Owned: An Alpha Anthology

by Jani Kay

  He shook his head before looking at me. "It’s a cut and shut Reed, the car’s fucking dodgy. If they pull me over, I’m looking at doing time." His eyes were back on the road and his foot was now back down on the pedal as we roared forward.

  "What the fuck, Miles. Why? Why the fuck are you driving around in a cut and shut?"

  "Because Reed, because for once I wanted something nice around me. For once I wanted something that everybody else was jealous of. I didn’t want to be that poor kid whose mum got murdered by her drug dealer. I didn’t want to be Miles, you know, his dad’s the piss head that used to be in the SAS." He grips the wheel tighter as he shouts. We’re travelling down country lanes and as I look down at the speedo, I can see that we’re hitting tops of one hundred and twenty, one thirty miles an hour. The blue flashing lights of the police car are still following in the distance behind us.

  "Slowdown Miles, slow the fuck down."

  "No, no Reed, I can’t. I can’t get caught. Don’t you see, if I get caught, I’ll get nicked. I’ll probably go to prison, and all those arseholes that talk about us, the people that look down their noses and think they’re better than us, that think we’re scum, like your girlfriend’s mum and dad, I’ll just be making them right. I’ll just be making things worse for you."

  Then everything seemed to happen in slow motion. A car came toward us, I think Miles tried to swerve and we ended up going down an embankment. That’s when the car split in two. The back end of the car rolled and pulled the front with it. A branch came through the window and I ducked down in my seat, Miles didn’t and snap, his neck was broken. We came to a stop with the car on its side. I could still hear the sirens for a while, then people shouting and above it all, while I lay trapped by my seat belt, staring into the eyes of my dead brother, I could hear the Chili Peppers sing about their lonely view.

  Physically, I walked away unscathed. I had some bruising, some scratches and the nylon of the seat belt caused a friction burn across my neck and chest but other than that, I was fine.

  The car was the result of two insurance write-offs being salvaged and welded together to make one car. Miles was well aware of what he was purchasing, but he didn’t care. He was driving around in a thirty thousand pound car that he’d paid five thousand for, and that’s all that had mattered to him. His safety, the safety of his passengers or anyone else on the road was inconsequential to him. He’d driven my nieces and nephews around in that car. He’d given Tyler’s wife Jenna, a lift in that car when she was pregnant with their little boy Ethan.

  As well as the details about the car, the coroner’s report also concluded that he was three times over the legal blood alcohol limit and traces of cannabis and MDMA, otherwise known as ecstasy were found in his system. It turned out, I didn’t know my brother at all.

  And because I’d been in a bit of trouble with the police when I was fourteen, I spent three months locked up on remand before the courts decided there was nothing they could charge me with. I had no idea the car was illegal and no idea that my brother was over the limit. Well, maybe with regard to the drink, but I had no idea he’d smoked weed and had popped a pill. I knew he was no angel, none of us were. We were of the generation, and from an area where doing a line of charlie and popping a few pills on a Saturday night, was as normal as going for a few beers and a curry. It’s just how it was. I smoked my first joint when I was about fifteen, which was old compared to a lot of the kids at my school. What we didn’t do though was get in a car and drive once we were stoned or high, ever. Apparently, my brother didn’t live by that rule and that, combined with the condition of the car we were in, cost him his life.

  My heart is pounding hard as I relive all of those events. I never normally let any of those thoughts or memories come to the surface but sometimes, sometimes, I’m just too tired to keep them away and that’s exactly how I feel right now. Exhausted. I want to get back to England, spend time with my brothers, their wives and their kids. I want to walk my dogs, play golf and sometimes, spend whole days, doing absolutely nothing.

  I close my eyes and drift off to sleep.

  REED BY LESLEY JONES

  4

  I pull the pillow over my head to try and block out the screams. I can’t remember what it was I was actually dreaming, but the girl’s screams were beginning to piss me off. There’s banging at my bedroom door and I assume I’ve been shouting in my sleep and Jet’s come to check if I’m okay. I’ve suffered from nightmares since the accident; I even walk as well as talk in my sleep.

  My eyes open instantly as I hear a girl scream my name from outside my bedroom door, the same scream I thought I was dreaming a few minutes ago.

  I jump up and unlock the door, it’s Lara, she’s naked and sobbing. What the fuck has Jet done to her? Sometimes he goes too fucking far with his freaky sex shit. I’m weird, but he blows anything my twisted brain can come up with right out of the water. It’s bad enough when it’s in a group, but when it’s just him and a girl together, they tend to get a little freaked out. Handcuffs, blindfold, ball gag and whips can be a bit too much for a girl that’s never tried it before, especially one you only met ten minutes beforehand.

  Lara throws herself at me and I can feel her shake. "Reed," she sobs and points to Jet’s room across the other side of the suite. I start to walk over to where she’s pointing when she says from behind me, "Don’t look, Reed. Don’t go in there." I turn and look at her with a frown, then carry on making my way into Jet’s bedroom, calling his name as I do. He’s not in his bed, so I walk through to his bathroom. His room’s a replica of mine, with a huge sunken Roman bath in the centre of the room and a walk in shower on one side, toilet on the other. I don’t see him in the bathroom at first, then as I turn to walk back through to the bedroom, I see that the bath is filled to the top with water and that the water is red and Jet’s laying face up at the bottom of the bath.

  "No, no, no." I climb in and lift him up, screaming at Lara to call for help. Call for an ambulance, the paramedics, the police, any fucker that might be able to help me. I call his name and slap his face.

  "What have you done? What the fuck have you done?" He’s cut his wrists, but he’s not bleeding. Perhaps he didn’t cut deep enough? Perhaps the water’s just red from where he’s broken the skin? I notice that he’s blue around his mouth, so I hold his nose and start blowing in it. I don’t know first aid, but I’ve seen them do this on Bondi Rescue.

  Me and the boys love that show. We went and met them all and gave them some signed shit when we toured Australia. We were in awe of those blokes and acted like a bunch of fan girls.

  I’ve no idea how long I’ve been sitting there when I hear a commotion and a policeman walks in the room, followed by two paramedics and another policeman. I don’t say a word as the paramedics take him from me and get to work. But I know because I searched everywhere. I’m not an expert and I’ve no idea what’s the correct way to find a pulse, but I knew he didn’t have one. I knew he wasn’t breathing and they didn’t need to waste their time doing all that shit they were doing.

  He was dead.

  Jet was gone.

  He is dead.

  The next few hours were a blur. Lawson arrived in our room, then Dom and Gunner. The police wouldn’t let me see anyone at first, then Laws got a lawyer from somewhere and he sat with me while the police asked me questions. I might’ve been in shock, but I wasn’t stupid. I told them that I knew nothing; that we came back here after last night’s show, there were a few people hanging around, but I wasn’t in the mood to party so I went to bed. The next thing I know, Lara’s screaming and banging at my door. I assume Lara’s giving her statement somewhere and hopefully she’s saying something along the lines of what I am. Otherwise, we’re both fucked.

  Finally, Jet’s body is removed. The forensic team pack up their stuff and the police leave. I’m eventually allowed out of Jet’s bedroom, where I’ve been held since the police arrived. Swabs have been taken from under my fingerna
ils and my prints were taken. I’m still only wearing my boxers and I’m freezing. I walk past Lawson and the boys, straight to my room and pull a hoodie and a pair of joggers from my case. I put them on while the boys all stand and watch.

  Everybody is silent.

  Jet’s dead.

  He swallowed a bottle of thirty Valium, washed them down with a bottle of Grey Goose and then just in case that didn’t work, he cut his wrists. As the Valium sent him off to a sleep that he’ll never wake up from, he’d bled out around a quarter of the blood in his body until his heart just stopped. That’s what the forensic and paramedic teams are assuming, but they won’t know for sure until an autopsy is done. I’m amazed at how much info I took in from the paramedic’s conversation with the police.

  I look at Lawson, Dom and Gunner. "Jet’s dead," I tell them. "He washed thirty Valium down with a bottle of vodka and then just to make sure that the job was done, he slit his wrists. He’s dead. I found him at the bottom of his bath. He’s dead, Jet’s dead." They’re all staring at me blankly, still not saying a word. "Do you hear what I’m saying, are any of you even listening to me? He’s dead, he’s fucking dead." I can hear myself getting louder and louder.

  Gunner steps forward and wraps his arms around me. "Shit Reed, this is fucked. I’m so sorry you had to see all that mate." I’m not a big fan of human contact. I usually try to avoid it. When we’re on stage or working, it’s different, I can deal with it but once emotions become involved, I don’t like it. I’m always worried that I’ll lose control and start to feel, and I hate it when I feel. I’m feeling now and it hurts, it hurts so fucking much.

  I don’t know where it comes from, but Dom’s suddenly putting a whisky tumbler in my hand. I take it and go and sit on the edge of the bed and knock back the drink. It calms me down instantly.

  "Sorry," I say, looking up at each of them in turn. "I’m sorry boys. Fuck. What a morning. What time is it?" Laws sits down next to me. He’s our manager, but he’s only a couple of years older than me. He’s usually composed, he’s usually wearing a suit and he’s usually got the answer to each and every problem we might encounter. Lawson and I get on well, he’s English, which is a start and he’s single. We’ve spent a few wild nights together in the company of a few willing women. Lawson has the look of a well-educated English gentleman, but I happen to know that he’s from Essex and a bit rough around the edges. Although he did go to university, so he’s better educated than me.

  "It’s just gone one. What the fuck happened, Reed?"

  Dom takes the glass from my hand as I stare down at the carpet. I rub both hands over the stubble on my jaw and look at Lawson, who’s now sitting next to me on the bed.

  "It’s my fault. He did this because I told him I was leaving the band."

  Lawson frowns. "What? Why? Why would you tell him that?"

  Gunner sits down on a chair that he’s brought in from the living area of the suite and sits on it. Dom comes back with a bottle of bourbon and four glasses. I watch as he sets them down on the unit below the television and pours us each a glass full. He passes one to each of us and then sits on the unit, facing me and Lawson. My heart’s still racing and I watch as my hand shakes while I hold the glass.

  Jet’s dead.

  My best mate is dead and it’s all my fault.

  He killed himself because of what I said to him. I drain what’s in the glass and hold it out to Dom for a top up. My throat burns from the alcohol but I like it, the sensation distracts me from the thoughts racing through my brain.

  "You know what, all these years I’ve blamed her. I thought it was her fault for not turning up, that my brother died," Dom passes me my refilled glass and I take a sip. "But it wasn’t her. It was me. First my mum, then Miles, now Jet. They’re all dead because of me. It’s me, not her."

  "Reed, calm the fuck down mate and just tell us what happened," Lawson asks again.

  I wipe my nose with the back of my hand and look at my bandmates. They all know my story, they know my mum was murdered and that my brother was killed, the whole fucking world knows that story. Every newspaper and magazine run with it when we first made it big. They all jumped on the bad boy Conner Reed bandwagon. ‘Con the Con’ being their favourite headline when they found out I’d been banged up. All the money they made reporting on other people’s misery and they couldn’t come up with a better headline than that? Fucktards, the fucking lot of them. It had snowballed from there. Once they found out how my brother was killed and that I was in the car with him, the sympathy lasted for all of twenty seconds before they started reporting on the fact that I was locked up while the accident was investigated. Then the fuckers found out I’d been in trouble at fourteen and that’s when the ‘Conner the Convicted’ and ‘Con the Con’, headlines began.

  It was the local corner shop. Me and two mates found the back doors to the local corner shop open one night and we nicked some cigarettes and some bars of fucking galaxy. We were kids, we had an opportunity to nick some fags and make some money; it wasn’t an armed robbery. We didn’t hurt anyone. We didn’t realise we’d been caught on CCTV, and it didn’t take long for the shopkeeper to recognise us and for the police to come knocking on our door. I was fourteen, I’d never been in trouble with the police before so they gave me a caution, and my dad gave me a black eye and a split lip. I think he cracked a few of my ribs too, but I wasn’t allowed to go to the hospital to find out. Once that story was reported, some nosey young journalist decided to dig even deeper into my past and found out the story of my mum’s murder. Then everything changed again and I was ‘Poor Reed’ or ‘Broken Bad Boy Conner Reed’s Heart Breaking Past Revealed.’ Or some other bullshit, piss poor headline.

  And suddenly, in this moment, it all becomes clear. They all died because of me. I was four years old when I unknowingly opened the front door to my mum’s drug dealer. He choked her to death. Strangled her while I hid between the sofa and the wall. My brothers came home from school and found her dead and me still hiding. We were all sent back to live with my dad after that.

  My mum had left him and moved us off of the army base two years before. But being back in London, back to the old estate she grew up on, she’d fallen back into all her old habits. She was just out of rehab when my dad met her and had stayed clean for ten years, but as soon as she was back in London that all changed.

  My dad had just left the army when we all moved back in with him. He’d gone back to Surrey and was living in a bedsit. Because of the circumstances, the council re-housed him and moved us all into a three bedroomed house. We lived in the rougher part of a nice area and for a few years, despite not having a mum, we had an idyllic childhood. The trauma that had affected our young lives, mostly forgotten. My dad was a good man and worked nights as a nightclub bouncer and as a security guard, so he could be there for us during the day. But he’d never gotten over my mum leaving him and he’d never recovered from her death. He’d always drunk, it was the reason she left him, but gradually, by the time I was about eight or nine, he was drunk all the time. He lost his jobs, which just gave him more time to drink. My older two brothers got out as soon as they turned sixteen and were working. Miles didn’t actually mind living at home, my dad ignored him for the most part, but me, he’d take a swing at me every time I walked past him. I’ve no idea what I’d done to suddenly make him hate me so much. If I could have afforded it, I’d have moved out as soon as I turned sixteen too. But I wanted to go to college so I could study music, and I did for a while, but then once me and Amoeba had come up with our plan to run away, I’d packed in college, started working and saved every penny that I could. I spent as little time as possible at home and as my dad was usually at the pub or unconscious on the sofa, we rarely came into contact with each other.

  I was seen by countless counsellors after my mum’s death, but I didn’t have anything to tell them. I couldn’t remember a thing. I dreamt about her often. I dreamt about the scruffy man with the tattoos, how he pulled up he
r nightshirt, held on to her hair and laid down on her back as he moved his hips backwards and forwards. His jeans were pulled down slightly and in my dream, she’d scream silently. He’d put his hand over her mouth and pull her hair harder. She kept her eyes open and just stared at me the whole time, putting her finger to her lips, warning me to be quiet. I’d squashed myself into a space between the wall and the end of the sofa. I often dream of the same man sitting on my mum’s chest, he smacks her around the face a few times, blood running from the corner of her mouth, but she just kept her eyes on me. It’s almost as if in this dream, I remember the other dream, I remember that she warned me to keep quiet. So, I stayed in my hiding spot and I stayed quiet and I watched as he squeezed his hands around her throat until she stopped moving, her eyes bulging out of her head, looking right at me. I have no idea if I dreamed what I’d actually witnessed, or if it’s what my brain has invented but it never changes, it’s the same two dreams all the time and sometimes both scenes become part of one dream. The so called ‘experts’ had no idea if I’d just blanked it all out, or if I genuinely didn’t see anything. The dreams and occasional flashbacks told me that I’d probably seen it all but I kept quiet, keeping it to myself. I didn’t want anyone else poking around inside my head and I didn’t want my brothers to have to know what I saw that day, so I just stayed quiet, kept it locked away.

  They’d caught the man responsible the very same day. I picked his picture out of a book and told the nice lady that gave me Fruit Pastilles and Smarties that he was the man that came to our house that morning. He was the man that I opened the door to, but that was all I told her about that day. My evidence, combined with the DNA they’d removed from the scene and my mum’s body, was enough to convict him. He’s dead now. Died in prison and I still keep it all locked away.

  "Why did you tell him you were leaving the band, Reed? Why would you say that to him?" I knock back the drink in my shaking hand, while Lawson repeats his question.