Lord of London Town

by Tillie Cole

  I didn’t look at the picture. I was too busy looking at her. Cheska the Chelsea girl. “Where is she now?”

  Cheska’s face fell. When she met my eyes, hers were shining. “She died two years ago.” My chest twinged at the sadness in her voice, but I kept my expression straight. My dad taught me from a young age not to show any emotion. To be neutral at all times. To not let any fucker get a read on me. To always be the grey man in the room.

  Cheska cautiously sat down beside me. She smelled of roses. When she looked at me, I saw her eyes weren’t as dark as I’d thought. They looked green at times, when her head caught the light at a certain angle. She folded her arms over her chest. Her tits were on the small side, but on her, it didn’t matter.

  “Is your mum at home?” she asked.

  “She’s dead,” I said plainly and glanced to the stairs, then through a set of glass doors to another room where the butler was busying himself cleaning. The raised voices had stopped.

  I wondered what Dad had on Cheska’s old man. Or what he’d done to deserve my dad’s personal attention. My head snapped to the side when I felt a hand on mine. I moved in a flash and gripped Cheska’s wrist instinctively, holding it in the air. She gasped, eyes like fucking saucers, and I slowly released her wrist. Cheska’s eyes were still huge as she rubbed her skin.

  “I just wanted to say sorry,” she said. “About your mum.” My cheek twitched. I schooled my features and straightened the collar on my coat. “I know what it’s like, to be without them,” she whispered. Her bottom lip trembled. “How lonely it can be.”

  I stared at her, chasing away the stabbing sensation in my stomach her words caused. Chelsea Girl had long black lashes that kissed her cheeks when she blinked and freckles scattered over the bridge of her nose. A single small beauty mark sat above her upper lip.

  I wanted to taste it on my tongue.

  Cheska’s breathing came faster, and I saw her nipples harden under her pyjama vest. I smirked as she quickly folded her arms over her tits again. That blush was back on her cheeks. Chelsea Girl was definitely innocent. She looked around my age. But unlike my East End gangster arse, who’d been sucked and fucked the minute I could come, she was still untouched.

  As my eyes slid down Chelsea Girl’s body, I knew she’d look even better on her knees. Cheska’s face blazed like she could read my thoughts.

  The sound of a door opening came from upstairs, tearing Cheska’s attention from me. I gave her one last look. No doubt this would be the only time I ever saw her. We didn’t exactly mix in the same circles. She no doubt went to some rich-as-shit girls’ school.

  Hushed voices came closer. Dad and Cheska’s old man appeared on the landing and walked down the stairs. Cheska’s dad’s eyes widened when he saw her beside me on the couch, wearing next to nothing. “Cheska. What are you doing up? Get back to bed. It’s late.”

  Cheska jumped to her feet, obeying Daddy’s command. “I needed a drink and saw Arthur here.” She flicked a nervous glance to me. “We … we were just talking.”

  “Get to bloody bed!” her dad shouted again, and Cheska ran, hurrying for the stairs.

  Her old man was a dick.

  “Night, Cheska,” I said loudly. Her dad’s face snapped to me and reddened in anger. “It was nice getting to know you.” Cheska turned to me, stopping dead on the stairs. I saw her lips twitch and a smile pull on her stunning face.

  “Mr Adley, James will see you out,” her dad said, gesturing to the butler, who had appeared from the other room. I stared for a few more seconds at Cheska, then met her dad’s furious gaze.

  “Mr Adley,” the butler said. “And Master Adley. This way, please.”

  Cheska’s eyes grew huge as she stared at me and whispered, “Arthur Adley …” Her cheeks paled, and I knew right then that she’d heard of my family, our firm, our fucking notorious last name. There weren’t many people in London who didn’t know the Adley family. Knew that we were the London reapers. When we came calling, it was because you’d made a deal with the devil. The fucking dark lord himself.

  I lifted my chin in pride at the sound of my name from her lips, then her daddy ushered her away out of sight. I fell into step beside my dad as the butler opened the front door, and we stepped into the cold, wet London night. The sounds of black cabs rushing by and pompous twats falling out of pretentious nearby bars filled the air. As I went to climb back into the car, I gave one last glance at the SW3 house. And in the top right window was a hand pressed to the pane, and a pair of brown eyes with hints of green staring back, watching me leave.

  Chapter One

  ARTHUR

  Marbella, Aged eighteen

  “Get the fuck out here, dickheads. The views are fucking spectacular!” Eric winked, then climbed the stairs toward the deck of the yacht, wearing his tight shorts that he claimed showed off his dick to perfection.

  The arsehole was such a fucking slut I was surprised it hadn’t fallen off with an STD or some shit.

  Beside me, Charlie took a sip of his gin and flicked his cigarette ash into the crystal ashtray on the glass coffee table. “If said ‘spectacular view’ is not a harem of men who’ve just descended from a CrossFit competition, covered in oil and waiting on their hands and knees, then I’ll be sorely disappointed.” I smirked at my cousin sitting like a fucking king on an Italian leather throne.

  “Artie!” Eric shouted from the back deck. “Get. The. Fuck. Out. Here! We’re in bloody Marbella. If we’re not pissed and knee-deep in pussy in two hours, I’m going to fucking shoot someone.” He wasn’t joking. I’d rarely seen anyone enjoy killing quite like Eric. And the psycho did it with his fucking cheesy grin plastered on his face.

  I lit a cig, got up from my chair and kicked Charlie’s foot. After inhaling a long drag, I said, “Get the fuck out of that seat. You’re coming too.”

  The door opened behind us. “We here?” Freddie asked, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Out of us all, Freddie was the quietest, the most introverted. But as Eric shouted us again, even he smiled and pulled off his t-shirt, leaving him in his black swimming shorts. He moved past us and climbed the stairs to join Eric up top.

  Charlie sighed and stood from his chair. “Just so you know, this is my idea of hell. Marbella in July, how fucking original.”

  “But at least we’ve got a bloody megayacht to be here in, you fucking miserable tosser,” Eric said, ducking his head into the cabin to check we were coming. He nudged his chin at me. “Artie, get the beers ordered. And keep them coming.” I glared at the fucker trying to give me an order. “What? We’re on holiday. You can take off your gangster-leader hat for a fucking few days and just be one of the fellas. All for one and all that shite.” Eric disappeared before I could plough my fist into his pretty face to shut him the fuck up.

  Charlie picked up the phone and placed the drinks order with the staff. “Down boy,” he said to me afterwards. He reached for a silver tray with our finest blow already sorted into perfect lines on its surface. Taking an ornate glass pipe from beside it, he snorted a line. He offered me the tray. I took a line and inhaled deeply as it hit the back of my throat. “Better?” Charlie asked. I nodded, feeling the coke poisoning my veins and waking me the fuck up. “Then let’s go and enjoy the delights of Marbella and our fellow British pieces of shits that visit these shores.”

  I was making my way to the stairs when the door to the bedrooms opened again and Vinnie came through. His eyes were red and flitting about the living room of the yacht like all he saw were living, breathing demons around him. His hands were shaking, and his teeth scraped along his bottom lip. “Are we here? I’d like to be here now. Don’t like the waves too much, Artie. Don’t like the waves too bloody much right now. I’m sick of the sway,” he said, looking out of the windows at the sea, the muscles in his back twitching.

  “We’re going over the top, old boy,” Charlie said, nodding to the stairs. “A ‘spectacular view’ awaits us, apparently.”

  Vinnie’s cheek
twitched. I moved in front of him until he met my eyes. Fucking blank as always, unreadable, like pits of no emotion. “Have you taken your medicine?”

  Vinnie smiled his wide, disturbing joker’s smile, his mouth showing a fucked-up type of glee which his eyes didn’t reflect. Vinnie owned the smile that struck fear into our enemies. It showcased how fucked in the head my friend really was. “Just taken it, Arthur. I’ve just taken the magic tablet. It’s travelled down my throat and down to my stomach. Yes, yes, the tablet has gone,” he said, his psychotic mania seeping out through his incessant talking. His medication did nothing but keep him a bit calmer than normal. It took the edge off his unpredictability, made him slightly easier to manage. But it didn’t take away the hallucinations, or the voices in his head.

  Vinnie was taller than me by an inch, and fucking ripped from the weights he lifted to blow off steam. His blond hair fell to his shoulders, a wild mess on his head. His blank eyes were bright green, his skin covered in scars and tattoos of the most random things—shapes, animals, and a fucking massive helter-skelter on his back. He’d kill anyone who threatened this firm in a second, hysterically laughing the entire time. He was also a paranoid schizophrenic and had spent a few years in and out of the loony bin, which had done sweet fuck all but make him more deranged and off-kilter. And he was as close to me as a brother. All my friends were. We were the future of the Adley firm, no matter how fucked up we all were.

  Charlie, in his Burberry shorts, made his way up the stairs first. Vinnie followed, bouncing and humming all the way like a kid going to Disneyland. I threw my t-shirt off, tossing it to the couch, and tied the waist on my shorts. We had just docked in Marbella an hour ago. We were on my father’s fifty-million-pound yacht, and we’d just parked beside the other “moneyed families”. No doubt their cash wasn’t made in the same way ours was. And they’d fucking hate us for it. One hint of our East End cockney accents and they’d turn their uptight noses up at us.

  We didn’t give a flying fuck.

  I pushed my glasses up my nose and climbed the stairs. The heat of the Spanish sun slammed into me like an iron fist, and I pushed my dark hair back from my forehead. White Mediterranean buildings surrounded us, and tourists sat in restaurants and bars, gaping up at our yacht.

  I joined my friends on the rear deck overlooking the restaurants and took a beer from Eric. He spread his arms. “Fucking paradise, boys.” I took a swig of my beer and glanced over to the yacht beside us. I didn’t see anyone on the back deck, but then I heard the people talking at the front of their boat, overlooking the sea.

  “So, where are these spectacular views?” Charlie asked Eric, lighting up another cig.

  Eric winced as he met my cousin’s waiting gaze. “Well, maybe not spectacular to you, Chuck, but definitely to the rest of us.” He flicked his eyes to Vinnie, who was circling the back deck like it was a track, and screwed up his nose. “Okay, maybe not to our resident nutjob either since he already has a bird. But to me, Freddie and Artie, what a view it is!”

  “Story of my fucking life.” Charlie smirked at me. I followed Eric as he headed for the main sun deck at the very front of the yacht.

  “The edge gone yet?” I asked Vinnie. He nodded, and I could see by his eyes that his medication had kicked in. His pupils had dilated a bit, and the shaking in his hands had lessened. “Getting calmer by the second, Artie. Getting calmer by the second.” He smiled again, his deep dimples making him look a fuck-ton more innocent than he actually was. I put my hand on his shoulder, right over the face of Nosferatu with his sharp vampiric teeth that was tattooed there.

  “So, who are we docked next to?” Freddie asked Eric. Freddie was six feet two with dark brown hair and brown eyes. He was slender in build but could fight like a fucking Rottweiler. His old man died a while back, for the firm, shot right through the fucking forehead by a Russian. My dad practically adopted Freddie after that. He’d lived with us in the old church for the past couple of years. He was quiet before his old man’s death. Now, compared to the rest of my gobshite mates, he was almost mute.

  “Wait until you see,” Eric said, waggling his eyebrows. Eric was six four, blond and covered in bright-as-fuck horror-themed clown tattoos. His hair looked like something straight from World War Two—combed over like a good little British solider. Claimed birds got wet for it—we all knew that was mainly referring to Betsy, my cousin and Charlie’s little sister. But neither he or Betsy ever talked about that. He also rarely shut his mouth. But that didn’t matter when shit hit the fan. He had your back, one hundred percent without question.

  As we turned the corner, I saw movement on the yacht beside us. Birds in bikinis, some topless. I couldn’t care less. Seen one pair of tits, you’d seen them all. Bored already, I lit another cig and moved to the front of the yacht. I looked out over the ocean.

  “Nice tits, sweetheart!” I heard Eric shout behind me. I glanced over to the yacht beside us and saw two girls sunbathing, looking our way—one with dark skin and jet-black hair that fell in spiral curls to her shoulders, and one with light freckled skin and red hair down to her waist.

  I went to turn my head again, when someone walked out from below deck and toward the two sunbathers. The hand holding my cig stopped en route to my mouth when I saw her long legs and olive skin. The dark hair that was pulled up on top of her head. She was wearing a white bikini, fucking curves like an hourglass.

  As if she was feeling my stare, she looked over, and the minute she did, I recognised those eyes. Those big fucking eyes that were fixed on me and widening by the second. Green-brown eyes that I never fucking forgot …

  Cheska Harlow-Wright …

  The memory smashed into my brain like a crowbar. The memory of her posh accent sank like talons into my eardrums. Chelsea Girl. In all these years, I’d never forgotten this posh-as-shit Chelsea girl.

  Cheska stopped dead, the fancy red drink in her hand spilling over the sides. “Cheska!” one of her friends said, wiping the drink off her stomach. But Cheska didn’t move. She just kept staring at me.

  My eyes dropped to her body, devouring every inch. Chelsea Girl was all grown up. And she was even more fucking gorgeous than she had been back then. I finally took a drag of my cig, eyes never off her, and moved near my friends. Cheska’s eyes followed me the whole way, red bursting on her cheeks. I’d thought of this girl often. And here she was, standing right before me, in Marbella.

  I stopped next to Charlie, my dick swelling just looking at Chelsea Girl’s cock-sucking red lips. My cousin leaned in close. “A friend of yours, old boy?” he asked, nudging his chin at Cheska. I narrowed my eyes at my cousin; Charlie laughed knowingly. I wasn’t laughing. I was imagining her underneath me, imagining fucking tearing her apart, pushing three of my fingers into her wet cunt.

  Charlie dropped down on the lounger behind us. “Wake me up when something interesting happens.” He lay out on the cream lounger and shut his eyes. I smirked at the dark-skinned bird staring at Charlie like he was her next meal. Poor bitch had nothing on her menu that Charlie wanted. Pussy did nothing but offend him. But women always wanted him. He had brown hair and brown eyes, six feet three and cut with muscle. Freddie called him a bird’s wet dream. My cousin was also the most ruthless motherfucker I had ever met. No one fucked with Charlie Adley and lived to see the next day. It was why he was my right-hand man and best mate. I trusted him with my life.

  “What’s your names, ladies?” Eric shouted over to Cheska and her friends. The redhead stuck her middle finger in the air in response. Eric held his hand over his chest. “You wound me, beautiful. You fucking wound me!”

  “Then piss off!” she shouted back. Eric laughed, but the bird had no idea she’d just become his next conquest.

  I tracked Cheska as she placed her drink down on the table beside her friends. Her eyes kept flicking away from mine before snapping back. I took a swig of my beer. She seemed to breathe faster as I kept my gaze on her. I watched her nipples harden and wanted
nothing more than to feel them against my tongue—I wanted to taste all of her. Her tits, her tanned skin, and her posh pussy.

  I flicked my cig to the floor when engines roared to my right. Four blokes were riding jet skis toward Cheska’s yacht. I narrowed my eyes on the arseholes as they turned off their engines at the side of the yacht, climbed the ladder and walked onto the deck.

  A blond pretty boy moved to Cheska and kissed her on the cheek. My blood boiled. I had the sudden need to rip his fucking head off his shoulders. Cheska’s eyes stayed locked on mine even as the fucker put his hand on her arse and squeezed. Chelsea Girl had a boyfriend.

  To me, he only looked like dead meat.

  Then the shitstain looked over at my yacht.

  “Who the fuck are these guys?” he asked the girls, his pathetic friends coming to stand behind him like they thought they could be threatening. They had no fucking idea who they were eyeballing.

  As if my thoughts were a command, the shitstains before us seemed to suddenly see Eric’s ink. His bright tattoos were picture after picture of deranged and psychotic clowns—sharp teeth and claws, mouths sadistic and dripping with blood. Eric’s smile turned from dirty for the redhead to fucking crazed in one second, and their smirks melted off their aristocratic faces.

  “Happy to introduce ourselves,” Eric said, a dark edge to his voice, his cockney accent thickening.

  Freddie kicked Charlie’s lounger, and my cousin opened his eyes. “You wanted to be woken up when something interesting happened.” Freddie pointed to the other yacht’s arseholes. “Well, something fucking interesting is happening.”

  Charlie was beside me in a flash, body vibrating with excitement. “Eye candy or dead meat?”

  “The latter,” I replied.

  “Shame. The bloke on the right is fit. He looks like he could take my kind of rough play.”

  Eric waved a hand at Freddie beside him. “Freddie Williams.” Eric pointed to Vinnie. “Vinnie Edwards.” Vinnie ran to the side of the yacht and laughed manically, the muscles bulging in his neck and shoulders. When his laugh faded, a wide, deranged smile stayed on his face as he stood there and stared.