“Not that. With Mickey.”
Gianna stopped eating and wrapped her small hand around Benito’s forearm. “What did you do?”
“I lied to him about what I was doing for money. He found out before I got away from it.”
“Got away?” Rosetta folded her hands in her lap. “What does that mean?”
“It means I’m just a taxi driver now, so it really is going to take me until the end of time to pay your arrears off.”
“But you’ll be safe?” she said. “No more fighting? Or bad men in London?”
“No more. It’s done.”
Gianna set her half-empty bowl on the coffee table next to Benito’s untouched dinner. “Can’t you tell Mickey that?”
It struck Benito that she had gone with that rather than the concrete revelation that her brother was a criminal.
Maybe she’d known that all along too.
“Beni?”
“Hmm?”
“Can’t you talk to Mickey?” Gianna repeated. “Tell him you’re sorry, but it’s okay now? And you’re not going to do that stuff anymore?”
Benito shook his head. “It’s too late. What I did... it really hurt him. More than I can explain. And I knew it would before it happened, and I did it anyway. We can’t come back from that, G.”
“You can try.”
“No. It’s over, okay? Just let it go.”
Gianna looked as though she might cry. She left the room. Rosetta took the pasta plates to the kitchen, and for a few minutes, Benito was alone. He shivered, cold again for no reason.
The cat took advantage of his distraction and reclaimed his belly, settling in for a good dig about.
Benito tried to anchor himself to the tiny pinpricks against his skin but found himself drifting, spinning until Gianna came back with a bar of Dairy Milk.
“For your broken heart,” she said.
Benito shook his head at her grave expression. “You’re trippin’, girl.”
“You’re sad, Beni. Why won’t you admit it?”
Benito had nothing. He set the chocolate on the arm of the sofa as Rosetta returned to the room and turned the TV up. No one spoke.EastEnderscame on. Benito stared at it, unseeing and unhearing until somehow, in a place that hadn’t been his home for more years than he could remember, he fell asleep.
He dreamed of looming shadows and dark country roads.
Of running through fields and choking on the thick mud slowing him down.
He woke coughing, eyes streaming, head pounding, and his vision blurred. A piercing shriek rattled his brain, forcing him awake when all he wanted to do was close his eyes and sleep forever.
Yeah. Fuck it.Sleep.
Benito sank back into the couch, down and down and down, the ancient cushions sucking him in. It should’ve been a pleasant journey to the bottom, but it felt like freefall, and not the good kind. Also, the persistent shriek wouldn’t quit, and a tapping sensation on his cheek had joined the party.
Groaning, Benito forced his eyes open again. Round, green irises awaited him, inches from his own. It took Benito a long, sluggish moment to place them as Sullivan’s and that the batting on his cheek was the cat’s paw insistently punching him in the face.
“Fuck off.” Benito hooked his hands beneath the cat. Lifted him to fling him off, but nothing happened. His arms didn’t move the way he asked them to, and the cat stayed put, yowling.