Page 68 of King of Obsession

She whirled away as I turned from the pain flaring in her eyes, from the acid building inside her.

‘How would you feel, Alessio Calibrese,’ she snarled on, ‘if you couldn’t say happy birthday to the one blood relative you have left on this goddamn earth. The one person who means the world to you and the only soul who cares for you?’

Fotto, I was a monster,I thought as her words beat me up on the interior.

I sliced my eyes back to her, maintaining my mask of ice while howling at myself.

I should have been more clued-in,I raged in my mind.

I growled instead, ‘You could have told me; I’d have driven you.’

‘Fuck off, I don’t believe you.’

She’d no reason to.

The immorality of my subterfuge hit, and I cursed.

She deserved the truth.

Not tomorrow, not next week.

Right fucking now.

I braced, aware her hatred of me was about to ratchet even higher.

‘Cleo, there’s something you have to know.’

She huffed, a little puff of irritation that cut deeper than her ire at me.

‘What?’

Damn.

This tension was not knife-worthy; it’d necessitate a hatchet to get through it.

I sighed, inhaled in readiness for her inevitable attack, and growled. ‘Your grandmother is not being held hostage. She’s in care, with my men keeping an eye on her.’

She made a strangled noise in the back of her throat.

I threw my hand up. ‘Not to harm her but to protect her if Franco attempts to reach her. I might have used the fact to try and compel you to keep me close. Which was a shitty thing to do.’

Cleo’s head tilted as if scouring the heavens for patience.

Then she swiveled to face me, letting loose the full intensity of her disbelief. ‘Repeat that?’ she spat.

I did.

I also told her how three years ago, on discovering through Mauri that Guilia needed hospice support, I’d located the best aged care nursing home in the State.

Our Lady of Mercy was a well-regarded, clean, professional service.

I’d then arranged for a middle-aged couple, Joseph and Sofia, two respectable capos within the Omertà Alliance, to dine at Cleo’s cafe in Moss Vale, where she’d held a job then.

Between coffee and generous tips, they’d initiated a conversation about the cost of aged care for their fictionaldependents. Extolling the praises of said facility to her and its very affordable fees.

‘You manipulated me?’

‘No. I worked out you were living paycheck to paycheck and desperate for some bill relief. I made it hard for you to refuse the appeal of Our Lady of Mercy. In weeks, you had a bed for Nonna at a discounted price.’

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