by Lovell, LP
I groan. Twenty-eight years of this… William Kingsley is an old-school cockney gangster. He believes in expensive suits and even more expensive booze, and in acting only to benefit himself, his business, or his family. He also takes virtually nothing seriously, but the moment he does is the moment everyone in the room sits up and pays attention.
“Can you focus?”
He only grins and rocks back and forth in the chair like an errant, bored child.
A few seconds later there’s a quiet knock on the door. I open it to a scowling Harold Dawson. The older man’s balding head matches the beet red of his face, and the overhead lighting reflects off it like a buffed bowling ball. He’s an average upstanding member of the community: a businessman, good Catholic, charity founder, husband, and father. He and his wife attend mass every Sunday, raise funds for the local school; even foster stray dogs. He’s unsuspecting. Good in every way that matters to anyone on the outside looking in. He’s the perfect Trojan horse, and more than that, he’s already proven.
“You’re blackmailing me?” He waves a manila envelope around.
“Blackmail is such an ugly word,” I say, fighting a smirk. He storms into the room, and I close the door behind him. “Harold Dawson, this is William Kingsley.” I offer no further explanation than that. My father’s eyes meet mine, an amused smile playing over his lips. I go by my mother’s maiden name of Kavanagh, simply because the Kingsley name carries a certain reputation. My father, in particular, is infamous, with a criminal career that has spanned decades, unproven and unchecked. A priest with the name Kingsley — well that would draw too much attention and defeat my entire façade. Harold however, already has dealings with one Kingsley. Whether or not he actually knows that, I can’t be sure.
Harold shifts from one foot to the other, and I can see his mind spinning, the wheels turning as he tries to piece it all together.
“I know who you are,” he mumbles in Dad’s direction. “What do you want with me?” He glances at me, accusation red hot in his eyes as he waves the envelope around. “Aside from fucking me in the arse.”
“I want to make you money, Mr Dawson,” my father says.
“I don’t need more money, and I don’t want yours.”
“Nobody needs more money, Harold.” He glares at me. “It’s obvious, you launder money through your children’s charity.” I nod towards the envelope in his hand containing a simple spreadsheet of figures pulled from his very own computer. “Tsk, tsk, I didn’t take you for such a sinner.”
He sneers at me. “Says the priest who’s trying to blackmail me.”
“There’s no trying. This is simple, you either sell us a twenty percent share in Global Aid, and clean our money, or I turn those figures over to the police.”
His eyes go wide, but my expression remains stone cold. “You wouldn’t. If you knew who I worked for…”
“Oh, I know exactly who you work for.”
“Then you know that if I sell part of my company, the company they use, then this is a signed and sealed death warrant for all of us.” There’s genuine fear in his eyes, and I can see the erratic throbbing of his pulse at his throat. I shouldn’t revel in it, but of course, I do. He shakes his head. “Turn me in. They’ll kill me anyway. And you.”
I crack my neck to the side, and my father’s eyes meet mine. He gives the smallest shake of his head, trying to leash the temper I’m sure he can see brewing in my eyes. You see, I’m not a patient man, and I’m not accustomed to asking for things twice. Snatching the rosary off the desk, I grab Harold’s shoulder and shove him into the chair.
“What—”
Moving behind him, I snap the rosary tight across his throat, clasping the beads in one fist. He flails and panics, and my father lets out an exasperated sigh.
“You should have just gone this way in the first place. Would have saved you some trouble.” He smirks, but I’m not in the mood.
“Harold.” I pat his shoulder, but he’s too busy thrashing around, clawing at his throat. “I tried to be nice, but what you failed to see is that this wasn’t a request.” I release the beads, and he drags a gasping breath into his lungs.
My father pushes to his feet. “You get above market value for your twenty percent. You make more money as a cut, we get our money cleaned, and your current clients continue to get theirs cleaned. No harm, no foul.”
Harold glances up, his face still puce and his breaths rattling. “You have no idea,” he mutters. I drag him to his feet and shove him towards the door. He pauses for a moment, shaking his head once more before opening the door and disappearing.
I glance at my father and raise a brow. “You know he’s banking on us having a bullet in our heads before the day is even out.”
My father groans, taking a cigarette from his pocket. “Well, we might do, but this is your plan.”
“We don’t have a lot of choices. There’s no sign of Fire opening any time soon, and we’ve already lost half our client base to those Italian fucks.” I need operations back in place. I can’t sell cocaine without distributors, or somewhere to clean the money. With my biggest nightclub down, the dirty money is building, and it makes me edgy.
“The police are involved.” He shrugs. “The distro’s are like rats fleeing a ship with a hole. You plug the hole, and they’ll drown at sea.”
“That doesn’t help us right now.”
“You could always speak to Saint. Speed things along. It won’t get your clients back, but it’ll fix your hole.”
I laugh. “I’m not asking Saint for shit.” My brother has most of London’s police force in his back pocket, mainly because he pays them more than we do. I’d sooner slit my own throat before asking him for a favour though. “This will work.” I’m absolutely playing with fire because Saint is the very person I’m fucking over. I sigh and drag my hand over my face. “I can handle him.” But we both know it’s a lie because my brother can’t be handled. By anyone.
* * *
My phone rings, the shrill sound dragging me from a deep sleep.
Squinting at the screen, I see my brother’s name flashing. “Yeah?”
“We need to meet.” His voice is clipped as always.
“Look, it’s not —”
“In person,” he hisses. “Be at Confess in one hour. And Judas, don’t make me find you.” Then he hangs up. The clock reads one thirty in the morning. Of course, Saint doesn’t exactly operate in normal business hours.
That was quick, even for him. Getting out of bed, I throw on jeans and a shirt, rolling the sleeves up past my forearms. When I leave the house the street outside is silent, the orange glow of the streetlights subtly reflecting off the wet pavements and roads. I’d rather go back to bed than make the half-hour trek to the other side of London, then again, there are a lot of things I’d prefer to do than have to meet my brother.
I reach the nightclub that my brother owns: Confess. It’s a church, and the irony is not lost on me because Saint is as devout in his faith as anyone I know. Maybe that’s why he bought it? He feels at home here, spiritually peaceful. Though, I never thought I would see the day when he would welcome fornication and debauchery into a house of God. Our views differ vastly.
I park up and cross the small gravel car park to the front door. Music pulses through the air, the tones muted to a low throaty rumble. One knock on the heavy wooden door and it swings open, allowing the throbbing bass to pour out into the night air. The bouncer looks me over and nods before letting me in. The place is packed wall to wall with bodies. It’s on the outskirts of the city in an undesirable area, and yet everyone wants into this club because it’s exclusive and rumoured to be a hub for wealthy and corrupt individuals. Funny how the human disposition draws them to the dangerous. Like junkies seeking out a fix.
I move through the dancing bodies until I reach the back of the church and slip through the door into a hallway. At the end is a single door with a security detail. I’ve seen one of the guys here before, but even if they’d nev
er laid eyes on me, they’d know I was related to Saint. We look almost exactly alike. Same blue eyes, same near-black hair, same smile. I only lack the fundamental wrongness that clings to Saint like a second skin.
Without a word, the first guy scans a card over the door. It beeps, and he steps back, allowing me to open it onto a set of stairs — the descent into hell.
The temperature drops by a few degrees when I reach the bottom, and I glance around at the domed ceilings in the small interlinking chambers that make up Saint’s private lair. Catacombs — refurbished and decorated, but underground tombs nonetheless. The walls and ceilings are painted white, as though that somehow disguises the dark, morbid roots of the place. Each one acts as a private room or booth, catering to Saint’s much less savoury business acquaintances. This is the rumoured club that draws the people upstairs. And it’s right beneath their feet. This place is a who’s who of London’s underground world. Fitting that they be down here really.
I move through the catacombs until I reach the huge wooden doors at the end. Knocking once, I push it open. I’m early, and I know Saint will hate that, but a petty part of me just loves to wind him up. To watch that little demon in his head throw itself against the bars of its cage and test the limits of that religious restraint he forces upon himself.
The room literally looks like a throne room, and I know it’s deliberate. My brother is that unhinged that he genuinely thinks himself like a deity among men. There’s a fireplace across the other side of the room. And in the centre is a single chair, the wood intricately carved and the back high: a throne. Across from the chair is a long sofa, so he can hold court, of course.
“Ah, Judas, it’s been a while.” A figure moves away from a shadowy corner where a small bar sits.
“Jase.” My half-brother moves closer, and the warm glow of the fire washes over one side of his face, igniting the copper strands of his messy hair. Jase is my mother’s shame, as she likes to say. The love child of one of William’s affairs, of which there are many, I’m sure. He doesn’t share the same dark hair and blue eyes as Saint, William, and myself, but the apple definitely didn’t fall far from the tree. By the time Dad found out about him, Jase was fourteen and had just been arrested for stealing a car.
He and I have never had much reason to get on, but he and Saint are close. Very close. Jase is Saint’s right-hand man, and quite possibly the only person he truly trusts. Approaching, he hands me a glass of whiskey, and I take it from him before he moves over to the couch.
“How have you been?” he asks. “How is the abstinent life treating you?” A quick smile flashes over his face, and he looks every inch my father for a moment. I roll my eyes and ignore him. He just laughs. “I have to say. I admire your dedication to the cause. Playing the role, keeping your head down. I can’t think of anything worse than banging on about God all day.” Again, I say nothing. We aren’t friends. We’re business acquaintances at best. He nods toward the glass in my hand. “I’d drink that if I were you.”
“Where is he?”
Jase checks his watch. “Well, you’re early, and you know how he is about his appointments.” I do. Saint keeps his appointments exactly. Not a minute before or after. If you’re early, and he happens to be here, he will ignore you.
Five minutes later, Saint strolls into the room like royalty returning to the empire. His two bodyguards halt outside, swinging the heavy doors closed behind him. The jazz music from beyond cuts off and the silence that went unnoticed before feels deafening with my brother in the room.
Everything about Saint makes people uncomfortable, even me. He’s too still, his gaze too intense, his movements too predatory, because that’s exactly what he is; a predator and everyone around him is prey.
He swipes a hand slowly down the front of his immaculately tailored suit, black, of course. His dark hair contrasts against pale skin, making him look like a vampire. He’s not far off, seeing as I’m pretty sure he never leaves this cave. Blue eyes, the same shade as my father’s stare back at me, but colder, much, much colder.
“Saint.”
He turns away from me and goes to his throne, releasing the button of his jacket before he sits. “Brother.”
“I know you’re pissed off —”
“Pissed off? No, Judas, I’m not pissed off. I’m perplexed.” He tilts his head to the side, taking the drink that Jase places in his hand without even looking at him. Jase clears his throat and quietly moves away. When Jase is uncomfortable you know it’s about to implode into a smouldering pile of shit. “I’m struggling to comprehend why you test me so.”
“It’s not —”
“Enough.” He holds up his hand and stands. “You blackmail one of my cleaners. By threatening to. Sell. Me. Out,” he hisses, a rare flash of temper peeking through that icy veneer. “Do you know what I do to people who threaten me, Judas?”
“I’m aware,” I drawl. He’s so melodramatic.
His eyes snap to mine. “Our sharing the same blood won’t save you if you fuck with what’s mine. The only reason you aren’t dead already is because Mother would be upset.”
“Comforting to know you care.”
He looks me up and down. “You are a sinner, Judas, a murderer, a false pretender, a heathen parading as a servant of God. No, I do not care.” I want to laugh because Saint is for all intents and purposes, crazy. But he’s devout in his religion. The madman with a moral compass? No, Saint simply believes in his final fate so absolutely that he avoids doing anything that might send him to hell. His ‘good deeds’ and forgiving heart are founded only in the narcissistic need to go to heaven. That’s it. Other than that, everyone is beneath him, except my mother of course because my mother is a true believer. My mother is the one that made him this way. Truthfully though, what else could she do? I may be a wrong ‘un as she so often tells me, but Saint has the devil in him. He’s a psychopath, and I mean that in the absolute clinical sense of the word. So she did the only thing she could. She made him fear God’s wrath enough to curb his own nature. Saint is the product of a conflicted conscience, but I never trust him. And as for his sin-free soul, well…he simply racks them up on Jase’s instead.
Saint wouldn’t kill me, but he’d get Jase to. Or at least try.
“It’s a global business for fuck’s sake. There’s plenty of scope for extra cash.” I refuse to tell him exactly why I’m pushed to such extremes.
He moves closer, one slow step at a time. Stalking me. “I’m careful, selective, practised.” He accentuates each word. “What I do is art. And you want to come in and run your filthy drug money through my contact?”
“Your money’s just as dirty, Saint,” I say on a snort. He’s so on his high horse about his damn counterfeit money, preaching about how drugs are sinful, and the business is beneath him. Meanwhile, he pours millions of fake cash into an already ailing economy.
“I’m careful,” he repeats, looking me over as though I offend him.
“So am I.”
“They will follow your little trail of breadcrumbs all the way back to Dawson and in turn me.” This is the other aspect to Saint, his paranoia.
“I’ll cut you in,” I say on a resigned sigh.
He pauses, his lips pressing together. I can see the possibilities firing through his mind at a hundred miles an hour. He’d love it, the idea of making money from my father’s empire, the one he refused to be a part of. Saint is not above gloating.
“That does not negate the risk.”
“No.” I step closer to him, unable to help the smile. “But you’re thinking about it, Saint because it’s something for nothing. It’s a middle finger to Dad and me, and it’s a degree of control.”
His eyes meet mine, that madness always lingering just below the surface.
“No.”
Here we go. “I’ll owe you.”
He cocks a brow. “What will you owe me?”
He knows what I’m going to say because it’s the currency we always used as k
ids, back when I feared hell as much as he does. A slow smile pulls at his lips before I’ve even spoken the words. “I’ll owe you a sin.”
His eyes light with the same feral delight that they used to when we were too small to really appreciate the full gravity of what a sin could be used for. Now though…now he knows. Now I know. All too well.
“Done. You owe me a sin.” I hold my hand out to him because he always requires a gentleman’s handshake on these things. Instead, he simply tilts his head in that unsettling way of his. “But I want it sealed in blood.”
I grind my teeth together. “You know that’s not how it works.”
Jase silently places a knife into Saint’s waiting hand, and I release a long breath.
“Think of it as a promise. It’s on your skin, so I know you’ll honour it.”
I glare at him before unfastening the buttons of my shirt and tugging the material open. A delighted grin pulls at his lips as he steps closer to me, placing a cold hand against my chest. Leaning in, he presses the tip of the blade to my skin and drags it downward in a burning trail, a cut about an inch and a half long. I keep my eyes focused on him, and he steps back before waving a hand at Jase who hands me a paper towel. I press it to the cut, soaking up the blood.
“Happy?”
“You’re running out of room, brother.”
I shrug shirt back in place. “Do we have a deal?”
He simply turns away, waving a hand through the air. “You may leave.”
I’ve done a lot for the family business over the years, but backing Saint Kingsley into a corner is by far the most dangerous.
4
Delilah
I wake up with a pounding headache and my stomach churning like a cement mixer. Blinking my eyes open, I flinch against the dull, late morning light pouring through the open curtains. There’s a moment, a perfect moment where I forget, and then the same as every morning for the last month, it all comes crashing back in. All the emotions that I temporarily suppressed with alcohol last night wash over me like a breaking wave. That lead weight that seems to take up residence in my stomach on a daily basis makes an appearance, and the temptation to drink myself unconscious again is more than appealing.