Dividing Line Origins (Short story anthology - Dividing Line Series)

by Heather Atkinson

  “If you’re going to kill me then you’ll look into my eyes as you do it,” she told him. Her lips curled into a sneer. “You’re just like Jasper.”

  “I’m fucking not,” he roared in her face.

  “Yes you are, using your pain as an excuse to hurt someone who was nothing to do with what caused you that pain. Go on then, throw me out the fucking window and watch your actions destroy you.”

  Her voice bounced powerfully around the empty room, hitting him with the force of a gunshot. He knew she was right. Killing her would only momentarily make him feel better, he’d loathe himself for becoming the person he hated most. Zoe wouldn’t want this, not in her name.

  With an angry snarl he pushed her aside and she went skidding across the floor, the pain of her bare skin dragging across the rough wooden floorboards nothing compared to the relief that she was still in one piece.

  Riley picked up her leather jacket, which lay discarded on the dusty floor, and hacked at the patch on the back with Jules’s own knife, shredding the grinning devil face.

  “You see this,” he said, waving it in front of her. “Your club’s on borrowed time. One day I’ll fucking finish the lot of you. Lucifer’s Shadow is done. If you think about coming after me and taking me out before I have the chance then I will kill you. No second chances.” He loomed over her and she stared back at him fearlessly. “Just remember I spared you today, I did something that is entirely beyond wasters like you and your boyfriend. I spared you when I could have easily killed you but if I ever see you again, I don’t care where it is, I will fucking murder you and not think twice. I swear it.”

  “Message understood,” she calmly replied.

  He gave one hard nod then started rifling through her jacket pockets, hoping to come across something that would tell him where Jasper was, but there was sod all. Instead he went through her purse.

  “Jules Parker,” he said, holding up the driver’s licence, squinting in the gloom. “Shame, I already have this address.” He threw it on the floor and pulled out a photo of a beautiful little girl who looked about nine or ten with big blue eyes wearing a pink hat. “Is this Cara?”

  “Put it back,” she spat, dragging herself up to a sitting position.

  “That’ll be a yes then.”

  “I said put it back.”

  “This is important to you, is it?” he said, dangling it before her.

  “It was the last photo taken of her before she died so you will put it back,” she screeched, fighting against her bonds.

  It was then he noticed the tube in the little girl’s nose, her emaciated limbs, the hat hiding the hairless head and he felt like a shit. Tormenting this woman was getting him nowhere but he couldn’t help it, he fucking hated her. She was the leader of the people who had torn his life apart and she’d done nothing to stop it. He wanted her to suffer, even if it wasn’t as much as he’d originally planned. So he tossed the photo onto the floor. The purse was stuffed full of money, more than he earned in months, but he ignored it.

  “Library card?” he said with a raised eyebrow.

  “I like to read. Problem with that?” she yelled.

  “I didn’t think you knew how.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, like I’m a fucking genius.” She was getting lairy again now she knew he wasn’t going to kill her and she was furious about being bested like this.

  “Oh yeah, it shows,” he said, indicating her helpless position.

  “This is only because of your training. If your weren’t a fucking elite soldier I’d have kicked your head in.”

  “Well I am and you didn’t and I’m getting sick of you.”

  He punched her hard in the face, knocking her out and the peace and quiet was a relief. Riley gazed down at her, knowing how easy it would be to snuff her out and get rid of the threat of her once and for all but he wouldn’t because that would turn him into the thing he hated most. Jasper was the ringleader, he was the reason Zoe and Maisie were dead and he would be the one to pay, along with Stoner because he’d inflicted just as much pain on them as Jasper had.

  He was well aware that this night marked a crossroads for him. Killing Venom would have sent him down the wrong path, leading to nothing but his own destruction. This way he was still the man Zoe had loved, undeniably altered after what he’d endured but still the same man, still deserving of her love. As he watched Venom unconscious on the floor, put there by him, he swallowed down his hatred and anger. Jasper was gone and he would be back one day but it could be months or even years before he got the revenge he so desperately craved and he would go insane if he didn’t get a grip. Instead he turned all the fire inside him into a cold, hard ball that he would nurture and contain until it was time for it to be unleashed.

  Riley cut the cable tie tethering Venom’s hands with her own knife then left both her blades beside her before walking away. He’d left her alive this time but if he saw her again he would carry through his threat to kill her, he never gave more than one chance.

  Riley walked out of that building a stronger, colder man than the raging wreck that had entered it, nurturing his hatred and grief. It would find its release one day and when it did it would be spectacular.

  ESTELLE

  Estelle sat before the mirror on her rickety, cluttered dressing table applying her make-up with a shaky hand. Blue eye shadow to bring out the grey in her eyes, bright red lipstick, a touch of mascara and peach blusher to highlight her prominent cheekbones. She lowered her hand to admire the results, pleased by what she saw. She’d always been beautiful, never gaining weight despite seven pregnancies, her alluring grey eyes that had hypnotised many men, the bone structure to die for.

  What Estelle failed to realise was that her body was so thin due to the constant drug abuse and the fact she rarely ate. The dull, greasy skin stretched tightly across the prominent bones of her face gave her a skeletal look, the grey eyes glassy and sunken as the drugs she’d recently taken started to wear off. She ran a brush through her dry, straw-like peroxide hair, seeing a cascade of golden silk instead of the truth.

  She glanced at the clock on the wall. Six thirty. She was meeting her boyfriend Jay in the pub at seven so she just had time for a quick pick-me-up.

  Estelle retrieved the little plastic bag containing her stash from beneath the loose floorboard beside her bed. She paused, staring into the hole at the large bags of powder hidden along with her own small stash, fighting the desire to tear into them. They belonged to Jay and he’d kill her if she touched them. Instead she cut herself a line of coke from her own stash on a small mirror using her eldest son’s library card. The little bastard had gone through five of them, always trying to hide them from her but she always found them. Maybe it would teach him not to be such a stuck-up, know-it-all little ponce. Who needed books to get through life? He thought he was so much better than her because he was into books and learning, coming out with smart-arsed comments she didn’t understand. He was just like his granddad, who thankfully had died when she was a teenager. He’d been the same - a snobby university professor, some sort of literary genius. She didn’t know any details about his work, she had never cared enough to find out.

  Ryan was just the same, he was getting ideas above his station and he needed a sharp reminder that he was a fucking Law. He was going to get one too and if he didn’t start toeing the fucking line he would get an even harsher life lesson. She smiled at the thought. Her other kids didn’t suffer from her disdain as much as Ryan. At fifteen he was her eldest, the one whose birth had changed her life, cramped her style. She would have been happy to give him up, let Social Services take him off her hands but his father, Stuart Cutter, a local gangster, had refused to allow it. It was alright for him, living in his big posh drum with his huge pile of cash. But he had to keep his illegitimate son quiet from his shrew of a wife, so Estelle had been stuck with Ryan. Stuart gave her money regularly for his son’s upkeep but she had refused to spend a single penny on th
e little creep and it all went to keep her in drugs and booze, it was her compensation for being lumbered all these years with someone she couldn’t stand.

  As he’d got older she’d realised he did have his uses, namely babysitting his four younger brothers so she could go out. She had two daughters but she’d managed to get rid of them. Bianca had gone to live with her dad years ago and she hardly saw her. She’d sold Jules, her second eldest child, the moment she was born to a pair of posh perverts. Sometimes she wished she’d kept the girls and got rid of the boys instead. She knew plenty of people who would have paid good money to go with them, she could have taught them her trade, raised them to be like her. They would have worshipped the ground she walked on. She couldn’t relate to the boys in any way. Jez and Jamie, her two youngest, weren’t so bad. They were still at an age where they listened to what she said but Adam and Simmy were getting to be as lairy as Ryan. He was doing it to them on purpose just to annoy her. Estelle smiled her wicked, lazy smile, failing to spot the lipstick on her loose yellow teeth. He’d soon change his tune after tonight.

  She stepped out of her bedroom into the small, cramped living room where her five boys were gathered. Adam, Simmy and Jamie were sat on the threadbare carpet watching cartoons on the tiny television. Five year old Jez was colouring at the rickety little table by the window, his legs kicking in eagerness as his hand flew over the page, he loved to draw. Hatred fill Estelle up as she watched Ryan sat on the couch reading fucking Dickens of all things. Her dad had loved Dickens too, had tried to encourage her, told her she had a good brain and she should use it but all she’d ever been interested in was going out with her friends and getting wasted. What was the point in being stuck inside with a book when you could be outside living and having a laugh? She’d never understood him and that had thrown up a huge barrier between them until she hadn’t given a shit about him either way. His early death, followed by her mother’s four years later, had little effect on her. In fact it had been a relief because she could finally live how she wanted to live. The money they’d left her had run through her fingers like water, so, a year after their deaths, she’d been forced to start working as a prostitute to keep her in drugs and alcohol. Not that she minded, she was a bit of a celebrity in these parts, her antics over the years securing her a reputation as someone not to mess with. Although not at all handy with her fists her enormous gob made everyone think she was and that kept her enemies, of which she had many, at bay.

  Now her pain in the arse dad was reincarnated in the form of the skinny boy before her. She had to admit Ryan had an elegance about him, the long lean legs gracefully crossed, back straight, long fingers cradling the book. His movements never looked effeminate, far from it, he exuded testosterone. Already he was attracting plenty of attention from the girls on the estate, his thick, permanently tousled dark hair, grey eyes and smooth strong features more than making up for his lanky frame. Those cunning eyes of his flicked from his book to her with such speed it startled her, the intelligence in them burning like a fire.

  “Going out Mother?” he said sarcastically. He always made the word mother sound like an insult but he rarely used it, preferring to call her Estelle. He didn’t see her as a parent but then she didn’t see him as a child. To her he was just a pain in the backside and a convenient babysitter.

  “Yes I am so you’re going to stay here and look after your brothers.”

  “Someone has to I suppose,” he sniffed.

  Estelle opened her mouth to hurl a torrent of abuse at him then closed it. He was going to get what was coming to him. “That a library book?” she said instead.

  “It is,” he replied, turning the page, his attention once again on the book. “My library card managed to disappear all by itself again but Mrs Henderson is so good to me she got me a new one. She said I could keep it there so I won’t lose it again.”

  His voice dripped accusation as well as condescension and Estelle was unable to contain herself. “You should watch your fucking gob a bit more mouth almighty before someone shuts if for you.”

  Slowly he lowered the book to regard her with suspicion. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’ll see,” she smirked. She would have liked to have added more but she felt something tugging at the hem of her new electric pink skirt, bought with Stuart Cutter’s money. She looked down to see Jez waving a piece of paper at her. “Get off, you’re covered in fucking jam,” she exclaimed, snatching her skirt from his grip.

  In his surprise little Jez staggered back, afraid of his mother’s wrath, the paper falling from his hands, which she stomped all over in her high heels in her haste for the door.

  Jez looked down at his drawing, marred by stiletto pinpricks, and started to cry.

  “The bitch,” muttered Ryan, casting aside his book and getting up to comfort him. “Let’s have a look,” he said, picking up the drawing.

  “Stop bawling Jez, we’re trying to watch the telly,” snapped Simmy.

  “Shut it. He’s upset,” barked Ryan.

  When Ryan turned back to Jez, Simmy gave him the finger behind his back.

  Ryan stared at the scrawled picture of a stick figure wearing a tight skirt and high heels with sticky-out blond hair. Ryan’s heart sank to see the dusting of white on her nose and the track marks up and down her arms. “It’s Mum, isn’t it?”

  Jez nodded, his wails turning into quiet sobs.

  “Why don’t you draw me or one of your other brothers?”

  Jez shook his head, lip stuck out. He picked up his pack of crayons off the table and hurled them into the overflowing bin.

  “Don’t do that, you love colouring,” said Ryan, retrieving them and wiping off the blob of ketchup stuck to the packet.

  Jez stormed into his bedroom and slammed the door shut. Ryan sighed when he heard him crying but decided to leave him to it, not sure what he should do for the best. He was only fifteen himself and sometimes he was uncertain about how to handle his brothers’ moods and tantrums. There were times when he resented them because it meant he was always stuck inside babysitting while his friends were out. He told himself over and over that it wasn’t their fault, it was Estelle’s, but he couldn’t help how he felt.

  With a sigh he sank back onto the couch and glared at the drawing of the woman who had birthed him, fighting the urge to tear it to pieces. That wouldn’t be fair on Jez. Instead he picked up his book and lost himself in another time and place. Anything was preferable to his own.

  “Alright sexy?” grinned Jay when Estelle walked into the pub.

  He pulled her to him, hand all over her backside and thrust his tongue into her mouth. The taste of vodka on his lips did more for her than the kiss. Jay did beat her when the mood took him but he was up and coming in the criminal underworld, a petty dealer who would one day be big, she was sure of it. He was nowhere near Terry Maguire’s league or Stuart Cutter’s - the fathers of two of her kids - but with him she had status and regular access to drugs. Plus he threw a few quid her way when she really needed it. She could do a lot worse.

  “All set for tonight?” he said.

  Estelle nodded. “And not a minute too soon. He’s got worse, little bastard.”

  “Don’t you worry love. After tonight Ryan will be as good as gold, promise.”

  “How far are you going to go?”

  “As far as it takes.”

  Estelle beamed and raised her glass of vodka in a toast. “Don’t hold back will you?”

  Jay grinned wickedly and clinked his glass against hers.

  “Mummy’s home,” called Estelle as she walked through the door of her flat.

  “Oh joy,” said Ryan dryly, putting down his book, annoyed by the interruption. He’d been so close to finishing it. His eyes narrowed and he jumped to his feet when Jay and his best friend, Chris, entered the room. “What are they doing here?” he demanded.

  “This is my flat and I’ll invite in who I want,” replied Estelle. She snatched Jamie’s hand a
nd dragged him roughly to his feet. Jez too found himself grabbed by the wrist and the two boys were hauled towards the door. “Adam, Simmy, come on. Mummy’s taking you for a walk.”

  “It’s nine o’clock at night, it’s too late,” protested Ryan.

  “They’re my kids, I’ll do what I want with them,” she screeched at him. “You see what I have to put up with?” she said, addressing Jay.

  “I do,” he replied, gaze fixed on Ryan.

  “Jay wants a word with you Ryan, that’s why we’re going for a walk.”

  “What about?” said Ryan. “Oy, Estelle,” he yelled as she continued to drag the youngest two boys to the door, Adam and Simmy slinking after them, looking back at him over their shoulders in confusion.

  When Ryan attempted to follow the rest of his family Jay and Chris blocked his way. He was tempted to try and fight his way out but they were both much bigger than him. “Estelle,” he shouted again.

  She looked back at him triumphantly before slamming the door shut. As she walked away from the flat, pulling the boys along impatiently, she smiled at the sound of her eldest son’s cries for her to help him.

  Estelle returned to a silent flat with the four boys an hour later. Jay and his friend had gone. She pressed her ear to the door of the bedroom Ryan shared with Jez and Jamie but could hear nothing. She couldn’t even be sure he was in there.

  Leaving the boys in the front room with the television she retreated to her own bedroom for some peace and another line. Even one hour in the company of her own kids had seriously got on her nerves and she needed a break.

  Estelle snorted the white powder and threw back her head, enjoying the tingle, feeling the annoyance drain out of her. She released a low cackle when she heard Ryan bellow at one of his brothers to get out of his bedroom. So he was still here after all and he was upset.

  Her bedroom door slowly creaked open and Simmy’s head popped round it. “Mum, Jamie wants to go to bed but Ryan won’t let him in.”