by Laura Read
The attendant returned holding her coat and when Angela put it on she saw that Marcus had disappeared. She wondered whether he was the man her father paid to watch Webster. If so, he wasn’t doing a very good job.
She walked out of the club alone, her father, Vincent, none of his men, leaving with her. Did they all think that her story was a lie?
She stood in the cold rain and hailed a taxi. She couldn’t believe that no one followed her out. Nobody trusted her. They stayed in the club even though she’d told them what Webster had done, but they all doubted her. It was as if they trusted Webster more than her.
She knew now that he needed to be put down. He had threatened her and she didn’t take threats lightly. She needed to protect herself and her father from Webster’s depravity, and she would defend her family at any cost.
8
Persuasion
Bass pounded in her ears and white lights blinded her as she made her way towards the dance floor. Her green silk dress circled around her thighs as she wove through the dark crowd, handbag swinging against her legs.
Tall predators with drinks in hand stood around the room, watching women dance. Some girls were unaware that they’d been selected as prey; others ignored the dark eyes watching them through the din of the room. Then a jackal made his move, caught the eye of a vulnerable young doe, burdened with thoughts that she was insignificant. As his pack watched with curiosity, he encircled his victim, trying to assert power over her and make her believe, just for the night, that she was everything he needed and more.
Angela didn’t need to tempt a stranger into her bed tonight. She had a different mission: to persuade someone she already knew. She snaked through the room and climbed the staircase towards the offices, hurrying so no one noticed her.
Reaching the top of the stairs, the double doors that Vincent should have been guarding wouldn’t open. She found her access card in her bag, swiped it against the panel and heard the click of the doors unlocking.
Pushing one door open, she stepped into the quiet of the unlit corridor. The light from the poolroom at the end of the hall flooded into the passageway, her steer through the darkness. The door gently shut behind her and she crept towards the light.
She glanced at the door to Joe’s office, the room that no one had entered since the night he died. The office was an empty crypt, the door an implicit plaque commemorating her brother and his final moments, forewarning others such a fate awaited them should they choose to follow the same path.
She stopped just inside the doorway and watched as Vincent slid a brown paper envelope across one of the pool tables towards Sean. The detective leant against a table, frowning at Vincent; the other man smiled reassuringly as if there were no hard feelings between the two. Sean reached for the envelope and placed it inside his leather jacket.
‘Did you know that Vincent’s father was a cop too?’ Angela asked, walking into the room.
Vincent turned around, surprised he didn’t hear her come in. ‘He’s dead. He died in jail,’ he added, scowling at her for over-sharing.
Angela glanced at Sean, noticing his thick stubble and the dark circles under his eyes that contrasted against his pallid skin. Then she looked at Vincent. ‘I need to talk with you.’
Sean took the hint, saying to Vincent, ‘I’ll see you on Monday.’
He hurried out of the room, avoiding Angela’s gaze. She imagined throwing sharp daggers into his back as he walked away.
Vincent followed Sean to the door to make sure he left. Then he turned back to face Angela. ‘Convenient moment to show up.’
‘You know me.’ She leant against a table and folded her arms. ‘I can’t believe we’re taking on a cop.’
‘You sure you don’t like him?’ Vincent teased her. ‘I thought that’s why you helped him the other night?’
‘I wish I hadn’t,’ she muttered, chucking her bag down on the floor.
‘Me too,’ he joked, then his face became serious. ‘But right now it makes sense to bring him on board. As for Webster… What the fuck happened last night?’
‘I told you what happened, and no one believed me.’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘Then why didn’t you say anything? No one followed me out to see if I was okay. You just left me…’
‘I needed to stay with Leon, Ange. Because I believed you.’
‘They why did dad stay? Why didn’t you persuade him to leave?’
Vincent sighed. ‘I don’t know. It would have looked weird if he left early: Webster supposedly threw the party for his new partner.’
‘What, are you jealous? Jealous that you could never be dad’s partner?’
‘I’m not fucking jealous! We both know Webster’s crazy, and sooner or later Leon will want to kill him.’ He changed the subject. ‘And you’ll love this: after you left, Webster asked your dad for money to bring more girls into the country. He says he’ll pay him back, but... Apparently he thinks the police are looking into his finances. Despite telling us a week ago that they were done looking into him.’
‘Dad won’t give him any money though, right?’ She didn’t think her father wanted to get involved in that side of Webster’s business.
‘I don’t know what he’ll do. He’s lost it since Joe died. He’s dealing with Webster when he didn’t want anything to do with him six months ago.’
Angela sighed and stared up at the ceiling, covered in filthy yellow smoke rings. She wouldn’t be able to face her father if he started to invest his money in prostitution. Already she wished that he wasn’t involved in the drugs trade. Webster treated the women he brought into the country like animals, yearning to fuck and slaughter them. She didn’t want her father to become corrupted by him. She needed to do something before she lost the man she knew as her father.
‘What if we took Webster out of the picture?’ she suggested, finally voicing her plan.
Vincent smiled at Angela as if she was crazy. ‘We’d need a legitimate excuse to kill him.’
‘We already have an excuse. He threatened me.’
‘Fine, I’ll rephrase: we’d need to get Leon to sign off on his murder.’
Angela examined the gnarled wood of the floorboards, following the grain with her eyes as her face filled with sadness yet with purpose. She looked up at Vincent. ‘What if we said he raped me?’
Vincent gave her a hard look. ‘You know how dangerous he is. Pissing him off will get you killed.’
‘He’d destroy us if he could,’ Angela argued. ‘He’s hurt a lot of people over the years. He killed that girl last night in front of me. The first chance he gets, he’ll stab my father in the back, then kill you, me, whoever he wants.’
‘So you want to lie and say he raped you?’
‘We need to do something, before it’s too late.’
‘No, Ange, you need to do something! He threatened you. You can’t stop thinking about it and now you’re planning how you can get revenge… You need to stop thinking about it. Webster gave you a warning for a reason, because you always stick your nose into everything, when it’s none of your business. It’s your dad’s decision to work with Webster. You might not like that, and I don’t, but he’s the one to make that decision, not you.’
‘You already said that he’s not thinking straight since Joe died. We shouldn’t trust him to make that kind of decision, not when it affects all of us. He’s putting our lives at risk.’
‘Your plan is to fake getting raped, pin it on Webster, then what? You hope Leon takes your side? What if he doesn’t and Webster and his men come after you?’
‘Of course, he’d take my side… He’d have to.’
‘He didn’t last night,’ Vincent countered.
Angela fell silent.
‘And you’ve got to think about whether or not you can follow through,’ said Vincent. ‘You’d have to get beaten up pretty badly to make it look believable.’
‘I know… That’s why I need your help.’
&n
bsp; ‘Fucking hell,’ he said, shaking his head.
He turned to face the windows lining the far side of the room. Their reflections were bright against the black night sky, their faces framed within the thin glass. He knew what Angela was asking him to do. He’d have to lie to Leon about it as well.
‘You want me to beat you up?’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t want that, Ange. You saw what I did to Sean.’
‘I’m not asking you to torture me, just hit me a few times.’
‘No fucking way!’ he told her.
‘There’s an alley behind the club. That’s where I thought we could go. Where you could do it...’
Vincent realised that she’d been thinking about how to get rid of Webster for a while now. It sounded as if she was ready to do what needed to be done, and she wasn’t afraid of getting hurt, but she’d never done anything like this before.
He’d been loyal to Leon since the day they met, and it would be wrong to go behind his back to help his daughter. Yet Webster wasn’t just a threat to their family and business, he threatened the status quo, and Vincent knew when that happened their business suffered and men usually lost their lives. Now Joe was out of the picture, Webster also jeopardised Vincent’s chances of one day taking over.
Angela was right: they needed to do something before it was too late. It worried him though that further down the line she might change her mind. Then again, perhaps she was more like her father than he thought.
‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he told her.
She stepped closer to him, hoping she was right to trust him. ‘You always hurt the ones you love.’
She looked sincere, but Vincent didn’t know whether she was being honest or this was some sick test and she was trying to manipulate him. ‘You think I love you?’
Perhaps she misjudged the moment. ‘I always see you looking at me, and I don’t know what that means.’
‘I’ve known you for years, since you were a teenager. I’ve always protected you and your family. I don’t know how I feel about you.’
‘Don’t you want to find out?’ she asked, looking up at him. ‘You kissed me the other night. I thought that meant something.’
Vincent gazed down at her, wondering whether he should act on his feelings. Finally he turned away. ‘Fuck, Angela. Don’t mess with my head!’
‘I’m not trying to –’
‘I’m not some fucking puppet! I’m not like Dom or any of the others you’ve fucked. You can’t lead me on with my dick just to kill Webster.’
‘I’m not doing that!’ she insisted.
‘Then what the fuck?’
‘I don’t know. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.’
‘Get out.’
‘What?’
‘Leave me the fuck alone!’ he yelled at her.
‘Fine.’ Angela bent down to pick up her bag, but realised that this was one of her few chances, if not her only chance, to persuade Vincent to help her. ‘If you don’t want me in that way, that’s fine. But what do you want? What would it take for you to help me?’
‘Nothing! I don’t want to help you.’
‘Come on, you must want something. What about Joe’s old job: being second-in-command? We still don’t know whether dad will give you or me that position. More likely it’ll be you, but I don’t want it.’
‘Of course you want it! It’s everything you’ve ever wanted: to get your dad to listen to you, to have more power.’
‘What, so I can stay in this shitty town and never leave, always tied down by my family? Maybe I used to want dad to show me the same attention he showed Joe, but now… There’s nothing left for me here. Joe’s dead, I don’t have any friends, I don’t have anyone, apart from the people who dad surrounds himself with.’
Vincent bit his lip, thinking what he could do if he wasn’t just ‘the lieutenant’, if he was the one who’d inherit Leon’s title and territory. ‘You really don’t want to be more than just your dad’s accountant?’
‘I used to want more. But I see the way your men don’t pay me any attention. I’m never going to gain their respect, not in that way. They look up to you and they’ll never look up to me. I’m not violent; I’m not going to be able to “scare them into submission”. Webster threatened me last night, killed a girl right in front of me – guys like him will never want to make deals with me. They just see me as this stupid little girl who has a powerful father. And I don’t want to get involved in fucking drug deals anyway. There isn’t anything here for me and I don’t know why I didn’t realise that years ago.’
‘So you want to leave? Where would you go? What would you do? Leon won’t want you out there on your own.’
‘I don’t know where I’ll go. Just… help me with Webster first, and I’ll make sure that dad sees you as more than just his “lieutenant”. I swear to you that I’ll do that for you.’
Vincent grabbed her wrists and pushed her hard against the pool table. ‘You better not be playing me,’ he told her, then he kissed her.
She kissed him back, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, wondering whether this moment meant anything to her, whether she did have feelings for him. She’d planned on using her body to persuade him, but she hadn’t thought of making an entirely different deal. As she fell into the depths of their kiss, she recognised that she still feared him; she had done since the night he attacked her in the barn.
Abruptly he let her go and moved away from her. ‘I can’t fucking beat you up. I don’t know how I’d do it so you wouldn’t get hurt.’
‘I know you’ll hurt me, but that’s the point. I trust you.’
Vincent looked at her, wishing he could feel comfortable that their plan would work out, and when the time came that he wouldn’t hurt her permanently. ‘And I’ve got to trust you,’ he said, more to himself. ‘Look, Webster told us today that he’s keeping a low profile for the next few days in case the cops investigate his clubs again. We should go now, do it tonight. Before I change my mind…’
He pushed open the door to the fire escape, outside the rain ringing out loudly against the black metal staircase. The cold air drifted inside, a damp smell rising from the wet bricks.
This was Angela’s time of action; her dark fall from grace. She could either turn back now and follow the footsteps of her past – choosing the way she had always lived her life, bound by inaction and apathy – or walk through the open door into the darkness of the night, into a life of death and consequences. For a moment she froze, wondering whether her feet would choose for her in which direction she’d walk, but she found herself moving towards Vincent.
He held the door for her as she stepped into the cool waiting rain, her thin stilettos sinking into the open grates of the steel platform. She slipped off her shoes and carried them by the thin black straps, as Vincent propped the heavy door open. In silence, they descended the stairs, Angela’s feet cold and wet, her hand tightly gripping the wet railings.
They climbed down the ladder at the bottom of the stairs, the rungs cool and slippery, then Angela’s bare feet met with sharp black gravel. The music inside pounded through the walls; a siren blared away in the distance. On solid ground Angela slipped her shoes on and stood up straight. Vincent jumped down next to her.
He moved towards her, gazing at the white raindrops adorning her hair and silk dress, her breath visible in the light of the lone streetlamp shining above the fence separating the club from the road. Framing her face with icy hands, he fixed his grey eyes on hers, the colour of the earth, looking at her with sad yet desirous longing.
His warm breath settled on her lips moments before his mouth found hers, his touch strong, fervent and compelling. They staggered back against the wall, Angela embracing him, her fingers warming against his muscled back beneath his shirt. He brushed her curled wet hair behind her shoulder and bit into her supple neck, scented with lingering perfume. She cried out as he bit deeper.
‘I thought w
e were heading towards the alley?’ Angela breathed heavily.
‘I don’t want to do this where others have fucked you before,’ Vincent murmured, not looking up from his trail of love bites.
‘But –’
‘Shut up,’ he snapped, looking into her eyes to watch her reaction as he tore off a silk strap from her dress.
He kissed her again, tearing off the second strap and tugged her dress down to feel it pool beneath his feet. Unhooking her bra, he let the material slip to the floor, before pulling down her underwear. He looked down at her goose-pimpled and vulnerable body shivering in the cold of the night.
The moonlight emphasised her pale skin and curves, her damp hair almost black and contrasting against her whiteness. She leaned with yearning against the coarse redbrick wall, rain trickling down her body.
He lifted his shirt above his head and undid his trousers, looping the pieces of clothing across the railings under the fire escape. Angela watched him with curiosity, wanting him to warm her further with his touch, breath, his muscles and strength.
He was comfortable in his own skin, and she had always been attracted to him because of that, but she could never love him. The anger etched in his eyes frightened her. It was a blackness to which he devoted his whole humanity, enduring hurt from his past overwhelming him, only to be forgotten when he inflicted pain on others.
He was a ghost walking the Earth in want of retribution, not sensing fulfilment, change and freewill. She wanted to help him, lessen his pain, but the truth was that he would remain forever constrained by his sins, and he believed that transformation and love were forbidden to him.
He hovered over her naked body and kissed her once more, his tender mouth the sole feature she channelled, her focus in their lustful mirage.
He softly whispered in her ear, ‘I wish you could love me.’
She looked up at him questioningly before he grabbed her head and smashed it back against the brick wall. Her world became a dark abyss into which she felt herself falling, further and further into the blackest depths of the unknown... until she couldn’t sense anything at all.
