Lord of London Town Page 22

  It was the closest Arthur had ever come to letting me know how he felt about me. The closest I’d seen to him losing his cool, to his usually expressionless face betraying his feelings. I stepped closer to him. He swallowed. “They’ll come for you, princess. They’ll come for you because of me.”

  This was because of tonight. This was all because we had made love. Not fucked. Not screwed. But made love.

  It had rocked him. It had affected him more than I ever thought possible.

  I nuzzled my head into his hand and kissed his palm. Meeting his wild eyes, I said, “They have already come for me, Arthur. The wolves already came. And not because of you.” I closed my eyes and chased my threatening grief from my chest again. I couldn’t let the sorrow catch up with me just yet. Then I thought of the trafficking, the blood, and the brand that marked the slavers who had tried to take me, but I couldn’t think of it all yet.

  The padlock rattled again, just as it had when I’d been talking to Freddie. Stark fear stole a breath. What would happen when I let it all in? Would it crush me? Would it destroy me? Would it take me to a place that I couldn’t return from?

  Arthur opened my hand and thrust his gun into my palm. The metal was cold against my skin, and it felt too heavy to hold—not just the weight, but the responsibility, the gravity of what it meant if I ever pulled the trigger that brushed tauntingly against my finger.

  My hands were shaking. The padlock rattled harder.

  Arthur moved behind me. He straightened his arms, taking mine with them. His body enveloped me and his cheek pressed against mine. He moved my hand into the correct position on the gun. “Unlock the safety,” he said, using my hand to do so. “Aim,” he added, then held his trigger finger over mine and pulled. “Fire.” The boom from the gun was swallowed by the soundproof walls of the fighting pits. The bullet pierced the white paper target that was attached to a bale of hay, the hole going right through the red circle.

  My blood roared through my ears, and a cocktail of adrenaline and fear and the addictive feeling of control raced around my body.

  “Good,” Arthur said. “Again.”

  I lined up the shot, then fired the gun. The bullet hit the target, and a rush of relieved breath left Arthur’s mouth. His cheek was still next to mine, and he leaned in and kissed me. I felt the tenderness of it shiver down my spine.

  Arthur released the gun and left me holding it myself. “Again,” he ordered and stepped back. As I felt the trigger under my finger, the balaclava-clad face of the man who’d slit Freya’s throat came to my head, the memory slipping through the cage’s door. Then the man who’d plunged a knife into Arabella’s chest followed quickly behind, showing me her eyes widening as the blade sank inch by inch into her still-beating heart. I remembered how she took the blade without crying or begging, how she met death with a steely bravery and an eerily calm façade.

  As I aimed the gun, my hand shook harder. Tears built in my eyes, and the bales before me became a hazy beige blur. I fired, having no idea where the bullet landed. No idea if Arthur spoke to me, tried to help me. I felt it then. I felt the padlock snap and the cage door burst open. My heart plummeted toward the well of grief I had tried to keep sealed off. A place of sadness and despair, a hole of quicksand that wanted to drag me down too deep to return from.

  I held the gun steady and aimed again. My head filled with Hugo and my father tied to chairs, frantically begging for their lives. The floodgates of my mind wrenched themselves open.

  And as if my dad’s and Hugo’s and my friends’ murders weren’t enough for my mind and heart to endure, an image of my mum came next. Her soft but bony hand clutched in mine. How weak it was as she tried to hold me tightly and say her goodbyes. My mum, the one person who had ever shown me love—true love—leaving me, cancer stealing her from my side. I saw her laughing and smiling and taking me to the park. Afternoon tea at Harrods and holding my hand as we walked along Bond Street.

  Then she disappeared, her body and bright smiling face misting away with the gale-force wind of death.

  Gone.

  I fired a bullet as I remembered watching her fade in her bed. When her chest rose, fell … then never moved again. Her hand, already weak in mine, went limp. Hours and hours passed, and I still couldn’t let her go. A little girl staring at her mum’s pale, still face, wondering why she couldn’t get better. Why she couldn’t smile at me again. Why she couldn’t heal and not leave me alone.

  Because I was. After she had left me, I was alone. Maternal love gone, and a distant father’s embrace the pitiful replacement.

  Mum.

  Dad.

  Hugo.

  Freya.

  Arabella.

  I fired the gun over and over until the bullets were replaced by empty rounds sending nothing but air and lost dreams into the bales. Tears flooded my cheeks, and all the fight drained from my body. The gun seemed to weigh ten tons in my trembling hands. My arms fell, dropping it to the ground. My legs felt like jelly, and I felt myself collapsing to the sandy ground, but strong arms caught me before I hit the floor.

  All I could see was blood. All I could see were my friends tied up and crying to be free. Their terrified eyes as they realised they weren’t getting saved. Dad and Hugo as they silently begged their attackers for mercy on the video. Two men who were not exactly affectionate or loving to me, but who I loved because they were mine. My only family … I saw my mum kiss my head as she said goodbye, as she told me to be a good girl and that she would watch down on me from heaven …

  My family … all gone.

  I didn’t realise I was falling apart, wracking sobs tearing from my chest, until Arthur sat on the floor and pulled me into his arms. His hold was like a balm to my torn soul. “They’re dead,” I said, hearing gunshots in my mind. The sounds that would have engulfed the room as the attackers fired into my dad’s and Hugo’s heads.

  And my best friends … they died because of me.

  “It’s my fault,” I said, my throat raw from the sadness, from the guilt. “My friends died because of me. They’re gone because of me …” Arthur held me tighter, and despite the emptiness in my heart, I felt safe. As I collapsed and exorcised weeks and weeks of repressed sadness and guilt, he kept me upright in his arms, never letting me fall.

  “Arthur,” I cried, clutching his arms just for something to ground me. To stabilise the emotions threatening to tear me apart. “They’re gone. All I have, everyone … they’re gone.” I was twenty-four, soon to be twenty-five. And they had all gone.

  Arthur lifted me until I was firmly in his lap, until I was curled into his chest, and I cried for the four lives that had been lost. Four lives that were my family, that I loved. Taken so brutally, so quickly.

  And my angel, my mother, taken from me so young.

  Arthur’s hands moved to my cheeks and lifted my face. His thumbs stroked away the mass of tears from my eyes, and he leaned in, kissing the wetness from my face. We stayed there, him kissing me and caring for me, until my body shook with exertion, my emotions raw and wrought. He kissed each falling droplet away, my tears glistening on his lips. He consumed my sadness; he savoured my pain.

  I was breathless, my chest sore from overuse. When my sobs had ebbed and my tears had begun to dry, Arthur met my eyes. “You’re not alone, princess.”

  I stared into his eyes, needing more. Craving more. Arthur’s shirt was wet, and I saw the lines of his tattoo through the now transparent material. I knew my cheeks would be red and blotchy, but I didn’t care. I was numb yet wracked with sorrow—erratically flitting from one sensation to the other.

  “I didn’t think it was possible to feel so much loss,” I whispered and let Arthur push back strands of tear-dampened hair from my face. I put my hand to my chest. “I didn’t think it was possible to feel such emptiness in here.” I sucked in a shuddering breath. “In your heart.”

  Arthur’s piercing blue stare captured mine and didn’t let go. Gripping my cheeks harder, he repeated
, “You’re not alone.” Each of his words was a salve. A door unlocking that had been bolted shut. Hope bursting into glimmering light.

  “I’m not?” I whispered.

  Arthur pressed his forehead to mine. His lips grazed along mine. “No.”

  I grasped his wrists and embraced the warmth his hands brought to my face. “I’m …” I pulled back so I could see his face. “I think I’m broken,” I confessed, feeling the truth of those words ache in my heart. “I’m not sure I’ll ever get over this, over losing them.” Arthur’s hands flexed on my cheeks, and I knew that was his way of telling me he knew how it felt. Of course he did. He had watched those he loved die around him too. “Can you love a broken queen?” I asked, smiling though my face felt numb.

  Arthur searched my eyes. “Can you love a broken king?”

  I stopped breathing. As he stared at me, I realised he was waiting for my answer. No, he needed my answer. Because Arthur, my Arthur, had just let me in a fraction more.

  He was broken too. This man, this unshakeable and unreadable titan of a man, was broken too.

  “I already do,” I said, my confessional whisper wrapping around us in the empty room.

  Arthur sighed. “Then don’t ask questions you already know the answer to.”

  His gruff response stopped my heart. Arthur’s eyes flitted away from mine, only to fix on them again as his veiled admission sank into my soul. He loved me too. It was the closest he’d got to admitting the words aloud.

  This broken king loved his broken queen.

  I kissed him. Lips sore and cheeks flamed, I kissed him and tried to pour all the love I had inside me into that kiss. I pulled back and looked at the target. Bullet holes riddled the paper. Arthur picked up the gun and handed it to me. “Yours,” he said. As I took the gun from him, he wrenched me forward so hard I hit his chest. Eyes burning, he said, “I need you to learn how to use it. You need to master it. Then use it if you ever need to. No hesitation.” Arthur’s breathing quickened, betraying just how much he needed this from me.

  “I promise,” I said and was rewarded with a deep kiss.

  “Let’s go home.”

  I followed Arthur out of the pits and into his car. He held my hand the entire way home. I sank into the heated seat and watched the early-morning mist rise over London. Market sellers were rousing from their sleep, readying for the morning of trade. I loved this time of morning. The calm before the storm. When it was quiet and still. The deep breath before the exhale of day.

  I felt dead on my feet as we entered the church. Emotionally and physically exhausted.

  As we passed the living room, Arthur changed track and pulled me inside. Vinnie sat before the fire, staring into the flames. Arthur nodded at his brother and poured me a large whisky. As I took the drink from Arthur and downed half the glass in one, feeling the hot liquid coat my throat, I felt someone watching me.

  It was Vinnie. His head tilted to the side as he examined my face, as if he was listening to someone speaking into his ear. I smiled at him, always feeling such sorrow for this man and the demons that plagued him. A man clearly lost in life’s intricate maze. I raised the glass to my lips, needing the numbing effects of the alcohol, when Vinnie said, “They don’t blame you.”

  My hand froze around the glass. He nodded at what I presumed was his hallucination of Pearl. Vinnie took a deep breath. “They don’t blame you at all.”

  “Who?” I asked, feeling Arthur move behind me. He curled his arm around my waist and pulled me back into his chest, as if he knew I needed his steady frame to keep me from falling.

  “Your mates,” he said with as much ease as he talked about anything else. My heart thundered in my chest.

  “My mates.” Numbness tried to smother me, to protect me from more pain. But I pushed it back. I wanted to hear this. I needed to.

  “They know it’s not your fault,” he said. “They just wanted you to know.” Vinnie stared back into the fire as if he hadn’t just carved my chest open and offered me something I thought I could never receive—forgiveness from my deceased friends.

  A lifeline.

  “And my dad?” I asked, knowing Vinnie never really saw the dead but taking the rope he offered anyway. I knew it was his illness, the hallucinations. Yet I so desperately wanted to believe it to be true that I pushed for more. “Hugo?” Arthur gripped me harder at the mention of Hugo. But he didn’t need to be jealous. I hadn’t loved Hugo in the romantic sense. But I’d loved him as a friend, as my family. I’d never wished him any harm.

  Vinnie cocked his head, then looked at me blankly. “I don’t hear them.” My stomach sank.

  “Come on,” Arthur said, clearly seeing exhaustion pulling me down to despair. He guided me to our room and took the whisky from my hand and placed it on the bedside table.

  He undressed me, but my thoughts were elsewhere. As he removed my clothes and slipped his t-shirt over my head in place of my nightgown, I asked, “Do you ever believe him?” I let my attention drift to the door, and the living room beyond where Vinnie was no doubt still sitting. “That he talks to the dead?” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “That he just spoke to Freya and Arabella? That they …” I inhaled deeply. “That they don’t blame me. That they wanted me to know.”

  Arthur stripped off his clothes. When he remained in only his boxers, he stepped closer to me. He put his hands through my hair. “I gave up a bloody long time ago trying to figure out what Vinnie was all about. So I say believe whatever the fuck you want, princess.”

  “But do you believe him?” I treaded carefully when I asked, “About Pearl. Do you believe he truly sees her, or is it really just a hallucination born out of mental illness and the stress of loss?”

  Arthur’s teeth gritted together, and I knew that the deaths of his sister and mum was one demon he had yet to confront. I knew from Betsy that it was the one part of his life he never talked about. Ever. Couldn’t talk about. Refused to—always had.

  “I think Vinnie believes she’s real, and that’s all that matters to him. Keeps him from going postal. I know he has an illness—it’s been verified by a truckload of doctors.” Arthur shrugged. “But Eric’s always believed Vin sees something else, sees what most people can’t. Sees something more.”

  “He didn’t see my dad and Hugo.”

  “It’s not a foolproof gift, if it even is a gift.” Arthur handed me the whisky again. I drained the glass, then let him lift me into his bed. He wrapped me in his arms and I shut my eyes, letting the grief I had pushed away for so long try to drown me again.

  I had to face it.

  But as the waves of grief and guilt crashed over me, I held on tightly to Arthur, trusting him to keep me safe. I held on as I replayed my loved ones’ deaths so vividly in my mind. Then I thought of Vinnie’s words: They know it’s not your fault … They just wanted you to know …

  Freya and Arabella didn’t blame me. I felt that truth in the depths of my heart. I’d felt the truth of it when Vinnie had met my eyes with unwavering faith and told me so, a message to my guilt-ridden soul from their mouths.

  Vinnie hadn’t known of my breakdown at the warehouse. He hadn’t known that I had broken my heart to Arthur and let the pain I’d been fighting for weeks finally consume me. He hadn’t known, yet his message was so timely it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

  So, I would believe him. My soul cried out for me to trust in him, to find solace in his words. And as the sun rose and London began to wake, Arthur held me tighter as his queen, safe in his protective arms and in his care.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ARTHUR

  She was fucking breaking me.

  I sat in my car, arriving at the docks thinking about Cheska. That’s all I fucking did. Think of her when I wasn’t with her; she was haunting me, fucking with me. She was in my bloody head as if she was possessing me. Her green-brown eyes, and the way they fucking cut through me. Like she always knew what I was thinking. Like she could claw at
my chest and grip my heart in her hand, squeezing it and ripping down its walls.

  I stepped out of the Bentley, the sky grey and overcast, the freezing rain chucking it down in buckets. I didn’t care about the downpour as it ran down my face and soaked through my suit. I didn’t give a fuck about anything but Cheska and being inside her cunt as she clawed at my back.

  I met Freddie in the woods. I stopped in front of the tree and the stupid twat tied to it. I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out my knife. I closed in on the prick, who was holding his chin high and trying to glare me down.

  “He’s saying fuck all,” Freddie said. This tosser had been caught wiping route information from one of our haulage ships. One of the haulage ships that had been targeted at sea, millions of pounds worth of coke now getting the fishes off their faces in the North Sea.

  I didn’t have time for this shit. Lashing out, I slit the twat’s throat, his blood spurting to the ground, then headed back to the car. “Be at home for seven,” I called back at Freddie.

  I climbed into the car, and the driver pulled out onto the road. I stared out of the window and felt fucking twitchy, like I couldn’t sit still, like I was crawling out of my skin. I felt fucking undone.

  And I bloody hated it.

  Since Cheska. Since Chelsea Girl met me in the pits and threw her crown at my feet. Since she threw her old life the fuck away and joined the fucked-up darkness that only I offered.

  I love you …

  Her voice played in my fucking head on loop. Fucking haunted me. Drove me insane.

  I never wanted it to stop.

  I pressed my thumbs into my eyes, seeing her on her knees as she sucked my cock, as she lay on her back as I fucked her—no, not fucked, made love, she said.