“Check the fucking roads,” he hissed at a man beside him. “He can’t have got far.”
My heart kicked into a sprint—a hopeful rhythm. Freddie moved out of the way for a second, and I found the van that had held Arthur. And I saw that it was empty … empty but for two slain men who were being dragged out of the back, blood dripping from their slashed throats and eyes glazed with the recent veil of death.
A manic smile pulled on my lips. I turned to Gene. “He got away,” I hushed out, and relief spread on Gene’s face. I scanned the van again; the men surrounding the vehicle looked panicked and harried. “He got away,” I said again, reassuring myself, as I was dragged from the van and wrenched to my feet.
A laugh escaped me, and I felt the weight of the bracelet around my wrist. The bracelet that would lead Arthur and the family straight to this gang’s door.
Freddie whipped his head around to face me, his expression red with rage. I lifted my chin and thought of Vera, Ronnie and Betsy. Of how they held themselves. They would never let anyone see their weakness.
I would not let him see mine.
Freddie stepped close to me, and in my mind I replayed him killing Alfie Adley back at the church. I heard the agonised scream rip from Arthur’s throat as his dad’s blood spilled onto his pillow. As Freddie so cruelly and smugly told him he had lost.
“He’s going to kill you.” I heard the menace in my own voice, a part of me rising to the surface that I didn’t even know existed. The part that thirsted for this man’s head on a platter, that longed to see him choke on his last breath. A part of me that seemed to expand with every second that I stood before him, looking into the eyes of the man who had lied for so many years, who had looked at the man I loved with disdain and contempt. He had dared to think he had bested his foe.
Bested us.
The entire Adley family.
“He’ll kill you,” I promised, then smiled under the tape. “And he’ll make you scream.”
Quick as a snake, Freddie sliced me across the face with the back of his hand. My cheek throbbed, and the tinny taste of blood burst on my tongue. I stumbled at the force of the hit. But it didn’t fill me with dread or fear. Rather, it emboldened me. The stab of pain ricocheting over my face drove me to push Freddie harder. To bring him to the edge, to make him question every noise and movement around him. Make him nervous for the wrath I knew my much-loved lord would soon be bringing to his door.
Freddie must have seen the lack of fear on my face; he raised his hand again, curling it into a fist. I braced my legs for another, harder blow, but a hand grabbed Freddie’s wrist.
“Don’t you dare fucking touch her again.”
I turned my head to the man who held Freddie’s hand, the voice that my foggy mind recognised …
My breath caught in my lungs when I saw him step out from behind Freddie.
“Ollie …”
Ollie Lawson. My mind raced with reasons he could have been here. I looked around us. It was an abandoned yard of some kind, old offices and outbuildings surrounding us. A broken-down palace. What was he doing here? He needed to leave. These men … they would kill him.
“Cheska.” Ollie gave me the same smile he’d always worn around me. The one that used to upset Hugo so much he would talk about his hatred of Ollie for days afterwards. Ollie flicked his chin at Freddie. “Take the tape off her mouth, then get back.”
Freddie’s eyes were molten as they fell on me, but he did as Ollie had commanded, dropped the tape to the ground, and walked to the barely standing garage-looking building across the yard.
What was happening? What the hell was happening?
Ollie stepped closer to me, my frantically beating heart trying to coax my hazy brain to catch up with what was staring me right in the face. He looked down my body, that heated gaze he always had for me still burning like hot coals. “I’ve missed you,” he said, and I tried harder to understand what the bloody hell was happening.
Then Ollie lifted his hand and ran his fingers over his mouth … and I saw it. I saw the circular brand on his wrist, the brand that I had come to despise, to associate with death and pain and devastating loss.
The thing that linked Ollie to a devilish operation that had killed so many people, our families … and trafficked women. So many innocent and helpless women …
“You?” I asked, my voice a mere whisper.