Merciless: Arranged Marriage Romance

by Esme Devlin

  “Hey, it’s alright,” I tell her, coming over in the dark and wrapping my arms around her. She doesn’t respond, she just rests her cheek on my chest and leaves her arms hanging down beside her. “Tell me. What’s wrong?”

  She doesn’t answer, she moves her head up and I feel her warm breath on my face as she looks up, into the darkness. I lean down to give her a kiss, just a wee one, one that lets her know it’s okay.

  But she gets up on her tip toes and she wraps her arms around my neck and pulls me down, deepening the kiss.

  If this is what she needs, then I’m happy to oblige. I kiss her back but I’m not concentrating on that. My head is far away, wondering what’s happened and how I fix it. What trouble could she possibly be in that I don’t know about?

  Then I remember the money she had, thousands in cash… and I remember thinking that it seemed strange, and wondering what she had done to get it.

  I break the kiss. “Shell, you need to tell me what’s wrong?”

  She puts her face down into my chest. “You promise not to hurt me?”

  What? Why the fuck would I hurt her? What has she done? “I’m not going to hurt you, fucks sake. What’s going on?”

  She takes a step back. “It’s Kieran Townsley.”

  Kieran Townsley? The wee prick she used that day after school to make me jealous? The boy is built like a wet rolling paper, what the fuck could he do to hurt her? If he’s touched her, I will kill him. I’ll go through him. He won’t know his fucking name by the time I’m finished.

  “What about him? What has he done?”

  “It was me. Well, both of us,” she says, sniffing.

  She’s not saying…? She wouldn’t. Not with him. She wouldn’t do that with him, not while she was sleeping with me.

  Surely?

  I take a step away from her because I want to see her face, but it’s too fucking dark. I feel myself getting angrier, more frustrated with each passing second she stays silent. “What have you done?”

  She misses a few more beats, and at this point my blood pressure is off the scale.

  I’m about to ask her again when she finally starts talking.

  “He offered to help me. I was going to run, and he said he could help. He was supposed to take the cash from Dad’s shop but instead he…” her voice trails off, but I let her finish. “He took paperwork instead. Paperwork that proves what my dad and your dad have been doing. Proves that they’re dirty. He’s going to the press and then he’s going to let the police have everything. They’ll go to prison.”

  I don’t answer her.

  That’s too much to process in a few seconds and still have the capacity to form cohesive sentences.

  I feel like she’s just shoved a rusty blade in my chest and twisted it.

  She was still running, even while she was sleeping in my bed. Even when I fucked her for hours, kissed every inch of her body. She sucked my cock. She held my hand when we walked along the beach.

  She asked me what I wanted, and I told her the truth.

  Did she just do all of that so I wouldn’t suspect anything? So I’d give her the car keys and drop my guard?

  And then the shit with Townsley. She doesn’t even know what she’s opened there. This shit has consequences that are bigger than me, bigger than the both of us. Bigger than our fathers.

  She’s indicted all of us. Her father, my father, our mothers, me. Except she underestimated the strength of my fathers ability to come out unscathed. There is no way in hell he’s going to let us go down with the sinking ship. He’ll let Michelle’s dad take the hit for everything. And he has the money, the legal team, and the political influence to do it.

  “Tommy?” She takes a step towards me and I take a step back. I don’t want her to touch me. “Tommy, say something?” Her voice is on edge. She’s scared.

  She should be fucking scared.

  “I won’t go to prison, and neither will my dad,” I tell her, my voice cool and steady. “Your parents will though.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean what I just said. If anyone with the surname Heenan spends a day in prison over this, I’ll eat my fucking boot. Why did you come here?”

  She takes a deep breath and tries to walk towards me again, but I take a step back. “Kieran was convinced he’d get away with it because I wouldn’t come to you. He said the only reason you wouldn’t kill me is so you could still marry me, but you’d crush me so much I’d be bits and pieces….”

  She was going to continue but I feel the need to correct her. “I’m not going to kill you and I’m not going to crush you. I’m not even going to hurt you. Hurting is for people you care enough to hate.”

  “You don’t hate me?” Her voice sounds hopeful. Good. The higher hopes she gets, the further she’ll fall.

  “I don’t care enough about you to hate you anymore. You’re dead to me now. You got what you wanted. You win. Now get the fuck out of my house.”

  “Tommy, please!” Her voice breaks, and I give absolutely no fucks. I’ve been tricked by her tears too many times.

  “You wanted to go, so fucking go. The door is behind you.”

  “I don’t want to go, not anymore.”

  Liar. Liar. Fucking liar.

  “Well, too late little princess. I don’t want you anymore.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “I’ll not tell you twice, Michelle.”

  “Please,” she says, her words turning to sobs. “I didn’t have to come here. I was so fucking scared but I came, anyway.”

  “Why? Why did you come? You wanted me to fix it? You go on and on about doing everything for yourself and then you fuck it up, and who do you come running to? Not me. Not anymore. I offered you that, you didn’t want it. You were too good for that… always have been.” I turn my back to her now and get as far over the other side of the room as possible.

  “I know. I made a mistake. I want it now.”

  Does she even know what she’s asking me to do? What does she think if I turn up with a bouquet of flowers and ask really fucking nicely Kieran is just going to hand them over to me? No harm done, Tommy mate?

  Highly fucking unlikely.

  She knows what she’s asking me to do, but she’s too much of a shit to say it out loud.

  Kieran Townsley is a clipe. A rat. There will be no sorting this out the good old fashion way. Whatever I have to do to get those papers back, I’m going to prison for it. A legal team can only save your arse to a certain extent when staring at a mangled bloody face in photographic evidence.

  Those images play through my head like a film, and I feel my anger about to seep through the cracks in me. She betrayed me, I hate her, but him? He preyed on her weakness. He used her. As much as I hate her, I still fucking care. And the thought of it is boiling inside me, a red flame that I have no control over.

  I told her to leave. She should have left.

  But instead she takes the last remaining steps towards me and she touches my cheek. She. Touches. My. Cheek.

  I grab her wrist and push it down to her side. “Don’t you fucking touch me.”

  I remember when she said those same words to me. I thought things were different between us.

  We’d never said the words to each other, but I felt the shift as real as I’d feel a change in the weather. I thought there was something... maybe it was just a drop in the ocean... but what is an ocean if not for a finite number of drops?

  It wasn’t any of that though.

  It was a lie. A cold as fuck, calculated lie. She was thinking those words I just said, the same words she said, she was thinking them while I was fucking her. Don’t. Fucking. Touch. Me.

  “Tommy?”

  What? She keeps saying my name like it’s a fucking question. What does she want?

  “You want me to touch you now?” I take a hold of her neck because I want her to tell the truth for once in her fucking life. Part of me wants to snap it, but I refrain, because I want to he
ar the words come from her lips more than I want to kill her.

  Say it.

  Say the words.

  I walk her over to the nearest wall, dragging her with me, and I push her up against it.

  “Do you want me to touch you now?” Her breath turns ragged as I pin her wrists to the wall beside her head.

  “Yes. I’m sorry,” she says. Her voice breaks and I think she’s close to tears. Good.

  “Liar,” I tell her. Lies. Lies. Lies. “Is that why you told me you needed space? Couldn’t bear the thought of me touching you again?” My hands are all over her now, pulling up her shirt and squeezing her tits.

  She moans, but she doesn’t say a word. “Just fucking say it, Michelle. I’m no rapist. Tell me to get off you.” My hands move lower now, sliding down the back of her tight jeans, pulling her body towards me like she’s a limp and lifeless rag doll. “Say what you mean. Tell me to stop.”

  “No,” she says, through tears. There they are. Her perfectly composed mask is slipping. But are they real? We had tears the first time, too.

  Fucking hell.

  I thought I was cold, hard, but she is another level.

  She is cold hard steel.

  My little Queen of Diamonds.

  She wasn’t supposed to use it against me, though.

  “No? Does this not bother you?” I bite down hard on her neck and she whines in pain. I’m pawing at her everywhere and she’s fighting me now, thank god.

  She still won’t say those fucking words though. “You’re a cold hearted little bitch. You’d let me use your body, knowing I hate you? Knowing you hate me? You fucking disgust me.” I stare into the dark place her eyes should be, breathing in her quickened breaths. And then she stops breathing. She holds her breath.

  And then she slaps me, full force, right on the cheek.

  I probably deserved that.

  She’s not having another one, though. If I let her have another one, then she would deserve one too.

  I take a step back, putting my hands in the pockets of my shorts and watching her shape in the dark. Listening to her breathe. Listening to her sniff. I think if I listened hard enough I’d hear her heartbeat hammering in her chest. Hers is clearly stronger than mine because as much as I hated her, as much as she crossed me not even a week ago, I still let her in. I still gave her the power to hurt me.

  “You need to get out before I do something I regret.” My voice isn’t stern, or cold, or angry. It’s just passive.

  Maybe that was worse because she straightens herself up and she takes herself to my door, and she walks right through it.

  Just like I told her to do.

  I heard that girls wash men out of their hair. Like in that song.

  I didn’t do that. I went for a cold as fuck shower and I shot my load down the drain.

  Can’t be sure if it worked but I sure as hell feel calmer than I did when I was pulling on her tits.

  It’s three in the morning, too late to phone anyone, but I’m wide awake. I lie in my bed scrolling through my contacts list.

  Bitch from Karma

  Bitch from PJ Mollys

  Bitch from Rev Bar

  Can’t even remember their faces, never mind how good they were at sucking cock.

  Nadine Cole

  She was my go to before. I try to think of something cold and awful to say about Nadine, but she’s actually alright. Nadine is a total fucking pleaser. She’s warm. Not like Shell.

  I try to think of what I would do if Nadine was in the room with me right now, and I come to the conclusion that the answer is probably nothing.

  I’ll never fuck anyone like I fucked Michelle. And that’s not because of some ridiculous notion like love or even lust. I didn’t love her, and I spent ten years of my life telling myself I wasn’t even attracted to her. We fucked like we were equals. Even with me pinning her down and physically dominating her, there was still a sense that we were both fucked together. Fuck our fathers. Fuck feelings. Fuck everything. And especially, fuck each other. Because we still hated. We hated, but I knew she was the only one who could ever match me, and she felt the same.

  I was angry before because I thought that wasn’t real. I thought she was pretending. But as much as she could fool the sharpest judge in a courtroom, deep down, I don’t think you can fake that shit. Not raw emotion. You can fake love, you can fake lust... both of those things are easy. Look at any cheating husband coming home after handing a couple hundred to a prostitute. Both of them lying. Both of them faking.

  But you can’t fake hate. Impossible.

  You have to care enough about someone to hate them.

  And you have to care even more about someone to hate them and still stick around.

  I get dressed and take myself out to the stables. It’s still dark, but there are lights in the courtyard and a clear sky with a moon that’s slightly more than half. I’m not planning on riding, anyway. I thought about it, but I can’t be sure I wouldn’t do something stupid, and I wouldn’t take risks with Fallacy.

  So instead I just sit there on a wooden bench, listening to the quiet and watching the stars. And that’s when I start planning. It’s not much of a plan, but it’s the best one I’ve got.

  I wait until the sun comes up and I tell Jody, Stubsy and Ryan to come to my house tonight at 8pm. Not Stuart. Stuart’s got too much to lose, and he would be useless, anyway. Also, Stuart does nothing that doesn’t directly benefit himself in some way, and what we’re going to do has none of that.

  In fact, it’s probably the opposite.

  I don’t tell them what we’re going to do until they get here, firstly because I want them to come. And secondly because I don’t want them to talk me out of it and try to change my mind.

  They’d have all day to prepare an argument if I gave them prior warning, and I’m not actually entirely convinced myself. I just know she’s in trouble. I know that if Kieran gets what he wants, Michelle will be the only loser.

  And I pity her. I pity her because she did it all to herself.

  The Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 is a bitch, and it won’t treat Michelle kindly.

  I tell myself that’s the reason I’m sitting outside Kieran’s house at 3.30am in the next morning. Because I pity Michelle, and because Kieran is a rat. What do we do with rats? We scorch them out.

  Jody sits in the front with me, and Stubsy and Ryan are in the back with a canister of petrol.

  Petrol. I can’t fill up my car without remembering that day with Shelly and her bastard coffee. And now the smell of it fills my nostrils. I should have ran a mile that day on the forecourt.

  “You sure you want to do this, Tommy?” Ryan says, leaning forward on the seat and speaking as if we’re having a private conversation.

  He’s asking me and only me because I’ve told them that whatever happens, if the worst comes to the worst, I’ll testify in court that I was alone. They won’t do time for it, and they don’t need to have it on their conscience. They’re just doing what any decent friend would do and helping a brother out.

  “No. But I’ll do it, anyway.” I get out of the car and let the door sit on the hinge only half closed. We’re dressed in black, good for when we’re around the back of the house but not so good when there’s four of us standing in the orange streetlights.

  I nod my head towards the house, and the four of us slip silently across the road like a team of fucking brooding wannabe ninjas.

  We go to the back door, and I can just make out the shape of a trampoline and a brightly colored wooden playhouse in the back garden. Either Kieran has younger siblings, or his parents hold some amount of sentimental love to keep that shit ten years longer than needed.

  Jody picks the lock while I pray to God he’s not got a dog. It’s always the dogs I feel sorry for, and as much as I love man’s best friend I won’t have it barking at me and blowing my cover. That’s what I tell myself, but I couldn’t kill a dog. I’d sooner kill a person than kill a dog.

 
; He’s not got a dog anyway, thank fuck.

  And I need to pull my shit together.

  I head through the kitchen (can’t see my hand in front of me at this point — but it still smells like last night's curry so…), towards where the door should be and find my way to the living room.

  This room is better, the streetlights come in through the windows and the furniture glows in the warm orange light.

  I turn the corner, passing the front door and seeing the stairs.

  The three of them are behind me, the can of petrol in Ryans gloved hand.

  I take the first step and the thing groans like it’s fucking in pain.

  If every one of them is like this, and all four of us take them, then we’ll wake every house from here to Braeburn roundabout.

  I turn around and make a slicing motion at my neck, shaking my head. The light comes in the glass door from behind them, so I assume they can see me better than I can see them.

  Ryan, who’s directly in front of me nods.

  “I’ll go up myself.” I half whisper, half mouth the words to them. “If you hear anything, burn it to the ground.”

  Ryan nods, and I remember the trampoline and the playhouse in the back garden.

  “Start it in the kitchen, and unlock the front door,” I add, before turning around and starting the battle with the second step. I want to destroy whatever evidence he has, I don’t want to kill his entire family. They’ll get out, though. The front door is far enough away from the kitchen and I’ll make sure I wake every last one of them before I leave, even if I’m signing my own life sentence.

  Except maybe Kieran.

  Where the fuck is the little bastard, anyway?

  I take the rest of the stairs slow as fuck, and when I get to the top of them I count four doors. A parent’s room, a bathroom, a sibling’s room? And Kieran’s room. All closed except one, which is slightly ajar. On the carpet in front of it, lights flicker as if there is a TV on inside the room. Is someone awake?

  I edge along the wall towards it, passing another door behind me. I’m barely breathing, but my heart rate is steady.

  When I reach the crack I listen for sounds. The TV must be muted because there are none. I concentrate harder, listening for movement, snoring, breathing.