Luis left the bedsit. Outside it was cold and barely light, but enough people were up and about to make the world seem real.
He paced the pavements, tracking past the park, the petrol station, and towards the cash-and-carry store at the end of the road. The fresh air felt amazing against his bare skin, and he almost didn’t notice the biting cold.
Almost. Man, it’s fucking freezing.
“Still no coat, eh?”
Luis jumped and swung his gaze sideways. For the second time in twenty-four hours, the man from Toni’s had walked up on him, this time from the exit door of the cash-and-carry. Jesus, what are the chances?
Not that it mattered. Despite the dude being glorious to look at, he was the last person on earth Luis wanted to see.
One of them, at least.
Luis turned away and kept walking, figuring the bloke was already bored with whatever conversation he’d been trying to start, but found his path blocked by six foot of scowling Italian. “Fuckin-A, mate. What do you want?”
“What do I want?” The man raised his hands as if considering putting them on Luis—let him try—then seemed to change his mind. “I thought it was you who wanted a job?”
Luis shrugged, his stance as non-combative as he could bear. He’d learnt to be painfully neutral in prison, pleasant enough to be liked, quiet enough to stay under the radar. With no Moss Farm boys on the wing, it had worked, but out here where his face was known, looking weak was a risk. His hands itched to push the man away, a warning, and the only one he’d get.
He balled them into fists and shoved them in his pockets. “Yeah, well. It was you who told me it didn’t exist, so why are you up in my face again?”
The man glanced over his shoulder. “I spoke to my granddad. He seems to think we need the help enough to put up with whatever trouble you bring to our door.”
“I already told you I don’t run with the Moss Farm boys anymore.”
“When did you get out?”
“Yesterday.”
“What are you doing roaming the streets at five in the morning?”
“What do you care?”
It was the other man’s turn to shrug. “I don’t care if you’re just out for a morning stroll, but if you’re on your way home from something dodgy, this conversation’s over.”
“I didn’t ask you for this conversation.” Luis kept his voice low, swallowing the frustration expanding in his chest. How was this even his life? He’d dreamt about cafe dude, but not like this. Never once had he imagined him becoming so fucking annoying. “If you don’t want to have it anymore, let me pass.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then what are you saying? Because as much as I’ve got nowhere else to be, I haven’t got time for this.”
“Do you have time to work today?”
Luis glanced up sharply. “What?”
“Work. As in, work for me. Today. I’m snowed under and could do with the help if you’re up for a trial shift.”
The sun broke through the clouds behind the train line, grey streaked with a golden glow. Tension bled from Luis’s shoulders. “What’s your name?”
“Why does that matter?”
“I want to know if you’re serious.”
“How does knowing my name help you with that?”
“You know mine.”
“That’s not my fault.”
Luis couldn’t deny it. But stubbornness flowed through him thicker than blood. He’d mellowed in the six years he’d spent with no choices or autonomy, but without rhyme or reason, the world had stopped turning until the beautiful man in front of him revealed his name.
“Paolo.”
“Paolo what?”
“Cilberto. Like my granddad, Toni.”
“I know him. Big guy with the giant moustache.”
“That’s the one.” A faint smile brightened the man’s—brightened Paolo’s face. “He hasn’t run the cafe in years, though, so why he thinks he’s got a say in who I hire, I have no fucking clue.”
“And yet here we are.”
“Here we are,” Paolo agreed. “Now, do you want the job or not?”
“I want it.”
“Can you start now?”
“Now?”
“You said you had nowhere else to be.”
Luis spread his hands. “Then I guess I’m all yours.”
3
Paolo led Luis to the loaded trolley he’d wheeled out of the cash-and-carry. “Delivery didn’t come in, so I’ve got to hoof all this back to the cafe.”
“Where’s your car?”
“Don’t have one.”
Luis nodded as if a trolley stacked high with eggs, bacon, and sausages and no way of taking it anywhere made perfect sense. “It’s a long walk.”
“It is. I’m waiting for an Uber.”
“Oh.”
Paolo laughed. “Did you think we were gonna pack up like donkeys and walk?”
“You said hoof it. I took you literally.”
In another world, Luis Pope could’ve taken Paolo any way he wanted, but they weren’t in another world. They were in this one. The one where Paolo had just idiotically hired a gang banger to bus his tables and had been so eager to do so, he’d left the cash-and-carry store without packing his goods into bags.
Luis noticed his mistake first. He gestured to the bags hanging unused on the handle bars. “Want me to put this stuff in those?”
“If you want.”
Luis unhooked the bags and began loading them with packets of bacon and sausages. Paolo should’ve helped but stood back and watched instead, letting his gaze, and thoughts, run riot as Luis worked.
He looked exactly the same as he had yesterday, and yet Paolo could tell he was a different man. His first night of freedom had changed him, and Paolo wondered why. Luis hadn’t divulged what he was doing out and about at the crack of dawn, but the bedsit he’d revealed yesterday wasn’t far away. Perhaps he really had been out for a morning stroll.
Yeah, right. Suspicion warred with Toni’s wise words. Paolo joined Luis at the trolley and reached for the eggs. “Aren’t you going to ask me how much I’m going to pay you?”
Luis glanced up. He frowned, and confusion flashed in his eyes so briefly Paolo thought he’d imagined it. “Is it more than the dole?”
“I think it’s called universal credit these days, but yeah, it’ll be more than that.”
“Then I don’t care how much it is as long as I can pay my rent.”
“How much is your rent?”
“Six hundred quid.”
Paolo raised an eyebrow. That was cheap for the city.
“It’s subsidised,” Luis elaborated, clearly reading his mind. “Through the charity that works with the prison. I can only stay twelve months, though. Then I have to find somewhere else.”
Even in this shitty neighbourhood, he was going to struggle to find anywhere close to six hundred quid on the wage Paolo could afford to pay him, but Paolo figured he already knew that. Sky-high housing costs weren’t a new thing, though it likely wasn’t something Luis Pope had worried about when he was slinging drugs out of the Moss Farm tower blocks all those years ago. If that was what he’d been doing. Back then, the Pope brothers had been feared for all kinds of things—drugs, knives, guns. Paolo had never been interested enough to care what was true. And I don’t care now.