Lord of London Town Read online

  “Arthur Adley without his suit jacket, waistcoat and tie,” she said, smiling. “A rare sight.” I’d thrown them off the minute I’d got home from Old Sammy’s warehouse. I was done with business for tonight. I’d opened a few buttons on my shirt and sat the fuck down in here to drink and smoke and not fucking think.

  Trouble found me anyway.

  Trouble in the form of a rich bird with long legs and the sweetest fucking cunt I’d ever tasted.

  “Impressive collection,” Cheska said, walking along the bookshelves. Her hand ran along the spines of the hundreds of old hardbacks. She was edging closer to me, using the books as an excuse to draw in. She stopped at my old man’s silver liquor trolley. “May I?” She held up a crystal gin glass. I nodded, taking another long drag of my cig. Cheska poured herself a gin and tonic and moved past me, stopping at the free armchair opposite me.

  I wasn’t fucking inviting her to sit down. I wanted to see if she’d scurry away from my lack of manners or sit the fuck down regardless. Cheska looked me square in the eyes and lowered herself to the seat. My cheek twitched at the challenge in her eyes. Her chin tilted up high, and I wondered if this was what that fucking fancy private school she’d attended taught her.

  “You haven’t been to see me,” she said straight, and took a sip of her gin. She clearly wanted me to see her as a ball-buster who didn’t give one shit about my permission to be in here. But the slight tremor in her proper voice gave away her nerves.

  “Been busy.” I lowered my gin to the table and pulled off my glasses. I cleaned the lenses on my shirt, then slipped them back on my face.

  “Busy …” She nodded. “I’m feeling better now, thanks for asking.” She lifted her legs up to the chair, curling her body over as she leaned closer to the fire. The reflection of the orange and red flames danced on her cheeks, putting fire in her eyes as she glared at me. She clutched her gin in her hands, watching me over the crystal glass’s rim.

  “What kind of business did you have?” she asked when I said sweet fuck all in response to her snipe.

  “Family business,” I replied. She nodded, but I saw the flash of rejection in her expression. She inhaled deeply. Her tits pressed against her t-shirt, and it took everything I had to keep my arse on the seat and not overturn the fucking chessboard between us and fuck her on the floor.

  Cheska had no fucking idea what I was imagining, how I wanted her pinned against the books she’d just admired as I slammed into her from behind. She gestured toward the chessboard. “You’re playing by yourself?”

  I finished my cig and flicked it into the fire. “You play?” I cursed my fucking tongue for asking her the question. I’d vowed to keep Chelsea Girl at a distance. We’d find the fuckers who’d hunted her, and she’d run back off to her perfect little life, far away from the dark lord that she’d fucked for a while. I knew how this story played out. Posh and peasant didn’t mix.

  “God, no.” She laughed. The addictive sound filled the room. There were no windows for that laugh to escape through. And I knew that sound would haunt me every time I stepped into this fucking study from now on. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.” She leaned forward, and the neck of her top showed me her braless tits underneath. The tits that I’d had in my mouth hundreds of times. The nipples that I’d rolled on my tongue and bitten down on to make her scream.

  She glanced up at me through her long lashes. She fucking knew what she was doing. But I showed fuck-all reaction. Let her try to pull me in like a bloody siren. I wanted to see how far the posh little princess was willing to go to try and bring me to heel.

  She pointed at one of the pieces. “What is this one?”

  “A pawn.”

  Cheska nodded, taking it in. “A lower-valued piece?”

  “A soldier,” I said. “Not as much power as the others, but it’s needed nonetheless.”

  “Like your soldiers?” she asked. “For your firm?” Clearly Chelsea Girl had been doing her research. No doubt the information came from Betsy. I knew my cousin had taken a shine to Cheska. And I saw the planning and cunning in Betsy’s eyes whenever she mentioned Cheska to me. I didn’t know what my cousin was up to. But whatever it was wouldn’t fucking work.

  “Like my soldiers,” I confirmed.

  Cheska nodded, then moved to the rook. She pointed at the castle piece. “Can only move laterally or forwards and backwards,” I explained. She pointed to the horse. I talked her through the pieces until two remained.

  “So,” she said, “these must be the king and queen. I don’t know a lot about chess, but I know that much.”

  “They’re the king and queen.”

  Cheska sat back in her chair and studied the board. “So all of these …” She motioned to the pieces. “The entire point of the game is to protect the king?” I nodded my head. “If the king falls, it’s checkmate?” I nodded again.

  “And let me guess,” she said, with a good amount of bite in her voice. “The king has the most power?”

  “On the contrary,” I said and finished off my gin. I placed down my glass. “That honour belongs to the queen.”

  Cheska’s mouth opened, but no words came out. I picked up the king and studied the ornate ebony piece. The crowned top wearing the cross. “The king is one of the weakest pieces. Needs all the others to protect him, as his skills are limited.” I fixed my gaze on Cheska. “He especially needs the queen.” I gritted my teeth but let myself say, “She’s his most important piece. His protector. His strength.”

  “She is?” Cheska said, her voice dropping. A blush coated her cheeks and she licked her lips. “And without her?”

  “The king is easily captured. Checkmate. Game over.”

  Cheska nodded. She glanced at the books surrounding us, but I knew she wasn’t looking at their titles or covers. She turned back to the chessboard, then picked up her queen. It was ivory, proudly wearing the crown.

  Cheska finished off her gin, lowered her glass to the table, then boldly met my eyes. “Then I would say it’s in the king’s best interests to stop pushing her away.”

  I let her words sink in. Then I let the torch she’d just brought to my flint ignite. Cheska never broke her gaze from me. She was pushing me. Challenging me. Trying to fuck with me.

  This was new.

  I smiled. Wide. Her eyes grew round. I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my legs. “The king doesn’t take well to mind games,” I said and watched Cheska’s chest rise and fall harder. “He doesn’t waste his time on queens who have fuck-all place in his world.” I dropped my ebony king right beside her ivory queen. One light. One dark. Opposing sides. “Queens who pretend they crave the darkness, but in truth want a noble knight on a white horse that will whisk her away to a castle like some fucking fairy tale.”

  I leaned further over the board. Cheska stayed where she was, her lack of submission making my dick twitch in my trousers. I could smell the shower gel she’d been using—almond or some shit. Something sweet. Something that made me want to lick every inch of her skin.

  “The king that the queen is intent on provoking is that darkness.” Cheska’s cheeks burned red, her olive complexion unable to disguise her fucking raw need. “He doesn’t live in an ivory castle. He lives amongst the monsters in the haunted forest. There’s no daylight in his world, only night. Perpetual fucking night. No moon and no stars in the sky, the landscape nothing but lifeless trees with broken branches and dead rose bushes laced with dagger-like thorns.”

  I studied Cheska’s face, fucking myself up by trying to imagine her in my world. Trying to picture her by my side—a fallen spring queen holding my bloodstained hand. I pushed it from my mind.

  It wasn’t real. Couldn’t ever be fucking real.

  “And all around his kingdom were the worst horrors every level of hell could conjure up. Demons and beasts all gunning for the king’s evil throne, vultures circling, readying to steal his crown. His throne built on the bones of his enemies, by the victims he had torn
apart with his bare, clawed hands.” I leaned in closer still. So close that I felt Cheska’s breath drift over my face. “The victims he enjoyed killing, enjoyed bringing down, stealing their last breath as he watched them fight for air.”

  Cheska drew in a ragged breath. “Yet the queen still wants him,” she said, and the crack she had smashed into my concrete chest years ago started to throb. I held her stare. Daring her to fucking look away. Telling her silently to run. To fucking jump from the chair and run while she still could.

  “The queen knows who and what the dark king is, and she still wants to stand by his side.” She dropped her eyes. I inhaled a breath, knowing she would eventually fail my challenge. But her eyes snapped back to mine, swirling with fucking fire. “She has always wanted to stand by his side. Even when she didn’t know what it meant to be with him, what it entails. When she didn’t know it all.”

  “She doesn’t fucking know it all,” I snapped, my voice dripping with poison.

  I rose from my chair and stepped around the table to hers. I kicked the table holding the chessboard, the pieces clattering to the wooden floor behind me. I caged Cheska in, my hands on the arms of her chair.

  “The queen knows shit,” I said. “She knows only what she’s let herself hear. She pretends she knows what the king has to do to keep hold of his kingdom.” I paused and smiled. “What he likes to do.” I leaned even closer, so close that my nose ran over the tip of hers. “The queen has no fucking idea what she’s asking for. She’s just a naïve little princess playing at wearing a big girl’s crown.”

  Cheska’s expression darkened and, taking me by surprise, she lifted her hand and gripped my jaw. I wasn’t easily surprised. And I saw red. I fucking saw red. But instead of wanting rip off her head for daring to touch me, I had to fight back the need to slam her against the wall and fucking destroy her pussy. Fuck her until she screamed and didn’t try to fuck with me again.

  “This queen is not playing dress-up,” she hissed. “She’s waiting for the king to stop talking in riddles and fucking expose who he truly is.” She smiled, and the cocky sight boiled my piss. Her nails sank into the skin of my jaw, and my cock filled with blood. “She’s waiting for the monster she has been warned against to come out to play, not the handsome façade he hides behind.”

  Cheska brought my face closer to hers, grazing her lips against mine and speaking against my mouth. “She’s waiting, has been waiting, for the king to show his true colours. Then he’d realise she’s not waiting for the valiant knight on his white horse to carry her away to her happily-ever-after. Rather she’s waiting for the fucking dragon to appear, to burn any suitor who gets in his way, and claim the queen once and for all. She wants the dragon, Your Majesty,” she said mockingly. “She wants the fire. She wants the thorns and the razor-sharp branches. She wants the eternal fucking darkness. She wants to sit beside the king on his treasured throne of bones.”

  Cheska was breathing hard, as if adrenaline was pumping her blood like rapids through her body. I grabbed her wrist and squeezed until her fingers fell from my face. I could tell by the sting those nails left behind that she’d broken the skin and drawn blood. My heart was thundering in my chest, and my blood was lava, fucking scalding and incinerating the walls of my veins.

  “You want darkness?” I said to her, pushing her back with my wide chest until she was pinned against the back of the chair, trapped. “Then you’ll get darkness. You want the fucking dragon, the fire and blood? Then you’ll get the motherfucking dragon. You want the bones, the flesh and the death … ?” I brushed past her cheek and down her neck, then scraped my teeth against her throat. “Then you’ll get fucking death,” I said against her scorching skin.

  I pulled back, glaring down at Cheska as she lay back against the back of the chair, gripping the arms and looking up at me like I was every inch the dark lord the pathetic bloody papers claimed me to be. “Tomorrow night, you can come with us, and we’ll see if you still want all the sadism and depravity you claim your pussy gets soaking wet for.”

  Her eyes narrowed at my crassness, but as I walked to the door, needing to fucking get away from Cheska and all the fucked-up things my evil soul wanted to hear, she said, “I want the dark lord in the obsidian chariot, black horses carrying us away into hell. Not the white knight. I’ve already had him, let myself be rescued by him. And he proved worthless.”

  Cheska stood, swiped a packet of cigs off the fireplace and sparked one up. “I want the king of my dark-hearted nightmares.” Cheska looked down, and in her hand were the ivory queen and ebony king. Cheska took another drag of the cig, then stabbed the lit, ashy end into the heart of the ivory queen, a black mark staining the white. I met the challenge in Cheska’s eyes with my own, then threw open the door and went to the spare room I’d been staying in while she slept in my bed.

  Tomorrow night. Tomorrow night she’d see the true fucking dark king she said she wanted to drag her to hell. Then we’d see if her conviction was as good as her talk.

  We’d see if she really wanted to be the queen to stand at my side. Through blood and torture.

  Through darkness and hell.

  Chapter Ten

  ARTHUR

  I stood at the bar waiting for Betsy and Cheska.

  “You sure this is a good idea, mate?” Freddie said beside me.

  “She wants to be in this world, then this is her test,” Vera answered for me.

  “He’ll hold back.” Charlie smiled cockily at me.

  “I won’t,” I said, eyes pinned on the fucking door. “She wants to see all this shit, how we live. Then she’ll see it all. No fucking holds barred.”

  “Should we prepare a limo to take her ladyship away after she sees the lair?” Eric said. “I can have it on standby at the back door, sick bags at the ready.”

  “Cheska will be okay,” Vinnie said, eyes fucking blown, readying for tonight. Out of all my men, he craved these nights the most. Almost as much as I did. “I’ve seen it.” Vinnie looked up and nodded at the ceiling like the fucking nutter he was. “There’s more black around her now. Still some red, but much more black. Everyone is dead. All her family are dead. That always brings more black. And it never goes away.”

  Something fucking pulled in my gut at that. I stood off the bar, righting my cufflinks, just as the door to the living room opened and Betsy and Cheska stepped inside. I fucking froze on seeing Chelsea Girl. She was dressed in all black. Skinny black leather trousers clung to her fucking legs like a second skin. Legs that seemed to go on for fucking ever. She wore a skintight black top tucked into the high-waisted trousers. Her hair was down and she was wearing makeup. I hadn’t seen her wear makeup since she’d collapsed on my nightclub floor. Her sky-high stilettos left her only a few inches shorter than me. They’d make it easier for me to turn her around and sink into her cunt, if she managed to last the night.

  Ronnie and Vera got to their feet. The room was quiet. Betsy threw me a smug look and went to stand beside her brother, linking her arm through his.

  “Let’s go,” I said, moving to leave the room.

  “One thing first,” Ronnie said, and I stopped dead. She turned to Cheska, who was watching her with a suspicious stare. Ronnie’s face was steel as she walked toward Cheska and pushed her against the wall. Cheska’s back hit the wall with a thud. I gritted my teeth, ready to wrench Ronnie the fuck out the way. I made to move, but Vera shot me a glare. She shook her head, telling me to leave it. I told my cousin with my fucking cold expression that if anything happened to Cheska right now, they’d be sorry.

  “You think you’re ready for tonight?” Ronnie said. Cheska nodded, chin held high like it had been in the study last night. Never knew a posh bird could have so much fucking fight.

  Ronnie smirked, then took hold of Cheska’s face and pinned her head back against the wall. With her free hand, Ronnie reached into her pocket and pulled something out. I stepped forward, suspecting it was a blade. But she held the silver metal item up and
smiled. “Then you better wear a fucking killer red to go with those heels,” she said and twisted the tube in her hand until red lipstick came out.

  I rolled my fucking eyes at her theatrics and pushed past them all. I flicked my eyes to Cheska as I passed, only to see her smiling at Ronnie as she painted her lips scarlet red. Betsy laughed, and my boys followed behind me. We got into cars, and in my peripheral I saw Cheska get into the one at the back with Betsy, Vera and Ronnie.

  There would be no attempt to hide her identity at the place we were going. The people there wouldn’t give a fuck who she was anyway. And they knew better than to fuck with me. They might be my associates in business, but I had dirt for fucking days on all of them. The place we were going to was my motherfucking domain. No one would dare fuck with any of us Adleys there. And if they did, then it was the perfect place for retribution.

  “Ready, old boy?” Charlie asked. I knew he wasn’t referring to tonight by the cocky look on his face. It was about Cheska. But I wasn’t talking about her right now. She’d see one of our enterprises tonight and fucking leave. Out of my life and back to her world. Then I’d be back to bloody breathing right. Because I wasn’t sure I’d taken a full fucking breath since she’d burst back into my life.

  The cars stopped at the old warehouse in Mile End. I flicked the collar of my coat up and lit a cig, the freezing cold wrapping around me, then led the way toward the warehouse. To normal people, it was just that—a warehouse, filled with car parts and other mechanical shite. To us and those in my world, it was a gateway to fucking sin.

  I threw open the door, then descended the staircase. Adley soldiers opened the steel doors that led to the dungeon.

  “Alright, guv,” they said as they opened the doors. “Full house tonight.” The minute the soundproof doors were open, the sound of fists hitting flesh came barrelling into the East End night. I glanced over my shoulder to see Cheska walking with Betsy, Ronnie and Vera. I flicked my chin at Eric. He nodded back at me, getting my order to keep an eye on her and the women.