Clicking his tongue in thought, he took a deep breath and stared straight at me. “You asked me to trust you when you brought your father in.”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“Then I need you to trust me now.”
“You’re thinking of recruiting?”
“Yeah. Jonathon’s been a confidant for many years, Ness. I trust him. But I still need your okay for me to do this. We’ve been in this together from day one, and although you forgot about that and didn’t trust me with your secrets, it’s imperative that I have your agreement on this.”
Chastised once more, I nodded my head. “The one thing that has never faltered throughout these last twenty days is my faith in you. If you trust this guy, then I do too.”
“Okay. I’ll give him a call.”
I wasn’t sure if I had a bad feeling about this, or if I were hoping he would prove to be an asset. However, time was running out. Denny was smart, and he’d been planning this for a long time. But it was now that I was more interested in. And the sooner we found my husband, the sooner I could bury him, once and for all.
Day 20
15:45
“I should piss on your grave,” I told the headstone that had my husband’s name carved into it. “Except, it isn’t really you in there.”
Snow had fallen since mine and Caelan’s conversation that morning, and the thin covering of white that blanketed the ugliness of Yew Tree Cemetery did nothing to lift my melancholy.
I wasn’t even sure why I had come. Whenever I felt sad or needed to talk about something that was bothering me, I would visit Denny’s grave. I supposed it was a hard habit to break, even if the grave no longer contained my husband’s burned remains.
I remembered back to the day of the funeral, how hard it had been to linger towards the back and act like just an ordinary woman that knew of Denny Barnes. Frank had been the one to console me later, in the privacy of the apartment Denny had purchased whenever I had to pretend to be a single woman.
Four months later, I had returned his kindness and held him when he had cried over the death of his father. Frank never showed emotion to any of his men, he saw it as a weakness, but the news of his father’s passing had been hard on him. He’d turned up at my apartment late one night, drunk and heartbroken.
Turning my attention back to the grave, I scowled. “Where the hell are you? It’s been twelve days now. You were never a patient man, Denny Barnes.” I snorted. “Although I have to hand it to you. You waited four years for this.”
“Ness.”
I turned around and gave Frank a smile. “Hey.”
“Thought I’d find you here. You always had to talk to Denny if something was bothering you.”
“Old habits die hard, eh?”
Pulling out a small silver flask, he took a swig and handed it to me. Taking a swallow, I relished the heat in my belly and looked to the grave. “When this is over, I need to give this guy a proper burial, Frank. I can’t imagine what his loved ones are going through. At least, in a way, I got to say goodbye to Denny. They haven’t had that privilege.”
“I’ll sort it.”
Frank Johns was a towering machine of muscle and ink. He intimidated the strongest of men, and he was merciless when the need arose. Yet, I saw underneath it all. He had always been gentle and considerate to me. He’d been Denny’s right hand since they progressed through childhood and adulthood together, and he had protected his boss and friend with his life. Many times, Frank had taken a bullet for Denny, literally, and I’d grown to admire his loyalty as well as value his friendship. I could marry worse men, and at the end of the day, I knew in my soul that Frank would protect me just as devotedly as he had my husband.
“I take it you’re not here to tell me you found Denny?”
He shook his head. “No, sorry. It’s rather delicate.”
“Well look at that, Frank Johns, nervous.”
He scowled playfully and nudged me with his shoulder. His deep blush endeared me to him even more. “We have an appointment with the registrar.”
“Oh.”
Grimacing, he diverted his gaze. “Technically, on paper anyway, you’re still widowed…”
“But it wouldn’t feel right marrying you while Denny is still alive.”
“Oh, no.” He shook his head. “We’re not getting married yet, but we have to see the registrar. Just an informal meeting thing. I promise we won’t proceed with the wedding until Denny Barnes is in a grave of his own.”
“Then lead the way, fiancé.”
His grin was full, and I couldn’t help but match it with one of my own. “Do you not want to visit your father’s grave while we’re here? Is he even buried here?” I asked, glancing around, and feeling sorry that I hadn’t a clue, really, about anything in Frank’s life.
“I saw him before coming to find you.”
The cemetery was quiet as we took the path back to the carpark. It was getting late, and the setting sun was casting an eerie glow around us. I was momentarily taken back to our third game, the midnight race to dig up a body and save my step-father.
My heart ached as thoughts pressed against my mind. If someone had told me six months ago that I would be the kind of person to desecrate a grave, then I would have laughed in their faces. Yet, now I had. I hadn’t even bothered to look at the poor person’s name, my actions on autopilot that night and centred solely on freeing Stuart.
I meandered off the path and took the one that led to the righthand corner of the graveyard. The old yew tree loomed in the near distance, guiding me back to the exact spot I needed to apologise and pay my respects.
“The other path is a quicker route out, Ness,” Frank stated, looking a little confused.
“Just another grave I need to pay my respects to before we leave.”
He nodded and shrugged, holding out an arm for me to lead the way.
Goosebumps raced across my skin the closer to the grave we got. I had the image in my head of the corpse rising from the ground to make me pay for what I had done.
Approaching the site, my footing stuttered when I saw that the grave had been refilled. I shouldn’t have expected anything else, really, but for some reason, I had thought I would find a hole in the ground as we had left it that night.
When I finally reached the grave, and I read the man’s name, I realised exactly how that key had got in the coffin with him.
And I finally understood exactly how fucking foolish I had been.
Day 20
16:00
Caelan
Jonathon threw the file down onto his coffee table and dropped back onto his sofa, finally directing his attention back to me. “Why the hell didn’t you come to me sooner, Caelan?” Lifting my brows and giving him long stare, he huffed and nodded. “Jesus. I don’t know what to say.”
“Like something out of a movie, eh?”
“A thriller at its best. And your tech guys didn’t get anything from the iPad feed?”
“Not a thing. Or from the cameras that the GM had set up around my house. He’s done his homework.”
He nodded and wiggled his jaw from left to right, a habit he had when he was deep in thought. “You swept your girl’s house for any kit?”
“Her father did. Clean as a whistle, which surprises me.”
“Oh, yeah.” He snorted. “How could we forget who the hell she is related to.” His tone was bitter, and I regarded him with narrow eyes.
“I came to you for help, not judgement, Jon.”
Holding up his hands, he shook them. “Not for me to give, mate. I’m just coming at it from all angles.”
“I get that, but what I need is a new angle.”
Rotating his finger around aimlessly in the air, he stared at the ceiling but spoke to me. “No, what we need is to flip it all on its head. We need to look at the opposite of how it would appear. Say, then, that those images and that recording of Vanessa and Noah are real, Caelan. What does that tell you?”
“Th
at he did love her.”
He nodded hard at me, trying to get my mind to roll with his.
“And if that was the case…” My brain was trying to latch onto something, but it was too exhausting. That, luckily, was why I brought Jonathon in.
Standing, he started to pace around the room. “If your brother genuinely did love her, then he certainly wouldn’t expose their affair to her husband. He didn’t expose her to Sergeant Norwood because he was in love with her, not because he was trying to blackmail her!”
“So, all the evidence in the file…”
“Wasn’t Noah’s file at all. But someone else’s. Someone who needed Noah out of the picture. You have been looking at this game as if someone has been trying to kill both you and Vanessa Barnes, or at least is hell bent on revenge. But…” He stopped frantically pacing and spun around to face me, although I wasn’t sure he was seeing me. “Take you out of the equation. You’re just collateral damage.”
“Will you stop being so damn cryptic!”
“Okay, so let’s get this straight. Your girl was married to Denny Barnes, and her father is Maksim Alexeev, making her technically the next in line to not only take over her husband’s firm but the Russian fucking mafia as well!”
I nodded, peering at him when I knew he was baffled with something. “What are you thinking, Jon?”
“That this makes her one hell of a prize.”
“And one hell of a target. Yeah, I know all this...”
“No.” He shook his head and pointed a finger at me. “You’re looking for a different angle don’t forget, Caelan. Well, I’m giving you one.”
“I don’t follow.”
Exhaling slowly, he fixed me with a stare that made my skin prickle. “What if the Game Master wasn’t trying to get rid of her, or isn’t hellbent of vengeance either?”
“Jesus, spit it out!”
“What if,” he growled, frustrated at my idiocy. “It wasn’t a game to get her out of the picture…”
“But get her in it!” I finished when it all clicked into place.
How could we have been so stupid?
“Jesus! Fuck!”
“Jesus. Fuck. Indeed,” Jonathon echoed. “Now you’ve just found your Game Master!”
Day 20
16:10
Nessa
Graham Frank Johns
Beloved husband and father
12.03.1958 – 28.04.2015
I didn’t turn around. I knew I would vomit if I had to lay my eyes on him. “Why, Frank?”
Apart from nausea, I was calmer than I thought. Whether it was because I knew it was finally the end of this stupid bloody game, or whether it was because it was the end of me, I couldn’t tell you. What I did know though, was how much Frank’s betrayal hurt me, but not for me, for Denny.
“Not really hard to work out, is it, Dr Griffiths?”
Keeping my concentration on the epitaph of the man who had raised not only a traitor but a cold and calculated man of the lowest level, I shook my head sadly. “You wanted to marry me for London?”
I shivered when he stepped up beside me and I felt the heat of his breath on the nape of my neck. “It was the only way to get you to come to me for a favour. You’re a stubborn woman at best.”
“After Denny’s death, I stepped down and let you run the firm, Frank. You killed my mother and Stuart. If you had come to me, I would have signed the whole thing over to you. Their lives were worth more than this rotten business anyway!”
“Oh, I want more than just London. I deserve your beloved Russia too.”
“You deserve to die a slow death! That’s what happens to traitors!” I spat, finally turning on him. “So, you orchestrated all this just so I would marry you?”
He smirked, but only answered with a shrug.
“You never heard of divorce? Because when I found out that this was all you…” I took a step back. “Jesus, that’s why you made it all point to Denny. You didn’t think I would ever find out. Did you?”
Crossing his arms over his chest, his cold expression made me want to set him on fire to prepare him ready for hell. “Why the hell did you think I took out Noah?”
Like a baseball bat to the temple, the truth hit me so hard that I stumbled backwards and had to cling onto the headstone for support. “Oh, God! It was you who planted that file for me to find. Noah wasn’t going to reveal our affair to Denny at all. You snuck into Noah’s apartment while I ‘drown’ him and hid it in that locker in the tube station to cover your tracks.”
“I told you I knew you had more intellect than Fen. Yes, I made that video of the two of you, and took the photos.” He curled his lip as if disgusted. “You assumed Noah had believed his cover had been blown, when in actual fact, he didn’t have a clue. I needed you to see who he really was, because despite what you think, Nessa, he was as bent as they come.”
“But he still loved me. You turned all this onto him. You led me to believe that he hadn’t loved me.”
“Whether he loved you or not, he was still a slimy pig that was basking in mud that would eventually clog his treacherous lungs. You make out you’re all holier than I and dare to call me a traitor. You had an affair! Denny loved you, Nessa! He did everything he did for you! Don’t you stand there judging me!”
“You actually believe that? You stupid prick. Denny held your hand through life…”
“No!” he screamed, bringing his face an inch from mine “It was my brawn that made every man fear us. It was my muscle that nurtured the firm!”
“It was Denny’s brains that built the firm he invested his life into,” I yelled back. “It was Denny who negotiated deals. It was Denny who put in the blood, sweat and tears to give the business a reputation every other gang lord feared. It was his choices that made the firm grow to be untouchable! And it was Denny who allowed you to join him. He gave you a life! And he sure as hell didn’t owe you shit!”
Sucking air through my teeth, I instinctively pressed a hand to my cheekbone when he punched me in the face and sent me sprawling across his father’s final resting place. I should have seen it coming, but my reflexes were in as much shock as my brain.
“You know,” I said, wiping the blood that trickled down my face from where his ring had cut me. “I really thought that it was Denny because the Game Master knew personal stuff no one else could.”
“That’s exactly what I made you think.”
“But you know why you knew all Denny’s secrets, Frank?” I stood up and faced him off. “Because you were his best friend, and he trusted you enough to confide in you about every aspect of his life, not just business!” Sorrow seeped into my bones as I turned to face the part of the graveyard where my husband truly was buried. “In the end, we all betrayed him.”
“Denny was getting soft. If I knew what Noah was, he should have. But he was too invested in you and in greasing palms. Instead of achieving what we wanted by making other firms fear us, he kissed their damn feet.”
“Because that’s who Denny was and how he worked. He’d rather deal with shit by talking it out first, try to establish an agreement. You and I both know that if that didn’t work, only then would he revert to violence. He just preferred neutral ground first! You always were a time bomb waiting to go off. Denny knew it too.”
“You think I didn’t know he was pushing me out?”
“That he was preparing to downgrade you? Oh, yeah, he knew you knew. The thing was, he didn’t care whether you had found out or not. You were becoming selfish, greedy.”
His icy stare chilled my bones more than the drop in the December temperature, and I shivered.
“Why the hell do you think Denny was found burned, Ness? Caelan shot Denny in the back. That’s the sign of a coward, right there!” He took a step closer to me, pressing me back against the headstone again. “The fool then walked away and left him. Rule number one, always check your prey is dead before you leave it for the vultures to find.”
Realisation made me fr
eeze, the impact of what he was saying ramming my breath back down my throat.
“Denny faked death so Caelan would walk away, and then he managed to call me to go and help him. He was in an abandoned warehouse and was bleeding badly when I got there. He was handed to me on a plate, Missy. Such a perfect opportunity for me to begin my plan to take over the firm.”
“God, Frank.” Tears scorched my face, and I sank into the dirt of the freshly filled hole in the ground. “I almost wish it had been Denny that had done this.”
Laughing, he bent and stared me straight in the eye. “And you said that Denny was the clever one. Wouldn’t you agree that it takes a genius to plan The Game that you didn’t win?”
“You once told me there’s a fine line between genius and crazy. Which one are you?”
Years of hurt, years of denying what was in my blood. Years of struggling to remain who I thought I was, who I felt I should be. Yet, in the end, it was who I was that would be my actual downfall. I had fought for so long that, in the end, none of it had mattered at all.
The Game Master had won.
I didn’t fight any longer. I was tired of fighting, and when Frank pulled a syringe from his pocket and stabbed it into the side of my neck, I welcomed the end square.
Day 20
19:57
Caelan
Maksim Alexeev was a legend in his own right. Take his daughter away from him, and he became a force to be reckoned with.
By the time Taylor Williamson and his men had a chance to even lay a finger on their own weapons, Maksim’s men had the muzzle of a gun pointed at each and every head in The King and County.
“I’m not in the mood for pleasantries,” Maksim growled at Taylor, his own gun rammed underneath Taylor’s chin. I wouldn’t dispute the fact that I got a certain amount of satisfaction from seeing the hint of fear behind his eyes.
Taylor gave him a nod, and Maksim removed his gun. Gesturing to his men, he ordered them to stand down, but I saw how they remained fixed entirely on the men they stood beside.
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