by Tillie Cole
“They killed themselves,” Betsy said. “When they knew they couldn’t beat us all. They killed themselves first.”
“Fucking cowards,” I snarled.
“What now?” Charlie asked, keeping his shit together, the fucking calm to my raging storm. That was why we worked as well as we did. Why he was my fucking closest friend. He was my true fucking brother.
Not bastard, traitorous Freddie.
“I need a computer,” I said and rushed to the study. I had to focus on how to get her back. Not on the thought of them hurting her, of fucking selling her … killing her.
My fingers smashed onto the keys, smearing them with blood. I brought up the tracking programme I used to have hidden on my phone, then …
“Deptford,” I said, Cheska’s tracker taking me right to the viper’s nest. Freddie had mentioned Deptford. The fucker had never been as smart as the rest of us. But I should have seen the signs. I should have seen that he lived in a family he hated. Seen through his act.
I heard the door open and snapped my head up, my body primed to attack. But it was just my cousin. Charlie was fucking white as his feet stopped just inside the study. “Alfie,” he said. Eric and Vinnie came in behind him.
“He killed him,” I said. “Dad fucking woke up, and Freddie killed him.” I kept my emotions tamped down. I fought to keep them subdued until I was able to set them fucking free. Channel them on the cunts that deserved everything that was building inside of me.
“No!” Betsy said from the hallway, clearly having just seen my dad too.
Someone smashed through the front door of the house. I was in the hallway in seconds—we all were. Vera and Ronnie stood there, guns drawn. “What the fuck happened?” Vera asked, eyes darting around the house for signs of trouble.
“Did you get anything?” I asked Ronnie, ignoring Vera. Her dark eyes fell to my blood-covered clothes.
I heard Eric telling Vera what was happening, that they had Gene. That they had Cheska. That my dad was fucking dead. All because of Freddie. Freddie fucking selling us out. A fucking wolf in sheep’s clothing living among us all these bastard years.
Checkmate. His smug voice in my head grated on my nerves. You’ve lost …
“Lawson,” Ronnie said, interrupting my dark thoughts. My focus instantly snapped to her. She swallowed like bile was clawing up her throat. “It’s Lawson,” she said again when I didn’t fucking move. “Ollie Lawson.”
Fire raged through me, incinerating every cell, every fucking fibre in my body. Ronnie’s dark eyes never left mine as her words hit me like fucking bullets. A spray of fucking bullets that sank into my organs, shutting every one of them down. Until I was dead. Until I was fucking walking death.
“Ollie Lawson,” I said, his name from my lips like fucking cancer. I tensed, stopped fucking breathing, and saw that fucker’s face in my mind. All this fucking time it was Lawson… Ollie motherfucking Lawson!
I shook, braced to fucking explode with napalm. He was there, all along, right under our fucking noses. Laughing right in our motherfucking faces!
The cunt kept clear of the underworld, like the fucking rat he was. No honour, no fucking code that all we fucked-up criminals lived by in this town. Claimed his family had a true business. A legit motherfucking business. Import and export.
Import and motherfucking export.
He traded in humans. Trafficked under the guise of a booming mainstream company. Hidden in plain sight, with pathetic brands on their skin and coward hearts in their chests. A fucking criminal cult packed with pussies too afraid to let their fucked-up faces be seen.
I was going to murder them. Motherfucking Ollie Lawson. Freddie fucking Williams. I was going to fucking massacre them all.
Ronnie handed over a thick file. I took it, the wrath inside me building and building until all I could breathe in was death. “Traffickers. All these bastard years existing under everyone’s noses. Gradually taking out crime families. Stealing contracts. Stealing kids, selling them across the world, and taking the entire criminal underworld down like fucking thieves in the night.”
“Get everyone gathered,” I said, my voice sounding fucked up even to my ears. “Every fucking soldier we have. Get them ready for war. Because we’re going in tonight to get these cunts. This coward-laced empire falls tonight.” I flicked through the file, then stopped when I saw something on one of the later pages. I read the information—text messages, transcripts, emails with no IP addresses … and my blood turned to tar as it tried to push through my fucking demonic heart.
I lifted my eyes. Ronnie was already watching me, waiting for me to see one crucial piece of information. She nodded in confirmation, and as I read it again, just to let the fucking words sink in, a cool blast of calm trickled down my spine.
Deadly, chilling fucking calm.
My family were looking at me, frowning, waiting for me to relay what I’d just seen that made all this worse. Made my reason for killing Lawson deeper.
Even more deserved.
So I fucking told them. I told them every detail of the fucked-up thing Lawson had done.
Cheska.
Fuck, when she found out …
That motherfucking betrayal only made my darkness sink deeper into my already evil-tarnished soul. They fucked with my queen. They fucked with my family. Now they were going to drown in their own blood.
I rolled the file in my fist, finger bones cracking. My family members’ livid expressions were all staring back at me, thirsting for revenge. “Get your fucking weapons ready. They’ve got Cheska and Gene. They killed my fucking dad.” I lit a cig and let the smoke billow around me. “They killed my mum and Pearl.” The rage simmered, reserving its full wrath for Lawson, Freddie and their men, and I let the devil inside me completely take the reins. “Tonight, they all fucking die.”
I met each of my brothers’ and sisters’ eyes. They were nodding their heads. Vinnie smiled broadly at me, hyped for blood and death.
First, I needed to make some calls. Because it wasn’t just me that these fuckers had messed with. The file in my hand was all the proof I needed to get the other families and syndicates on board. Lawson’s network was big, brutal, effective. But so was the rest of the London fucking underworld. Separately, we were lethal. Together … we were fucking death incarnate.
Tonight we needed all of the Lawson syndicate taken out. Not one of those fuckers would be alive when the sun started to rise tomorrow. But we—my family—we were getting the snakes at the top. We were going to destroy the nest.
“Call Royal, Seamus and Vano. Tell them we’ve got something they want to see. The Italians, Chechens, Chinese and Jews too. Lawson has fucked with too many of us. For far too long. Tonight, we all pay him back in kind.” My family’s gazes lit with excitement—vengeful excitement. “But Freddie’s mine,” I said. “Out of every one of those cunts, Freddie Williams is mine.”
I pushed past my family to change and wait for my soldiers to rally.
Then I was going to get my fucking girl.
Chapter Sixteen
CHESKA
Gene woke in the dark van, groaning as he tried to sit up. They had tied his hands with tape too. He managed to sit, and in the hazy low light—the lampposts outside our only source of illumination—his hazel eyes found me. Confusion glittered in their depths, but it soon cleared and his mouth parted when he saw me, my hands bound and my mouth gagged.
“Cheska,” he whispered and searched around us, getting his bearings. Then his shy face, the timid and closed expression he always wore, morphed into determination, and for the first time since I’d met him, I saw a flicker of “Adley” looking back at me. A steely and ruthless resolve in his stare.
“They’ll find us,” he said, making sure to keep his voice low, even though an opaque partition separated us from the driver. He shifted closer to me. “They’ll find out what happened and get us out of here.” He frowned, then paled. “Arthur?”
“He’s alive,”
I said from behind the tape. I had managed to get its seal off my lips with my tongue, a gap forming at the top that helped me breathe, let me speak to Gene. “He’s in another van.”
Gene nodded, and I could see him thinking. “He’ll tell us what to do,” Gene said, confidently. “When we get out of here to wherever they’re taking us. He’ll get us out.”
My eyes fell to the bracelet on my wrist. Arthur and I hadn’t told anyone that I was wearing it. If only we had told someone—Charlie, Betsy. They would be able to find us. Then I thought back to Arthur when our eyes met in his father’s bedroom. When they met just before I was put into the van … when the Arthur of old took hold of him. The one I had known for years, the one who never gave me any indication of what he was thinking.
The ruthless man who, despite his aloofness, I fell so deeply in love with.
The van came to a stop, and fear took me in its grasp. These were the men who had come for me at the spa. The ones I had evaded. The ones who had killed my family—and now they were going to make me pay. I knew it, down to the marrow of my bones.
The sound of low voices sailed through the body of the van, then the doors were wrenched open. A frantic and furied Freddie glared down at us, his shoulders relaxing slightly as he laid eyes on me and then Gene.
“Check the fucking roads,” he hissed at a man beside him. “He can’t have got far.”
My heart kicked into a sprint—a hopeful rhythm. Freddie moved out of the way for a second, and I found the van that had held Arthur. And I saw that it was empty … empty but for two slain men who were being dragged out of the back, blood dripping from their slashed throats and eyes glazed with the recent veil of death.
A manic smile pulled on my lips. I turned to Gene. “He got away,” I hushed out, and relief spread on Gene’s face. I scanned the van again; the men surrounding the vehicle looked panicked and harried. “He got away,” I said again, reassuring myself, as I was dragged from the van and wrenched to my feet.
A laugh escaped me, and I felt the weight of the bracelet around my wrist. The bracelet that would lead Arthur and the family straight to this gang’s door.
Freddie whipped his head around to face me, his expression red with rage. I lifted my chin and thought of Vera, Ronnie and Betsy. Of how they held themselves. They would never let anyone see their weakness.
I would not let him see mine.
Freddie stepped close to me, and in my mind I replayed him killing Alfie Adley back at the church. I heard the agonised scream rip from Arthur’s throat as his dad’s blood spilled onto his pillow. As Freddie so cruelly and smugly told him he had lost.
“He’s going to kill you.” I heard the menace in my own voice, a part of me rising to the surface that I didn’t even know existed. The part that thirsted for this man’s head on a platter, that longed to see him choke on his last breath. A part of me that seemed to expand with every second that I stood before him, looking into the eyes of the man who had lied for so many years, who had looked at the man I loved with disdain and contempt. He had dared to think he had bested his foe.
Bested us.
The entire Adley family.
“He’ll kill you,” I promised, then smiled under the tape. “And he’ll make you scream.”
Quick as a snake, Freddie sliced me across the face with the back of his hand. My cheek throbbed, and the tinny taste of blood burst on my tongue. I stumbled at the force of the hit. But it didn’t fill me with dread or fear. Rather, it emboldened me. The stab of pain ricocheting over my face drove me to push Freddie harder. To bring him to the edge, to make him question every noise and movement around him. Make him nervous for the wrath I knew my much-loved lord would soon be bringing to his door.
Freddie must have seen the lack of fear on my face; he raised his hand again, curling it into a fist. I braced my legs for another, harder blow, but a hand grabbed Freddie’s wrist.
“Don’t you dare fucking touch her again.”
I turned my head to the man who held Freddie’s hand, the voice that my foggy mind recognised …
My breath caught in my lungs when I saw him step out from behind Freddie.
“Ollie …”
Ollie Lawson. My mind raced with reasons he could have been here. I looked around us. It was an abandoned yard of some kind, old offices and outbuildings surrounding us. A broken-down palace. What was he doing here? He needed to leave. These men … they would kill him.
“Cheska.” Ollie gave me the same smile he’d always worn around me. The one that used to upset Hugo so much he would talk about his hatred of Ollie for days afterwards. Ollie flicked his chin at Freddie. “Take the tape off her mouth, then get back.”
Freddie’s eyes were molten as they fell on me, but he did as Ollie had commanded, dropped the tape to the ground, and walked to the barely standing garage-looking building across the yard.
What was happening? What the hell was happening?
Ollie stepped closer to me, my frantically beating heart trying to coax my hazy brain to catch up with what was staring me right in the face. He looked down my body, that heated gaze he always had for me still burning like hot coals. “I’ve missed you,” he said, and I tried harder to understand what the bloody hell was happening.
Then Ollie lifted his hand and ran his fingers over his mouth … and I saw it. I saw the circular brand on his wrist, the brand that I had come to despise, to associate with death and pain and devastating loss.
The thing that linked Ollie to a devilish operation that had killed so many people, our families … and trafficked women. So many innocent and helpless women …
“You?” I asked, my voice a mere whisper.
Ollie’s face fell, and he put his hands in his pockets. “You fucked things up for me, sweetheart.” He shook his head in disappointment. “I had a plan. I had everything all worked out. A smooth and seamless execution.” A dark shadow crossed his face. “But I hadn’t considered Adley.” He said the name with pure hatred in his tone. “I hadn’t counted on you fighting my men on your hen do. Frankly, I hadn’t thought you had it in you to get away, pelting down the alley like that.”
The spa. He was talking about the spa. I shut down my emotions, held back the tears that threatened to fall, when it fully hit me. It was Ollie, Ollie Lawson, who had ordered the deaths of my dad and Hugo, of Arabella and Freya.
He stepped closer still. “And I didn’t expect you to go crawling to Adley. The motherfucking bane of my life.” He sucked on his teeth. “That wanker’s always getting in my way.”
“You killed them,” I said, voice weak. “Arabella and Freya were your friends, and you killed them. Ruthlessly.”
“They were collateral,” he said with such nonchalance that it set me alight. I felt my organs burn and re-form with the hatred and fire that was igniting in me. An internal eclipse smothering any light that lived inside my soul.
Ollie pushed a piece of hair from my face. I wanted to launch at him, kill him for the things he had done, all the sadness and pain he had caused. “I always wanted you, Cheska,” he said and yanked my head back. He smirked as a pained moan slipped from my lips, and I had to breathe through the urge to attack him. I felt Gene standing stoically behind me. I had to protect Gene too. I had to stay alive for Arthur.
It felt as though the bracelet pulsed around my wrist, promising me that he was coming. That he would find us here and destroy the men that had brought us all so much pain.
“I had to make a lot of plans to finally get you. For years I craved you. And this time I wasn’t going to fail in making you mine.” He shook his head and laughed without mirth. “The first time it was Adley who got in my fucking way too. I hadn’t counted on that twat being around. Or even caring about you.” His hands curled into fists as he spoke of Arthur. “I should have known. The fucking Adleys were always in our way in this city. Thinking they controlled it all. Making everyone in the underworld piss themselves with fear.” His expression grew icy. “Well, not fucking me. Not
my organisation.”
Ollie Lawson … I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that the enemy, the shadowy force who had caused so much devastation, was Ollie and his family. He’d attended Hugo’s school. He had a successful business. They had it all. Apparently it wasn’t enough—they had delved into the darkness of the underworld to sate their malevolent desires.
They trafficked humans as if they were nothing.
“It was all going to work so well,” he said, pulling me back to the moment. The harsh winter wind whipped around us as I listened to the mad man before me. The devil who had tricked the world into thinking he was some kind of benevolent god. But here he was in front of me, showing me his fanged teeth, scales and horns.
“They would attack you, and I would save you. That was the fucking plan—simple, but effective. I would save you, and you would see me.” I froze, trying to cast my mind back to whatever he could be talking about.
Harlow cunt …
The way my attackers had spat my name at the spa. The way the men in Marbella, all those years ago, did too. “You?” I said, shock rendering me almost speechless. “You set that up? In Marbella?”
“I did,” he said, almost proudly. “But Adley stuck his bastard nose in where it didn’t belong.” He smiled softly at me. “My old man wasn’t happy about that little stunt I pulled. Not when your old man had just come to us for help with his failing business.” My heart thudded slowly, as if my chest had become quicksand and was denying it air. “He’d gone to one of our more obvious associates, one of our fronts, and our man led him straight to our door.” My blood ran cold. “Our fathers ended up doing quite a lot of business together—”
“You mean you lent him money you knew he could never pay back,” I spat.
Ollie shrugged. “It was your father’s choice, and the start of a beautiful working relationship.” He paused. “Until it wasn’t, of course.”
“You killed them,” I hissed, nausea rolling in my stomach as I saw my dad and Hugo take bullets to their heads in my mind.
