‘Let’s get him in and see what he’s made of then, eh?’ Nick said.
‘Yep,’ I nodded in agreement and Nick walked back to the open door and called the candidate inside.
Simon Hardaker strolled into the office trying his best to look cool and collected, but failing miserably. I could see his hands were shaking as he took his seat. I liked that he was nervous though, it showed that he cared about making a good impression. Nothing was more annoying than a newly qualified solicitor who thought they knew it all. I should know, I’d been one once.
Nick offered Simon a glass of water and we allowed him a minute to compose himself. He pushed a strand of blonde hair out of his eyes and I noticed how young he looked — or maybe I was just getting old?
Despite his nerves, Simon impressed both Nick and me. He seemed conscientious and had a good knowledge of the law. Most importantly though, he seemed to care about the work we did, and about the people we worked with. None of the other candidates impressed as much as he had. Nick and I argued over who got to give him the good news. We tossed a coin in the end and I won. Simon could barely contain his excitement and his disbelief when I’d phoned him.
‘Thanks so much, Samantha. I can’t wait. See you Monday.’
I was pleased with our new addition to the team, sure he would be a good fit.
Gabriel picked me up from work as usual. I slid into his warm car and kicked off my heels.
‘My place or yours, beautiful?’ he asked with a smile.
‘Yours,’ I said as I laid my head back against the warm leather seat. ‘I feel like being waited on.’
He laughed. ‘A take-away it is then. How did your interviews go?’
‘Good. We’ve got a new guy starting next week.’
‘A guy, eh? What’s he like?’
‘He’s nice. He’ll fit right in. He’s smart, and friendly. He’s very handsome too.’
‘Very handsome? Is that so?’
‘Yes, Sadie and Beth couldn’t stop staring at him.’
‘But not you?’
‘Why would I stare at some young boy when I’ve got a gorgeous man like you waiting for me, Gabe?’ I said with a grin.
He laughed. ‘That’s a good answer.’
‘I aim to please.’
‘You certainly do.’
I looked across as Gabriel and my heart fluttered in my chest. There had been a time, when I was an awkward teenager, when I had dreamed about moments like these. But they had seemed so far out of my grasp. Gabriel had always been off limits. I had always assumed he was out of my league, and now here we were.
A couple.
In love.
The road we had taken to get here hadn’t been an easy one, but for a moment I wondered if all my previous heartache had been worth it just to be right here, right now, with him. Suddenly, I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to go out somewhere and act like a normal couple. I wanted people to look at this incredible man and know that he was mine.
‘Forget the takeaway. Let’s go out to eat. My treat,’ I said.
He turned to me and smiled — that one that made my knees feel like jelly. ‘Okay. Where to?’
‘How about that new steak place that opened on the High Street?’ I suggested.
‘Deal. You want to go straight there?’
I checked my watch. ‘Hmm. Do you think we can get a table?’
Gabriel laughed. ‘Yeah. I know the owner.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘Is there anyone in London that you don’t know?’
‘No,’ he said as he looked at me. ‘I have eyes everywhere, Sam. Remember that,’ he said with a fake menacing growl that made me laugh out loud.
Gabriel and I had finished our meal. The waitress had just brought over the dessert menu when I saw the change in Gabriel’s face. He was looking at the door.
‘What the fuck is that prick doing in here?’ he mumbled.
‘Who?’ I turned in my seat to see a man walking towards the back of the restaurant. He looked about my dad’s age. He was tall and stocky like my dad too. But his face was a mess, full of cuts and bruises, and he walked with a limp. A red-haired woman walked behind him. He caught Gabriel’s eye and walked over to our table while the woman was shown to their table by a waiter.
‘Evening,’ he said curtly as he reached us.
‘Evening. How’s that eye?’ Gabriel asked with the hint of a smile.
‘Fine, thanks,’ the man snapped at him. He had a black eye with a huge cut over it, and obviously that had something to do with Gabriel.
‘I didn’t know you ate in here. You know this is Turkish Mick’s place?’ Gabriel said.
‘Me and Mick sorted our differences,’ the other man replied. ‘I hope that we’ve resolved ours now too?’
Gabriel nodded.
Then the man turned to me. ‘Who is this lovely lady?’
‘Samantha, meet Jimmy,’ Gabriel replied.
‘Not Samantha Donovan?’ Jimmy laughed. ‘Does Sebastian know you’re fucking his daughter?’ he leered at me as he said the word fucking and licked his lips. It felt obvious to me that his question had intended to make me feel uncomfortable.
I saw Gabriel’s jaw clench and wondered whether Jimmy was about to get a cut over his other eye. I didn’t want a scene in the restaurant though.
‘Oh, of course he knows, Jimmy,’ I replied with a smile. ‘Although we tend to call it dating around my dad. You know because of that temper of his? But we do fuck a lot, don’t we, honey? I mean a lot.’ I beckoned Jimmy closer to me. ‘Sometimes he makes me come so hard, I literally pass out,’ I whispered and I saw Gabriel chuckling from the corner of my eye.
Jimmy shifted uncomfortably. ‘Yeah, well, he’s good at making people pass out, aren’t you, Gabriel. I assume she knows all your dirty secrets? Even the ones you buried years ago?’
Gabriel’s eyes blazed with fire and he clenched his fist on the table. ‘Fuck off, Jimmy. Before I rip your fucking head off.’ He made to stand up and Jimmy flinched before backing off and walking away.
‘What the hell was that about?’ I asked.
Gabriel shook his head and I could see his face still full of anger. ‘Let’s get out of here before I bury Jimmy too,’ he said as he took four crisp fifty pound notes and left them on the table.
‘This was supposed to be my treat. And I don’t think our meal cost two hundred pounds, Gabe.’
He shrugged. ‘Then that waitress will get a nice tip. Come on. Let’s go.’
I’d been eyeing up the chocolate fondant for dessert, but it was clear that Gabriel wanted out of there. ‘Okay,’ I said as I stood up.
Gabriel had hardly spoken during the drive to back his house. Once we were back I showered and changed and he hadn’t interrupted me once, which was so unlike him. I pulled on one of his t-shirts and walked downstairs. He was sitting on the sofa staring at a blank television.
‘Who was that guy, Gabe?’ I asked as I sat down next to him. ‘And why has he got you so rattled?’
He turned to look at me. ‘That was Jimmy Fenton,’ he replied.
I remembered the name now and wondered how I hadn’t put two and two together in the restaurant. ‘The guy who’s been giving you and my dad some trouble?’ I asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘But I thought that was handled?’
‘It is.’
This was like pulling teeth. Clearly something else was going on here. ‘So, what was this secret he was referring to then?’ I asked. I’d hoped he’d explain of his own volition, but clearly he needed a nudge.
He lowered his eyes and shook his head. I had never seen him like this before. He was always so confident and sure of himself. Was this the thing that tormented him in his sleep? The demon that he’d once told me of?
I reached out my hand and stroked his cheek, ‘Please, Gabe. Talk to me,’ I said.
‘If I tell you… I’m not sure I could stand the way you’d always look at me afterwards.’
‘Well, yo
u’re just going to have to trust that I love you, and nothing will ever change that,’ I said.
He looked up at me. ‘You sure about that?’
I nodded. I was sure there was nothing Gabriel was capable of that could ever make me fall out of love with him. I knew the man he was. He might be my angel Gabriel but I wasn’t naïve enough to think that to many who knew him, he was the devil in disguise.
He didn’t look convinced though.
‘Do you remember when I told you that I’ve never been in love with anyone else?’
He frowned at me. ‘Yeah.’
‘Well, that’s true. But the reason that’s true is because I’ve been in love with the same man since I was fourteen years old. And I can’t imagine there is anything he could do that would change that.’
Gabriel took a breath, as though he’d been winded. ‘Wow,’ he said as he let the breath out. ‘That man is me, right?’
‘No. It’s my dad’s neighbour, Archie. Of course it’s you,’ I said with a laugh.
He smiled at me then. ‘Well, I wish I’d known that before today.’
‘Oh, come on. You knew. I used to practically drool whenever you were around.’
‘You never drooled, Sam. You used to flirt with me. I knew you had a thing for me. But being in love is an entirely different thing.’
‘Yeah. Tell me about it.’
‘I came to see you before you left for uni, you know?’ he said.
‘No?’ I didn’t know that at all. I’d gone off to uni thinking that I’d made a massive fool of myself and that he’d never want to speak to me again.
He nodded. ‘I wanted to say goodbye. And, I wanted to see you. I wanted to tell you that I would miss you and … Well, I don’t know what I was planning to do. But you’d left. Your dad said you were too excited to hang around.’
‘Yeah. I told him that. But I was too embarrassed after what I’d done,’ I said as my cheeks flushed pink.
‘You never have to be embarrassed about anything in front of me, Sam. I love you.’
I smiled at him as he realised our conversation had now come full circle. ‘And I love you. So? Talk to me, Gabe.’
Chapter 62
Gabriel
I sat on my sofa staring at this incredible woman telling me that she’d been in love with me for eighteen years. I wondered how our lives might have been different if I had asked her to stay in Dagenham that night. No doubt, she would have resented me eventually. I wished I could have stopped all the awful shit that had happened to her. I wished I hadn’t been so wrapped in up in my own ego and pride and reached out to her. But despite all of that, in some ways I would change nothing. Because sitting here with her now, I knew that this was exactly where I was supposed to be and I wouldn’t change it for anything.
And now I was about to tell her who I really was. This was the thing that still sometimes kept me awake at night. I took hold of her hand and she sat staring at me intently while I told her all about Calvin Stewart. He wasn’t the only man I’ve ever killed, but he was the first. He was the only man I’d never meant to kill and the only one who hadn’t deserved it. I call him a man, but he was no more than a boy. Just seventeen.
I’d been a promising boxer when I was a teenager, but I’d had a shit manager and too many people had only seen pound signs in their eyes when they’d looked at me. By the time I was eighteen, I’d given up on my dreams of professional boxing and was fighting in illegal street fights instead. My manager had told me it would be easy money — the way to fund my pro career. Neither of which were true. The money was great, but it certainly wasn’t easy. These fights were managed and run by a man named Alfie Cunningham, and Jimmy Fenton had organised them on Alfie’s behalf. It had been lucrative for me, and my record was unbeaten.
Before long, me and my trainer had started hearing rumours about this wonder kid from Edinburgh – Calvin Stewart. Apparently, he was unbeatable. Hard as nails and crazy with it. He’d knocked out every opponent who’d faced him stone cold. But from what I’d heard, he’d never taken a good punch.
I’d been eager to fight him. The purse would be my biggest yet and the fight had been the only topic of conversation in our underground circles for weeks leading up to it.
The night of the fight came. I was pumped. Calvin was too. He looked strong and fit. They told me he was eighteen — perhaps they believed he was. We went into the ring and I fought the hardest two rounds of my life. This kid was fast and he was strong — a lethal combination. In round three I decided to go for it. I was sure if I could connect with his jaw, he’d be out. I went into round three feeling like a fucking lion. I missed his jaw and hit his temple instead. No big deal though. But Calvin dropped to the floor like a sack of spanners. His trainer ran over to him with the smelling salts while me and my trainer were celebrating the win. But something had gone wrong. Calvin wasn’t coming round.
He was pronounced dead a few minutes later and that was when his trainer told the first aider that he was only seventeen. Everyone scattered into the wind, until the only people who were left were me, Jimmy Fenton, the kid’s trainer and of course the dead kid. And I’d fucking killed him — in an illegal bare knuckle boxing match. I wasn’t ready to go to prison. My trainer and my manager left me swinging in the wind. Luckily Jimmy Fenton needed Calvin’s death covered up as much as I did. Alfie Cunningham wouldn’t have the death of some kid ruining his lucrative side-line and he would hold Jimmy personally responsible if it did.
We buried Calvin’s body in a deep hole in the middle of a forest near Cumbria and he was registered as a missing person. As far as I knew, his mother still held out hope that one day he would come back home again.
I sat back against the sofa and searched Samantha’s face for a reaction. She held on tightly to my hand.
‘Is this the secret Jimmy was referring to?’
I nodded.
‘But, Gabe. It was an accident. It sounds like Calvin knew what he was getting into. And if he didn’t then he was exploited by his trainer and Jimmy Fenton, but not you.’
‘But his mother deserves to know that her son is never coming home. She deserves to have a grave to visit.’
Samantha took my face in her hands. ‘You are a good man, Gabriel Sullivan. The fact that this still haunts you proves that. Don’t you see? Jimmy Fenton is a piece of shit for using this to get to you. But uses it because he knows that you have something he doesn’t — a conscience.’
I looked into her eyes and saw nothing there but love. This woman was incredible and I didn’t know what the hell I’d done to deserve her devotion, but it made me feel like the luckiest guy on the fucking planet.
I reached for her waist and pulled her onto my lap so she was straddling me. ‘I must have done something right in a previous life to deserve you.’
She smiled at me. ‘You must have been a veritable Santa Claus,’ she said and I pulled her to me and kissed her until I forgot about everything except her.
Chapter 63
Samantha
I’d just come back from court and was eating lunch at my desk when my office phone started to ring. ‘Yes, Beth?’ I answered.
‘Samantha, there’s a Mr Smith on the phone for you. Says he needs a solicitor. He asked for you personally.’
I checked the time on my watch. I had thirty minutes before my next client was due. ‘Put him through,’ I replied. I often had people asking for me. Nick did too. Personal recommendations generated a lot of business.
I heard the click as my receptionist, Beth hung up the phone.
‘Hello, Samantha.’ The voice was unmistakeable. It was cheery, almost sing-song. But I knew the coldness and the cruelty it disguised. The hairs on my skin stood on end. My breath caught in my throat and I felt my blood freeze in my veins.
‘Hello, Jackson,’ I whispered.
‘It’s so good to finally hear your voice, Samantha.’ He laughed. ‘Have you missed me?’
‘What do you want?’ I snapped.
‘Well, to be honest, I’m very disappointed in you. I thought at least I’d taught you some class. I assumed you’d have a bit more respect for yourself than to start fucking that Neanderthal, Gabriel Sullivan. You do know he thinks he’s some sort of gangster? But you know what they say, you can take the girl out of Dagenham …’
‘Class?’ I snapped. ‘Gabriel has more class in his little toe than you do in your whole body, you spineless bastard.’
‘Oh no! Please don’t tell me you think you’re in love with him, darling? For God’s sake,’ he started to laugh.
‘Piss off,’ I snapped.
I heard the change in his voice instantly. ‘It’s not love, Samantha. It’s infatuation. Limerence, I believe they call it. Look it up. But trust me, you do not love him.’
‘What would you know about love?’ I hissed.
‘I know enough. I know you are the only woman I have ever loved, Samantha, and I expect you to be waiting for me when I get out of here. Did you know my appeal is underway?’
‘No,’ I said as my heart almost leapt out of my throat. I hadn’t heard that yet.
‘Yes. I imagine I’ll be out before you know it. So, I expect you to conduct yourself with some fucking decorum, because like it or not, you are still my wife.’
‘No, I’m not!’ I insisted.
‘You think those divorce papers mean anything to me? I’ve let you have your fun and now it’s time to remember who you are what I’m capable of, darling. You will stop seeing him, now! I tried to warn him off, but he’s a stubborn little bastard, isn’t he? Either that or he’s plain stupid.’
‘He’s not-'
‘Break it off now, Samantha. Or I will have the police and the tax man crawling up his arse, and your fucking father’s too. I’m sure the pair of them have plenty of skeletons in their closets that they’d rather not have found. And if that doesn’t work, I have plenty of other people at my disposal. To be blunt, darling, if you don’t end it, I will end him.’
Dark Angel: A Dark Romance: London Ruthless Series Book 1 (The London Ruthless Series) Page 23
