by Esme Devlin
“What makes you think I need propositions from the likes of you?”
“We want the same thing.”
“So I heard. What I can’t work out though, is why? Why would the loyal son want to kill his master? Unless of course, you want to replace the master. Which is exactly the same thing I want.”
“Neither of us will achieve anything if he survives the both of us.”
“And if he doesn’t? I’m guessing you want my help to destroy him, and then you’ll do your best to destroy me once he’s safely in the ground. I didn’t come down in the last fucking shower, mate. You’ll have to try harder.”
“There will be a piece of the pie for you when he’s gone. A bigger piece than you have now.”
“And what guarantees that?”
“I’m going to marry your sister,” I stated, as seriously as if I were announcing that the sky was blue, or the sea was wet. “Can’t see her being too thrilled about that prospect if I slaughtered the three of you.”
“Ah… you’re going to marry my sister, are you? And what does my sister say about that?”
“She didn’t fight me, Jed. Not in the slightest. Not in any way.”
“Aye, Sarah alluded to that. Megan is a fickle little shit though. She’ll forget you soon enough.”
“Like Sarah forgot all about you? Tell me, Jed, did Sarah fight you? Did that change anything?”
“Sarah has nothing to do with this.”
“Sarah has everything to do with this, even more so now with his grandchild growing inside of her. The grandchild that won’t live to see its first breath if you let her slip through your fingers again.”
“Grandchildren,” he corrected.
“That changes what, exactly?”
He paused for a while before letting out a sigh.
“I’ll meet with you, but I’m promising you fuck-all.”
“Where?”
“Come to my house. Come unarmed.”
“I’ll see you shortly,” I said, ending the call.
Chapter 21
MEGAN
It was almost the middle of the night when I finally came out of my room. The walls in there were closing in on me, and even though it was my bedroom, it still felt like the cage James had trapped me in for the last three weeks. Different decoration, but the same feeling of restlessness. I didn’t know what I wanted; I was just fed up. I’d been staring at the fairy lights surrounding my bed, trying to find sleep that would not come. Maybe a cup of coffee would help?
I peeked out of the door and into the hall. It was dark, lit only faintly by the light of my lamp that was escaping from the crack in the door. It was quiet, and I hoped everyone would be sleeping.
I wrapped my house-coat tighter around me, feeling the chill as the door closed behind me. Jed didn’t skimp on the central heating, but even so it struggled to warm a house as big as this in the dead of winter. My hand edged along the wall until I reached the bannister, and I crept down the stairs barely making a sound. I crossed the grand entrance hall, my bare feet quietly slapping against the ice cold tiles.
When I reached the kitchen, I noticed my brother sitting at the dining table. It was his favorite spot; I should have guessed he’d be there. I had often before come down the stairs, even as a young teen, for a drink of milk or a sneaky cigarette out the back door, and found him sitting there in semi-darkness, reading his newspaper or just staring in to space. He said he had trouble sleeping, and it was only now I realized how that can happen.
“Can’t sleep?” I asked.
“I’m waiting on someone. Need your milk?”
“Coffee.”
Jed nodded once, not really paying me any attention.
“Do you want one?” I offered.
“Aye, go on then.”
I clicked the kettle on to boil and pulled myself up on to the worktop, my legs dangling down over the edge. Two cups, two heaps of coffee later and the kettle clicked off.
“Will you pass me the milk out, please?”
Jed got up from the table and retrieved the milk from the fridge, passing me it and then standing beside where I was sitting.
“Sarah told me what happened to you.”
“Oh,” I replied, as I gave each cup a splash of milk.
“Did he hurt you?”
I handed him his cup and looked him in the eye as I shook my head. I wasn’t sure myself if that was a lie or not. He had hurt me, but did it count as a lie if I’d wanted it? Begged for it? Jed had hurt Sarah…
“Did he cut your hair?”
“Yes. But you have to admit, he did an okay job,” I said, smiling mischievously.
Jed pulled a face. “If that makes you feel better about it. Looks like shit to me, though.”
“Nothing some extensions can’t fix.”
He nodded, and we sipped our coffee quietly, the both of us finding other things in the room to look at. He was first to break the silence.
“Did you fight him?”
I shrugged. “I fought him the same way I told Sarah to fight you.”
Jed took his cup and moved back to the table, taking out a cigarette and putting it to his mouth while he lit it. He put the lighter down against the wooden table with slightly too much force, not exactly a slam, but not far off it either.
“Fighting like that didn’t work out too well for Sarah,” he stated.
“Didn’t work out too well for me either.”
He gave me a half a smile in reply before exhaling his cigarette and then twirling it around against the side of the glass ashtray. He always did that when there was something on his mind, the same way I twisted my ring.
“I always had you down as the smart one.”
“Yeah… me too,” I replied, putting my cup down beside me while I slipped off the worktop. “I’m going back to bed.”
“No. Stay, for a while. I need your help with something.”
This was… different.
“What is it?”
“James phoned me.”
“Oh? What did he want?”
“I think he wants my help to kill Kimber.”
“Makes sense,” I said.
“It does? You don’t think he’s capable of doing it himself?”
I pulled out the chair next to his and sat down. “He’s capable. I’ve been thinking about it though, it wouldn’t make sense for him to kill Davie himself. He’d be weak, if only temporarily, while everyone decided where their loyalties lay. He knows you wouldn’t let a chance like that go unnoticed.”
“He wants me to do it,” he stated.
“Maybe. Or he wants you to take the flack for it. Or, he wants to guarantee you’re on his side for the aftermath.”
“I’d kill Kimber anyway, for what he’s done to my family. That includes Sarah.”
“I know. But then what?”
“This all started because I wanted more than I had.”
“Yes, but how much more do you want?”
Jed shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Well, you need to decide. And decide soon.”
Our coffee was barely cold when Jed’s phone lit up on the table. He glanced at it and then looked to me, before he got up and made his way through the kitchen door.
“Stay there,” he ordered as he left.
I waited at the table, fiddling with my ring and wondering what the fuck he was up to. When he returned a few minutes later, my breath caught in my chest when I realized who was behind him.
James.
Jed said they had spoken, but I hadn’t imagined for a second he would show up here in my brother’s kitchen. I froze, utterly unable to take my eyes away from his. We stared at each other until Jed cleared his throat loudly, and James turned to face him.
“You said you had a proposition for me,” Jed began.
“I have a plan, yes, but I can’t do it on my own.”
Jed took his seat at the table, one hand rubbing against his stubbled cheek while the other gestured for James to
sit down across from him. I was stuck in the middle, both physically and emotionally. There was a tenseness between them that was so obvious, you could almost reach out into the air and touch it.
“Well..?”
“Tomorrow, I have half a mil of product arriving at a port that Davie is completely unaware of.”
“Half a mil?” Jed repeated.
“Aye. Every week.”
Jed swallowed. I don’t think he had ever fully considered the extent of Kimber’s operation before now. The operation he had wanted to steal from him.
“I changed the ports over last week, an idea I got from your sister here,” he motioned towards me, “and Davie hasn’t been made aware. The warehouses stayed the same, so it’s gone unnoticed. Tomorrow my driver is under instruction to deliver the product to a warehouse in the borders, one which is just outside of Kelso.”
Jed immediately sat up straighter at the mention of Kelso. To our knowledge, no one else had a distribution centre down there. It was one of the key components to Jed’s success.
“Who the fuck told you about Kelso?”
James said nothing, and after a second it was obvious why. Jed turned on me. “Is that how you spent your time, Megan? Jesus, I never thought you’d be that fucking stupid. Spreading your legs is one thing, but how long did it take you before you handed everything we’ve built over to our enemies on a silver fucking plate?”
“She wasn’t fucking stupid,” James cut in. “In fact, she’s probably the smartest out of the whole fucking lot of you, if only because she sees clearly what you refuse to believe.”
“And what is that?” He shouted at me. “What do you see so clearly? Please, fucking tell me Meg — cause I’m absolutely in the dark here.”
“I see that you can’t do this on your own,” I replied calmly, meeting his heated gaze.
“I have two loyal brothers. I had a loyal sister who had a wee bit of sense about her. I was never on my own.”
“What do you know about distributing half a mil of product?” I argued. “You’d have enemies from here to fucking Inverness circling to take it from you. As for your loyal brothers, one of them feels too much and the other one doesn’t think at all.”
“There are others. It’s not a fucking three man operation, Megan. But you already knew that, you probably already told him all about the others.”
James cleared his throat. “I have no interest in taking away anything you’ve built. Even if I could, I wouldn’t, for reasons I explained to you on the phone. I’m offering you a section of the country to run as you please. I’m offering you a part of my already established distribution. And, I’m offering you help whenever you need it, expecting it’s returned should I ever have a need for it.”
What had they spoken about on the phone, I wondered? Jed went silent, his breathing calming only slightly while he thought about the proposal.
“What do you want in return?”
“As I explained, I have my driver delivering the product to your warehouse. I have another associate, who will report that your three-man operation stole that shipment and the address you’ve taken it. He’ll send men, at which point I will intercede, and ensure they are loyal only to me. They will report to Davie that they have you and tell him to come. Davie will agree, because he’ll want to kill the three of you himself. He likes the easy kills these days. And then, I’ll put a bullet in his head.”
“More holes in that plan than a heroin addict’s arm,” Jed snorted.
“Do you have a better one?”
“Why aren’t we going to his house?”
“I set up the security on that house myself. You don’t break in to David Kimber’s house. Ever.”
“His club?”
“Can you think of a way to guarantee he’ll be there? You only get one chance at that.”
“He’ll be expecting us to work together.”
“Exactly. Which is why it might just work. He’ll think I told you where the shipment would come in, and you stole it. He will believe it, because most of it is entirely plausible. Anything else, any other story or plan, and he would suspect a trap. We need to give him exactly what he’s expecting.”
There was a long pause before my brother would meet him in the eye. “Alright. We’ll do it.”
James nodded, before turning to me. “I need to speak to you. Alone.”
I glanced to Jed, thinking he might leave the kitchen and give us a moment, but he was already lighting up another cigarette.
Motioning to James, I left the kitchen, and he followed me up the stairs to my bedroom. I knew this was dangerous, but I also didn’t want my brother to see us. I locked the door behind us and sat down on my bed, watching him. The warm glow from my lamp danced across his features, and he looked just as good as he always did, if not better. He was wearing black jeans that sculpted his thick thighs, a white t-shirt, and that leather jacket he’d given me that very first night.
He said nothing for a while, just stared at me with a gaze so intense I had to look away.
“You wanted to say something?” I broke the silence first.
“You understand why I did what I did?”
I sighed. “I have my theories.”
He sat down on the bed beside me, the both of us looking down at our hands.
“I promised you I’d never stick a needle in you again, and I broke that promise. But I did it to keep you safe. You wouldn’t have gone back to that house otherwise.”
“How do you know? You never thought to ask me!”
“I know. I’m going to ask you something now.”
“Oh, now you want to ask me something. What is it?” I angled my body to face him.
“I want you to marry me,” he said, his lips twitched but his face was deadly serious. I didn’t even have to think about my answer.
“No.”
Immediately, I saw his shoulders tense.
“Not right now, I’m not daft. When all this shit is over. When you’re ready.”
“There’s too much water under the bridge for this to work. Too much you need to change.”
“Then teach me.”
“Why?” I breathed, remembering I’d said those same words to him before.
“You’re going to deny what we have between us? Even I struggle to warp that reality, Megan. I can’t fight it. I can’t be without you.”
“You left me.”
“Only to keep you safe, while I tried to do what I had to do.”
“You don’t think to ask me what I want. You took on this role I never asked for.”
“You did ask for it, though. That first night, you didn’t ask me to kiss you? You didn’t ask me to make you mine?”
“You know why I did that.”
“So, what are you saying? None of it was real?”
“It was real! I don’t know when or how or why, but it changed, it was real. I fell for a man who is no good for me, who I don’t trust. And I fell for you so fucking easily,” my voice broke as I finished my sentence. Tears threatened to spill, and I swallowed them down. The way I’d been feeling since I got home, that sinking feeling in my chest, I wanted that to disappear. I never wanted to feel like that again and I was so fucking terrified that if I let him take it away, it would only be a matter of time before it would come back again.
“Don’t throw it away then.” His hand came down to grip mines, and he squeezed it tightly, my fingers compressing against the ring I always wore. “In time you’ll see that I am good for you, that you can trust me. You need to let me fix this, baby.”
A final squeeze of my fingers and then everything moved so quickly. His hands came around my head and suddenly he forced me backwards, onto the mattress, his lips hovering not even an inch from my own. I could feel his warm breath on my face as his eyes searched my soul. I knew right then, this man was my weakness. He was something I couldn’t fight, couldn’t resist.
I wanted him to take me, then and there. To break me into a thousand tiny pieces and
then put me back together again. He was so fucking good at that. As his lips crashed down against mine, he kissed me with such ferocity that all thoughts of potential heartbreak seeped away into the mattress beneath me. I was weak, and I hated myself, but I think I loved this man. I could think about the rest of it tomorrow, when I wasn’t smelling him, tasting him, when he wasn’t pushing my legs apart like he owned the space in-between them. Yes, I’d think about the consequences of this tomorrow, after I’d let him do everything he wanted.
My fingers slid down his body under his jacket, making half an effort to push it off his shoulders. He slid out of it and removed his t-shirt, letting his full weight rest on top of me until I felt crushed. My housecoat was next, he tore it to the side and pulled my bra down, taking my breasts in his hands and kneading them firmly while I moaned into his open mouth. This felt so right, how could it possibly be wrong? My hands slipped between us and I undid the button on his jeans, releasing his cock and taking it firmly into my hand while he went to work on my neck. I needed him inside me; I needed to feel full again like I needed air in my lungs.
As if he sensed it, he pulled away from me, his hands pulling his jeans off quickly while I sat up and wriggled out of my housecoat and underwear.
He scooped me up and lay me down on top of him, his hands running all over my body, spreading my legs wide across his stomach and kissing every inch of my face. It was like a frenzy, a madness threatening to consume the both of us, a race against it and somehow towards it at the same time. I kissed him back, his stubbled cheeks, his ears, his forehead, his neck, his lips. None of it was enough for me. His arms encircled me in a crushing grip and in one swift motion he had flipped me over, my head burying in between the two pillows. He took my wrists in his hands and locked them just above my head. My back arched and my nipples tightened as they connected with his hard chest, making me shiver in anticipation.
He shifted down slightly, leaving a trail of wet heat as my pussy slid along his stomach, and licked and kissed my breasts voraciously. My hips bucked, and I ground myself against him, already desperate for release.
By the time his hands moved down towards his cock I was positioning myself desperately to meet him, my leg reaching around his waist and trying to pull him closer towards me. He held the tip at my entrance and I closed my eyes, restlessly wriggling under him like a wild animal.
