Page 37

It has always bugged me that the place is called ‘Peacocks’ when it is a strip club in which women are the entertainment. Peacocks are male. Nonno should have called itPeahens, but that doesn’t sound as cool, I guess. And now I think about it, it is really the male patrons who peacock around the place measuring their dicks. Maybe Nonno was being cleverer than I realised.

“Yeah, I’ll need you to take me home so don’t get on the piss. Hopefully won’t be too long.”

Bluey gives me a nod and a cheeky grin as he follows me in the front door. How the red-headed class clown ended up working for us I don’t know, but he’s good value. Funny and, just like my brothers, he is smart when he isn’t thinking with his dick.

‘Giovanna!” One of the door girls fawns over me. She is wearing leather hotpants with her augmented boobs spilling out of a bejewelled bra. A total gay-for-pay bimbo who would hump my leg for the status it would afford her.

“Ladies,” I murmur in response to her and her colleague. In my twenties, I spent a lot more time inPeacocksand was a lot friendlier with the staff. I had a posse of lesbian mates who used to love taking advantage of my VIP status at the club. Most of them are married off and have kids now.

The place is busy, but not heaving. We’re doing a decent trade this evening, but we always are. Business is never bad when you have a constantly replenishing pool of horny, unfaithful Italian men who want to gather and measure their dicks.

“Bluey, grab me a whiskey, please,” I instruct him. “Rocks.”

There are two main stages with a mixture of high and low tables scattered around them. Booths line the perimeter of the floor and I spot Elio and Matteo with a group of men in the one that sits right up against the smaller of the two stages.

Bluey places a whiskey in my hand and we weave through the crowds. I’m keeping an eye out for Stefan, but he isn’t standing out.

Candice winks at me from the stage. She’s nude apart from a diamante g-string. We haven’t hooked up for a couple of years, but she’s a nice girl and one I don’t mind chatting with when I’m here. She definitely didn’t have those boobs the last time we caught up though. She grabs them and mouths ‘ Do you like them?’ I roll my eyes but give her a small laugh.

“You distracting the dancers already, G?” Elio’s loud voice booms from a few metres away. He is well on his way to oblivion. He sits with his legs spread wide, arms across the back of the booth. Here is the peacock our grandfather named the place after.

“It’s a gift and a curse, bro. Don’t worry, one day you’ll get as much pussy as I do.” I say it knowing his mates will react and sure enough they roar with laughter, clinking drinks that they no doubt did not pay for.

“See I tell people you’re funny, but they just won’t believe me,” he shrugs. His ego isn’t even slightly bruised by my jab. These are our games. We’ve always played them. “Move,” he tells some drunk bloke with bourbon all down his suit. “Make room for my sister.”

Sitting next to him under his mammoth wingspan, I sip my whiskey and scan the crowd. Matteo slides into the booth next to me and even though one of them is hopelessly drunk, I’m happy being flanked by the two of the men I trust the most in the world. A drunk philanderer and a brooding ex-con, what does that say about me?

“What was so urgent that you had to come rushing in here straight after dinner?” I ask Elio. “Did the dancers need help applying their fake tan?”

“Such a comedian, sis. Nah, I just needed to get out of there.” His evasiveness is all the more blatant in his drunken state.

“Why?”

“Fuck off, bloody sticky beak.” His words are slurred and it takes a few seconds for him to slide his eyes from Candice’s tits to me.

“Elio, I was the one left to deal with Francesca. She thinks you hate her. Can’t you just try not to be a dick?”

“If I stayed I would’ve ended up taking her up to bed and fucking her again. It was early and I didn’t want to give her the wrong impression.”

“The impression that you are attracted to your fiancee and want to spend the night fucking her?”

“Well, yeah. Basically. Look, I don’t want to get married. I don’t want her to think that because we fuck I suddenly want to get married.”

I want to scream. This situation is ridiculous. Both Elio and I want to fuck Francesca, but for different reasons are avoiding doing so. That means, despite being attracted to us both, she is going to bed alone tonight.

“But youaregetting married. So what does it matter?” I grit my teeth.

Before the pointless circular discussion can continue, Matty whispers in my other ear, “your two o’clock. Next to the stage. Rossi and some stupid fuckin’ capos with a death wish.”

I follow his directions and spot Stefan at the centre of a group of men. He is attempting to hold court, to look powerful. Unfortunately, it appears a few ill-advised souls have fallen for it.

Azarro. Hmmm. Wouldn’t have picked him as a sucker.Mario Azarro, an astute man in his 50s, has always toed the line for my father and I am not happy to see him sitting in Stefan Rossi’s little gathering.

La Paglia. Two La Paglias, actually. Fucking morons. And Santoro.

The rest are men I don’t recognise. Nobodies. Hangers on. Hired posse perhaps.

“How long have Azarro, Santoro, and the two La Paglias been with him?” I ask Matty.