by Tillie Cole
Pearl …
“Annie,” Ollie said, speaking my mother’s name. He didn’t deserve to speak her motherfucking name. I would rip out his dirty fucking tongue if he said it again. “That right there is my sister, Annie Lawson.”
Victory spread across his face as his words sank into my head. Ollie’s arm hung by his side, his leg was broken, but the fucker still glared at me. “What better way to fuck you all up than to take your beloved little sister and make her one of our own?”
“You lie,” I snarled, but I stared down at the woman sitting in a café in some other fucking country—France or Switzerland or some shit by the looks of things. Someone approached her table, and she smiled, shaking their hand. Every part of me froze. Because I knew that fucking smile.
It was Pearl … They’d fucking taken Pearl!
“Cunt!” I flew at Ollie, but the fucker was prepared. He pulled out a gun and fired a shot, grazing my arm. I didn’t feel the pain, I didn’t stop coming at him—I just needed this arsehole dead.
As I lifted my hand to smash his face, he said, “Annie runs our European enterprise.” I stilled and pictured her in that suit, shaking someone’s hand. The video she clearly didn’t know was being recorded.
“Trafficking?” Betsy asked, devastation in her voice. “Pearl’s involved in trafficking?”
Ollie raised an eyebrow at my cousin. “Annie wouldn’t stand for that shit.” He looked at me again. “Quite the spitfire, my sister.” I was going to kill him. I had to fucking kill him. Pearl was my sister, not his. My fucking little sister.
“She’s more suited to drugs and guns.” He smiled again. “Quite similar tastes to you, actually. She knows nothing about the human trafficking side of our business.” He shuddered. “Annie can be quite the little sadist if she doesn’t like someone—likes to make them pay. And she loves me. Her big brother. I would never tell her about the true nature of our London ventures. Wouldn’t want to incur her wrath.”
“Where is she?” I snarled.
“Where the fuck is she?!” Vinnie screamed behind me, still being held in Charlie’s arms.
“Not here,” Ollie said, and my mind became a fucking sludgy mess. Pearl was fucking alive, and working for the Lawsons. No, not working for. She was a fucking Lawson. A fucking Adley adopted by the Lawsons, wearing our murdered mum’s name.
“She doesn’t remember a thing about you,” Ollie said, and I heard Betsy suck in a sharp breath like she’d been fucking shot. “She doesn’t know that the famous Adley family was once hers.” He laughed, and the sound of it grated on my nerves. “In fact, she fucking hates you. Loathes you …” Ollie leaned into me. But I was fucking paralysed, the crack in my chest draining of lava and hollowing out to nothing.
My sister hated us. Hated me.
“And if anything happens to her dearest big brother—me—then she has orders to bring you all down.” All I could see in my head was Pearl. Pearl was alive. Sitting at the café, smiling and shaking some wanker’s hand.
My little sister was fucking alive.
Ollie moved the gun to my forehead. The barrel pressed into my skin, and fire lit in his fucking eyes. Death. He wanted to bring me death.
I saw blackness dance in my vision, Satan himself ready to drag us both down. “Do it,” I snarled, eyes fucking lit, pushing against the gun. “FUCKING DO IT!” I shouted, lifting my own gun to his skull. Ollie smiled a wide smile, clicked off the safety of his gun just as I clicked off mine. We were going to die. The fucker would die right the fuck now even if I had to go down into a fucking blazing inferno myself to see it done …
Then he froze.
His eyes widened.
And Lawson started choking, lips moving. His hand shook and his gun dropped to the ground. I drew my head back as he fell to the floor, only to see Cheska stood behind him, one hairpin blade in her hand, and the other in Ollie Lawson’s neck, the blade cutting right through his pulse.
Her green-brown eyes lifted to mine. I fucking breathed, my slamming heart wrecking my fucking sternum. Then I was on my feet, crushing my mouth to hers, her hands desperately raking at my back, my neck and my head. “Princess,” I croaked, dropping my hands to her body, checking she was okay.
She was alive.
She was fucking alive.
“I love you,” she said, pulling back and staring into my eyes, no tears. There were no fucking tears.
I whipped around. Freddie was glaring my way, still in Eric’s arms. But I saw the fear in the rat’s eyes. His boss was gone, and now it was his time to face the fucking reaper.
“You knew she was alive.” I stopped in front of him. “All this time, and you fucking knew Pearl was alive. That she was a motherfucking Lawson.” I’d never wanted to kill anyone as much as I wanted to kill this fucker. This two-faced mothercunting rat.
Freddie smirked. He knew he was on borrowed time. But he used his final minutes to stick the dagger further into my back. “My old man set it up. Knew when your mum and Pearl would be alone. He organised for the Lawsons to torch the place, then took her from the cottage and away from you fuckers. And now she’s one of us.” His eyes flared. “And she’ll kill you. She’ll kill all of you when she finds out what you’ve done.” Eric’s gaze burned with fury. “If you’re the dark lord, then she’s hell itself.” Freddie nodded his head. “She’ll come for you, Artie. Your sister, the one you fucking mourned, missed every day, hates you, and will come to kill you. She—”
I grabbed his face and snapped his neck before he could say anything else. I didn’t want to hear his fucking voice anymore. Freddie slumped in Eric’s arms, and Eric dropped him to the ground like last week’s rubbish.
I turned. All my family were looking at me, their eyes fucking wracked with both pain and rage at the news about Pearl.
My sister was alive.
Vinnie was staring at the ground, his head more than fucked. Everyone looked at me for answers.
I had none. I fucking had none!
Rage built from the bottom of my feet to my motherfucking skull. And I roared. I threw my head back and roared. My bellow echoed off the walls, the fucking fight draining out of me. She was alive. Pearl was alive, and she hated us. Despised us. Wanted to fucking see us fall—
Arms wrapped around me from behind.
Cheska.
Turning, I met her watery eyes, yanked her close and held her to my chest. “We’ll get her back,” she said, and then kissed me. She fucking kissed the fuck out of me, and my body calmed back down.
Always the water to my fucking fire.
I held on to my bird, then cupped her bloodied cheeks. “You fucking killed him.” I searched her face for any sign of regret, of shock or guilt. Charlie and my family started taking calls in the background, back to fucking business. But it was all white noise as I looked at my woman, my princess, my fucking queen.
“He deserved to die,” she said coldly, her eyes flashing with darkness. “For what he’s done. For everything he’s done to us all.” My forehead fell against hers, and everything that was displaced inside me fucking clicked together. In that moment, I knew that aura of darkness, the one Vinnie had told me was wrapped around me, had merged with her red. The same. Whatever it was that Vinnie saw around us, we now were the fucking same. No beginning to mine, no end to hers.
“You came for me,” she whispered, and I dropped my hand to the bracelet on her wrist, thanking fuck I’d got her it.
“I told you I would,” I growled, taking her mouth again. Her tongue tasted like fucking heaven. “You’re never leaving me. Never fucking leaving my side. From now the fuck on, you’re an Adley, and whatever we do, you’ll be right by my bastard side.”
Cheska smiled against my mouth and sighed. “I’m an Adley now.”
I growled at my surname on her lips, fucking kissed her harder, forced myself to break away, then said to my family, “Let’s get the fuck home.”
Chapter Eighteen
CHESKA
I st
epped out of the shower, breathing in the humid, damp air. I wrapped the towel around me and entered the bedroom. It took me a few seconds to realise Arthur was absent and Eva Adley sat on the armchair. I stopped dead and met her hard gaze.
She was dressed impeccably as always, but as I studied her further, I saw a paleness in her cheeks and redness in her eyes. My heart broke for the Adley matriarch. She had just lost her only remaining son at the murderous hands of a boy she’d raised as a much-loved grandchild. A traitor raised to bring her family down from inside.
“Eva,” I said in greeting and walked toward her. She remained silent, watching me with stony eyes as I stopped a few feet away from where she sat. “I’m sorry,” I said, feeling completely and utterly drained. “About Alfie. About Freddie. I’m so incredibly sorry.”
Eva didn’t react, didn’t flinch. Instead she got to her feet and met me toe to toe. Her eyes ran down the length of me. I braced, waiting for her censure, for her cold dismissal. But when she opened her mouth, she said, “You killed Ollie Lawson.” I couldn’t speak, so I simply nodded.
Eva brushed by me, but as her hand wrapped around the doorknob she turned to face me. “It’s a hard, dangerous and sometimes thankless job being the lady of this firm’s gaffer.”
I lifted my chin at the challenge in her voice. “I’m ready for it.”
Eva’s head tilted to the side as she regarded me. “The road ahead is going to be rough. Arthur won’t rest until he has Pearl back. Until the rest of the Lawson enterprises are destroyed.”
“I know.”
Eva glanced to the roaring fire in the fireplace, then met my gaze once more. “Maybe I was wrong about you,” she said, and warmth burst in my chest at those words. But then she shrugged, lips pursing. “We’ll see.” With that, she left our bedroom, closing the door behind her, her flicker of acceptance bringing a small smile to my lips.
I found him at their graves.
The sun had just started to rise over the Adley church, the dawning of a brand-new day. The harsh wind whipped around my damp hair, sending chills over my freshly-scrubbed skin. I had been desperate to wash the stain of last night from my body. But the stain on my mind wouldn’t go no matter how much water the shower head had pelted down on me. The events of the night were branded onto my brain just as sure as the brand that Ollie’s organisation wore proudly on their wrists.
I was still numb when I thought of Hugo and my dad. I knew I wouldn’t always be. But it was as if my body couldn’t take any more pain, had met its threshold over the past several weeks. It had rejected the heavy emotions trying to pierce me from within and created an impenetrable armour around my heart. An armour that only lowered for my new family and, of course, the king who held my heart in his firm grip.
My feet crunched on the fallen leaves on the ground. Hearing the noise, Arthur looked back and wordlessly held out his hand. The hand that I used to dream he would want me to grasp. The easy affection he now gave.
He was staring at the graves of his mum and sister, a frown on his face. Eyes glued on the new plot that had been dug for his dad, finally joining his beloved wife after all these years without her. We would bury him tomorrow; we would say our final goodbyes.
I clutched Arthur’s hand tightly, giving him the silent support he no doubt needed. I read the epitaph on Pearl’s grave, and I took a deep, sobering breath.
We had no idea whose few remains were buried in this small Adley graveyard. Remains found at the site of the cottage. No doubt planted there after Annie Adley and her much-loved cottage had become nothing but dust.
I laid my head on Arthur’s arm, feeling the heaviness he held in his heart. “Everyone is in the living room. Vinnie is still in his bedroom. But everyone else is waiting … for you.”
Arthur was tired, his blue eyes worn and wracked with pain. Because although he had found out that his little sister was alive, he had also found out that she had no memory of belonging to this family, of him. And she despised them. If Ollie was correct, Pearl Adley would now be planning war on the brother she didn’t even know she had in honour of the one who was a lie.
“Maybe we can put the meeting off until after we’ve all slept,” I said. Arthur was still covered in dried blood. “Our family will understand. We’re all at the end of our tethers.”
“No. I want this dealt with.” He turned to me and gathered me in his arms. “I want this fucking night over and done with.” Arthur breathed in the scent of my freshly washed hair, shoulders sagging as if my mere presence calmed him, settled the rage I knew paced inside him, still seeking more revenge.
I wanted to take him to bed, clean him up and just hold him, letting him know that he was loved, that he was adored. But I also knew him. He took his role as the head of this family seriously. He bore the weight of the firm’s pressures without complaint. I vowed that from now on, I’d help him share those burdens. I would lighten his load, even if that could only ever be by caring for him after everything was finished. After loose ends were tied up.
When Arthur released me, he lit a cigarette and put his arm around my shoulders, leading us back into the church, which was now patrolled by twice as many Adley soldiers than ever before.
Now that we were all back safe, he wasn’t taking any chances.
We entered the living room. All the family but Vinnie and Gene were gathered on the familiar chairs. The fire blazed, and I breathed in the comforting scent of burning logs.
I stayed by Arthur’s side as he poured out two gins at the bar, my hand on his lower back. He passed one gin to me, then sat down on his usual armchair, heading up the casual circle that made up his family meetings. Arthur pulled me onto his lap and placed a kiss on the back of my neck.
“We can get Ches her own chair, you know?” Eric said, a smirk on his face. It was the first bit of levity the day had brought.
“She stays right fucking here.” Arthur put his arm around my waist and kept my back flush to his chest. I settled against his warmth, his scent of tobacco and musk seeping into my lungs. Arthur opened his mouth to speak, but Gene came through the doorway.
“Gene?” Eric shifted forward in his seat, no more laughter in his tone. “What’s wrong? You okay?”
Gene nodded. He pointed at a spare chair—the chair Freddie used to occupy. “Is it alright if I sit?”
I gaped at him. Gene wanted to sit in on the family meeting. He had never sat in one before. He had never made any attempt to be included in the family business. Arthur and the others had always accepted that he had no desire to join the firm. I could tell by the bright eyes and hidden smiles shining Gene’s way, they were more than okay with him taking the newly vacant seat.
“You belong here,” Arthur said, and Gene sat down, his cheeks reddening under everyone’s attention. But Arthur’s words seemed to sink into his ears, and he sat straighter on the chair, as if he had finally found a purpose, a path out of the labyrinth he’d confessed to me he felt he lived in.
Gene met my eyes, and I winked at him. His lip curled up in a soft smirk. Then his eyes shyly drifted to Charlie. Charlie, who was already watching Gene, an unreadable expression on his face.
Charlie only tore his gaze away when Arthur spoke to him. Feeling warmth sprout in my chest, I leaned my head on Arthur’s shoulder, looking at my battle-worn family with utter love and respect in my heart.
My family. I had a real family now.
As if he sensed my thoughts, Arthur’s thumb moved up and down on my stomach, a gesture of comfort, of love.
“All the cells were wiped out. Not one fucker was left,” Charlie said. He put his pipe back in his mouth. “Tip-offs were made to the bobbies about the whereabouts of the trafficked girls and where the Lawsons were holding them. As well as a list of addresses of people who have one or more of them in their homes.”
Charlie met my eyes. “We’ve found a holding cell in Ollie’s flat where he would keep the girls that looked like you. The ones he kept for his personal use.” My stomac
h fell, my blood cooling to freezing temperatures. “When you’re ready, we’ll take you there, and the Old Bill will get a tip-off that Cheska Harlow-Wright was kidnapped by Ollie Lawson and has been held at his home all this time.” Charlie flicked his hand in the air. “We’ll let them find you, create a story for you to stick to, then lay all the blame at Lawson’s feet. You can claim he ran when he got in bother with someone, leaving you there. Then you can put all this shite behind you and finally become one of us.” Charlie winked at me and smiled.
“She already fucking is one of us,” Arthur said, no argument in his voice.
“Hear, hear,” Betsy said, holding up her drink.
Arthur turned to Eric. “Anything on Freddie?” Eric had got one of the soldiers to keep one of the Lawson men alive. The soldier had stayed behind at the garage when we left and got answers before disposing of him too.
“Just what the rat fucker had told us,” Eric said. “His old man infiltrated your old man’s circle years ago. He was one of old Lawson’s right-hand men, from being a kid. He sent him into our firm to get them intel. When Freddie grew up, he was raised to do the same job. They fed information back to the Lawsons.
“When his old man died, Freddie was crushed, blamed us, and sought out his revenge. For years, he planned with Lawson how they would take us down.”
Eric nodded at me. “Lawson’s plan to kidnap Cheska was separate to the one meant for us.” He shrugged. “But then that all changed.” I took a deep breath to keep calm. “They never expected Cheska to come here. Ollie’s stupid fucking mind was blown when Cheska turned up at The Sparrow Room after his attack on her had failed—Freddie had told him you hadn’t seen each other for over a year, believed that you’d tossed Cheska aside.
“Freddie hadn’t planned for shit to go down when it did, but when Ronnie traced the video he’d sent to you about your mum, he knew he was on borrowed time. That we’d soon find out we had a rat in our midst.”