It was Betsy who spoke, unaffected by my outburst. “Just haven’t seen you like this since …” She trailed off, and we all knew what she meant. The night after I got back from Oxford, after our dads were done and I had to take the helm. The night I siphoned off any feelings and emotions I had for Cheska and became what I had to in order for this family to survive.
We’d fucking gone to war that night. And we’d been fighting on the front line ever since. “She means something to you,” Betsy added, clearly choosing her words carefully. “If you’re being honest with yourself, she always has.”
“I fucked her! That’s all,” I spat, and flicked my cig into the fire, done with this conversation and this dissection of my fucking life. I marched out of the room and straight into my bedroom. When I entered, the doctor was just moving his stuff. A bag of blood was being transfused into Cheska’s arm. But she was cleaned up, my sheet and duvet pulled up to her shoulders.
“She’s lost blood, but not as much as I’d feared.” He gestured to her face. Her fucking beaten face. My hands fisted at my sides. No one as perfect as her should ever look like this.
“I cleaned up her face, but they were surface injuries. I gave her an antibiotic injection and left medicine for her to take when she wakes—both for pain and to prevent infection. She’s to take them until the course has finished.” He pointed at the tablets on the bedside table. He went to walk past me. “She should wake after she’s rested. She got off relatively unscathed, considering what I imagine she went through tonight to even get in this state.”
“And her memory?” I asked. I needed to know what had fucking happened to her. I needed to know who the fuck had done this to her so I could kill the cunts.
“Should be unaffected. That’s physically, of course. That’s not taking trauma into consideration. That could be a potential problem for her.” The doctor left when I stayed silent, not asking him anything else. He shut the door behind him, and I stared down at Cheska.
My teeth ached from gritting them so hard. I thought back to the last day I went to her in Oxford. When I was fucked off my face on whisky and just needed her. Out of everyone, I fucking chose to turn to her. And not just to fuck, but to just be somewhere else that wasn’t this church or with my family, or with my old man lying in a bed that he would be in for months and months to come. And because I’d liked the feel of her in my fucking arms. In that moment, that fucked-up dark moment, she was the only one I’d wanted.
I shook my head when flashes of memory showed me crying on her like a pussy. Showed me that fucking ring on her finger, that bright diamond catching my drunken eye. She’d got engaged a couple of days before that night. One look at that motherfucking ring and I’d snapped. I’d needed her, needed to fucking own her, and here was another prick’s ring on her finger. A finger that had just been wrapped in my hair, holding my fucking face and wrapped around my dick.
I walked closer to the bed and saw her hand still wore that fucking ring.
She was getting married soon. Freddie’d told me that a while back, like I didn’t fucking know. I knew every detail. Married at St Paul’s Cathedral, then on to the Ritz afterwards. I fucking knew. I knew everything about this bird. She bloody clawed at my head daily, had done since the first time I met her.
Like fucking witchcraft.
I couldn’t go down that fucked-up road again. Cheska was pure kryptonite. She was the fucking gatekeeper of shit I needed to keep firmly locked away.
I needed to leave. I needed to send Betsy in here to keep watch over her and take care of her when she woke up. I had work to do, family business shit to deal with, and this bird had no place in my life anymore.
But then my feet fucking led me forward, and I dragged the armchair from the corner of my room to beside the bed, like I was being pulled by some invisible rope to her side.
I lit up a cig and stared at her face. Even bruised and battered, she was a fucking ten. But she didn’t belong in this world I lived in. Never fucking had. Didn’t stop me from taking her though. I’d fucking stolen her from the light and made her mine in the darkness.
I thought it would be just one time, an inevitable fuck we both knew we had to get out of our systems. But one taste of Cheska Harlow-Wright wasn’t enough. Even at eighteen, after my soul had only been fractured, not shattered apart—irreparable and written off. After fucking her in Marbella, I only craved her more. I was meant to get her pussy once and walk away. She wasn’t meant to ensnare me. I wasn’t meant to get addicted.
I came back to London with her bloody mobile number still stained on my palm. A week later I was knee-deep in her cunt again, and I stayed there for five fucking years.
Until that night.
Until the night everything changed and I had to throw her out of the way of the fucking demons that had taken hold of my ankles and were pulling me down to hell.
But she found me anyway. Thirteen months later, she found me, far from where she should be. An angel seeking out the devil for help. Exactly what kind of help? I didn’t fucking know.
So I’d wait in this fucking chair until I found out.
I woke up to the sound of coughing. I opened my eyes and saw Cheska wince in pain. Her eyes slowly blinked open. I turned off the main light and put on a lamp so the room wouldn’t be too bright. And I waited. When Cheska’s eyes opened, I watched as confusion wrapped around her. She glanced in my direction, and recognition flashed across her face. Even though she was pale, her cheeks flushed red.
“Arthur,” she whispered, her voice weak.
“Princess,” I said. Her eyes softened at that name.
“What—?” she went to say, then froze, seeming to remember whatever the fuck had happened to her. Her hands started shaking on the bed, then her eyes filled with tears. Her trembling hand covered her mouth, and she flinched, her fingers feeling along her swollen lips.
“They killed them,” she said, voice wracked with pain, and my body tensed. Cheska looked at me, her gaze fucking tortured. “Someone killed my friends in front of me, Arthur. Freya and Arabella. They slit Frey’s throat and stabbed Arabella right through the heart.” A sob ripped from her throat. I couldn’t fucking stand it. Couldn’t stand that horrified sound or the tears in her sad eyes.
I moved off the chair and sat on the mattress beside her. She looked up at my face, hands shaking as she clutched at the duvet. “Hugo, Dad … they’re gone too.”
“Dead?”
She nodded. “Shot.” She started crying, fucking broke, and I got her a glass of water from the bedside table. When her hands were shaking too bloody much for her to hold it, I brought it to her mouth. I held the back of her head and made sure she took a sip.
Cheska pulled the glass away but took hold of my wrist before I could move away. Her fingers were weak as piss around me, but fuck did it make something pull in my bastard gut. “They sent a video to my phone,” she said. She swallowed like she had a lump wedged in her throat. “Of them killing Dad and Hugo.” She sucked in a jagged breath.
Her eyes zoned the fuck out, her thoughts no doubt taking her back to earlier tonight. “Then they came to the spa we were at and captured us. They killed Freya and Arabella in the bedroom but said they were taking me somewhere else. They had other plans for me.” She refocused on me and held my wrist tighter. “Something slow and painful.” Rage consumed me.