no strings attached,’ said Constantine. ‘What, you think I meant come and I’ll jump on your bones and then maybe I’ll hand over the money? You thought that? Not that I
didn’t
want to jump on your bones. I did. I still do. But if you thought that, if you thought I was
still
going down that path, trying to force you into things you didn’t want to do, for fuck’s sake—I was an idiot, I know it—then you really ought to hate my guts.’

‘So sue me. I don’t. You know what?’ Annie looked at him consideringly. ‘Underneath all that scary stuff, I think you could actually be a really nice man. Are you coming back?’

‘I’m coming back. And I’m
not
a nice man. If I was a nice man I’d have bought you roses and taken you out to dinner and given you the cash without a murmur:
that’s
what a nice man would do.’

‘Well,’ said Annie slowly, ‘there’s still time for all that.’

She looked at his face, looked into his eyes. She felt her heart lift and her stomach drop at one and the same moment. Elation and terror grabbed her and held on. Something very serious was happening here. She had let Max go, with huge regret and heartache—and now once again her heart was her own.

Only maybe it wasn’t.

She gazed at Constantine, and knew that this could have a future. What that future would be, she had no idea. But it might be exciting, finding out.

Constantine took her wrist and pulled her in close against him. His eyes played with hers. ‘So, now we’re clear that you don’t hate my guts and that you think I could be a nice man—a mistake, by the way, I’m not nice at all—are you going to kiss me, or what?’

Annie stood on tiptoe and kissed his lips. Constantine leaned into the kiss, put his arms around her, held her close against him. They stayed like that for several minutes, and then Annie pulled back.

‘How long?’ she asked.

‘Soon.’

Annie smiled into his eyes.

‘I wrote you a note,’ she said, slipping the piece of paper out of her pocket and into his hand. ‘Read it on the plane, okay?’

‘Okay. See you,’ he said, and kissed her again, very briefly, very lightly.

‘Soon,’ said Annie.

‘Yeah,’ said Constantine.

Somehow, Constantine had got under her guard, under her skin. She was sad to see him go, but she was thinking,
He’ll be back.

‘Is Layla okay?’ he asked.

‘She’s wonderful.’

‘I’ll see you soon—Annie.’

‘See you, Constantine.’

Annie turned away. He watched her walk off across the bustling terminal, then he and his minder rejoined the small queue at passport control.

When he was through security and on board his jet, with the pilot running through the safety checks ready for take-off, he spread out her
pizzino
and looked at it. Caesar’s code, the one he always used. Very simple, very effective. He deciphered the numbers quickly, and smiled. The note said
Call me. A.

‘Where to, Boss?’ Tony said, when Annie got back to the car.

Where to?

Annie wondered about that.

She thought of all she’d been through, of the deep, gut-wrenching sadness of losing Max. She’d loved him so much. And now there was Constantine. Would she always be drawn to these bad boys? But then, the two were very different. Max had been a rough diamond; Constantine was smooth, intriguing, fascinating.

Yeah, where to?

She had no idea what the future might hold, or if a suave American mafioso could be a part of it.

Who knew? For now she was going to look forward to seeing him again, and in the meantime she was going to get on with her life. She had her little girl back: that was what counted.

‘Back to Dolly’s, we’ll pick up Layla,’ she told Tone, and he gunned the Jag’s engine into life and pulled out into the traffic flow.

Yeah, she had lost Max.

But she had Layla back.

After that, everything else was a bonus.

To Louise Marley, great friend and problem fixer, Thea at Phoenix Web Designs, Conan McGale at the Charter Company, and Jane Harvey who always finds the way. Huge thanks to publishing legend Wayne Brookes, to my magnificent agent Judith Murdoch, and to Cliff, who has a lot to put up with.

Jessie Keane’s story is one of idyllic early years, and struggles against the odds from her teen years onwards. Family tragedy, bankruptcy and mixing with a bad crowd all filled her life.

Her first novel,
Dirty Game
, was published by HarperCollins in 2008. She lives in Southampton.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Also by Jessie Keane

Dirty Game

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Harper
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1

First published in Great Britain by
HarperCollins 2009

Copyright © Jessie Keane 2009

Jessie Keane asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-00-727399-7

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EPub Edition © 2009 ISBN: 9780007335732