Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 128585 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 643(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 429(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128585 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 643(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 429(@300wpm)
“She quickly caught my eye.” Vera kissed her bird on the lips. “Then I won her over.”
Cheska sighed, and it was heavy. “That’s what they would have done to me?” she said, the reality and gravity of her situation hitting home. “Those girls, if I hadn’t found you, if I hadn’t made it to you at your club …” She turned to me, and the expression on her face, the fucking look she was wearing, carved the fuck out of my soul, wrenched that crack in my chest wide open into a fuck-off gaping canyon. “The good guys,” she said, using Ronnie’s words. She shifted closer and pressed against me like she could melt us into one fucking person.
“They shot my dad and Hugo like they shot your parents,” Cheska said to Ronnie. She pressed her hand to my cheek. “But you saved me, Arthur. You saved me from that awful, heartbreaking life. You saved me from what Ronnie had to endure for too many years.” Cheska reached out and took Ronnie’s hand. “You are an inspiration.”
Ronnie kissed Cheska’s hand and then sat back, the fight leaking out of her. Ronnie met my eyes. “They’re stepping it up,” she said tiredly, referring to the traffickers. Ronnie darted a glance at Cheska, and I held my woman so fucking tight I thought she might not be able to breathe. They wanted Cheska.
They knew she was with me.
I didn’t know how, but they fucking knew she was with me.
Vera and Ronnie must have thought the same thing because the looks on their faces were thunderous. They liked Cheska. Fuck, they loved her, and not just because she was mine.
They wouldn’t get her. I fucking vowed to myself that they would never get her.
Cheska stayed glued to my side as we pulled up at the church. I held her fucking close as we went inside and sat down in the living room. One by one my family returned home, bringing their bags with them. We were all staying under this fucking roof until the cunts messing with us were caught.
No one spoke as we all sat around the room. Cheska sat on my lap. But it was the hairpin blades in her hands I watched, as she studied the gift Ronnie had given her. Her fingers danced over the steel and over the intricate filigree handle.
“I have braces for you too,” Vera said, nodding to the blades in Cheska’s hold.
“Braces?” Cheska asked.
“To conceal them.” Vera gestured to her sleeves and the bottom of her trousers. “They lie flat so no one will know you have them on you. Giving you time to plan your escape.”
Cheska nodded, but her eyes widened. Then I saw something flit across her face. Something I’d never seen on her before—a shadow of fucking black, a spiral of darkness.
Darkness that matched my own.
My phone sounded in my pocket. I pulled it out, expecting to see a message from Mikey telling me the police were bought off and the yard was cleared. Instead, it was a message sent by an encrypted number.
I opened it up as Eric and Charlie talked of what Mikey had found so far and the others listened. Cheska was busy turning her blades over and over in her hands, and I focused on the video that had been sent.
The video was silent and the quality was grainy. It took me a while to realise what I was looking at. But when the camera panned out and I saw a familiar thatched roof and manicured garden with a wooden fence, I knew.
I tensed, every fibre in my body braced to fucking snap. Cheska whipped her head to me, obviously feeling something in me change. My breathing came fast and hard as I watched some fucker in all black walk to the house that held every good childhood memory I ever had. And I watched as the cunt circled the cottage and poured petrol over the walls and the sides.
And I fucking watched as my mum walked out, checking a noise or something that she must have heard. I didn’t move a fucking muscle as I watched the cunt charge at her from his cover of darkness and slam her back into the house, locking her inside, barricading the door with a metal bar. My mum hammered on the glass in the door as they backed away. Then she ran to the living room window just as the flames ignited, trapping her inside.
“Babe?” Cheska’s soft voice said, but all I had was white noise in my head as the video showed the cottage starting to burn. Showed my mum running from the window when the heat became too much. Showed me her fucking terrified face as she backed away, the flames swallowing the house like it was being devoured by the jaws of hell itself.