Page 8 of In My Blood
“Mum?” I called as I stepped inside and went for the light switch. I pressed it and nothing happened. I pressed it several more times, and still the apartment remained in utter darkness. No light could come in from the street because my Mum had long ago covered all of the glass panes with newspaper so not one crack of light could get through. I had stopped trying to convince her we needed to let light in months ago. Sometimes it was easier to go along with her delusions and coping techniques, no matter how crazy they were. “It’s just me. Did you take the light bulb out again?” I asked as I walked further in and closed the door behind me. That was something else she did. She told me it would make it harder for the men who were coming after us to find us if they couldn’t turn the lights on. I just hoped she hadn’t fallen or cut herself when doing it this time.
“Mum?” I called again when she didn’t answer me. I strode into the tiny lounge area of the smallest one bedroom apartment in the world – I was sure - feeling confident of the layout, even in the dark. There was a lamp beside the sofa that I intended to flick on, but I stumbled over something on the floor, and when I tried to catch myself, my foot landed on something even bigger and I ended up falling on my butt with a small cry, and landing in a wet patch.
“Fuck!” I cursed, praying it was water I had landed in, that my Mum had spilt, rather than a result of her having an accident, which had happened before. I reached behind me, following the line of the old, ratty sofa until I reached the table beside it. I got a hold of the base of the lamp and flicked the little switch there to turn it on. I didn’t want to move when I didn’t know what my mother had smashed up and left all over the floor this time. If there were glass…
My thought was ripped from me as the light flicked on and I glanced to my right. Blood. I had seen blood out of the corner of my eye, and now I had seen it, I could smell it too. There was a strong scent of copper in the air that made me feel instantly nauseous. I looked around me, terrified my Mum had fallen and hurt herself.
My instinct was to scream at the sight that surrounded me, but I held it back and instead clamped a hand over my mouth to be sure. I don’t know why I didn’t scream. Something inside me told me not to. Then I just sat there, completely frozen. My entire body went numb, except for my heart which was beating so hard and fast I was sure that was the reason my body started to shake so violently. I made my head move to look at it all again, even though I knew I shouldn’t. I didn’t want to see it again, and yet I had to, because it didn’t feel like it could be real. I didn’t know that kind of horror could even exist in the world.
But it was still there – my Mum, her body cut up into pieces and spread around the floor as if the pieces had been arranged that way for some sick, twisted display. I sat in the centre of the tableau, in a lake of blood that covered the floor for as far as I could see around me. Opposite me, on the floor, her eyes open and seeming to stare right at me, sat my Mum’s dismembered head. The rest of her was cut up into tens of pieces, and the room around me was in disarray like there had been a fight there.
“Oh God,” I whimpered. I knew I had to move – knew I could be next if whoever did this was still in the apartment, but I couldn’t make my body move at all. I just sat there, my own mothers blood soaking into my clothes with every second that passed, frozen by an equal mix of horror and terror. I couldn’t stop the thought that ran through my mind over and over again – Did my father, or my brother do this?
CHAPTER 2
DARIO
I was exhausted as I walked into the boardroom late that night, for the family meeting that Rafe had called. I knew it had to be important for him to call us all together at such a random time, but that didn’t really narrow down which of the many problems we were in the midst of trying to manage simultaneously, it would be about.
I had rushed up there because I was late, but when I walked in, Rafe was the only one there, seated in his usual seat at the head of the long table. He’d taken off his tie and suit jacket, and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, a couple of his top buttons undone.
“You look as knackered as I feel,” I laughed as I walked over and took my own usual seat to his right. It was where I had sat since the day he took power of the De Santis empire eleven years earlier. I was what they would have called his ‘second’ in the old days. I had his back in all things, because he was my brother, not by blood, but in every way that mattered.
Ever since Rafe had been handed the reins of his family business at twenty years old, he had worked hard to drag it from the depths of criminality that his grandfather and father had lived within, and to instead make as much of it as possible legitimate.
Now I’d say the De Santis empire earned eighty percent of its money legitimately. The other twenty percent was still earned through the fact that the family still operated the docks. That meant that anything that came through there that wasn’t legitimate, we had a hand in and a cut of. Rafe wanted us to get out of that too, but there was a balance there that we needed to be cautious of. If we simply let control go, it would create a power vacuum for the other crime families, gangs, and other lowlifes that still operated in modern day London, to leap in and take that power. Problem with that was, anyone else having that power was going to cause issues that could lead to war between everyone and leave us open as a target too. The situation had to be handled very carefully and we were still trying to figure it out, but we would.
“Long day,” he sighed. I hated how beaten down he looked, but it had been that way for a long time. Rafe had never recovered from losing his sister, Cara. Years earlier he’d been forced to send her away with their Mum to keep her safe from the wrath of Marcello De Santis – Rafe’s father. His plan had been to send them both where he would be able to keep in contact, and go to collect Cara eventually, when things were safe, but Rafe’s crazy bitch of a mother had run off the moment the plane touched down in America, and disappeared with Cara.
Rafe had never stopped searching for them, because he wanted Cara back home with us, where she belonged. But by some miracle his mother – Isabella - had pulled off a pretty effective vanishing act, and in eleven years we had never found so much as a breadcrumb about their location. It had broken Rafe and I knew not a day passed where he didn’t beat himself up for sending Cara off, and worrying about what had become of her alone with no one but Isabella to look out for her.
Isabella had never been a mother to her kids. I was pretty sure she had hated them to be honest. The only reason Rafe had sent Cara with her was because he had little choice, and because it was only ever supposed to be short term. Now Cara would be nineteen years old and he had never heard a word from her. I knew he feared she was dead. I did too. Cara had loved her brother so much. If she weren’t dead, surely she would have tried to find him by now?
It cut me up inside just to think of that beautiful, bright, happy little girl gone from this world because of the sins of her evil parents, so I could only imagine what it did to Rafe. He’d aged thirty years in the last ten, and he swore he would never stop looking for Cara, so nothing would change unless he finally got some closure.
“Are the others coming?” I asked as I looked to the empty offices outside the glass walls of the conference room and saw no movement.
“Said they were,” he nodded.
“What’s going on?”
“Gary called me. He said the police have been sniffing around the docks, asking about multiple containers brought in last month,” he explained.
“Do we know which containers and who they belong to?” I asked.
“Yeah. Two that belonged to the Russians. Apparently some young girl turned up dead in East London last week and police traced her to a container that came in to our docks.”
“Those fuckers” I snapped. “They’ve been bringing girls in again?”
We’d had this problem with the Russian family we dealt with – the Kozlov’s. They liked to bring girls in from Eastern Europe to work in their clubs. The problem was that most of these girls came against their will, usually drugged to the eyeballs and thrown into the containers with a bucket to piss in and a few bottles of water to keep them alive. We drew the line at human trafficking – a point that we had made very clear to every single client we dealt with. The fact that the Russians had ignored our warnings and our threats was going to call for some very affirmative action.
“Looks that way. I want Dante and Arran to start looking into the dead girl and see if it leads them to the Russians too. If it does, then we need to deal with them. I can’t have them making me look weak. I already have people questioning my power in the city now that I’ve gone legit. I don’t want anyone doubting that this family is still very much a major player in the running of this city.”
“We’ll handle it,” I told him easily, I had no doubt in my words. Ever since Rafe changed the structure of the family, and how things ran, we had built a very tight circle of men we trusted. Closest to us were our family - the family we had built and surrounded ourselves with. It started with Rafe, his other little sister – Gia, me, and my Mum – who was also our housekeeper. Dante came soon after. He saved Rafe’s life and chose our side when it mattered most. Then Arran came crashing into our lives. How he got there was a long story, but Rafe instantly felt a kinship with him, and he took both Arran and his kid brother, Callan, in when they had nowhere to go. Now Arran worked with Rafe, Dante, and I, and was part of our inner circle. He andCallan also lived with us. We were an odd family, but it worked for us..
I opened my mouth, about to suggest I call the others and hurry them the fuck up, when Rafe’s mobile started to ring where it sat on the conference table in front of him.
The caller ID said ‘Front Desk’ which was odd, since it was late and the offices - where we mainly ran the legitimate side of the businesses - closed hours ago.
