“I can’t pay you anything,” Angelo explained for the fifth time. “I don’t own theplace.”
“I understand that, mate,” the bailiff said. “But we’re going to need some kind of payment today or we’ll have to removegoods.”
Angelo sighed. Deep down, he’d known this was coming. The financial plan the business advice centre had put together had been sound, but it had depended on selling off equipment, using cheaper suppliers, and raising prices?—all things his mother, backed by good old Uncle Gino, had refused to do. “If you remove goods, we won’t be able totrade.”
The bailiff was sympathetic but ultimately unmoved. He listed the contents of the deli and then took a seat at the counter while Angelo placed a dozen unanswered calls to the Giordano familyhome.
It was midday when the bailiff ran out of patience. Angelo watched with mixed emotions as the deli was packed up and loaded into the back of a transit van. Half a century of his family’s history was winging its way to an auction house, and he’d always figured that when it happened, it would take a part of him withit.
As it was, he felt nothing except a vague sense of panic that his sole remaining source of employment had gonetoo.
Dazed, he locked the deli and walked home. Under the unseasonal sunshine, he found Theresa in the garden having coffee and biscotti with his uncle, aunt, and three teenagecousins.
“What are you doing here at this hour?” Gino snapped. “Theresa told me that you’ve been closing the deli during the day and it’s got to stop. How do you expect to get out of this mess if you aren’t putting the hoursin?”
The unfairness of it was almost funny. Angelo leaned in the back doorway and shook his head. “Enough bullshit. I couldn’t trade if I wanted to. The bailiffs have been and cleaned usout.”
Theresa lamented to God in Italian and clutched her hand to her chest. Aunt Carmella rushed to her side while Gino stood and stepped forward, his large frame towering overAngelo.
“What do you mean they’ve cleaned us out?” Gino said. “You let thieves come in and take your father’s business from under yournose?”
“Not thieves. Bailiffs. Sent by the high court by suppliers we haven’t paid. Some might argue that makesusthe fucking thieves?—and by ‘us’ I mean me and Mum. It’s got fuck all to do withyou.”
Angelo spoke quietly, as exhausted mentally as he was in every other capacity, but Gino’s face reddened like Angelo had called his wife a whore. “Nothing to do with me? My father built that business from a pot of piss and then my brother killed himself keeping the doors open. You run it into the ground and tellmeit’s not myconcern?”
Angelo glanced at Theresa. They’d never been close, but familial loyalty had kept Angelo in Romford, flogging the dead horse his father had left behind. Or had it? Was he giving himself too much credit? After all, it wasn’t like he’d had any betteroffers.
Gino shoved at Angelo’s shoulder. “Don’t glare at your mother. I’m talking toyou.”
Angelo’s gaze shifted to where Gino had touched him. Was still touching him. “Get your hands off me. Dad ballsed the business up all by himself. And she”?—Angelo pointed at Theresa?—“has done nothing but bury her head in the sand. I’m the one who’s been stuck behind that counter for the last four months. If I hadn’t been, it would’ve been over a lotsooner.”
“Four months?” Theresa finally looked up. “Four months, Angelo? I needed you home fouryearsago. Where wereyou?”
“You know where I was and what I was doing. And Dad took the money I sent home to him. So don’t give me any indifferent, uncaring-brat bullshit.” Angelo fished the keys to the empty deli from his pocket and tossed them past Gino’s head and onto the glass garden table. “All you can do now is sell the place as a going concern and then hide any leftover cash from this money grabbing bastard.” He jerked his head atGino.
Gino spat on the ground. “I should put you over my knee and teach you somemanners.”
“Try it.” Angelo wrenched Gino’s hand from his shoulder and sneered. “And don’t think for a minute that I don’t know why you’re hanging around Mum like a fucking disease. If you weren’t as stupid as you look, you’d have encouraged her to sell the moment she got power of attorney when Dad was ill. That way you could’ve got your hands on the cash long before I camehome.”
“You little fuckingfaggot.”
Angelo laughed. “Right. And you’re not? Me and Paolo found your porn stash when we were kids and it was pretty obvious that you like cock as much as Ido.”
Gino’s huge fist connecting with Angelo’s ribs and then his stomach should’ve surprised him?—shocked him. But it didn’t, even though it had been more than a decade since Gino had last struck him, and what came next seemed to happen in slow motion. The weight behind Gino’s blow sent Angelo crashing into the doorframe. The back of his head hit the wood with a dizzying thud, but Angelo barely felt it as the punch to his stomach stole hisbreath.
He doubled over, and an odd calm settled in his veins. For a moment, he thought he would pass out, but then adrenaline kicked in, and his own Giordano temper roared tolife.
Angelo lunged at Gino and rained hits on his head and chest, his fists blurring in the sunshine, his speed making up for the weightdisadvantage.
Gino grunted, caught off guard, and fell backwards, stumbling into the glass table and knocking it to thefloor.
Someone screamed. Gino kicked out and his boot slammed into Angelo’s ribs again. The sickening crack poured petrol on Angelo’s fury, and the long-neglected masochist in him?—the one who’d danced on the international ballet circuit through a dozen ME relapses?—sprang forward again. Bones crunched against his knuckles and blood flowed. More screams. And then desperate hands yanking himback.
“Angelo! Stop it. You’ll killhim.”
Angelo struggled against the hands that held him, but the fight drained from him as perspective returned. The patio was a wreck, and so washe.
Gino was on his arse by the broken table, blood dripping from his mashed-up nose, his left eye already swollen. Angelo stared at him and felt nothing. And the numbness frightened him. His family had always been dysfunctional, but even on the other side of the world, he never felt sodetached.
