The Crossroads Read Online Free

he might be a trifle touchy.
    A few years before this story, Rino Zena had been taken on at the factory as a transporter of furniture.
    He was paid in cash and earned more from tips than from the pittance he got from Castardin.
    Things had gone reasonably well, with Rino grumbling to anyone who cared to listen that he was treated like dirt, until the day old Castardin in person had phoned to ask him to take the furniture for a children’s bedroom to the home of Councillor Arosio.
    â€˜Please, Zena, be on your best behaviour. There’s no one else I can send; they’re all out doing deliveries. Arosio is an important customer. Cover up those tattoos or you’ll frighten the children. And speak as little as possible.’
    Rino had glared at him and loaded the furniture onto the van.
    Councillor Arosio was another guy Rino couldn’t stand. He was the shithead who had closed Varrano’s main street to traffic. So even if you had to deliver the space shuttle the traffic police wouldn’t let you through.
    When he had reached the house he had learned that the councillor’s flat was on the third floor and that the porter wouldn’t let the lift be used for carrying heavy loads: ‘I would let you, but if you used it I’d have to let everyone else use it too and the lift would get worn out.’
    Fuming, Rino had hoisted the furniture onto his back. At the door of the flat he had found Mrs Arosio waiting for him in a violet satin nightdress.
    She was a really attractive woman, about forty years old, with a tawny perm, two enormous tits only partly hidden by her nightdress, a slim waist and a bum as big as an aircraft carrier. She had a round face, a small nose too perfect to be the one her mother had given her, eyes tinged with light-blue shadow, and swollen, shiny lips parted to reveal some slightly gappy incisors.
    Rino had seen her walking along the high street in summer and winter with plunging necklines over those huge UVA-tanned breasts, but he hadn’t known that she was Arosio’s wife.
    While he got to work with the nuts and bolts, she had sat down in such a way that her ample frontage was prominently displayedand had remarked that muscles formed at work were much more attractive than ones that were pumped up in a gym. And what were all those tattoos? What did they mean? She wanted one too, a squirrel …
    By now Rino had a hard-on and was finding it difficult to follow the instructions under that hungry gaze.
    After the little writing-desk, the mini-blackboard and the wardrobe, he had assembled the bunk bed.
    â€˜Have you screwed it together tightly enough? I wouldn’t want it to come apart … My son Aldo is a bit on the heavy side. Would you mind getting up onto it yourself? To try it out?’
    Rino had climbed onto the top bunk and bounced up and down. ‘Seems all right to me.’
    She had shaken her head. ‘You’re too light. I think I’d better come up too. Just to make quite sure.’
    Half an hour later the bed had suddenly given way. Mrs Arosio had broken her wrist in falling out and had sued the furniture factory.
    Rino had sworn to Castardin that he hadn’t had sex with her.
    And technically speaking that was correct. Penetration had not yet taken place when the bed had collapsed. She was on all fours, with her face buried in the pillow and her petticoat pulled up, and Rino was holding her by the hair like a red Indian gripping his horse’s mane, stamping her buttocks with large red slap-marks like the patches on an Apache steed.
    Then the bed had given way.
    Rino Zena had lost his job.
    And he had sworn to get even with old Castardin.
8
    Cristiano Zena lay down and aimed at the head. He took a deep breath and fired. The animal flinched, gave a little whine and lay still.
    He raised his fist. ‘First shot!’
    He jumped down from the pile of planks and, after checking thatno cars were passing by, approached slowly,