by Tillie Cole
“Babe, shh, it’s okay.” Cheska. Cheska was in front of me, her hands on my face. “I’m here, it’s okay. Let me help …”
But it wasn’t okay. She had done this. She had fucking rammed back into my life with the force of a crowbar to the knees and fucked it all up. She had cut through the darkness that had settled inside me and tried to bring me to the light. I didn’t fucking want the light. I didn’t want the light or the fucking smiles, the kisses or the making love.
It made me weak.
She had made me too weak.
I ripped my head back and saw Charlie pick my phone up off the floor and watch the screen. Cheska’s hands stayed in the air, where they’d just been on my face. Like I’d burned her. Like I’d scalded her skin.
“Get the fuck off me,” I snarled, and Cheska’s face blanched. “You,” I said, pointing at her. I pounded my hand on my chest. I needed to close the crack. Needed to stop the pain that was seeping out of it, poisoning my brain, my heart. “You.”
“What? Please—” She tried to step closer but stopped when I shook my head at her. “What have I done? Arthur …”
I slapped at my skull, at the throbbing in my brain. That voice, her broken fucking voice made me feel things I didn’t fucking want to fucking feel—couldn’t feel to do my job right. “You’re fucking with my head,” I snarled and swiped the bottle of vodka that had fallen to the floor but remained intact. I threw the top into the fire and downed half the bottle in one go. Cheska had folded her arms across her chest, in protection, and was moving toward Betsy. “You fucking crawled into my fucking head, cleaved my fucking chest open and broke me!” I yelled. I saw the phone being passed from Eric to Freddie in the background. Charlie’s and Eric’s faces were fuming with anger as they met my eyes.
Freddie passed the phone to Vinnie. “Artie,” he said, and I saw the fucking disbelief on his face, the fucking moment we all found out my mum and sister weren’t lost in an accident after all, that they were in fact murdered. Murdered by the same cunts who had got Ronnie, who had killed all of Cheska’s family and tried to take her too.
The ones who had dumped a container full of trafficked women on my fucking dock! It was them … it was the branded cunts who were trying to come for me, for all we’d built.
They wanted Cheska. They fucking wanted my bird!
I searched the room for Cheska, but she’d gone. A fucking weight pressed down on my lungs like a torture device. My dark heart taunted me, ordering me to get on my fucking hands and knees and find her. That it needed her back. My fucking queen. The one who controlled the fucked-up chessboard that was my life.
My most important piece.
But I fought it. I fought it all, trying to yank myself back to the numbness I used to live with, the blackness, the fucking void that kept me from having to feel any of this shit, that let me think. Right now, I couldn’t fucking think!
“You fucking prick,” Betsy spat and got right in my face. My jaw clenched as my cousin went toe to toe with me. “Don’t you dare you take this out on Cheska.”
“She did this,” I growled, the rage still pumping through my veins in waves, incinerating every fibre in my body. “She fucking made me feel, made me like this!”
“Human?” Betsy shot back. “A fucking living being, breathing, thriving—not a walking demon with nothing in his soul but blackness and hate?”
“THEY KILLED MY FUCKING MUM AND SISTER!” I boomed in Betsy’s face and looked to the rest of my family. I caught Vinnie’s eyes. They were fixed on the floor, and his body was shaking. Fucking shaking with rage.
“They killed her.” Vinnie lifted his head and met my eyes. “They killed her, Artie. She didn’t tell me they killed her.”
“I don’t think she knew,” Charlie said, placating Vinnie’s fucked-up head, his belief that he still saw and talked to my sister. “When the house went up, she wouldn’t have known how the fire was started.”
Vinnie nodded, grasping onto that lifeline. He studied his tight fists and said, “We need to kill them, Artie.” He nodded, like he was assuring himself it was what needed to happen to make this shitshow okay. “They all need to fall down. All fucking fall down.”
“Just remember,” Betsy said, moving back into my path, ignoring everyone else, “that Cheska lost her entire family too. Not just you. She lost them all.” Betsy laughed without humour. “And she loves you. Right now, I have no fucking idea why.” Betsy moved to the door but stopped and, without looking back, said, “Your mum was like my mum too. And Pearl was my best friend, my fucking sister. You chose to deal with this life yourself. You have people who love and support you, but you chose to remain unfeeling when our dads died. You chose to push us all away and shut down, never letting anyone in. And you’ll die alone if you keep doing it. Just like our dads did. Because I, for one, am fucking over trying to revive you.”
Betsy left, and her words circled my head as I downed the vodka until the bottle was done. I looked up. Most of my brothers were still around me. Gene and Vinnie were the only ones who’d gone somewhere else, Ronnie and Vera too.
“I need them found,” I said to Eric, Charlie and Freddie as they sat nursing their own drinks. “I need them fucking gone.” My vision was hazy and I heard my voice. It was broken and slurred. The vodka hadn’t numbed the pain in my body like I’d planned. It made it pulse deeper, faster, made the crack sink lower, lower and lower until I couldn’t fucking stand it.
“We’ll get them,” Charlie said, and Eric and Freddie nodded their heads. I stared at the fire, seeing the flames of the cottage again. Seeing some cunt push my mum back into the house, locking her inside.
I sat up when the pain in my chest felt like it would fucking end me. “What the fuck is happening to us?” I said to them. “No one can fuck with us. I make sure of it.” I stared into the dying fire, the flames being snuffed out under the burned logs. “We’re the Adleys. We fucking run this town.” I smacked into the side table. “I’m meant to stop this shit from happening to us. But someone is sneaking through. Someone is fucking sneaking through. I’m blind. I’m fucking blind to them.” I took a half-full bottle of whisky and unscrewed the cap. I drank it down. “I can’t see them.” I looked at Freddie, Eric and Charlie. “I can’t fucking see them. They’re hiding in my fucking house, and I can’t fucking find them!”
“We will.” Charlie got to his feet. But I didn’t want them to come to me. I didn’t want anyone fucking near me. I was poison. The crack in my chest was full of fucking poison.
My shoulder smacked off the wall as I stumbled into the hallway. My room. I needed to get into my fucking room. No, the study. I needed to get into the study. No windows. No light. Just darkness. I needed to step into the darkness and let it swallow me whole.
I tried to walk. I tried to walk but all I kept seeing was my mum walking outside, wrapping her cardigan around her to stave off the night chill. Then he shoved her. The branded cunt fucking charged at my mum and trapped her inside the house. The fucking house that she loved. The cottage that she felt safe in. She took us there all the time to get us away from this life, a break from the firm and my dad, who only ever lived for this family, this fucked-up life.
And you’ll die alone if you keep doing it. Just like our dads did … Betsy’s voice circled my head. And you’ll die alone if you keep doing it. Just like our dads did …
I stopped at the door to my left. The door that I never let myself go through. I turned the knob, then stumbled through. The lights were off and his nurse had gone home for the night. My feet were fucking cement blocks on the floor. But I made them move. I took a swig of whisky and let it burn my throat as I closed in on my dad. On the man I hadn’t let myself get close to in over a year.
Everything smelled of antiseptic. The machines that surrounded him bleeped and pierced through my skull. I grabbed the footboard and held the fuck on. My eyes were on his covers, on the duvet that hid him from me.
“Look up, you pussy,” I said t
o myself, then forced my eyes up. I turned away when my gaze landed on his face. On his too-thin body that never fucking moved. Not even a finger moved. My hand shook around the neck of the whisky bottle, but I made myself turn back around.
“Kill him,” I heard my dad’s voice say, the memory barrelling into my head. I saw the man in my eyes. Saw him on the floor of the pit. Saw my dad stand behind me and put a knife in my hand …
“Kill him,” he said. I stared down at the knife in my hand. I was thirteen. I’d just turned thirteen. Charlie, Eric and Freddie watched me from the top of the pit. The knife felt heavy in my hands.
“Please, kid, don’t,” the man on the floor said. I looked at his face. He was bloodied and beaten, and he was on his knees.
“Look him in the eyes when you do it,” Dad said, his mouth at my ear. “Make sure he dies looking into your eyes—the future of our firm.”
“What did he do?” I stepped forward, closer to the man.
“He fucked with us. Ratted us out to an enemy. Some of our men died.” I felt it then. Felt the anger start to build. Dad said that no one ever messed with us, our family. And if they did, they had to die.
“Arthur,” Dad said again. “Kill him.”
I walked forward and stood before the man. I could smell the sweat and piss on his clothes. The blood. I lifted the knife as one of our soldiers ripped open the man’s shirt. I kept my eyes on his and pushed the knife into his chest, right through his heart. And I never moved my eyes away from him. I never moved my eyes from his as his mouth opened and he started choking on air. As the knife stopped when it reached the handle.
As he toppled over, and my dad put his hands on my shoulders. “Good, Artie. Real fucking good, kid.”
I blinked, and the memory disappeared from my head. I remembered feeling it then. I’d felt the darkness start creeping, the doorway opening to something evil, something that reached its talons into my soul and took up home.
That had been the night. That had been the fucking night that Mum and Pearl had burned. When I’d killed that man, that traitor, they were already ash and teeth lost in the cottage’s remains.
And you’ll die alone if you keep doing it. Just like our dads did …
Dad’s face was grey and sunken, nothing like the man I’d just pictured in my head. Shot by the fucking Russians. Ploughed down and only alive because I paid a fuck-ton of money to keep him this way.
No one ever came to see him.
He had no one outside of us. His mates were long gone. Mum and Pearl were gone. And me? I never came into this room.
… you’ll die alone …
I downed the rest of my whisky, and my head swam with memories. Of Pearl. Come on, Artie. Play with me. Hide and seek.
Of Mum. Come here, she said, arms out. I walked to her and she pulled me onto the couch. She kissed my head. Let’s watch TV. It won’t be long until you won’t want to hang around with your old mum anymore.
I couldn’t fucking take it. The pain, all the fucking pain in my chest. I couldn’t look at Dad. Couldn’t think of the video I’d just seen. I backed out of the room until I was back in the hallway. I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t fucking breathe!
But my heart wasn’t done fucking torturing me. Instead it showed me Cheska’s face as I told her to get off me. That I was like this because of her. I saw the agony in her green-brown eyes. The trembling of her bottom lip. I closed my eyes, back slamming against the hallway wall, and I saw her above me, riding me, head thrown back and lips parted. Saw her walking down to the pit, leather on her legs and fucking hellfire in her stare.
Saw her stand before me and drag the queen down my chest. I am your queen.
Your queen … your queen … your queen …
My fucking broken queen.
I scrambled off the floor, pictures slamming to the ground as I used my hands to steady me. I burst through the door to my bedroom. She wasn’t there.
My heart started pounding in dread. I had to find her. The fucking ache in my chest only stopped aching when she was with me. When she was next to me, when my mouth was on hers, when I was inside her.
“Cheska!” I said, slamming open doors. My family stared at me when I found only them inside the rooms. I raced down the hallway, the whisky blurring my vision, robbing me of balance.
“Cheska!” I shouted, knocking vases and other crap off shelves as I bounced off the walls. I needed to find her.
I love you … Her voice played in my head, threatening to bring me to my fucking knees. Her face. Her face when I told her to get off me, her arms wrapped around her waist like I’d stabbed her in the fucking heart.
I may as well have.
I love you, Arthur …
“CHESKA!” I slammed open the study door. Betsy jumped to her feet. “Get out,” I said to my cousin, seeing Cheska sat on the armchair behind her. “Cheska,” I said again, the ache in my chest numbing some as I saw the top of her head, her brown hair.
She was still here.
I pushed into the room. Betsy brushed past me. I felt her burning, narrowed eyes on me, but I didn’t look at her. This had fuck all to do with her.
The fire was climbing, and as I rounded the chair, there she was. There she fucking was … my broken queen. Her eyes were fixated on the chessboard between the two armchairs. I stared down at it to see she had moved the pieces, played the game alone. The queen was off the board, the king fucking wide open, ready to be taken down by his enemies.
His most treasured piece had been defeated.
I dropped to my knees. Cheska didn’t move. It was like she was paralysed, numbed to anything around her but that motherfucking chessboard.
I looked at Cheska’s eyes. They were dead, fucking blank. This time, my gut twisted not because of the fracture in my chest that was sending an army of suffocating feelings raining down on me like bullets, but because of the dead stare on Cheska’s face.
I’d never seen her look like this. Not even when she’d collapsed on my office floor in the nightclub. Not even when she’d woken up and the truth of what had happened had hit home again.
I’d destroyed her, like I always knew I would.
Ruined her.
In my mind’s eye, I saw her as a kid on her Chelsea home’s stairs, the first time I ever met her, all olive skin and huge eyes. I saw her in that fucking bikini on her yacht in Marbella when we were just eighteen. I saw her face when she realised who had docked beside her, the fucking obsessed look in her eyes that had never faded.
Until now.
“Cheska,” I said hoarsely, my voice cutting out. I dropped my head, feeling all the fight drain out of me. When I looked up, she was blurred, tears fucking blocking her out of my sight. “They were killed,” I said, and when my eyes cleared I saw something like pain flicker across her face.
Cheska stayed looking down at the chessboard, at the vulnerable king and his queen stuck on the sidelines. “They killed them,” I said again, and I stopped fighting the fucking feelings that had been battling to get through to me, to fucking take up every inch of my flesh and bones.
“They burned them alive,” I said. Cheska winced. My shoulders sagged, and the alcohol swam in my stomach and head. “I don’t know how to deal with it,” I said, immobilised, fucking exhausted on the floor at her feet.
Still, she stayed silent.
“This …” I said and looked up. Cheska was watching me, face shattered, fucking broken. “Feeling,” I confessed and saw the ice thaw from her expression. Ice that I knew—even in my drunken state—I’d put there.
“Arthur …”
“I shut it off. I shut it all off, after Mum and Pearl, after Dad … then after I left you that day in Oxford,” I said, letting it all spill out. All the fucking pain that I’d kept trapped inside me, that had soured and fucking rotted my flesh until it was nothing but a deadly virus running inside me, until I was numb to everything but death and rage.
Cheska shifted on the seat but stil
l didn’t touch me. I knew she needed more. Needed me to tell her more. I closed my eyes and remembered her falling on the floor of my club. The fucking ache that started the minute she fell back into my life. Thirteen months. I hadn’t seen her in thirteen months, hadn’t felt a fucking thing in thirteen months but rage and bloodlust and darkness in the wake of our fathers’ deaths.
Then I’d seen her face. Her bloodied and beaten face, and the crack in my chest splintered through my protective walls. The feelings started stabbing at me, day by day, minute by minute, the more I was around her.
“You …” I remembered her pulling the lifeless bird from the container earlier tonight. The fucking fear, deep and gutting fear, when the container exploded and I thought I was too late. I’d thought Cheska was dead beneath me. That she’d gone. And I’d lost it.
Fucking lost it.
I swallowed the thickness in my throat, then met Cheska’s gaze. “You made me feel again. After so fucking long. After the blood and the death and all the dark thoughts …” I squeezed my eyes shut. “You made me fucking feel.”
I heard the rustling of clothes and smelled Cheska’s perfume suddenly floating around me. Hands touched my face, soft fucking hands holding my cheeks. I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it, if the whisky and vodka were creating a hallucination as strong as Vinnie’s. I wasn’t opening my eyes to have it all disappear. Cheska holding me took the pain away. She brought it crashing down, but she was also chasing it away.
The bringer and destroyer of everything I was.
“Open your eyes,” she said, her posh fucking accent sinking deep into my bones. Soothing all the severed and jagged-edged nerves that currently made me. The heat from her palms warmed my freezing body. “Baby, open your eyes.”
I did as she said, and there, right before me, on her knees too, was my Chelsea girl. The only one I’d ever fucking wanted. The only one I’d ever let in.
“I don’t know how to fucking do this,” I said, and Cheska’s eyes turned watery. “I don’t know how to fucking feel, how to let all the fucked-up in. How—” I touched her face, her soft skin like silk under my calloused fingers. “How the fuck do I do this?” I rasped, the emotion I was terrified of clawing through the broken tone of my voice.