Squinting in the evening sunlight, Nathan pulled his sunglasses from the glovebox of his car. He was parked on a side road, with a clear view of Antonelli’s restaurant on the high street, hoping to catch Grace when she came out. He’d called at the Rose and Crown to look for her earlier and had tried his best to hide his disappointment when Jake told him where she’d gone. She was meeting a friend apparently. With nothing else to do, Nathan decided it wouldn’t hurt to find out just who this friend was.

He’d never been to Antonelli’s. It was a new Italian, owned by Sean Carter of all people. Nathan frowned as he realized it was probably no coincidence Grace was choosing to eat at Sean’s place. She seemed to have some connection to the Carter family that he couldn’t quite get to the bottom of.

It looked like a nice place. All chrome and glass and fancy signage. Apparently, it was a new Liverpool hotspot. Nathan had no idea how Sean had managed to walk away from his former life and open a string of restaurants, but he was seemingly squeaky clean these days. Where had he found the capital for his business venture? He must have had a backer, but who?

Sean and his brother Michael had been arrested as part of the operation that saw Nathan doing twelve years inside. He knew that the brothers had lost everything, just as he had. Their houses, cars, money. Proceeds of crime, apparently. Not that Nathan’s losses could be explained away so easily. Over a million he’d had stashed in his lock-up from the job they’d been working on, had mysteriously disappeared – apparently. Nathan knew exactly who’d taken it. The thieving, scumbag, bizzies. There was no way they couldn’t have found that in his lock-up. They put on a good show though. For all outward appearances, they appeared to be scratching their heads looking for it, and he could hardly say anything, could he? The money he’d paid that shower of cunts over the years and they still saw fit to rob him blind.

Nathan had never found out who grassed him up all those years ago. It had to have been a set-up. There was no way the plod were that clever, or that lucky. They’d burst into the place when him and two of the lads were inside, up to their necks in drugs. If that wasn’t bad enough, Nathan had two shotguns and a Baikal handgun in there as well. His prints were all over the handgun too, on account of the fact he had it in his hand when the door was bust open. They’d only been moving them through though, and had only been inside the place for ten minutes before it was raided.