by Esme Devlin
Chapter 12
JAMES
When I finally got back to Megan, it was much later than I had intended. As always happens when plans change, the delivery hadn’t gone as smoothly as I had hoped and there was a mess that needed cleaning up.
I unlocked the bedroom door and something drew my eyes to the floor the second I switched the lights on. Fucking hell. I should never have left her alone.
I rushed over to her and picked her up, putting her down gently on the bed. She stirred and her hands went to her eyes, a tiny whimper escaping from her lips.
“Who did this to you? Megan?” I shook her gently but she wouldn’t respond. I wasn’t even sure she could hear me. I put her in bed and tucked the covers around her, before going to find Jenny.
She’d locked her bedroom, but that didn’t stop me and I quickly kicked the door open, turning the lights on and barging straight in.
“What the fuck happened?”
She scrambled up in bed as I roared at her.
“Davie. It was Davie.”
“Davie did that to her?”
“Davie made me do that to her. Why do you care?”
I turned around abruptly, no longer interested in what she had to say. I would sort this out. “You don’t fucking move from that room until I say so, do you understand?”
“James?”
I was already taking the stairs two at a time to get back to her.
When she finally came around, I got her a glass of water and something to eat. I wanted her to cling to me. I wanted her to know that she was safe now, that nothing would hurt her anymore, and that I would fix it. She didn’t do that though. She just stared into nothing while her mouth moved robotically on the buttered toast. She looked like she wasn’t really here.
“What happened, Megan?”
“I got hurt. Again.”
“Who did it?”
She turned to me and stared me straight in the eye. “That fucking whore Jenny, with the help of your almighty boss.”
“Why?”
“Why not? Why do you think I would know that?”
I stood up from the bed, cracking my neck as I began to pace the room.
“I will fix this.”
“No, you won't.”
“Yes, I will.”
“I want them dead, James.” She looked at me with such a certainty in her eyes. I was really struggling to doubt her. “I want to kill them.”
“You don’t just kill David Kimber.” I argued.
“Why not? My brother tried to run rings around him, thinking he was too fucking clever to just put a bullet in his head. I’m smarter than Jed.”
“You think I would let you do that?”
“I think you’d be stupid not to.”
“Why is that?”
“Because you’d love to take over. You expect it when he finally hands the reins over. But what if someone else takes those reins before you can pick them up?”
She was devious. That thought had crossed my mind on more than one occasion, more so because of recent events.
“And you think I will let you run off back to your brothers when it’s done? You think I will let you plot my downfall with them?”
She laughed. “Not for a second. I think you would do well to keep me, just like you claimed you wanted. You have Sarah now? My brothers will fall into line, eventually.”
Was she lying? I couldn’t tell, but I suspected she was. Did it matter though? “My very own little dark fucking princess.”
“Queen.” She raised her eyebrow. Queen suited her better.
“Let’s do it.”
“We do it my way. I want clothes. I want a chance to let my bruises heal before you cover me in anymore. And I want Davie to suspect nothing until the time is right.”
I considered her for a moment. “I’ll give you two out of three. I can’t fuck nice, even if I wanted to.”
She rolled her eyes and chuckled. “Here.” She handed me the plate and turned over in bed, closing her eyes. “If you must keep me here, I want a TV.”
“We’re not staying here.”
I turned to leave, taking the plate with me. I needed to check on Sarah and deal with Jenny. Megan told me she wanted to kill her. I hadn’t doubted she wanted to, but I didn’t think Megan had that in her. Most people didn’t.
I sorted Sarah out and went down the stairs. Jenny sat on her bed and looked up when I entered the room.
“James…”
Her voice trailed when she saw the rage written across my face. I said nothing, just grabbed her and my hand covered her mouth so no one would hear her scream.
She struggled against me; her wails getting lost in my hand as she shook. She’d left Megan in a fucking state. I had warned her, and she had still done it. The rage was building inside of me at the thought of what this sly little cow had accomplished.
A quick knock on the head and she was out for the count. I tied her hands together behind her back and stuck a sock in her mouth, in case she woke up and screamed. Then I carried her outside and stuck her in the boot, folding her legs in neatly and letting the door close quietly.
I’d let Megan decide what we would do with her.
I went into the room beside Megan’s, turned the lights on, and shook the girl who lay sleeping in the bed.
“What’s your name?”
“Crystal,” she replied in a thick accent. She didn’t seem at all phased by a strange man coming into her room in the middle of the night.
“Well Crystal, Jenny is taking a well-deserved break. A long one. You’ll run this house while she is away, and you will report to me. Not David Kimber. Not anyone else. Me. Do you understand?” The girl nodded and sat up in bed. She at least looked like she was paying attention.
“There is a girl here, Sarah. She’s sick, and she is not to be disturbed. Her door is to remain locked at all times, and no one enters. No punters, no girls, only me. Jenny’s phone…” I glanced towards the device I’d taken from Jenny’s room and the girl took it from my hands. “You can find me under the name James McLaren.”
I went to the girl's closet and searched for anything that resembled regular clothing.
“You don’t have normal clothes?”
“In the drawer.”
“Thanks.” I nodded, raking through the clothes and finding a pair of jeans and a top I assumed would fit Megan ok.
“You have any shoes?”
The girl got up and checked under her closet, retrieving a pair of Converse and holding them up for me.
“You’re a diamond, Crystal.”
She smiled, blushing slightly.
“Now remember, phone me should anything out of the ordinary happen. I’ll be back later. Don’t let me down.” I winked at her as I left the room, clicking the light off and closing the door behind me.
Chapter 13
MEGAN
“She’s in the boot.”
“What?” That was a statement I hadn’t ever expected to hear. He had just pulled the car out of the street and was speeding down the dark road, his cool white headlights lighting up the tarmac ahead.
“Jenny. What do you want to do with her?”
“You’re leaving it up to me?”
“Aye.”
I thought about it for a moment. “I don’t intend to be the type who leaves people alive.”
He paused, looking at me while he glanced to the road every so often. “Just think carefully, little girl. You take a life and you’ll never be the same again. It starts to mean nothing.”
“Her life already means nothing.”
“Very well. You want me to do it?”
“No. It was me she almost fucking killed.” I wasn’t exaggerating. When I’d went to the bathroom to put on the clothes James had given me, I checked the mirror and my eyebrow was burst open, as was my lip. It hurt to move; just breathing was causing a sharp stabbing pain at my ribs. The bitch was going to die, and I felt nothing. I wondered how many other girls she’d don
e that too? How many had she used for her own financial gain? She deserved it, everyone who profited from other people’s misery deserved it. You played with fire, you knew you might get burned. It was a risk.
“I know a place she won’t be found.”
We drove in near silence for almost half an hour. The roads grew thinner and after a while, there were no longer white lines separating the lanes or cats-eyes lighting up the edges. We were out in the sticks. There was no law here, mostly because laws were rarely broken here in the first place. James switched off the full beam headlights and only the daytime LEDs guided us the rest of the way. He drove slowly and precisely, even without the headlights, and I wondered how many times he had come to this place.
He pulled the car off the road and onto a track that was overgrown. I could hear the branches and twigs scratching against the exterior as the car rolled over the uneven ground.
“There’s a loch at the end of this road. We’ll dump her there when it’s done.”
“You’ve done this before?”
James flicked the gearstick and turned off the engine. “She won’t be lonely down there.”
We got out of the car, using only the light on his phone to guide us. I felt my way towards the end of the car where James was already opening the boot, his torch lighting up behind the tinted rear windscreen. She was awake and squirming. He’d gagged her mouth with something and I reached my hand down to pull it out. She coughed and spluttered, her eyes blinking rapidly from the blinding light in her face.
“Did you think you could lay your hands on me and live to tell the tale?” I sneered.
“Bitch! Fucking bitch!”
I grabbed her by the hair and slammed her head down against the floor of the boot. She screamed in pain; her legs kicking viciously, trying to find me.
“James, hold her down for me please, darling.”
“James?” Her eyes squinted as she tried to search him out “James, please! If I ever meant anything to you, you won’t let her do this!”
James started laughing.
“What is she talking about?” I rounded on him.
“It was nothing, babe. Years ago, I was drunk, and she clearly hasn’t gotten over it.”
That was why she’d done it? She had wanted me to suffer because his boss decided he should fucking abduct me? She was jealous? I hadn’t asked for any of this. Fuck her. She was going to die.
“James can’t save you, stupid bitch.” I grabbed a hold of her neck and I squeezed hard. I squeezed like it was the only thing in the world that mattered to me. She was gasping for air and receiving none. Her whole body started shaking, and I watched as the fight escaped from her eyes. My fingers ached, my wrists felt like they were going to snap but I kept on squeezing. Then she reared her head back and my hand slipped, only slightly, but enough to have her coughing again and gasping for air.
James dropped the phone in the boot and edged past me, quickly snapping her neck as if he was breaking a biscuit in half to dip it in his tea. Her body stopped moving instantly, and she lay in the boot in an unnatural position.
“Why the fuck did you do that?” I pushed him, my hands meeting his solid chest and only serving to knock me back instead of him.
“You’d have been there all night doing it your way. I’ll teach you, for next time.”
“You ruined it.”
“She’s gone, that’s what you wanted isn’t it?”
“I wanted her to suffer.”
James chuckled. “You can throw your little tantrum later, when I get you home and tie you to the bed.”
“Bastard.”
“Brat. Take this.” He handed me the phone and picked her up like she weighed nothing. I followed him down the track until I heard the sounds of water lapping against rocks. The trees cleared to reveal the moon. It was just a small sliver in the sky but it reflected off the ripples on the water, illuminating how big it was. I could see my breath form in front of me as it collided with the cool night air.
“Can you hurry this up, please? It’s fucking freezing.”
“Do you want her to float?”
I hadn’t considered that. He took a few moments to sort it, and then he stood up and dropped her over the edge of the bank. He took my hand and led me back to the car, switching the light on his phone off. Something told me he could have done all that without the torch, and it had only been for my benefit. I wondered how many secrets this man had?
“Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
We got in the car and he reversed it all the way back up the track. His face turned to look out the rear window as he did it, one hand gripped on the back of my seat and the other flat against the steering wheel, the light from the dash reflecting off his thick muscles. I could get lost in that face, in that body; the body that was capable of killing me with a single movement. I wasn’t scared of him, but something deep inside me screamed that I should have been.
My hand rested on his thigh and he looked down at it like I had scalded him. I watched his face, and he swallowed hard. We were back on the main roads and the engine revved as he pulled up through the gears, checking his side mirror while he shot straight into the fast lane.
“You feel better now?”
“Hmm hmm. A little.”
My hand edged to his cock, and I wasn’t surprised to feel that he was solid. He groaned as my fingers gripped the thick shaft through his jeans.
“You shouldn’t start things you aren’t able to finish, little girl.”
I couldn’t tell if he was referring to my blatant attempt at arousing him, or my failed attempt at killing someone. Maybe it was both?
“Lucky I have someone to help me then, isn’t it?”
He chuckled, and I clenched my fingers tighter around him. “You’ll regret this,” he breathed. “If it wasn’t for the red-hot evidence in the back of this car, I’d bend you over that bonnet and fuck you til you’re cross-eyed.”
I didn’t doubt his conviction. He drove like a madman the rest of the way, speeding over the bridge and overtaking the freight-lorries like he had a fucking death-wish. He took a sharp left at what appeared to be the middle of nowhere and only slowed the car when the tarmac road turned to gravel beneath the wheels. A huge house loomed before us, whitewashed with clean modern lines and double length windows. Spotlights at intervals along the roof lit up the front of the building. It was beautiful, not at all my usual taste but seemed to fit his personality perfectly.
He jumped out of the car and walked around to open my door.
“Out,” he ordered, before the door had even swung fully open.
I got out of the car and the gravel crunched beneath my feet. He slammed the door shut and pushed me against the car forcefully, one hand gripped around the back of my head and the other squeezing the life out of my left breast. The impact knocked the breath from me and as I gasped for air, his mouth crashed down on my parted lips, stopping any protest I should have had. My hands flew up to his chest instinctively, trying to get some distance between us, between his hand and my aching breast. I couldn’t think clearly — not with his tongue caressing mine.
“You still feeling brave, little girl?”
I couldn’t answer him.
“I think it’s time we play a little game.”
His tone was menacing, his fingers ran through my hair and he yanked my head back towards the roof of the car. His other hand found my nipple through my top and he pinched down on it, causing my treacherous legs to buckle underneath me. His grip on my hair tightened, and he pulled me back up the car.
“Do you want to play, baby?”
I moaned in response. I hated him. Hated that he could change me from the confident, brazen woman I was sure of, to a scared, trembling girl using his sheer brute force and the threat of dark things to come.
“Answer me.” His hand reared back, and I tried to turn my face away, but his grip on my hair was iron. He slapped my cheek, and I cried out in pain.
“Yes,�
� I whispered. I was terrified, everything about him was savage now. The way he looked at me, the way he spat his words at me in his fierce, husky tone. But I couldn’t deny this need inside me. The way my hips pushed forwards, desperate to meet him, desperate to offer myself to him like I was a missing piece in his puzzle.
“You know this makes it better, right? You know there’s nothing in this world like pain and pleasure, fear and ecstasy, tears and fucking.”
He smiled and turned me around to walk before him, his hand still clenched in a fist of hair at the top of my head. The gravel shifted under my feet and I struggled to keep my balance, his long legs able to cover much more ground than my own. The door came into view and he marched straight through; it wasn’t locked.
Heat encircled my body the second we entered the hall and James huffed and swore under his breath behind me, pushing me against the wall while he fiddled with the thermostat attached to it. Seconds later he threw his leather jacket to the floor and headed towards the stairs, motioning me with his finger to follow him.
Part of me wanted to run. The keys were right in front of me, the car just on the other side of the door. Maybe I could have done it. But what would I do next? Where could I go that James and Davie, and even Jed wouldn’t find me? I had just fucking killed someone. The both of us, together. We’d made a plan to kill Davie Kimber. I didn’t trust James at all, but in that moment I trusted him enough to follow him up those stairs.
I glanced around briefly before I began walking. His house wasn’t anything like I had expected. I don’t really know what I had expected, perhaps something cold, masculine, industrial. This was a proper home. The walls were a soft taupe color that instantly warmed the room and tied in the polished wooden floors. On the wall hung a large mirror, reflecting the light off the lamp that sat on a side table with a Jo Malone candle and a picture frame. I wasn’t close enough to make out who was in the photo, but I couldn’t shake the feeling I was somehow in a woman’s space. James didn’t live alone.
Following him up the stairs, I paused when I reached the landing and couldn’t make out where he had gone. There was barely any light up here, and the house was silent apart from my hurried breathing. The wood had given way to a thick carpet and my feet bounced on it as I edged along the hallway. All the doors were closed.
