Deadly, chilling fucking calm.
My family were looking at me, frowning, waiting for me to relay what I’d just seen that made all this worse. Made my reason for killing Lawson deeper.
Even more deserved.
So I fucking told them. I told them every detail of the fucked-up thing Lawson had done.
Cheska.
Fuck, when she found out …
That motherfucking betrayal only made my darkness sink deeper into my already evil-tarnished soul. They fucked with my queen. They fucked with my family. Now they were going to drown in their own blood.
I rolled the file in my fist, finger bones cracking. My family members’ livid expressions were all staring back at me, thirsting for revenge. “Get your fucking weapons ready. They’ve got Cheska and Gene. They killed my fucking dad.” I lit a cig and let the smoke billow around me. “They killed my mum and Pearl.” The rage simmered, reserving its full wrath for Lawson, Freddie and their men, and I let the devil inside me completely take the reins. “Tonight, they all fucking die.”
I met each of my brothers’ and sisters’ eyes. They were nodding their heads. Vinnie smiled broadly at me, hyped for blood and death.
First, I needed to make some calls. Because it wasn’t just me that these fuckers had messed with. The file in my hand was all the proof I needed to get the other families and syndicates on board. Lawson’s network was big, brutal, effective. But so was the rest of the London fucking underworld. Separately, we were lethal. Together … we were fucking death incarnate.
Tonight we needed all of the Lawson syndicate taken out. Not one of those fuckers would be alive when the sun started to rise tomorrow. But we—my family—we were getting the snakes at the top. We were going to destroy the nest.
“Call Royal, Seamus and Vano. Tell them we’ve got something they want to see. The Italians, Chechens, Chinese and Jews too. Lawson has fucked with too many of us. For far too long. Tonight, we all pay him back in kind.” My family’s gazes lit with excitement—vengeful excitement. “But Freddie’s mine,” I said. “Out of every one of those cunts, Freddie Williams is mine.”
I pushed past my family to change and wait for my soldiers to rally.
Then I was going to get my fucking girl.
Chapter Sixteen
CHESKA
Gene woke in the dark van, groaning as he tried to sit up. They had tied his hands with tape too. He managed to sit, and in the hazy low light—the lampposts outside our only source of illumination—his hazel eyes found me. Confusion glittered in their depths, but it soon cleared and his mouth parted when he saw me, my hands bound and my mouth gagged.
“Cheska,” he whispered and searched around us, getting his bearings. Then his shy face, the timid and closed expression he always wore, morphed into determination, and for the first time since I’d met him, I saw a flicker of “Adley” looking back at me. A steely and ruthless resolve in his stare.
“They’ll find us,” he said, making sure to keep his voice low, even though an opaque partition separated us from the driver. He shifted closer to me. “They’ll find out what happened and get us out of here.” He frowned, then paled. “Arthur?”
“He’s alive,” I said from behind the tape. I had managed to get its seal off my lips with my tongue, a gap forming at the top that helped me breathe, let me speak to Gene. “He’s in another van.”
Gene nodded, and I could see him thinking. “He’ll tell us what to do,” Gene said, confidently. “When we get out of here to wherever they’re taking us. He’ll get us out.”
My eyes fell to the bracelet on my wrist. Arthur and I hadn’t told anyone that I was wearing it. If only we had told someone—Charlie, Betsy. They would be able to find us. Then I thought back to Arthur when our eyes met in his father’s bedroom. When they met just before I was put into the van … when the Arthur of old took hold of him. The one I had known for years, the one who never gave me any indication of what he was thinking.
The ruthless man who, despite his aloofness, I fell so deeply in love with.
The van came to a stop, and fear took me in its grasp. These were the men who had come for me at the spa. The ones I had evaded. The ones who had killed my family—and now they were going to make me pay. I knew it, down to the marrow of my bones.
The sound of low voices sailed through the body of the van, then the doors were wrenched open. A frantic and furied Freddie glared down at us, his shoulders relaxing slightly as he laid eyes on me and then Gene.