Free Lawless by Jessie Keane Page B

worried sick.’
    Ruby sighed. ‘I can’t stop thinking about what happened at the funeral yesterday . . .’ She told Daisy about Kit showing up, and Bella’s words to her.
    ‘God, that sounds serious,’ said Daisy. It certainly put all her petty concerns into perspective.
    ‘It’s that all right. But if Bella can rein in Vittore and Fabio, Kit might yet get away with it.’
    ‘Do you think she can?’
    ‘Let’s hope.’

19
    Kit woke up alone and in pain. No luscious blonde Alison today, kicking off because he called her by someone else’s name. Now, he couldn’t remember whose name he’d called her by. Same meat, different gravy. It didn’t matter, anyway.
    The pain was a familiar morning companion. His head felt like someone had taken it off his shoulders and kicked it all around a football field, then booted it right out of the ground for an encore.
    The drink.
    He knew he had to stop that. He’d come home from his mother’s late yesterday afternoon after the funeral – was that wise, taunting the Danieris as they buried Tito? – and then he’d got drunk again. Roaring, shit-faced drunk. He must have fallen across the bed fully dressed, and now he was awake, and he felt like death warmed over and served up as freshly minted.
    He opened his eyes and it was light, it was morning, and oh God he didn’t want another day, another fucking day without Michael, without Gilda. He pushed himself up into a sitting position and his brain started banging away inside his skull.
    ‘Shit,’ he groaned. There was a three-quarter-empty bottle of Bell’s on the bedside table. He reached for it.
    Hair of the dog, right? Make it all better. Maybe a prairie oyster later, settle my stomach, feels like it’s doing backflips in there, what the hell . . . ?
    Her face rose up in front of him, sea-green eyes laughing into his, the faint fairy jangle of gold that had followed her everywhere like her perfume, which was sweet strawberries and hay meadows. Not that he’d ever smelled a hay meadow, but if he had he just knew it would smell the same as her skin.
    Gilda.
    He’d truly loved her, and now she was gone.
    He screwed up his eyes, wrenched out the cork, put the bottle to his lips and drank. Then he set it aside, tossed the cork fuck knew where, and lay back, eyes closed, feeling the whisky burn a hot tingling track all the way down to his toes.
    Now he could see another face. Granite-jawed, set with a strong mouth and dark grey eyes that matched the thick thatch of hair. Those eyes were looking at him with disapproval.
    Michael? Boss . . .
    Kit felt his eyes fill with tears that spilled over. It was the drink. He was turning into a pitiful, booze-soaked alkie, maudlin and seeing faces of dead loved ones and blubbing like a fucking baby. Michael was looking disgusted with him. Well, he was disgusted with himself. He knew it was getting to be a major problem, the way he felt the pain and then automatically reached for the bottle to take it away.
    He was scared of the pain. Physical pain he could handle. He was a gladiator, right? That was how he saw himself: tough as you like, nothing touched him. Rip his arm off, he’d come at you with the other one. But this – this soul-eating sense of loss, of something precious that was never, ever going to be replaced – this was too much.
    So maybe he was, in fact, a fucking coward.
    And what use was he, falling-down, rat-arsed drunk? He had . . .
    Oh shit he had something important to do. What the hell was it?
    Yeah, he had to . . . find out who murdered Michael, who really did it, because Tito and his brothers didn’t. Was that true, though? Could it be?
    Oh, and incidentally, just a minor detail, Kit, but didn’t you kill Tito because you believed he did Michael?
    ‘Fuck,’ he muttered.
    He hauled himself back into a sitting position. Looked again at the bottle and felt an uncomfortable stab of self-loathing. He was like a sodding baby with that bottle, a baby on its