But he didn’t care. She was like him – intent on living the Life to its fullest. He understood even better than her exactly what that meant. Together they had the potential to be the dream partnership – they could pool their resources and eventually they could own this fucking town.

He could sense the same ambition and desire in her that he had. She had a child and she wanted the best for him. Like him, Tania Bailey had an instinct for achieving what she wanted and, like him, she knew that they were destined to be together. She was so young and so lovely, and he had never wanted anybody as much as he wanted her.

Tania saw him standing by the bar of the new club the Baileys had just opened in Soho. She stood in the doorway watching him for a few moments; he was a lot older than her, but that didn’t bother her as much as it did him. She really liked him, and she was confident that he felt the same way.

Her son’s birth had brought home to her the Bailey need to earn and make sure that you were capable of keeping yourself and your own. She was a Bailey all right, she had realised that when she had held her son in her arms.

She had been the victim of so much heartache, but it had made her stronger, she could see that now. You had to toughen up, and learn how to deal with whatever life threw at you. Her mother’s death had catapulted her into the Bailey world overnight and, from that moment, she had walked into the Life with her eyes wide open. She was so different now; the young girl she had been three years ago was long gone. Her mum had paid the ultimate price, and her uncle had paid a high price as well – he had lost two sons. Her Auntie Ria had never got over Petey’s death, and her cousin Imelda spent her life watching her son’s submersion into the Bailey franchise. They were all fucking full of regrets.

But Tania wasn’t going to end up like them. She wouldn’t live off the proceeds of the Bailey name, while distancing herself from what the Bailey name really stood for. She knew better.

Her brothers had grown up in the Life, they had known the pitfalls from an early age but they had never been given a choice. Her mum had tried to protect her from it, but Tania had seen glimpses from a very early age, and when her mother had been taken from her she accepted it could not go unavenged. She had learned there was no getting away from the Life, not for a Bailey. And when she had given birth to her boy, she had sworn to herself that he would never go without.