Diego: (Brighton Bad Boys 3)

by Tilly Delane

  Julian looks to me as he digests this information, comprehension finally dawning. But Silas being Silas absolves me from having to back him up with anything more than a curt, affirmative nod, by turning his attention on Rowan next.

  “Swapsies,” he demands.

  He takes his hand off Rowan’s shoulder, and without a second glance at Julian, Rowan gets up and swaps seats with Silas. As soon as Silas sits between them, the atmosphere in the room changes. Silas cements the new serenity by turning his head to Julian and carrying on as if nothing had happened.

  “Now, you were saying?”

  I can tell that Julian is dumbfounded for a moment, but he glosses over it quickly.

  “The point wasn’t the fencing, though one might ask oneself why it is still up and who they are paying to keep it there. The point was that I pulled the planning application for the building works. Nothing interesting there. Standard rebuild stuff, as far as I can tell. But guess what I else I found on the site plans?”

  He gets up.

  “I’ll show you. I’ll go get it,” he says and leaves my office.

  Silas, Rowan and I sit in silence until Julian returns a couple of minutes later, flapping an A3 sheet of paper about. He lays it out on the table and remains standing over it. It’s the printout of a site plan. He points at a separate rectangle on the plan, a structure away from the main building.

  “Look, that’s an old air raid shelter. And a pretty big one by the looks of things.”

  “What? Out there? Why would there be an air raid shelter out there? Makes no sense,” I say, but the lettering on the plan verifies his words.

  “Because, at one point during the war, that farmhouse was an evacuation home.”

  “Cool,” Rowan says.

  “Very,” I agree as my mind starts bounding like a happy puppy.

  I look at Julian and he looks right back at me. I know we’re thinking the same thing. And a childish part in me wants to jump up and shout ‘knew it!’ but, of course, I don’t.

  “You don’t think we need to plant any product, do you?” I ask him with a smile.

  He shakes his head and sits back down, satisfied.

  “Nah, I think you’ll find plenty when you get there,” he answers with a wide grin, and turns to Rowan. “You didn’t see anything that told you they were cooking up there?”

  Rowan ignores the taunting undertone and draws his eyebrows together, thinking. I see his cogs ticking before he shakes his head.

  “No, I was kind of focused on Cormac and trying to get across to him that I really didn’t want to see two dogs ripping each other to shreds, you know. Also, there was so much junk up there, you know what the backs of farms look like, well this one looks like it fucking everywhere, front and back and all around, I could easily have missed it, especially if it’s underground. And it’s not like he gave me the grand tour, you know. Oh, and here’s my bedroom, and these are the kennels and by the way, over there is where we cook up the meths. But it makes perfect sense. I can see it as clearly as you can,” he concedes and gets up. “Well, it’s been fun but sounds like I’m not really needed here. Thanks for the flight tickets, though. Flying business is much more fun than economy. You even have somewhere to store your legs.”

  He tips his head at me as if he’s actually about to leave.

  “Sit down.”

  “Why? If you’re sure, just tip off the cops, sit back and watch the show.”

  I shake my head at him.

  “No, I don’t just want to be sure, I want to be certain,” I answer. “And if they’ve really been playing Breaking Bad up there, I want to know who their cookie is. Can you imagine Cormac or Callum making meths?”

  I watch him sit down again.

  “Exactly,” I add. “Now, let’s...”

  I don’t get further than that before a movement on the security feeds that stream on the screens above my office door catches my eye.

  “Motherfucker,” I curse as I watch my father enter the building.

  Right behind my woman.

  Kalina

  “Good afternoon, Kalina, Mr Benson.”

  I feel the presence breathing down my neck a split second before Ben, the doorman, names him for me. I have no idea where he suddenly came from, but he’s so close I can’t exactly turn around without bumping my face into his chest. So we are already through the door and in the building by the time I manage to clear enough space between us to be able to turn around and stick my hand out.

  “Hi, I’m Kalina, nice to meet you, sir,” I say, trying my hardest to sound sincere.

  The last and only time I saw this man, he was braying by the side of an emptied pool, rooting for Rowan to finish Silas off, for good. That alone would make me despise him, but the few things Diego has told me about his father didn’t make him any more desirable to be around either. As if to proof the point that he’s a prize arsehole, he doesn’t take my hand but just looks at it in disgust.

  “I know who you are, Polack.”

  “Suit yourself,” I answer and turn around to walk to the lift. “Diego is in the office.”

  I don’t expect him to follow me. The Santos-Benson Security office is on the first floor, and I assume he’ll take the stairs, so he doesn’t have to breathe the same air as the dirty Polish gold digger he clearly sees me as.

  I assume wrong.

  He stays where I left him, until the lift arrives, the door opens, and I’ve stepped inside. Then he suddenly clears the distance between us in long strides and slips into the metal box with me, just before the doors slide shut. The hairs on my neck stand up instantly, but there is nothing I can do about this. I’ve already turned the key in the keyhole that allows me to go all the way up to the penthouse, and we’re beginning to ascend.

  I reach out to press the first floor button, but with a swiftness I wouldn’t have expected of a man of his bulk, he slaps my hand away and then puts his body between the panel and me, forcing me to retreat if I don’t want to touch him.

  I really, really don’t.

  He’s not gross to look at and he doesn’t smell bad. In fact, he doesn’t smell that dissimilar to Diego, though his aftershave or deodorant or whatever is more assaulting. And I’d be happy if Diego looked like him by the time he’s in his fifties, maybe minus a bit of the bulk. George Benson senior still has a full head of hair, blonde like Diego’s but with grey in it, making it a shade lighter overall. His bone structure isn’t as attractive as Diego’s and his lips are thin, but he hasn’t aged badly. He’d be pleasant enough to look at, if it wasn’t for his eyes. The same shade of grey as Diego’s but watery and without any humour or passion in them, they crawl over me with undisguised hatred, taking in my tank top and shorts. It’s hot as Hades outside today, and my dungarees needed a wash. I wish I had waited another day now, because something else glitters in his eyes when he trails his gaze back up my naked legs. Something that puts me on high alert.

  “So you’re the reason my son won’t take my calls,” he says under his breath. “Can’t say I see the attraction. Let me see.”

  He reaches out and grabs my left boob, squeezing it hard through the fabric of my tank top. I yelp, while he shakes his head.

  “You’ve got no tits, girl.”

  Still holding my breast in a vice so painful it takes my breath and makes my eyes leak, he leans down to look into my face and snarls.

  “You sure you are a girl?”

  Then he grins.

  “I think I might find out for myself. Wouldn’t be the first time junior and I shared a whore.”

  And that’s when I unfreeze.

  Diego

  I’m not quick enough.

  I’ve barely got out of my chair by the time he’s followed her into the lift. My sudden movement wakes up Isla and she starts barking, while I watch in horror as the camera inside the lift shows my father leaning towards Kalina and grabbing her breast.

  I see red. Literally. Red dots start dancing in front of my eyes.
<
br />   I pull out the drawer of my desk and take out the 1911 I keep there, fully loaded. All three men in front of me blanch, especially Julian.

  “You keep a gun in our office?” he asks, as he springs to his feet. “Fuck me, Diego, we never agreed to that. What if─“

  “Shut up,” I cut him short. “Guys, he’s going for Kalina.”

  Silas and Rowan are already up and looking at the screen, when I say it. Unlike Julian, they might not be comfortable with firearms in general, but as soon as they realise what’s triggered me, they don’t question me, and we become one unit. We scramble out of my office, past Lila, leaving behind Julian and his still barking dog. As soon as I’m out on the landing, I look at the panel above the lift door, telling me that they’ve already reached the top floor. Rowan gets to the lift first and starts pressing the call button, but nothing happens. Of course.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I exclaim and start running up the stairs instead, Rowan and Silas hot on my heels.

  We pound the steps, two or three at a time, until we get to the steel barred door that prevents people from getting up the last flight of stairs to the penthouse. When I was a kid, it still had a normal lock with a keyhole, but even then, I always wondered what would happen if there was a fire and Nan wouldn’t be able to get to the key. So the first thing I did when I took over The Brick was to change the lock to a combination dial. I’ve never been so grateful yet so impatient at the same time. I stick the gun into the waistband of my jeans and with trembling fingers turn the dial back and forth on the combination.

  Everything just takes too long.

  Finally, there is a soft click and I swing the door open. The three of us start running again until we get to the fire exit door of the penthouse. It leads into the short hallway at the back of the penthouse, where Kalina’s study room, the kitchen and the guest bathroom are. I storm along the corridor, Rowan and Silas still at my back, until we get to the living room.

  I stop dead at the view in front of me.

  The lift door is open, my father’s unmoving body lying half inside, half out. Kalina has her back to us and is trying to drag him by the arms further into the penthouse. She is breathing heavily, struggling with his bulk.

  “Baby, stop!” I shout, and she jumps two feet in the air as she drops my father’s arms.

  She turns towards my voice, and a new surge of anger rushes through my body. Her tank top is ripped, exposing a breast, a stream of blood is flowing from her nose, and one of her cheeks is starting to swell from a cut. I unfreeze and in a few steps I’m with her, catching her trembling body in my arms.

  “He, he...” she starts against my chest but can’t get the words out.

  I wrap myself around her, kissing the top of her head, and hold her tight until I can feel her breathing relax back to normal. I watch as Rowan and Silas come around to check on the arsehole on the floor. They finish the job Kalina was doing and drag him fully into the penthouse then kneel by his shoulders, flanking him left and right as he coughs back to life.

  It’s a very distinctive cough.

  The cough of a man who’s been choked out.

  I release Kalina from my embrace, keeping my hands on her shoulders, and scrutinize her face. Despite the blood, structurally the nose doesn’t look too bad. I already know the doctors won’t set it if we go to A&E. The cut on her cheekbone is more of a scratch, left no doubt by my father’s signet ring. She looks up at me then down at herself before she glances over her shoulder at Silas and Rowan.

  “I...” she starts again, but I interrupt her.

  “Hang on,” I tell her and then pull my bloodstained t-shirt over my head.

  I bunch it up so I can pull the neckline open wide and carefully slip it over her head, avoiding any touch of her face. She smiles up at me gratefully as she slips her arms through the sleeves. I pull the hem down and smile back at her.

  “Right,” I say. “Better?”

  She nods, tears pooling in her eyes.

  I bend down to kiss them out of the corners before they can spill over.

  “Don’t cry, baby girl. If you cry, it’s gonna hurt like a bitch when it hits that scratch and on the inside of your nose. You’re safe. You’re good. You did good,” I say, straightening up and frowning at my own words. “How on earth did you manage to choke out a two-hundred-pound man, Kalina? You know what? Who cares?” I add immediately and gently draw her back into my chest, making sure she’s angled on her good cheek and I’m not squishing her nose. “I’m glad you did. I’m sorry I wasn’t here to protect you, baby. It’ll not happen again.”

  I catch Silas’ eyes. There is the question in them as to what we’re going to do with my father. He is sitting upright now, still coughing intermittently and clearly dizzy.

  “Okay,” I say as I once again reluctantly dissolve Kalina’s and my embrace. “You go, clean yourself up. We’ll deal with him.”

  Her hands slide down my waist and one of them catches on the grip of my 1911. She doesn’t freak. Not even a little bit. She just narrows her eyes at me and puts a beseeching expression in them.

  “Don’t kill him, Diego,” she says. “He’s not worth it. It’s not worth going to prison for.”

  I laugh and tilt her chin up.

  “I don’t know who you think I am, baby girl, but I haven’t killed anyone yet. We’re just gonna have a little talk, my old man and me. About women and how we treat them.”

  A weird expression crosses her face then, but it’s fleeting and ends in a grin.

  “Promise?” she asks, and relief floods me when I realise she’s still got her humour.

  “Promise,” I say. “But there may be a teeny tiny bit of castrating.”

  She pops an eyebrow at my caveat, and I immediately know that my girl is fully back in the room.

  “Well, of course it would be a teeny tiny bit of castrating. That’s all you would have to work with, no?”

  I grin back at her.

  “Careful what you’re saying when you’re talking about a man’s father’s dick size, baby girl.”

  “Hah,” she huffs. “Your penis is from your mother’s side,” she retorts, batting her eyelids in her bashed-up face, before her eyes go wide when she realises what she just said, but then suddenly the cute funny look disappears and she gags. “I know, because I felt his. He’s got a dog’s dick. Pointy. Yuk.”

  She spits it out.

  Her words add fuel to the rage still burning beneath the surface of the care I’m dishing out for her. She can sense the change in me and when I cock my head in the direction of our bedroom, she nods and makes herself scarce.

  I wait with my eyes shut, listening out for her movement through the flat, until I hear the en suite door shut. Then I open my eyes and turn my attention to my father.

  I walk across and kneel down in front of him. Silas and Rowan have stayed by his shoulders, still on their knees. Neither of them so much as flinches when I take out my gun, take the safety off and hold the barrel to my dad’s forehead. He looks at me in disbelief and doesn’t say a word. I’m not sure if he’s just scared, or if he’s still disorientated from the choke-out. I don’t really care, other than that I want him to comprehend what’s happening.

  “Kalina says not to kill you. But, you see, my father raised me to ignore what the womenfolk have to say.”

  I let it hang, long enough for a wet patch to appear at the front of his trousers and the stench of somebody shitting themselves to permeate the room. Both Silas and Rowan, closer to his backend than me, avert their faces for a second.

  “Gross,” Silas says.

  Rowan nods and then looks at him over my father’s head.

  “We learned something for the future, though,” he says.

  Silas frowns.

  “What’s that?”

  “You put a knife to their throat, they just piss themselves. You break out the guns, you got shit on your hands.”

  They grin at each other over some private joke then turn back to m
e, waiting as to what happens next. It dawns on me in that moment that I could truly pull the trigger, and these two would be one hundred percent behind me. No matter if I decided to try to disappear the cunt in front of me or if I decided to call the police and claim self-defence, they’d back me up. Either by carrying the carpet roll or sticking up for me with a bogus story in the witness stand. It’s the most powerful feeling I’ve had in my life, and I swallow hard.

  As if he’d read my thoughts, which he probably has ‘cause he’s Silas and he can, Silas decides to put in his two pennies’ worth.

  “If you’re going for the self-defence story, you probably wanna move back a bit and point the gun at somewhere less obvious, you know. Close-range head shot will always look like an execution.”

  I love the way he discusses this with the same calm he does everything else in life. I catch Rowan’s eye, and we grin at each other. There really is a reason we love this guy so fucking much.

  “Son,” my father whispers, and my eyes snap back to his.

  I push the barrel harder against his forehead.

  “No,” I tell him. “Not anymore. If, if, I let you live today, I will have nothing to do with you any longer. Unless I hear about you hurting another woman. In which case, I will come after you and kill you then. Are we clear? And I mean any other woman. That includes Mum. Leave. Her. The. Fuck. Alone.”

  I let the gun sink and put the safety back on.

  “You want him gone?” Silas asks.

  I nod.

  “Just put him out in the street, let him make his way home with crap in his pants.”

  Rowan and Silas get up, grab my father under the armpits and heave him up. For a moment, while I’m still kneeling and they’re all already upright, I look up at the man who I worshipped as a boy, loathed as a teen and have come to hate as an adult. I wait for him to threaten me, to tell me he’ll come after me or some shit like that, but there is nothing. One look in his eyes and I know he knows he’s lost.