CATERINA OFTEN IMAGINED FINALLY staring at the face of the man who made her laying on the cold slab at the mortuary. Imagined if the frown lines between his eyes would seem more prominent, or if the thin lips that used to hold thin, short cigarettes captive would shrivel and crack. Wondered if his already receding hairline would turn from pitch black to ashen to white, if his striped dress shirt would be stained red.
It hardly mattered now. He was cold and purple and green, and left all the weight of the world on her shoulders. It hardly mattered, because in no scenario that she replayed before she closed her eyes at night, for over a decade now, did she let a stray tear escape her eye, or a breath hitch in her airway.
The mortuary of Birmingham General was a basement space, with no source of light but the one that hung above her or came from the staircase that led to the more lively parts of the hospital. His body was covered with a thin white sheet pulled up to his chin, with only his head peaking out.
She doesn't acknowledge Thomas until his hand is on her shoulder, squeezing slightly in a manner which was supposed to comfort her. Only, she doesn't feel like she deserves to be comforted at all.
"Is it wrong that I feel no sense of guilt?" Caterina asks into the empty, emotionless voice bouncing off the green and white tiles, "I should, he fathered me. He put clothes on my back and a roof over my head."
She was an orphan now. Or had she always been, since her parents failed to play their nature given roles?
"Father's rarely give much more than disappointment and unwanted lessons."
She takes his words and buries them somewhere close to her heart. Tommy's hand doesn't leave her, only trails down to rest on her waist. The air is chilly, and the pungent smell of alcohol and death leaves her wanting to bury her head in his shoulder. She can't peel her eyes off the white sheets and the white corpse.
"You know, I never met him," he says, almost conversationally, "Didn't have the opportunity to ask for your hand."
There is drumming in her ears, loud and dissonant, that resembles the one of her beating heart. An unspoken question, a sentence, floats between them in the musty, death-ridden air that never felt so very alive until know. Unspoken and inevitable, it was, because from the moment they met it was so unquestionably mean to be; Thomas and Caterina, Tommy and Cat. Absolute like the rise of the sun, and fall of the rain; intricate in every single way that made it disarmingly simple.
She was young, but he wasn't, and their line of work allowed no weaknesses or rest. Somewhere along those lines their found reprieve in each other's existence.
"He wouldn't have given it to you, anyway," she mused lightly, "Several presentable, well-bred suitors tried to court me before, but they were either shot down by him, or thrown out by me." Some she remembered with a chuckle, some with a belly of inky dread. Cat spared an amused glance Tommy's way,
"You have the worst possible timing, Thomas Shelby. Proposing by my father's corpse? I'd hardly call that romantic, even for our standards."
A smile was tugging on the corner of his lip, and he pulled her further into his side.
"I'll do it properly, I promise."
There's lump in her throat that wouldn't go away no matter how many times she swallowed, or how deeply she breathed. "You better. I'm just a vain little girl who likes a good show," she flashed her teeth briefly, sobering up a moment later.
"Could you give me a minute?"
He obeyed without a question, dropping a brief kiss to the side of her head. When the sound of soles hitting the stairs dimmed in the background, Caterina turned her head at the cold figure on the metal table.
She firmly refused to feel anything; not sadness for the loss of a parent, not relief for the fall of her bully and tormentor. He is dead, ha can't hurt you. The soles of her boots scrapped against the cheap tiles on the floor when she stepped closer. But oh, he could.
Caterina carefully lifted the sheet to reveal her father's immobile hand. Would some indecribable power burn her if she touched it? With all the confidence she could muster, she slipped the golden signet ring off Roberto's finger, and onto the pinky of her left hand.
The gold weighted heavily on her hand, almost as heavy as the responsibility that the carved ring represented on her.
IN THE YEARS THAT WOULD COME, many would say Roberto Cardinale's funeral rivalled those of some members of the royal family, and the cut-outs from the papers of the days following it would only serve to prove it.
Lord Major, Sir David Davis and his shy little wife came for the wake, but left before the church service. Antonio Tavolieri kept sniffling, loudly and wettly, using a worn out handkerchief to dab at his red rimmed eyes. Every patriarch of every Italian family in the city, and the counties that surrounded it came for the service, in their best black finery, and hats they held against their chest.
Caterina cursed whoever invented the elaborate mourning clothes, the black veil that ticked her nose, and the lacy gloves that kept sliding down her arms no matter how many times she tried to keep them upright. She cursed the tradition, and the seating plan that allowed her to observe all the guests that came to pay their respects to her late father.
St. Michael's graveyard seemed far too small for such attendance, she took notice with well hidden disdain. The Changrettas didn't bother hiding in the shadows. Vincente and Angel, and some of their older cousins were planted right next to Sabini and his retinue — the whole affair would no doubt make the pages in tomorrow morning's Times.
Blood hounds, the lot of them, sniffing out the new competition. She could smell the bloodlust from her place of honour, the hunger that was kept at bay by the stability of her company, of her. Her fingers curled and dug deeply into the palms of her hand, but not enough to draw blood just yet.
They stared, and she stared right back at them, through the sheer fabric of her veil, hardly focusing on the priest and the words, the hymns and the ominous sound of trumpet somewhere in the distance. Sharks, the lot of them, waiting for her to bleed she knew, scooping a fistful of soil and letting it fall on the casket. He was dead, he was dead and she was free. The shaky breath she didn't know she was holding disappeared into the air.
No sign of her brother, at least. Perhaps he was truly and well deservedly dead.
Her eyes searched for Tommy, out of habit. He promised her he would hang in the shadows, with Arthur and John and the rest of the Blinders that manned the premisses of the churchyard during the ceremony. Mostly to keep the peace, but also to openly proclaim their alliance. Shelby Limited was on the rise in both hemispheres of influence, a valuable ally for her shaky company.
Now, even from afar Tommy could see how her lips tightened in a straight, white line, annoyed and uncomfortable by the situation she found herself in.
The scene is set like this:
Seven aged men still stand in the semi circle around the grave, opposite of her, even when the rest of the mourners are long gone. She's known all of them from the moment she was born, crows from the shadows and from behind closed doors, her father's trusted associated and right hand men.
They don't speak the words, but all of them are aware of the jarring, violent confession that hangs in the air between them. The papers would talk about the sudden death of an affluent Birmingham businessman, of a heart condition that could not be prevented. They would goon about his heroic servitude in the War, and the generous deeds he had done for the poor of the city.
Behind closed doors huddled heads would whisper of kinslaying and witchcraft, and a wretched daughter that conspired with Gypsy devils to murder her father. Once, such talk would make her chuckle bitterly. Today, she knew better than to smile.
"Signorina Cardinale, we put ourselves at your service, with all the powers we attain from our positions," Alberto Bastiani is the first to speak, in his broken, creaky English.
It's expected of him, after all. He held one of the most influential positions in the company for over two decades, and it seemed only rational to allow him to resume it with no argument. A strong, experienced hand to lead her youthful little head in the right direction.
What surprises her is the person who abrubtly speaks up next, "Are they to be confirmed, as they stood before?" Bianchini — Mazza, she corrects herself — towers over the rest of the assembly. Not a pin drop could be heard in the tense silence.
"Of course."
There's a languid tone in her voice that wasn't there moments before, and it puts the rest of the men on sudden alert. She stalks, slowly, around the fresh grave to stand in front of the oldest of them.
"Why change something that worked so immaculately before?"
Alberto Bastiani swallows thickly, careful not to show the antsy feeling that compelled him to scratch at his stuff collar.
The black lace covered hands she stretched out before her doubled as an invitation, and she grasped both of his wrinkly ones between her's. "Signore, I would be honoured for you to be my consigliere."
The wide smile did not reach her amber eyes.
NOT EVEN THE OPEN WINDOW ON the eastern side of the room offered a suitable ventilation for the smoke that accumulated in the room over the course of that afternoon. The woman unstuck her formed fist from her lips, only to bring a freshly lit cigarette to them. It seemed to be accelerating, the chain of smoking, with every new legal matter that appeared on the table, with seemingly no indicator of the pile decreasing with the time that flew by.
"How much, Mazza?"
The man sighed, shaking his head in a way that made his thick, muscular neck strain. He spoke with hesitation in his voice, as if she was a scared little doe, ready to bolt at the sound of upcoming danger. It infuriated her to no end.
"The docking fees for the last five years, several months of wages for the workers, warehouse rents in the States," he trailed on, turning the list in his hands, "Count in the profit lost with losing most of the protection money and the licenses that had to be renewed for all the restaurants and pubs through the last ten years. It will be hard to collect anything from those that were in direct debt to your father - I found a list, partial but it will have to do — "
"I numeri, per favore, Mazza." Numbers, it would always be the numbers. Bills, ledgers, debts, the bloody stock markets changing every day — and then money, of course. Her life revolved around the shaky currencies and even shakier economies.
In retrospection, she rather wished she didn't ask.
"As of today Cardinale Imports Company is five hundred thousand pounds in debt, out of which hundred and twenty-thousand belongs to the worker's wages...." He went on to list the bank accounts and attorneys, the warehouse dealers from New York and Chicago that have been writing and demanding their piece of fortune as soon as they heard the old man was finally dead.
Everything she ever wanted slipped through her fingers.
She listened, half there and half somewhere among the swirling clouds of smoke that danced around the room like ghosts. She wanted to smile, to curse the man that made her. Must be having a jolly laugh, old man, voiced she bitterly in her head. How funny would it would be, if I proved myself to be a failure, just as you expected me to?
They go through the list of assets that came with other inheritance long after the church bell indicates midnight. She counts at least four factories and seven cars, and paintings of unknown worth in the house basement that were yet to be inspected. All what remained of her mother's jewellery, and dried out bank accounts. The emptiness of it all slowly digs a hole inside her chest.
Her first firm decision sparks an argument, "You will sell your family house? You know I could never approve of that."
Not even a strike of amber leaves the papers laid out before her, "I didn't ask for a permission," came her sharp retort, "There's no more family, so there's no need for a house."
Mazza groans slightly, stretching his legs until they hit the desk that separated them. His joints cracked and shifted, the giant of a man trying to make himself comfortable from the entire day of sitting, smoking and and staring at the ledgers.
His disapproving look is uneffective, "It's a symbol of what your family is, and you are still a part of it. Who knows, maybe your brother is alive and—"
"Even if my brother was alive, I would've sold the house because he already spent most of his waking and sleeping hours around brothels and opium dens. Tommy bought us a house and I intend to make a home of it." In the last few days she found it oddly comforting to imagine walking through the acres of greenery that surrounded it, and through the halls they were yet to decorate, to make entirely theirs.
"The office will stay, obviously, it's too important to be parted from it," she refrains from saying that she thought of moving the company offices elsewhere, someplace that could be better protected, more respectable than two floors above a bustling restaurant. She wasn'f in the mood for the continuation of the fight, however, so she bit her tongue.
"I need headquarters to finalise this shipwreck, for the lack of better wording."
Mazza excused himself after the clock struck two, leaving the young heiress to wallow in her own thoughts until the sun went up again. Caterina reached for the descarted pack of cigarettes and matches on the table. The stick was already on her lips when she let out a sigh of resignation, dropping it lazily back on the table.
Her heart drummed punishingly in her ears while she rummaged through the inside pocket of her coat, thrown haphazardly over the back of her chair. When had she become so erratic? No, no questions. The coolness of the blue vial sent a pulse of giddy relief through her veins. By then, she knew the right amount to knock herself out, to sleep without the plaguing dreams.
Everything was burning down, and so was she.
author's note
are we, getting emotional here?