Lord of London Town

Wordlessly, we pulled out of our drive and onto the roads of our kingdom—East London. I stared out of the window as the streets that we owned passed by. I kept my focus outside, the views moving from battered warehouses with boarded-up windows, terraced council houses and run-down pubs to upscale restaurants and bars, mansions and one-hundred-thousand-pound cars.

Motherfucking Chelsea.

Jack, my dad’s personal driver, stopped in front of a mansion in SW3. Jack kept the engine running. Rain had started to pour outside, the heavy drops thundering on the car windows and roof like bombs. Jack got out of the car and opened my dad’s door. He opened a black golf umbrella to protect him from the rain. Alfie Adley always had to look pristine. I followed him from the car, and Dad took the umbrella off Jack. “We won’t be long,” he said to Jack.

We walked to the house, and Dad knocked on the door. A fucking butler of some type answered. Dad pushed past him, knocking him backwards into some no doubt expensive but ugly-as-fuck vase. “I’m here to see George.”

“But, sir, wait!” the butler argued. Dad opened the hallway door, and I shut the front door, locking us inside. A man about my dad’s age came rushing down a huge central staircase and stopped on a landing.

“Wait here, Arthur. I won’t be long,” Dad said, his eyes locking on the fucker who was glaring at him with wide and fearful eyes. My dad cut a deadly look to the butler. “Make sure Alfred here doesn’t do something stupid like call the Old Bill.” Dad cracked his neck, never taking his glare off the butler. “This is a friendly meeting, right, George? No need for things to go south.”

“It’s okay, James,” the man—George, I guessed—on the landing said to the butler, and my father followed him up the stairs. Putting my hands in my pockets, I moved to the wall in the hallway and the pictures that hung there, keeping the butler in my peripheral. I cleaned my glasses on my shirt, rubbing the rain from the lenses so I could bloody see. When I put them back on, I was in front of a picture of a girl about my age. She had dark hair and dark eyes and olive skin. I passed pictures of a brunette woman and George.

Done browsing, I sat on the ornate red sofa in the foyer and looked around the house. Money. Whoever this George prick was, he had a fuck-ton of money.

My eyes moved from the posh artwork and sculptures and went back to the girl in the picture. Then I didn’t look away. Just as I wondered who she was, the stairs creaked. My eyes snapped up.

Brown hair.

Brown eyes.

Long legs.

Olive skin.

The girl from the picture froze on the stairs, her eyes widening when she saw me. My eyes dropped to her clothes. She was wearing pyjamas. The white top was sleeveless, and the bottoms were shorts with pink polka dots all over them. Her brown hair fell to her shoulders.

I watched silently as she searched around the foyer, her cheeks blazing red. She came further down the stairs until she was stood on the black-and-white tiled floor of the hallway. “W-who are you?” Her posh accent sailed into my ears. A proper Chelsea girl. No doubt brought up with a silver spoon in her mouth. And what a fucking mouth she had. Full, dark pink lips that seemed to permanently pout. Eric, one of my best friends, called those cock-sucking lips.

In this bird’s case, I had to agree.

She folded her arms across her chest but edged closer. “Who are you?” she asked again.

I leaned back against the couch. “Arthur.”

“Arthur,” she echoed and came closer again. She was only a few feet away. Her skin was lightly tanned and smooth, and her shorts showed off her perfect thighs. Posh birds never really did it for me. But by the twitch of my cock, this one seemed to be the exception. “Arthur …” she said again, her posh accent wrapping around my name. Suddenly, the sound of raised voices came from upstairs. Her head whipped in that direction.

“Daddy? That’s Daddy’s voice.” She faced me, panicked. “Who’s up there with him?”

“My old man.”

“Why?”

I shrugged. “Business.”

She frowned, then said, “You don’t give much away, do you?”

“What’s your name?” I asked, ignoring her question.

“Cheska.”

“Cheska … ?”

“Cheska Harlow-Wright.” She tilted up her chin—she was proud of her name. My eyes found a picture I’d seen on the wall, one in front of a factory, “Harlow” written on the signage.

All the wealth suddenly made sense.

“Harlow Biscuits.” I suddenly knew how they could afford to live in a house like this in the best postcode in Chelsea. There wasn’t a home in all of England that wouldn’t have had a pack of their biscuits in the cupboard to dunk into cups of tea.