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The ideal candidate must have a flair for homicide, be able to spot the vendetta-obsessed mafioso lurking in the middle of a crowd, and be quick on the draw and even quicker to whip his weapon out of sight and pretend to be a postman when the occasion demands….
”
    â€œLuciano…” The lawyer’s face was wreathed in smiles as he shook his head slowly from side to side.
    â€œHours and salary negotiable,”
Luciano continued, stopping mid-pace to slump with a groan onto a button-back leather sofa. “Oh, for heaven’s sake—I wouldn’t even know where to
begin
.”
    â€œBut you have begun already, dear boy,” Ludo said. “You’ve told me. Or rather, I’ve told you what you need, and now I’m telling you that I can provide the tuition.”
    â€œYou?” Luciano’s eyes opened wide and he stopped massaging his forehead.
    â€œI know, I know. You’ve got me earmarked as a bit of a tweedy old duffer.” Ludo peered across at Luciano, adjusting his half-moon spectacles and raising his eyebrows as if to say,
Haven’t you?
    Luciano had the grace to blush as the lawyer blithely continued, “No matter. Suffice it to say I’m not quite such a dry old stick as most people think. One did have a previous life before hanging out one’s shingle here in Auchenlochtermuchty, you know. Some day I might even be persuaded to tell you about what I
used
to do for a living. For now, though, you need to learn how to fire a shotgun, and I am going to teach you.”
    â€œBut…but…,” Luciano bleated as Ludo bulldozed onward, his eyes twinkling wickedly.
    â€œShouldn’t be too difficult for you to learn. You don’t need to be good, you just need to be lethal. And let’s hope you never have to use what I’m about to teach you….”
And pigs might fly,
he added silently, a wave of sympathy for Luciano’s predicament temporarily derailing his upbeat semi-bullying approach to the whole ghastly mess.
Poor Luciano,
he thought sadly.
The man has simply no idea what he’s up against.
    And so began Luciano’s education in the use of firearms. He was a reluctant pupil, but an obedient one, and in the space of a few lessons was able to load, shoot, reload, and shoot again without nipping his fingers, dropping ammunition on his feet, or hurling his gun to the floor and stomping off in a tantrum. However, achieving a degree of accuracy in hitting a given target was going to take more time, and Luciano was beginning to suspect that time was running out. With this in mind, he embarked on a program of weight training in the hope of turning himself into less of a pathetic and weedy specimen of Italian manhood. Perhaps if he became fitter, sprouted some muscles, and scowled a lot, he might stand a better chance of defending his family from whatever it was that Ludo wasn’t telling him about.
    So Luciano set about building a home gymnasium, thus sparing himself the humiliation of going to a public gym to work out in the company of the bruisers, he-men, and muscle-bound gargoyles of Argyll. In answer to Titus’s, Pandora’s, and Baci’s understandable queries about his newfound obsession with exercise, Luciano lied through his teeth.
    â€œDoctor’s orders,” he claimed, gasping out this utter fiction to Baci as she watched him heave and gasp under the weight of dumbbells that, to her, looked as if they were every bit as heavy as a pair of small bungalows with matching lean-to carports. A while later, when Luciano had moved on to the horrors of the exercise bike, his two older children came into the newly refurbished Chinese Bedroom and stood watching for a moment.
    â€œBut why are you doing this?” Pandora demanded, raking her father with the kind of withering glance that only a loving daughter can bestow. “I mean, it’s not as if you needed to lose any weight. Unlike lard-chops