by Tillie Cole
“What do you need?” she said, anxious to channel her anger into work.
I had just the job for her. “They sent her a video of her old man and numpty of a fiancé being shot and killed. I want to see that fucking video.”
“Number?”
I rattled off the mobile number, not even giving Charlie the time of day, feeling the knowing stare he gave me as I recited the digits off the top of my head. Ronnie left to go to the office and get me what I wanted.
“And the posh bird?” Vera asked, an edge of curiosity to her raspy voice.
“She’s staying here.”
“The police could deal with this, Art,” Eric said. “She’s a rich one. Someone they actually give a shit about looking after. They’ll be all over her arse with protection. Let the pigs deal with it. We’ve got enough going on.”
“I SAID SHE’S FUCKING STAYING HERE!” I shouted, and Eric held up his hands as my voice echoed around the room.
“Alright, Artie. Simmer the fuck down. I was just saying.” The fucking smug smirk on his face told me he knew exactly what he was doing by pushing me. Prick. Betsy covered a small smile with her hand. It was probably the first time in ages she’d actually smiled at Eric and not sent him daggers.
Freddie was playing on his phone. He met my eyes. “It’s just hit the news, Artie.” He turned his phone so I could see the screen. “They’ve reported the deaths of the dad and fiancé. Coppers were sent the video of them being shot by an anonymous number. They’ve reported the deaths of her best mates too.” Freddie read the article. “Suspecting Cheska has been kidnapped. No leads. The CCTV all around that part of the city had briefly been cut.”
“They won’t get her here. They won’t even know to come looking. She’s not going anywhere while those cunts are still out hunting her.”
“She’s staying with you then?” Betsy asked, and I saw that fucking spark of something in her eyes. Something like hope. “In your bedroom?”
“It’s not like that,” I said, knocking back another glass of Bombay Sapphire and feeling it flooding my stomach. I turned to the bar and fought back the image of Cheska pinned to the mattress beneath me, screaming out my name as I wrapped my hand around her throat and sank my dick inside her wet pussy. “She doesn’t fucking belong in this world.” Something caved in my chest as I said that. I looked up at the mirror on the wall and saw myself looking back. But as I stared, all I saw around me was a black shadow and every inch of me covered in blood—not my own.
Never my fucking own.
“Wouldn’t you say that’s up to her?” Betsy pushed. I tore my eyes from my bloodied reflection and pointed at my cousin. She just stared back at me blankly, un-fucking-afraid, as per usual.
“Don’t,” I warned, my voice thick with command. Command to stay the fuck out of my business and back the hell off.
“Just saying,” Betsy said, rising from her seat to move beside me at the bar. She poured herself a port and faced me. “You’ve never cared about excluding women from the Adley fold. Our fathers weren’t even cold before you welcomed me, Vera and Ronnie into the firm, guns in hand and, hours later, Russian blood under our fingernails.”
“It has nothing to do with her being a fucking bird,” I snapped.
“No.” Charlie moved beside his sister. “It has to do with the fact that Ms Harlow-Wright is your bird. Isn’t that right, Artie?” I glared at my best friend. He wasn’t taking the piss. I knew Charlie as well as I knew myself. I knew he was concerned for me, had been for a while now. He’d barely left my side in the past thirteen months, since I’d taken the gaffer’s role in this fucked-up family. He walked beside me, step by unholy step, as I fell deeper into the fucking abyss. And he never complained once. But I knew he was scared I’d be lost to the depravity of it all—the killing, the blood, the underworld that I ruled with a fucking iron fist.
I faced Betsy, ignoring Charlie. “You’re in charge of Cheska. You’ll watch out for her while she’s here. Stay with her and protect her.”
“It’ll be my pleasure,” Betsy said, then went to sit beside Vera on the settee.
“Your colours match,” Vinnie said when the room got silent. Vinnie lived with me now. His old man had watched out for him when he was alive—we all got that Vinnie couldn’t be left alone. He needed to be watched. Given too much of a wide berth, the fucker would be out like Jack the Ripper, murdering Londoners for fun in the most fucked-up ways. Plus, he’d told me Pearl was clearer to him in the church. It was the first hint he’d ever given me that he knew Pearl was a hallucination and not actually my sister, all grown up and standing beside him, flesh and blood.
“What you on about, mate?” Eric asked, frowning at Vinnie.
Vinnie’s eyes were pinned on me. His hand was beside him on the couch, open like he was holding someone’s hand. “All around you is black.” Vinnie shook his head, his shoulder-length blond hair covering some of his face. “It never used to be. It used to be red too.” His hand tightened around thin air. “It was because of you that the blackness first came,” he told what I assumed was his hallucination of Pearl. “When you and your mum burned. Some of the red went and was taken over by black.” Vinnie lifted the invisible hand to his mouth and kissed it. He faced me again. “When your old man died, more and more red was replaced by black. Month by month, I watched it turn more and more black until I thought there was no red left.”
“But?” I asked, feeling like I was going insane too, actually listening to what Vin had to say.
“There’s a bit left. But I only realised it when you held Cheska. She made your red light flare.” My chest fucking tightened. Darkness. I always knew it had come for me, had taken me under … Vinnie saw it clear as day.
That bit of red that remained was all Cheska Harlow-Wright.
“Hers is mostly red,” Vinnie said. He smiled, and it looked like the smile of the Rottweilers we kept at our docks to guard the place. “But there’s a thin line of black around her too. The darkness has infected her. She might not know it yet … but she will.”
Me. I was that bastard darkness. I was the one who had infected her. Tarnished her innocence.
“Fuck, Vin, you’re going to kill us all one day, right?” Eric sat forward on his chair. “We’ll wake up one night with you at the end of our beds about to stab us. You’re fucking barking, mate.”
“Eric,” Charlie warned.
Eric smiled at Charlie, and I knew the fucker wasn’t finished. “You haven’t got paranoid schizophrenia at all, have you? You’re a fucking medium or some shit. Talking to the dead all day every day, and that’s what sent you to the nuthouse.” Eric flicked his thumb at Vinnie. “We could make some serious money off this fucker.” Eric winked at Vinnie; Vinnie smiled back. It was a fucked-up sight, these two sadistic clowns grinning at each other. Normally only their victims got to see those crazy smiles.
“I talk to them,” Vinnie said, and we all stared at him. He shrugged. “Our old men. I talk to them all the time.” He looked at me. “Even Alfie. He comes to me too.”
My jaw clenched. I got the context. He was telling me that my old man was as good as dead. But I refused to fucking believe that. I refused to let him go. He’d wake up. I knew he’d wake up. Some fucking day.
Eric’s smile fell. His face had paled at the mention of our old men. He opened his mouth to say something, when Ronnie came back into the room. She pressed something on her tablet and the TV above the fire came to life. Seconds later we were watching men dressed in black silently killing Cheska’s dad and fiancé.
When the screen cut to black, Ronnie said, “No sound. No trace. Whoever these guys are, they’re good. Really fucking good.” Ronnie glanced to Vera, and Vera immediately got to her feet.
She wrapped her arm around Ronnie. “What is it, babe?”
Ronnie rewound the video, then stopped on a particular part. She zoomed in on one of the men’s hands. I squinted to see what we were looking at, and I saw the sliver of skin between hi
s leather glove and the end of his jacket. Ronnie was watching me, waiting for me to see it.
“My traffickers.” She rubbed the mark on her shoulder. The same one this fucker wore on his wrist. Fire built at my feet and started to rise. I felt it incinerate my bones until it was everywhere. Until it was all I fucking was. The darkness, the fire, the evil that lived inside me, taking full control.
“What the fuck?” Vera snapped. “They’ve appeared again?”
“Been a while,” Charlie said, running his hand over his stubble. “What do they want with the Harlows?”
I was burning. I was fucking boiling, ready to explode. “They’re not getting near Cheska,” I snarled. “Where are they?” I said to Ronnie.
Her shoulders fell. “No address. No trace. Same as fucking always.”
“Cunts!” I shouted and threw my glass into the fire, watching it roar as the alcohol fuelled the already high flames. “I’m about fucking done with these wankers!”
Freddie jumped to his feet, staring at his phone. “Fuck’s sake!” He turned to me. “We’ve been motherfucking hit again.” I stilled and stared at my brother. He turned his phone to show me the text and the picture of the west dock, the empty shipping containers and the dead guards bleeding out on the ground.
“What the fuck is happening?” I said, grabbing my coat from the back of a chair. I threw it on, and my brothers followed suit. This was the fifth hit on our docks and haulage ships in the past six months. Some fucker was trying to get to me. And it was working. No one fucking took on the Adley firm. And no one challenged me and lived to tell the tale.
“Cowards,” I said. “Hiding behind sneaky attacks and killing guards. Face me, toe to toe. Cowards. Fucking face me!” I opened the barrel of my gun and checked it was full. I clicked it back into place and tucked it into the holster in my coat. “We’re going to check it out.” I turned to Betsy. “Watch Cheska. Don’t let her out of your sight.”
“I promise, Artie,” she said, and I felt the fire calm a little. Then I walked out of the room, my boys behind me. Whoever was fucking with our gear was going to die. So were the traffickers who’d fucked with Ronnie and now had their eyes on Cheska.
The devil inside wouldn’t let me fail.
Chapter Eight
CHESKA
My legs were stuck. I tried to move them, to run to Freya crawling on the floor a few feet away, but I couldn’t reach her. Her eyes widened and she reached for her throat. Blood. So much blood began to pour from her throat, pour from her ears, pour from her eyes.
“No! I cried, feeling my heart crack down the centre into two broken parts.
“Cheska?” I snapped my head to the right and saw Arabella stumbling through a fog. She was searching for me, reaching out her hand for me to take. To guide her home.
“Arabella,” I said and reached out my hand. Her fingers had almost met mine when a knife came out of the fog and ploughed right through her chest. Her lips moved in a silent cry for help. But she dropped to the ground.
I screamed as she fell, as Freya’s body disappeared in a pool of her own blood. Then the fog cleared. It cleared, and there they all were. Freya, Arabella, Dad and Hugo.
They were gone … they were dead.
My throat was raw from screaming and my cheeks were sore from tears. I couldn’t save them. I couldn’t save their lives …
I heard the humming before I’d even opened my eyes. It would be Freya. She was always singing as she got ready. I smiled, relieved that it had only been a nightmare. My pounding heart calmed as I tried to push the awful dream from my mind. I opened my eyes, only to see an unfamiliar ceiling. The humming was billowing in the air, but it was deeper than Freya’s soft voice. It was smoother, and a little more off key.
Confused, I rolled my head to the side and caught sight of a woman I had never seen before. She had long brown hair that fell in loose waves to her shoulders. One side of her hair was pinned back, revealing porcelain skin and bright blue eyes. She was tall and slender, dressed in skinny black jeans with a white shirt tucked into the waistband. She was beautiful.
I frowned, wondering who it could be, then my memory took over and started laying recent events on me like bricks, the weight of which crushed my chest. Dad … Hugo … Freya … Arabella …
It hadn’t been a dream. It hadn’t been as simple as a nightmare. It was real. It was all real. A pained sob slipped from my lips. They throbbed as it did. I raised my hand to my mouth and felt that my lips were swollen, and I remembered being hit, being dragged to a van … running. The Sparrow Club. Arthur. Arthur …
“Arthur,” I whispered, my throat like cut glass.
“Shh.” The woman brought a glass of water to my mouth. I took the glass and tried to sit up. I had to do something. My friends … Dad … Hugo … “Let me help,” she said, her accent hitting me even though my head felt as though it was filled with fog. She was a cockney, like Arthur. She put her hands under my arms and lifted me until I was sitting up. I dropped the glass, soaking the side of the bed, as dizziness made me lose my balance. I held my hand to my head and breathed until the room righted and the wave of nausea ebbed.
“I’m sorry,” I said, opening my eyes and letting my hand drop to the damp bed.
“Don’t be sorry, darling,” the woman said and pulled back the sheets. I looked down; I was dressed in a nightgown. I had no memory of putting it on. I didn’t know what was happening. Everything felt too surreal.
As if reading my mind, she said, “I cleaned you up and dressed you after the doctor checked you over this morning.”
“This morning?” I asked, confusion rising as I looked around the room. There were old beams everywhere; the roof was angled, the walls white and uneven like many old buildings seemed to be. Vintage furniture decorated the minimal room.
Arthur’s house. His famed converted church.
The woman stopped beside me. I searched her face up close. She was so pretty, with a sprinkling of freckles dotted over her nose. “Darling, you’ve been asleep for about twenty-four hours.”
“I have?”
“You were knackered, girl. Your body needed time to rest after what you’ve been through.” She rolled back the sheets and pulled them from the bed. “Are you strong enough to sit on this chair if I help you up? I need to change the sheets.”
I moved my feet and, despite the pain in my side, was able to move them off the side of the bed. The woman held my arm and helped me stand. I gasped a little as the pain sliced through my stab wound. When it faded, I let her help me to the chair. It was the chair Arthur had sat in when he came to see me. At least I thought he had been to see me. Maybe I had imagined that too.
“I’m Betsy.” The woman gave me a devastatingly beautiful smile. “Betsy Adley.” My eyebrows must have risen as she spoke her last name, because she winked and said, “Arthur’s cousin.”
“Oh.” I shook her offered hand. “Cheska.”
“Oh, I know who you are.” I wasn’t sure what that meant or how to read the tone of her words. My head was pounding and I could barely focus. “Here,” Betsy said. I looked up to see two tablets and a glass of water in her hand. “Your medicine from the doctor. For the pain.” I numbly took them from her, swallowing them down and praying they kicked in quickly.
Betsy stripped the bed and re-dressed it. She kept glancing my way as she did. When she was done, she helped me back to the bed, plumping pillows to place at my back so I could sit upright. I felt as if I was in some kind of awful dream. High waves of emotions kept hitting me like boulders. Sadness, anger, then numbness … numbness … I treasured the numbness. I reached out as hard as I could, and I held on to that numbness. Then I thought of Arthur. I glanced down at my hand and thought I could feel his palm against mine. His phantom touch.
My gaze drifted to the door.
“He’s not here,” she said. I looked at her. “Everyone’s out.” Betsy handed me a tray that I hadn’t noticed on a small coffee table near a grand fireplace
. Tomato soup and buttered bread. “I was letting it cool a bit.” She laid the tray on my lap. “Try and eat a little. You must be starving.”
But my stomach rolled as my mind forced me back to my friends in the spa, to the video of my dad and Hugo. My body jerked and I gasped for breath. I couldn’t breathe. I felt like I couldn’t breathe!
The bed dipped, and Betsy met my eyes. “Breathe.” Betsy took a deep breath, and I followed her action. My racing pulse started to slow and the vice that held my lungs in a grip began to loosen. I breathed in and out, mirroring Betsy until the panic subsided and left only rawness in my chest. “Eat, Cheska. You need your strength.”
I stared down at the tomato soup, and all I saw was blood. The crimson blood of Freya, the blood of Arabella … Dad and Hugo slumped on chairs. “I can’t get them all out of my head,” I whispered, my eyes glazing and my mind taking me back to that place again. But the deeper I fell into the memories, the more I felt something within me building. Walls. Walls that were stacking on each other at breakneck speed, trying to block the memories out, trying to prevent me from splintering apart.
“I know,” Betsy said with understanding. “I’ve been in a similar position myself.” She shrugged. “I mean being there when someone you loved was killed. Right in front of you.”
“You have?” I asked, at the same time as feeling was as though I were being anaesthetised. Every breath in my lungs and every pump of blood through my heart took away the sting of the emotions that had been wrecking me, devouring me, slowly killing me.
Shock. It had to be shock. I didn’t care. I just didn’t want to feel anything right now.
“My step-mum,” Betsy said, bringing my focus back to her. She got up and poured me another glass of water from the decanter on the bedside table. I drained the glass again. “Killed a while back by an Adley enemy.”
“In front of you?”
