Lord of London Town

by Tillie Cole

  “I never want them to think it was you.”

  Arthur smirked. His body wet and muscled, that cigarette between his lips, made my thighs clench. “They’ll think it was Stockholm Syndrome or some shit. That you fell for the fucking Dark Lord of London Town and I corrupted you, dragged you to my lair and made you my dark queen.”

  “Well,” I said. “It’s not too far from the truth.”

  One of Arthur’s hands drifted down my back and over my arse. It dipped lower, following the curves of my behind to my pussy, where he sank a finger inside me, and my forehead dropped to his chest. A moan tore from my throat, and I widened my legs as he added more fingers and pushed them in and out of me at a maddening pace.

  “Dark queen,” he hissed, and I felt him harden against my stomach. I crawled to all fours, his hand slipping out of me as I straddled his legs and sank down on his cock. My head fell back as he filled me to the hilt.

  Arthur’s hands landed on my breasts. I rode him, rocking back and forth as ash from the cigarette still between his teeth dropped onto his skin. I didn’t think he even noticed it as he fucked me, as I rode him, hips jerking faster and faster, and he dropped one of his hands and rubbed his fingers over my clit.

  “Arthur,” I whispered, my movements becoming stuttered as I felt the telltale tightening of my thighs and the ache in my lower back. Before I could even utter his name again, I shattered, coming hard and fast. My nails sank into his chest, and he stilled, groaning around his cigarette as he came inside me.

  I fell against his chest, my ear pressed over his heart—it was racing. Arthur stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on the bedside table and wrapped his arms around me. I could hear the faint sounds of his family in the living room. Of Eric leaving, and the quiet murmurs of Ronnie and Vera as they passed by the bedroom door.

  I wanted this. Not my old life. I wanted this family, not the stifling Chelsea social scene. The materialism, the focus on money and how much power you could gain amongst the rich.

  “I don’t want it,” I said once I’d caught my breath. Arthur was quiet, listening. “My old life.” I lifted up and braced my arms on his hard torso. “I want to be with you. Not in secret. But proudly by your side.”

  A smile tugged on Arthur’s lips and melted my heart. “That’ll cause a motherfucking commotion.”

  “I don’t care,” I said vehemently. “Let them think what they want. I’m done with caring what anyone but you and this family thinks of me.”

  “And your family’s business?” he said. “Some of the shares will fall to you. Some of the responsibility if you want it.” I’d studied business for years at Oxford. And I was good at it. But …

  “I can keep the shares.” I didn’t want to completely sever the ties to my mum’s legacy. “But maybe it’s time for the business to be handed over to someone not so invested.” I thought of my father and how much the business took up his life. Possessed him, until that was all he cared about—not his family or child. I thought of Hugo, and how I now looked back on our relationship and knew, with absolute certainty, that there had never been any romantic love between us; rather, it had been familial. And he had wanted my hand in marriage to secure his place at Harlow Biscuits. My father would never have let me close to running the show. He had been a good man in some ways but thought very little of women in general, and especially in a place of work. He viewed them as disposable. A means to an end. Looking back, I wasn’t even sure he loved my mum at all. I was starting to believe that he loved the business and power her name had brought to him.

  It was business that consumed Hugo and Dad—they were cut from the same cloth. And although we knew little about who killed them, we knew why—because they messed up the business somehow and owed a crime syndicate money. They had borrowed money from ruthless men again, and my best friends paid the price for their default.

  “The company’s sullied to me now,” I said. “It’s steeped in blood and lies.” Arthur pushed back my wet hair from my face. He understood. I could see that written on his face. I traced over Westminster Bridge on his stomach. “But I’m good with stepping away.” I caught his eye. “I’m smart, Arthur. I’m good with business. I don’t want to live life on the sidelines. I’m not some little woman for you to come home to, barefoot and pregnant. If I’m with you, in this family, I want to help. I want to be a part of what we all do.”

  “I have businesses,” he said, and my pulse beat faster at the playful twitch on his lips. “Many of them.” He shrugged. “Most of them are fronts. But I have a few legitimate ones that turn over an okay profit. Enough to keep Scotland Yard off my back and away from my real work.”

  Excitement flared inside me. Excitement at what life could look like for us. Arthur championed women in his firm. I could be an asset to him. Leave the life of a socialite that I had never been able to stand anyway.

  The smile slipped from Arthur’s face and his expression darkened. I knew it was because all this, this dream we were creating … it would be only that until we found whoever was hunting us. The future we wanted, the one we dreamed of, was all up in smoke if they weren’t discovered. If they weren’t dealt with.

  The thought of what Arthur would to do to them when he caught them made me feel sick. Not because of the killing. They’d killed too many people close to us to be exempt from that kind of justice. But because I feared something happening to Arthur. Him being taken from me after we had finally found ourselves in this place.

  Together. Happy. In love …

  A cave formed inside my stomach when I pictured him being hurt, or worse.

  Arthur sat up. “I have to go out, princess. I’ve got a meeting.” I reluctantly got off him and watched him dress. Nothing in this world looked as good as Arthur Adley in a suit. I dressed too and sat on the bed, watching him collect his things. He walked over to me and took hold of my jaw. “One day, you won’t have to stay behind. You can be right by my fucking side.” His lip curled into a smirk. “My queen of darkness.”

  I laughed at the heat in his eyes and kissed him, just as someone knocked on the door. “Yeah?” Arthur said against my lips, not bothering to pull away. I closed my eyes, deepening the kiss, but a soft cough interrupted us.

  Arthur pulled away, and Vera and Ronnie came into the room. They had their coats on and overnight bags in their hands. “What’s all this?” Arthur asked.

  “I have some hacker friends—discreet hacker friends—who owe me a favour,” Ronnie said. “I think they can help me get further into all this. Really help us find out who they are—names, businesses. Everything.” She gestured to the piece of paper in her hand—the one with the information about the encrypted number she’d managed to get a trace on.

  Arthur was silent for a few strained seconds, then said. “Off the grid.” He frowned. Then some silent communication passed between Vera, Ronnie and Arthur. Something that looked important danced between them. I wondered if they’d been speaking in private.

  Before I could question them on it, Arthur’s phone rang. “I’m on my way,” he said to the caller. Arthur kissed me and left the room. Vera and Ronnie were on his heels, and the three of them left the house.

  It was dark, and the wind whistled outside as it thrashed against the old walls of the church. My mind drifted back to what Arthur had told me about Freya’s and Arabella’s funerals.

  I should have been there.

  I pulled out my phone and, for the first time since they died, I searched their names. My blood curdled when I saw report after report of their deaths. All mentioning my name, suspecting I was dead too. Then I saw an article that covered their funerals. Tears pricked at my eyes when I saw their parents, holding each other up as if they would fall to their knees if left unsupported.

  The grief. The pain. It all hit me like a ton of bricks.

  Wrapping my oversized cardigan around me, I headed for the churchyard. I needed fresh air. I didn’t care if it was cold. I needed to feel the wind on my face, needed to f
eel nature on my skin, life flourishing all around me.

  I closed my eyes the minute my feet left the back doorstep. The night was clear, and stars were a wash of sparkling diamonds in the sky. The crescent moon illuminated the church’s old graves; it was straight from the pages of a Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale.

  I headed toward the rows of headstones, Freya’s and Arabella’s funerals heavy on my mind. I came to the first one. An angel stood high on a marble plinth. Its cherubic face was cracked from years of batterings from the harsh, mercurial English weather. I ran my hands over the name engraved on the stone, but it was too worn and weather-beaten to make out the letters.

  I walked past grave after grave. Some with names that could still be read, mostly people that died centuries ago. Short lives and long lives—people who were very much loved. A lump clogged my throat when I thought of where Arabella and Freya now lay. What their headstones looked like and what was written for their epitaphs.

  Taken too soon.

  They were. Too young. Too much life running through their veins.

  I missed them. I missed them with my whole heart. My eyes misted over, and I was about to turn away when I saw two headstones in the corner of the garden, underneath a large tree that in the summer would be thick with green leaves, its branches cascading like a waterfall over the two white marble graves. They seemed newer than the rest, more cared for.

  My feet crunched on the fallen leaves beneath me. My exhales were clouds of white as the cold night embraced me. I reached the graves and stopped dead.

  Annie Adley.

  Pearl Adley.

  I closed my eyes and felt their loss sink into the depths of my bones. The loss of two people very much loved by their family—especially by their son and brother. I kneeled down and batted away the leaves and twigs that had landed on the top of the headstones from the blustering wind.

  “Hello.” I cleared the debris from the manicured grass around them. “Nice to finally meet you.” I felt slightly silly at talking to them this way. But I wanted to with all my heart. “I’m Cheska,” I said, keeping my voice quiet. I smiled at Annie’s name. “And I am completely and obsessively in love with your son.” I fought back the lump in my throat as his face sprang to my mind. “I promise I’ll love him for you both. I promise to care for him when he forgets to care for himself, and I promise that I’ll always stand by his side.” I inhaled the cold air, feeling it burn my lungs but settle frayed nerves inside me.

  I had just risen to my feet when I heard the crack of a twig behind me and smelled cigarette smoke. I whipped around, heart racing, only to find Gene standing a few feet away.

  He held up his hands, his face paling. “I’m sorry. I was sat by the tree over there.” He pointed to the tree I had seen him underneath earlier. “I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “Gene,” I said, hand on my chest, covering my racing heart. At the sound of our voices, one of the soldiers came running around the corner, gun drawn. He stopped, scanning the area. “Everything okay?”

  “Yes.” I said, and the soldier left again. I walked closer to Gene and sat down on the bench near the Adley graves. Gene hovered nearby, looking unsure of what to do. “Care to join me?”

  Gene ducked his head shyly but sat down beside me. The wind whipped around us, but the branches of the tree sheltered us from most of its harshness. I embraced the silence, happy to be outside, taking in fresh air in good company.

  “They were good people,” Gene said minutes later, nudging his head toward Annie’s and Pearl’s graves. “I liked them a lot. Miss them a lot.”

  “I’ve heard they were. I’m sad I never got to meet them.”

  Gene lowered his head and ran his hand over the sleeve of his long top, pulling it back enough to show the black bandages he wore underneath. I wasn’t sure he even realised he was doing it. A nervous habit he had picked up. I studied his face. He bore a resemblance to Eric and Vera, but where they were both blond with vibrant and loud personalities, Gene was all dark hair and timid hazel eyes. He was quiet, introverted … damaged.

  “He’s changed,” Gene said, his quiet voice almost getting stolen by the wind. I stared at his profile, and his gaze flitted to mine before he stared out over the trees again.

  “Arthur?” I asked.

  Gene nodded and rubbed his hands together—another nervous gesture. “When I left …” He trailed off. “A while back.” When he had been sectioned. When the family had paid for him to seek help for his inner demons. “He was …” Gene frowned as if he was seeing Arthur in his memory, searching for the correct description of the man he used to be. “A ghost,” he settled on. “He was a ghost. Empty but for the anger that fuelled him. He didn’t live. His eyes …” Gene sighed. “They were dead. Void of any happiness.”

  “They were?” I said, remembering Arthur’s blank stare as he left my flat in Oxford that night after his dad had been shot. How he’d seemed changed. How the man I had known was long gone. He had always been tortured and haunted. But as he left that day, he had been nothing more than a death-fuelled wraith.

  “Like recognises like,” Gene said and just about obliterated my soul. I wanted to reach out and touch him, comfort him, but I didn’t know his boundaries. I didn’t know what he would be okay with. His pale face flushed. “I …” He clenched his jaw. “Until I saw Artie, I didn’t think it was possible for people to change that much.” There was a heavy dose of hope in his voice, and I realised that it was for himself. That if Arthur could change, be saved … so might he.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, choosing to not push him on those things and give him space.

  Gene didn’t answer straight away. But then he answered me with a question of his own. “Are you?”

  I listened to the cars driving by beyond the high walls of the churchyard. I breathed in the fresh, winter air. “I feel …” I wrapped my cardigan tighter around me. “I feel like I’m in a strange kind of purgatory.” I nodded, knowing I had expressed it correctly. “I have my old life on one hand, a life so far away from this place, from this kind of life.” Gene stared at the ground, but the stillness of his body told me he was listening. “Then, on the other hand, I have a chance at this new life, one I want with all my heart, but one that’s just out of reach. Out of reach until whoever wants to hurt me—us—is gone.”

  I smiled to myself despite my fears. “A life with Arthur. A life I never thought he would ever be able to give me, or I could give him.” Gene looked at me, and I nearly cried at the way his eyes seemed to yearn for the same thing. “Until then, I’m here. Staying hidden. Keeping safe until it’s clear for me to move on and step into my next chapter.” I laughed and shook my head. “Did any of that make sense?”

  “Yes.” Gene sat back on the bench. His curly brown hair flopped in front of his eyes. “I get it completely.”

  “How do you feel?” I asked. “Being back here?”

  Gene pulled down the sleeves of his top until it half covered his palms. “Like you,” he said. “Trapped between the past and the future.” He tipped his head up at the sky. “My past …” He tapped at his head, then his heart. “I have thoughts and feelings … dark, sinking thoughts. Demons. They drag me down. Until I can’t breathe.”

  I wanted to wrap my arms around him and keep him safe. But I stayed still. And I listened. “I’ve never quite fit in to this family like the rest of them,” he rasped, and I could hear the pain in his heavy tone. “I’m not like my brother or sister. Never have been. Never been like Arthur. They were born for this life, ready to join the ranks and serve the family. Me …” He sighed. “I’m not sure what life I was meant for. None, I think. Living and me … they don’t seem to be well matched.”

  “Gene.” I fought back the urge to hold his hand, my heart breaking at such sorrowful, morbid words. “You are. You’re meant for this family. There is a place for you here. You just have to find it. It may seem hidden right now. But your place is here, I know it.” I inched closer to him. “
Your family love you. They just want you to be happy. Whatever path you choose.”

  “Happy …” he said, as if the word was something he’d never heard of, something he had never felt, a concept he couldn’t grasp.

  “No one,” I asked, “or nothing helps you feel happy? Makes something inside of you burn? No one helps relieve the sadness?” His eyes darted to me, and I recalled the day I met him. He’d kept his head low, eyes downcast as he faced us all … until one person came to him. Until one person held him, and Gene had held him back so tightly it was as if he would never let go.

  “Charlie,” I said knowingly, and Gene froze. His mouth opened and closed. I didn’t think he would say anything, but he turned to me, a flicker of life—and maybe hope—sprouting on his face, and—

  “Princess?” At the sound of Arthur’s voice, Gene closed his mouth and shut down, looking over my shoulder. I followed his gaze and saw Arthur approaching. He glanced to his mum’s and sister’s graves, then back to me. His expression softened when he understood what I was doing out here. Who I had found.

  “Gene,” he said. “You okay, kid?”

  “I’m good, Artie.” He got to his Doc Marten-clad feet, his black skinny jeans clinging to his slim legs. “It was nice speaking to you, Cheska.” He smiled, and the sight stole my breath. He was beautiful. I wanted with all my soul for him to be rid of the darkness that kept him captive, and for his light to bring him home. “Welcome to the family.”

  I watched Gene walk away. Arthur’s finger ran down my cheek. “You’re freezing.” He held out his hand. “Let’s go inside.” I let him lead me into the house and straight into our bedroom. I sat on the end of the bed, my conversation with Gene circling my head.

  “I like him,” I said to Arthur as he took off his suit jacket, waistcoat and tie. He undid the top buttons of his shirt, then rolled up his sleeves to his elbows.