The Pope: Cards of Love

by Lovell, LP

  A couple of the guys lean into each other, wide grins on their faces as one talks into the other’s ear. Their eyes sweep the length of my legs, and I fix my face into an expression of cool indifference. Too many smiles and they start to wonder just what you’re prepared to do for the good tips.

  I place the bottle in the ice bucket and bend over the low table, removing the sparkler from the top. I feel the brush of fingers on the back of my thigh, and as I straighten, a hand grabs my arse, wrenching me forward. I stumble, my knee landing on the couch beside one of the drunken guys, my crotch in his face.

  “I suggest you let me go.”

  “Aw, come on baby,” he slurs. “Haven’t we been nice to you all night?”

  “We have, Dan. I think she should be extra nice to us,” his friend chirps in.

  I shove away from them, but his finger catches my fishnet tights, tearing a hole in them. I freeze, glancing down at the hole and then back at the guy.

  “Oops,” he says on a grin.

  Anger rises hot and fast. “Did I give you permission to touch me?” I snap.

  And then, as if to prove a point, he grabs my arse again. Without thought, I lash out, my fist colliding with his nose. Blood explodes, and he cries out, immediately releasing me.

  “Argh! Fucking bitch.”

  Jackson, one of the security guys, sweeps in and pulls the guy to his feet, dragging him and his friend out of the club. I shake my hand because that bloody hurt.

  “Are you okay, Delilah?” I turn to Stacey, one of the other girls. Concern mars her pretty face.

  “I’m fine.” Damn, my thumb is really throbbing.

  Going down to the bar, I grab a towel and some ice, wrapping it around my hand. I disappear out back to the changing room and sit down for a moment. My thumb is already turning an ugly purple and swelling. There’s a gaping hole in my fishnet tights too. I can just imagine Judas’s reaction when I see him after work.

  A few minutes later there’s a knock on the door, and Stacey pops her head in. “Boss wants to see you, Delilah.”

  “He’s here?”

  She shrugs one shoulder. “Guess so.” Shit. Shit.

  Pushing to my feet, I follow her out; her long bleached blonde hair swaying with every step. She offers me a small, almost sympathetic smile before she goes back up the stairs to VIP, and I head for the stairs that lead to Judas’s office. At the top, there’s a door that opens onto a short corridor, and as soon as the door closes behind me, I can hear Judas shouting.

  “What do I fucking pay you for if the girls have to defend themselves? What the fuck were you doing? You obviously weren’t paying attention.”

  “I’m sorry, boss. It won’t happen again.”

  “Get out.”

  The door in front of me opens, and I still like a rabbit in headlines as Jackson stands in front of me. All six and a half feet of him.

  “Sorry, Lila,” he says as he moves past me.

  “It’s fine. Don’t apologise.”

  “Delilah, get in here,” Judas barks.

  On a deep breath, I walk into the office, closing the door behind me. I feel like a kid getting called to the principle’s office, and the idea pisses me off.

  Judas leans against the front of his desk, his head tilted down and his shoulders hunched forward. He says nothing for long moments, but his anger is like a living thing in the room with us. I refuse to fear him though.

  Moving closer, I slide one leg between his spread ones, straddling his thigh. Cupping his face, I force him to look at me. The rage swirls in his irises, making the sharp angles of his face seem cold and hard.

  “I handled it,” I whisper, brushing my lips over his.

  He grips my jaw, securing me in place. He holds me right in front of him, searching, probing. “He had your arse in his hand, Delilah. You should have hit him long before then.” There’s a chill in his voice that promises anarchy. That low menacing growl is like the prequel to his own personal apocalypse. This is the man that he really is, the one that I both fear and love.

  “You saw?”

  “I’m always watching you, little lamb.” There was a time when that might have bothered me, but it doesn’t. I love the way I’m the centre of his world. It’s powerful and addictive, to be wanted like this. Maybe it’s a little sick, but if that’s the case, then I don’t want to be cured.

  I close my eyes, and his fingers dig into my cheeks harder. “Look, maybe you should stop coming to the club so much.”

  “You don’t want me here?” There’s a thinly veiled warning behind the question.

  I open my eyes. “You were never here before. You’re supposed to be lying low. I’m worried you’ll do something to draw attention.” Like kill someone for looking at me the wrong way. “This isn’t like you. You aren’t irrational.”

  His hand braces against the small of my back. “I am when it comes to you.”

  “You can’t try and kill anyone who looks at me wrong.”

  He wrenches me up against him. “I can,” he whispers in my ear. “Because you’re mine.”

  “Always.” I press a lingering kiss a to his lips for no other reason than I need it. I feel this connection between us growing stronger by the day, as though we’re melding together. “But I don’t want you to get in any trouble. I need you.”

  His eyes sweep over the tiny shorts and bralette that I’m wearing. “If you’d wear clothes—”

  “We’ve talked about this.”

  “Then work in the office. Manage the books. I’ll pay you the same.”

  I roll my eyes. “No, you won’t because you pay me ten pounds an hour, and they,” I point to the VIP area, “tip me hundreds a night.”

  “So I’ll match it.”

  “No.”

  He grits his teeth, his fingers flinching against my hip. “Fuck, Delilah. What do you want me to do here?”

  “Absolutely nothing.”

  “I swear you want me to go back to prison,” he growls, sliding his hand over mine. Our fingers thread together, and he squeezes, making me wince. His brows furrow as he takes my hand, inspecting it. My thumb is swollen now, the skin so purple it’s bordering on black. “You punched him?” I nod. “You kept your thumb inside your fist didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  His eyes shift from my hand to my face. “What happened to eyes, throat, crotch?”

  “I panicked.”

  “This is probably broken.”

  “Great. One more injury.” His jaw works back and forth. “I’m fine.”

  He shakes his head. “Fucking Jackson standing there with his thumb up his arse.”

  “Poor guy is terrified of you.”

  “Good.”

  “So grumpy.”

  He cocks a brow. “I’m this close to firing you.”

  “What? Why? I didn’t do anything.”

  “You know why.” Because I won’t just bow to him.

  “You can’t be this possessive. It’s not normal.”

  “Oh, little lamb.” He laughs, and then his teeth scrape over the side of my neck. “Nothing about us is normal.”

  His lips trail a path down to my shoulder, and my mind blanks, all thoughts just blinking out of existence. Grabbing a handful of his hair, I kiss him, a deep drugging kiss that turns my entire body limp.

  His finger hooks into the top of my shorts. “Just let me pay you the money not to do the work.”

  I pull back. “Judas Kingsley, I will not be your whore!”

  He smirks. “Of course not. I don’t have to pay you to fuck you, sweet Delilah.” He releases the button on my shorts and slowly lowers the zip.

  “I’m working.”

  “I’m the boss.”

  He kisses his way down my neck again, pausing where it meets my shoulder and sinking his teeth into my skin. His fingers have just worked their way beneath the seam of my lace thong when there’s a knock at the door. He shifts me until my back is fully to the door.

  �
�Come in.”

  “Hey, there are police here.” I recognise Marcus’s thick cockney accent. Police? Oh god, they finally figured it out. They know I killed Isabelle. My heart ticks up a notch, and I imagine them dragging me through the nightclub in handcuffs, everyone looking, knowing what I did.

  “I’ll be there in a minute.” Judas slips his hand from my underwear and zips and buttons my shorts. The door closes, and he pushes to his feet.

  “Why are the police here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Judas…”

  He clasps my face in both hands and kisses my forehead. “They aren’t here for you, Delilah. Calm down.” His fingers stroke over my face, his brows pulled tightly together. “Here.” He hands me his keys. “Take my car. Go to my place. I’ll be there soon.”

  Tipping my chin up, he kisses me quickly before striding from the room. Stay calm.

  * * *

  By the time Judas gets back, it’s late, and my nerves are so fraught that I feel like I’m losing my mind.

  “Well?”

  He tosses his keys on the coffee table and shrugs out of his jacket. “They just wanted some CCTV footage from a fight we had last night.”

  I narrow my eyes, unsure whether to believe him. “I didn’t see a fight.”

  “It was outside.”

  “Okay.” But it’s not okay. God, it’s like I’ve immersed myself so entirely in Judas that I’ve forgotten why I ever went to him in the first place. Nothing has changed. I still helped kill Isabelle. Nate is still right there, lingering in the shadows, waiting. And his employers will still kill me if they think for a second that I’ll talk. That impending sense of dread that has become blanketed under everything that is Judas rises now, wrapping its icy fingers around my throat.

  A hand lands on my shoulder, and I jump, glancing at Judas.

  “Delilah. It’s okay.” He says the words slowly like he’s talking to a small child. “I need to take you to the hospital.”

  I shake my head, glancing at my hand wrapped in an ice pack. “It’s fine.”

  Sitting next to me, he takes the pack and inspects my hand.

  “I’m proud of you for throwing a punch, little lamb.”

  “I did it wrong.”

  “God loves a trier.” That dashing smile crosses his lips, and I almost want to cry because I’m terrified that there will come a time when I’ll never see his face again.

  I rest my cheek on his shoulder, inhaling the clean citrus scent of him. “Let’s just do normal for an hour or two.”

  He chuckles. “We’re not normal, Delilah.”

  “Shh, just an hour.”

  And he gives it to me. His arms come around me, one hand stroking over my hair, and right here, right now, I feel like Judas would protect me from anything. But deep down I know he can’t protect me from myself.

  22

  Delilah

  There’s a light knock on my bedroom door. I cross the room, pulling it open. Tiff stands there, her face pale and her eyes wide.

  “Tiff, what’s wrong?”

  She sweeps her blonde hair behind her ear. “Lila, there are police here. They want to talk to you.” I feel all the blood drain from my face and my pulse leaps into a sprint. A cold chill sweeps over my body and my palms grow clammy.

  “Okay. Just…give me a second.”

  She nods and backs away from the door. Tiff’s my friend, but I can see the suspicion on her face. She’s wondering what I did. She’s thinking that maybe she doesn’t know me at all. And she’d be right.

  I change into a pair of jeans and a hoody and leave the room. With each step down the stairs, my legs feel a little weaker, my lungs a little smaller. When I round the corner, I try and force myself to keep calm. Two police officers stand in my kitchen in full uniform.

  “Hello,” I say, my voice barely more than a squeak.

  The pair of them round on me, and I shrink back. The man is younger than the woman, and he offers me a small smile.

  “Miss Thomas, we need to ask you some questions.”

  I nod. “Uh, yeah, sure. Can I…ask what this is about?”

  The woman’s expression is a hard mask. “Best that you come with us. We’ll discuss it at the station.”

  The station? They want me to go to the station. My pulse throbs against my eardrums, drowning out everything else. “Am I in trouble?”

  The guy takes a step forward. “We just need to ask some questions and for you to make a statement.” He offers me a reassuring smile, but I don’t feel reassured because I’m guilty. And aren’t guilty people always found out in the end?

  “Okay,” I whisper.

  When I get to the police station, I’m shown to a room and asked to wait. It’s a plain room with a small table in it and two chairs facing each other. I’m so jittery that my hands are shaking, so I shove them into the pockets of my hoody and pace back and forth.

  When the door finally clicks open, I’m ready to crawl out of my skin.

  An older man with a kind smile and lines set into the corners of his eyes walks in. He has a paper folder tucked under his arm as he walks around the desk.

  “Miss Thomas, I’m Detective Harford.” He pulls out the chair and unfastens the button of his jacket before sitting. “Please sit.”

  I hesitate for a moment and then sit in the chair across from him. “I don’t know why I’m here,” I say.

  His eyes meet mine, and though they’re devoid of any kind of emotion, I feel like he’s screaming at me that he knows what I did. “I just want to ask you some questions about the night of the twentieth of March.” I say nothing, and he opens the file, sliding a piece of paper across the table to me. It’s an image, a grainy CCTV snapshot of Charles and me. His arms are wrapped around my shoulders, and mine around his waist. A blinding smile covers his face, and we look like we could almost be lovers. “This image of you and Charles Stanley was taken that night.” I swallow heavily and nod. “Can I ask how you know him?”

  “He was my friend, Isabelle’s boyfriend.”

  “Do you embrace all your friend’s boyfriends like that?” He jerks his head toward the picture. I feel my face heat as he puts me on the spot.

  “I…we were friends too.”

  The detective’s lips press together tightly. He’s not convinced. He takes another image from his file and slides that in front of me. Another CCTV image, this time of Nate and me. I’m pressed against him so tightly that I’m straddling one of his thighs and he’s burying his face in my neck. “And this one? Was he a friend?”

  My spine straightens at the bite in his voice. “No, Nate was my boyfriend.”

  “Was?”

  “We’re not together anymore.” He leans back in his chair, propping one elbow on the back while his other hand raps over the tabletop. I’m going to go to prison, and then Nate’s bosses are going to have me killed. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to go to jail.

  Better. I need to be better. More convincing. “Look, I gave my statement about the night Isabelle and Charles died.” My voice breaks. “What does this have to do with Nate?”

  He takes another picture out of his file, then another, and another. All images of Nate with various people, giving them a half hug, slapping palms together, and one where they’re just hunched close, obviously exchanging something, but the darkness of the image makes it hard to see clearly. “Your boyfriend is a drug dealer, Miss Thomas.”

  I look up at him, and for a moment I don’t know what to say. I feel like he can see the truth written all over my face, he can read my lie. “He’s not my boyfriend,” I whisper.

  His lips pull into a small smile that says he’s got me and he knows it. “Interesting that of my statement, that’s the bit you deny.”

  “I don’t know anything about Nate dealing drugs,” I say quickly.

  “You don’t seem surprised by it though. That would suggest you, in fact, did know.”

  I press my fingers to my temples and close my eye
s for a second. I can’t sell Nate out. “Look, Nate wasn’t the nicest guy. I never asked how he made his money or what he did. Our relationship wasn’t a long-term thing.” I shrug one shoulder. “It wouldn’t surprise me if he were, but I never saw anything.”

  He pushes the image of us together just an inch closer. “Not even when you were right there with him while he was working?”

  “No.” My voice quivers and my nerves are right there at breaking point.

  “You know what I think, Miss Thomas?” I really don’t want to know. He takes the image of Charles and me and lines it up next to the other picture. “I think this is you making a delivery.” My heart trips over itself — falling flat before resuming a desperate, awkward splutter. “I don’t think you know Charles Stanley well enough to hug him. This is just a drop.” I hadn’t realised I was chewing on my thumbnail until a sting of pain alerts me. Looking down, I see that my nail is now bleeding. His eyes follow mine, looking at the evidence of my obvious guilt. He leans forward over the desk, dropping his head to catch my gaze. “I don’t know whether it was willing, or whether he forced you to do it.” There’s a pause, and his expression is now nothing but sympathetic. He’s giving me an out, but I can’t take it. “It’s not you I’m after, Delilah. You’re a student, a nice girl from a nice family. However, Nathaniel is a link in a chain much bigger. I want him so I can get to them.” He opens his folder and takes out one final picture, placing it in front of me. I close my eyes, fighting back the sting of tears. I don’t need to look at that picture because it’s branded in my mind. The same image they splashed all over the main news channels. Isabelle’s smiling face. “Your friend is dead, Delilah. Because of guys like him putting this stuff on the streets.” Guys like Judas.

  “I’m sorry,” I choke. “I wish I could help you, but I don’t know anything.”

  He blows out a long breath and scrubs a hand over his clean-shaven jaw. “We can protect you, Miss Thomas.” They can’t though. I’ve learned more in these past few months than I ever wanted to know about the criminal underbelly of London. I know how it works. These people make far too much money to ever let one girl pose a risk. The police can’t protect me. No one can, except maybe Judas. “I’m giving you this chance. The next time we speak, I’ll be arresting you for intent to supply and conspiracy. Not to mention aiding and abetting a murder.” I swallow down the bile that’s creeping up the back of my throat.