The NSC Boxset: Heart of Stone

by D H Sidebottom

  “Is that what she told you?” I laughed in amazement at his stupidity, “You are far more dense than I gave you credit for if you believe her fucked up story.”

  My toes curled at the pain that cracked through my jaw when his fist connected with it and I watched his face spray with blood as my lip spilt severely. “Feel better?” I hissed as my face screamed in agony.

  “Much!” He said after a deep calming breath.

  I closed my eyes and sighed, “Look Will, whatever has happened between you and your Mother, or our Father come to that, we’re family. You’re my brother at the end of the day; surely we can work this out.”

  He nodded, “Of course we can. Give me the chip.”

  I rolled my eyes and clenched my jaw tightly. “But why do you want it?”

  His eyes widened and he looked at me like I was incredibly stupid, “Christ Grace. That thing is worth a fortune.”

  “But you can have the family assets if it’s money you are after” I offered but he laughed, the sound of it starting to coil my stomach with its sadistic tone.

  “Well let’s see,” he cocked his head as if contemplating things whilst he strummed his fingers against his chin in thought. “A few million from the family funds or a few billion from the government, errrr. . . .”

  “Then why the fuck did you kill Marcus if it isn’t the family money you’re after? It was senseless and unwarranted.” The words choked in my throat and Will pulled a fake sympathetic face, his bottom lip pouting excessively.

  “Aww, Gracey, you missing our fucked up brother already?”

  My temper flared and I belted out of my chair and pinned him to his, “He wasn’t your brother you fucking cunt . . .”

  “Get off me” he warned as a gun came to rest threateningly on the side of my face, the muzzle squashing my cheek harshly but I was too angry to relent. “You don’t see it do you Grace, he was worthless to me. I didn’t need him, he was irresponsible and reckless.”

  He pushed against me but I stayed pressing into him, my fury giving me the strength I needed to outweigh him.

  “If you don’t move, they . . .” He pointed to each of the men whose guns were trained on me, “ . . . will make sure you do.”

  I stared at him and saw nothing in him that I could grab onto from our childhood. The way he used to look at me, the twinkle of brotherly love in his eyes, the broad shoulders that I thought would have protected me my entire life and the happy laughter we used to share; it was all gone and I shook my head sadly at him. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”

  He stalled at the sadness in my voice but as he rolled his lips and exhaled heavily he pulled a small pistol from his pocket and secured my gaze, “I have no choice, Grace.”

  “You always have a choice, Will. You just need to make the right one.”

  “And the right choices are twisted and corrupted by lies, Grace.”

  I nodded, I agreed but as he lifted his hand and pointed the gun at me he tilted his head and frowned with slight confusion, “What did you mean?”

  Finally! I assumed he hadn’t heard me and I had let it ride out with my anger but now, as he stood awaiting my words I knew it was time. My mouth dried as I dug deep for the courage as a solitary tear rolled down my cheek and dripped off my chin, its loneliness matching my soul as I looked at my older brother and told him what my parents should have twenty six years ago.

  “Marcus was your son, Will. He was yours.”

  His brow creased then his eyes widened as he shook his head sharply and his bottom lip trembled, “No.”

  “Yes.” I whispered back as I watched the realisation hit him full force.

  His throat constricted as a tight whimper left his lips. He stumbled backwards and grabbed hold of the chair arm for support as his legs gave way and he fell against the chair. He scrambled around it, staring at me like I had cursed him, his head still rapidly shaking from side to side as a faint wail started to carry from him. “No, you’re lying.”

  “No, Will. You know I’m not.”

  “YOU FUCKING BITCH!” He screamed as he raised his gun once more and I closed my eyes, ready and prepared for the finality as I welcomed death, relished it even.

  But then all hell broke loose and I watched in shocked silence as each of the men in the room dropped to the ground after a series of gunfire.

  Will lifted his eyes to mine and locked me down. “Grace . . .” he whispered with so much pain it splintered every single inch of my soul as the devastation at what he had done hit him.

  I tried to get to him. I knew what he was going to do but my legs wouldn’t move. “I’m so sorry, Grace.”

  I felt arms come around me from behind as Will lifted the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Kade

  “THEY’RE ALL GONE,” Grace repeated as Ava held her tight on the sofa opposite me. “All of them.”

  Her cries ripped me bare but she wouldn’t let me near her. When Mason had brought her back she hadn’t even acknowledged me but I don’t think she was aware of anything as she sank lower into herself.

  We all looked up as the door opened and Liam walked in. He stopped and closed his eyes, gaining the strength he would need to comfort his surrogate daughter but she gazed at him and shook her head angrily, “Don’t you dare.”

  He sighed and carried on approaching when she flew off the sofa and started to hit him. Liam held a hand up at Mason when he came to tackle her, telling him to let her get it out. The sight of her breakdown was crippling to watch and I turned so I didn’t have to witness it.

  The heart wrenching cry she made as I closed the door behind me took a piece of my heart and crushed it under her desolation and grief.

  I didn’t know what to do to help her and I veered straight for the whisky as I nodded in acknowledgment at Baxter who was sat nursing his own drink at the table.

  “May I?” I asked as I held up the bottle.

  “Be my guest.” He held his own glass to me and I brought it to the table and refilled his before I poured my own then settled the bottle between us on the table as Mason slumped into the chair beside me then gestured for me to fill him one.

  I sensed the pair of them eyeing each other until Grant sighed and peered at Mason. “Out with it.”

  Mason sighed and rolled his lips then bit down lightly on his tongue. “Something Grace said”

  “Marcus?” Grant asked quietly and Mason nodded. “You want the whole story, I gather?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  Grant looked down at his glass and swilled it round, giving him something to concentrate on as he relayed the story we both needed to hear.

  “I’ll give you the shortened version cos’ the long one will take too much of my loving time away from Nicola.” He winked softly at a plump redhead who was filling the dishwasher and then tipped his chin to the door signalling for her to leave. She winked back and blew him a kiss before she left and I smiled faintly, it was quite funny to watch a big, gruff muscled bloke go weak at the knees for such a plain and ‘normal’ girl but if I was honest, it was very refreshing to see.

  “Right,” he sat up straighter and huffed loudly. “Will. Where the fuck do I start with that cunt?”

  He blinked, then widened his eyes, then scowled and each of his facial expressions differed so completely from the last I had to hold back a snort of laughter. He reminded me of that puppet out of The Muppets with the big bushy eyebrows and I watched Mason fist his hands under the table. Not just me then!

  “Will was thirteen when Grace came along. He absolutely fucking doted on her. Loved the bones of that kid and it was incredible to watch them together. He grew up happy like any other kid.” I nodded and refilled all our glasses as I watched his face darken and his posture stiffen, “But when he hit eighteen he received a letter.”

  “His real Mother?” Mason asked intuitively and Grant nodded as he took the glass from me and downed a huge mouthful.

  “
Yep, skanky fucking bitch that she is. Of course Will didn’t have a clue about her. Robert had married her when they were both seventeen. I’ll admit, they were both in love and they had Will through that love, but then she changed, God did she change. She hit the heavy drugs and her veins practically flowed with the stuff, they must have been pure heroin the amount she stuck in there.”

  He shook his head and frowned as he reminisced but then he sighed dejectedly and shrugged, “Will blamed Robert of course for not telling him. He was so angry with Robert but funnily enough he didn’t seem to blame Iona at all. To him, she was the saving grace in all this. She had taken another man’s child and brought it up as her own and to Will that was pretty special.”

  He scoffed and shook his head in bewilderment. “He thought she was so special he had an affair with her.”

  “What the hell?” I barked and then quietened quickly when I remembered Grace was nearby.

  He nodded and shrugged his shoulders. “Robert was on his usual womanising streak and to be honest, I don’t blame Iona one fucking bit. She and Will got close when she would talk to him for hours about how he was coping with the revelation and I suppose they grew too close. Anyway, their affair began and . . . Iona became pregnant.”

  “Oh shit!”

  Grant nodded at me, “You guessed it, along came Marcus.”

  We sat silent for a while and all I could think of was how Grace had gone through this alone. I wished she had felt able to talk to me but Grace never felt the need to lean on anybody.

  I glanced towards the door and prayed Ava was helping her through it. I could help her but I knew she wouldn’t let me.

  “I take it from his reaction today that Will didn’t know he was Marcus’s Father?” Mason mused and Grant sighed.

  “No, they thought that he couldn’t cope with it. God knows, don’t ask me.” He scoffed with confusion but Mason shook his head.

  “We all make the wrong decisions when we’re parents. Fuck, I should know.”

  I cocked my head and gazed at him, “Everything okay, Mase?”

  He nodded but I noticed there was no ease in his smile, “Mase?”

  His brow furrowed and he turned to me with a pained grimace, “Just . . . George. He seems . . . I dunno but he seems . . . distant from me.”

  “Don’t be daft; he’s always been Ava, that’s all.”

  “Mmmm” he mused then smiled and stood up. “Talking of Ava, I need to fuck my girl.” He winked and I chuckled with him, “Night.”

  He strolled from the room but I noticed the slump of his shoulders and I reminded myself to have a word with Ava about what shit was going on between Mason and George.

  I jolted in my chair as Grant leaned forward and thumped his elbows on the table so he could stare at me. “What’s the deal with you and Grace?”

  I lifted my brows and stared at him, “Excuse me?”

  “Don’t fuck with me, arsehole. I’m all the family she’s got left now.”

  I couldn’t hold onto the astonished laugh that made both our eyes widen, “You’re family, yet you took her in exchange for me?”

  The corner of his lips twisted and a glint twinkled in his eye, “Business, Mr Hamilton. Don’t you fret; she knew exactly what she was doing. She knew I wouldn’t hurt her.”

  I snorted and my jaw dropped, “You wouldn’t hurt her? Did you see the state she was in when you’d finished with her?”

  God, this man made me bloody angry and he smirked at me when he saw my anger come through. “Quite feisty there aren’t we? It’s a shame you weren’t this brave at the club.”

  I leaned forward and copied his pose, resting my elbows on the table as I tipped my head at him. “You know, I’ve known Mase a long time, I know how things work. If you’d have even bothered to ask me, I would have told you that my lips were sealed anyway.”

  He shrugged casually as he stood up, “Just business as I’ve already said Mr Hamilton. Good night.”

  I stared after him as he followed through the door Mason had left through and I leant back in my chair and rolled my stiff neck around my shoulders.

  I wasn’t sure how I was going to win Grace over. Why the hell she couldn’t have walked in the room a minute later when I would have had chance to finish the sentence was bloody frustrating and I sighed heavily.

  She needed release and there was only one way to give it her and as I walked back into the room I prayed that she would allow me to give her the freedom her soul craved.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Grace

  MY BRAIN WAS weeping and my body was throbbing at the pressure of it. Why? It was all so pointless. I had lost both my brothers in one day by the hand of one of them.

  I closed my eyes and prayed that Marcus had been too strung out to even realise what was happening.

  All I could picture was when he was seven and our foster parents had smacked his legs for something silly. He was devastated, he’d never been struck before and his loud wails as he called for me still haunted my dreams even now but I knew without a shadow of a doubt that they would now be replaced by something far more dark and agonising.

  I closed my eyes as Will’s face swam in my head, the gun held to his head and then the blood, Christ the blood had been everywhere and I gasped as my chest stuttered painfully.

  “Grace?” Ava asked quietly as she took my hand. I frowned at her, unaware of what she had just said. “Why don’t you try and get some sleep, hun?”

  I shook my head and stared at her as my heart ached with the sight of her, “Do you still want him?”

  She gave me a confused look but then sighed when she realised what I meant. “No Grace. You got the wrong end of the conversation earlier.”

  “How could I get the wrong end of it? He told you he loved you!”

  She opened her mouth to speak but snapped it closed when Mason walked in and smiled at me, “Where’s Liam?”

  “He got called in to work.” Ava told him as he held out a hand to her and pulled her upright.

  “I need you. Come on, home!”

  She giggled when he slapped her arse and I smiled at them both. I had always been jealous of their relationship but I hadn’t seen it until now. Before I had told myself that I didn’t need anyone and I had believed that but since Kade . . . since Kade had come into my life I physically felt as though something was missing.

  I blinked when Ava knelt before me and took my hand, “You gonna be okay?”

  I nodded and squeezed her hand, “Yeah, some lone time will do me good.”

  She scowled at me and sighed, “Kade’s around somewhere.”

  I nodded, not letting on that I actually didn’t want to see him. He had uttered the same words to me not an hour before he had said them to Ava. That was some going, not many men were that shallow.

  “Okay, but you know where I am.”

  I repeated the nod. I was sick of smiling and nodding at people. Why couldn’t they leave me alone?

  I watched them walk out and then slumped back on the sofa and curled my legs underneath me. My mind wouldn’t shut down and I groaned, rubbing at my eyes as the various images flittered about like moths around a lamp; Marcus, Will, Kade, Ava, Mona, my parents and then finally the little blue chip that I now knew was worth my life to Will’s mother.

  She was the lowest of the low from what I had managed to find out about her. I hadn’t told Will the full story. He didn’t need to know that his Mother had actually sold him to my Father. What kind of mother does that? She made my Dad give her a hundred thousand to hand him over without a fight, and my Father being my Father hadn’t even blinked according to Grant. To him we had each been priceless, I just wished that Will could have seen that. Maybe now they could make their peace together in heaven.

  “Arghhhh” I groaned loudly as Will’s tortured face filled my head again. “Please be at peace” I whispered as I looked to the ceiling. “Find your son and love him.”

  I was exhausted, my body was running on re
serves but my brain wouldn’t slow down and I closed my eyes to try and find a little harmony in the chaos that refused to release me.

  I could feel the build-up of tears as Marcus’s last words slaughtered my strain to keep control. His happy drug induced high as I shouted at him when he grinned up at me from the chair.

  “I can’t do this anymore?” I screamed at him.

  He laughed and grabbed my hands, “Sis . . . I love you. You’ll never know how much I love you and I know what you did for me Grace . . . I know . . .”

  I flung my hand over his mouth before he voiced the words but he moved my hand and looked up at me, his pupils not really with me but he still saw me. “I love you so much Grace . . . Thank you . . . thank you for saving me.”

  But in the end, I hadn’t managed to save him.

  I blew out a breath and stood up; running my hands up and down my thighs agitatedly as I frantically scanned the room for something to occupy my mind with. I frowned as I noticed the laptop resting on the coffee table and rushed over to my bag for the USB that I had downloaded all of Liam’s data onto. I had forgotten all about it in my rush to get Kade back and sort out all the other shit.

  I settled on the sofa again and fired up the machine, slipping the memory stick into the port and waited for it to open.

  “What?” I shook my head in confusion as I tapped at some keys to open the locked file.

  “It’s software that locks programs even after you have opened and downloaded them.” Kade said quietly from behind my shoulder and I turned and scowled at him. “It’s just an extra security measure.”

  “Why do you always have to creep up on people?”

  He smirked at me and leapt over the sofa, coming to a thud beside me as he elbowed me gently, “Hey you.”

  I peered at him with my eyebrows high but he just shrugged, “You still sulking?”

  “Excuse me? Sulking? Oh, God forbid that I’m sulking!”

  He rolled his lips at my outburst and nuzzled into the side of me, his eyes wide and soft as he looked up to me from where his head rested on my shoulder. “Fuck, I love you.”