Lord of London Town

Roses … Cheska always smelled of roses too.

I opened my eyes and blinked, every move of my eyelids dropping a tear to my cheeks. The wind took them away as quickly as they came. So I fucking shed more. I shed more and more, damn sinful Adley holy water cleansing the air for my mum and sister. Tributes to their lives. Lives taken by our dark underworld, by some branded fuckers who had been secretly tearing apart my family for too many years to count.

I dropped my head and bent down. My hand raked though the patch of mud under my feet. The earth fell through my fingers. Tears ran down from my cheeks and dripped onto the soil, joining the unseen ash of the family members I loved most of all.

Artie. I closed my eyes as I heard my mum calling my name like she was right behind me. I could feel her hand on my shoulder. Smell the strong, expensive perfume Dad used to buy her every Christmas. I love you, my boy, she whispered in my ear. My sweet, sweet boy. I’ve missed you.

“I’ve missed you too, Mum,” I whispered back.

And I fucking broke. My shoulders shook as the years and years of grief poured out of me onto the Cotswolds ground. My botched, stitched-up heart was ripping open and bleeding out beneath me, on the very ground that had held my mum and sister’s bodies as they burned, as they breathed their last breaths. My hands and knees planted onto the earth, and I shattered apart.

I fought to breathe as I saw that video in my mind. I mentally retraced the steps of the fucker on the screen pouring petrol on the house and trapping my family inside. He’d struck the match and tossed it onto the fuel with no fucking care at all that he was killing my mum. My fucking mum. My sister. My annoying little sister who I just wanted, so fucking badly, to annoy me for just one more day.

Arms surrounded me, and I turned my head in to Cheska’s chest. “I’m here,” she said, her words wrapping the fuck around me and chasing away the smell of fire that I couldn’t get from my bastard nose, the smoke that was filling up my lungs and taking away any ability to take in fresh air.

“They died,” I said, voice cracking. “They fucking died and I didn’t save them.”

“Couldn’t save them,” Cheska amended. “You were a child.” A child who was busy taking his first life when it all went down.

I sat up and ran my hands down my face. Cheska sat beside me, hand on my back. “They were killed, princess.” She nodded, tears slipping down her pale cheeks. “They were fucking killed.”

“I know, baby.”

I sighed, then my stomach plummeted as I wondered if Mum could see me now. If, wherever she was, she could see me here, finally finding out the truth about her death.

But my fucking heart stopped at that thought.

“You think they’ve seen what I’ve become?” I asked. Cheska tried to read my face, and I thought it was because she didn’t know which way to take the question. I wasn’t sure which fucking interpretation of it I was asking myself.

Was she proud of me, or horrified at what I did for a living, who I was?

Cheska put her hands on my cheeks. “I think she sees you. I think she sees you and smiles and loves you and is so proud it makes her ache to see you again. To be able to touch you and kiss your cheek and tell you how proud she is that you take care of your family the way you do. How you sacrifice your own happiness time and time again so you don’t break, so you don’t fall.

“But I think it would break her heart to see those things too. To see the burden such heavy duties press down on you. How you push people away so you don’t buckle under the weight of loss.” Her bottom lip trembled. “How you have love, and have found love of the deepest kind but have fought it for so many years that it’s made you battle-worn and feeling unworthy of such a gift.”

“She’d love you,” I said.

Cheska’s face crumpled in sadness. “And I’m sure I’d love her. Your sister too.”

I nodded, a smile pulling on my lips. Because Pearl would have loved Cheska. She’d told me many times that she wished she’d had a sister instead of me—her annoying big brother.

I stayed kneeling on the ground until the sky started to lighten. Until the pitch black of the sky started to turn royal blue. Taking Cheska’s hand, I said, “Let’s go home.”

“Is it my home?” Cheska whispered, showing me how the wounds I’d inflicted last night had cut her deep.