Lord of London Town

“Let them go,” I said venomously to the men who held them. Ollie laughed, actually fucking laughed as he lay on the floor.

The men were distracted by their gaffer’s laughter. Charlie used that distraction to aim his gun at their heads and send bullets right into their skulls. Cheska choked on a sob as the man behind her fell away and Vera and Ronnie reached her. They cut the tape from Gene’s and her hands.

“Arthur,” Cheska whispered in relief, then she saw the spikes around Ollie, the heads impaled on the top. As she walked closer to me, she couldn’t take her eyes off her dad and Hugo and whoever the fuck the Cheska lookalike was on the end.

Tears filled her eyes and ran down her cheeks. But she didn’t sob. She didn’t fucking break. Instead I saw darkness fill her eyes. The same darkness that lived in me—what was mine was now hers too.

I took Cheska’s hand and pulled her to my side. I smashed my lips to hers, devouring the fucking mouth I loved so much. I didn’t want to let her go. I needed to keep her beside me, but I had to deal with the twat on the floor.

I released Cheska, then gestured with my chin for her to step back. Ollie was glaring at me from the ground. The fucker hadn’t liked me kissing my bird.

I laughed coldly, then spread out my arms. “This is it?” I shouted around the empty room. “This is the great Lawson Empire?” Ollie was watching me, but now there was amusement in his unhinged eyes. It just pissed me the fuck off. I moved near him and booted him in the shin. I heard a crack and knew I’d snapped his bone. I lit a cig, not taking my eyes off the fucker moaning and gripping his ruined leg.

Cheska stood close by, still as a fucking statue, eyes fixed on Lawson. Targeted on Lawson. She wore a look of death in her eyes, and it was making me fucking hard.

“She screamed, you know,” Ollie said, pulling my focus from my bird, seemingly not giving a shit that he was about to die by my hand. I circled him, stamping down on his arm as I passed. Another snap came, and Ollie screamed out into the room. But that scream turned into a high-pitched laugh. A fucking psychotic scream.

“As the fire ate up the cottage, she screamed,” he said, panting through his pain.

My blood boiled the minute he mentioned the cottage, fucking propelling me forward. I stamped down on the same arm again. The limb dropped lifelessly at his side. I spat on his face. “Keep talking about my mum and I’ll fucking make this last all night, cunt. I’ll break you piece by piece, tear your flesh off in strips and then add your severed fucking head to one of these spikes.”

Lawson smiled, and shifted until he was kneeling on one knee, struggling to find balance. The cunt met me square in the eyes and said, “Who said I was talking about your mum?”

“I’ll kill you!” Vinnie roared, but Charlie held him back before he could rip Ollie’s tongue from his throat. “You don’t talk about my Pearl. You don’t ever fucking talk about my Pearl.” Vinnie was breathing hard, his face bright red.

I glared at Lawson. He was going to die. Slowly.

I stepped forward, my knife in hand.

But just as I did, my phone beeped with a message, and Ollie’s face lit up. “Seems not all my men are dead yet.” A wide smile pulled on his lips. I didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. “Well?” he asked. “Aren’t you going to look? If it ever came to this, I wanted to be sure that I was here while you saw it.”

“I’d rather kill you than watch some fucking video you get hard about sending,” I said.

More beeps went off around me, then silence.

A few seconds later, Charlie walked toward me, holding out his phone. His face looked like it’d seen a fucking ghost.

My cousin pressed play on the video. Betsy and Vera kept their eyes trained on Ollie as I watched. But Lawson only had eyes for me. I could feel the weight of his stare as the video started playing.

I watched as some fucker in the usual black clothes and balaclava carried my sister out of the back door of the cottage. The place was burning, my mum inside, but someone had gone in for Pearl. My heart fucking pounded like a canon at seeing my sister alive, but being taken away.

The video cut off. My hands were fucking shaking with rage, when another scene started to play. Of a woman in a suit. A blond woman with Pearl’s eyes. A woman in her early twenties …