“From himself. From the darkness that’s almost completely devoured him,” Ronnie said. “That will take him under until he’s got nothing left inside him, no humanity, no fucking life.”
“Everyone is terrified of Arthur, and that’s why no one fucks with our firm. You can’t beat a man who doesn’t fear death,” Vera said.
“And as much as that serves us well as a crime family, we love our cousin more than our place on the top of the fucked-up London underworld,” Betsy said. “If he keeps living this way, he will die alone, never knowing love and constantly haunted by the ghosts of all the people who fell by his hand.” Betsy sighed. “Just like his father.” She sipped at her wine. “As much as I adored my Uncle Alfie, in reality, he died years ago. He died when my aunt and cousin burned in the house fire. And instead of loving Arthur harder, he moulded him into a man who could never be fucked with. Who would make the most formidable crime boss in London. He made his son impenetrable. Unfeeling. He made him fucking lethal.”
“And a geezer who couldn’t express his feelings. Uncle Alfie feared it would make Artie weak if he did.” Vera reached across and held Ronnie’s hand. “Love, Ches. Arthur was raised to think love was a fast track to ruin.” She smirked, but it was laced with sadness. “The strong and formidable Arthur Adley, who kills without remorse, runs far, far away at the first sight of love. Ironic, no? I’d say it’s the only thing in life that actually terrifies him.”
“Then along comes you,” Ronnie said. “Rich, posh, and poles apart from his way of life.” She shrugged. “I’m sure it was easy to convince himself that you two would never last, would never really start.”
She pointed at the ring. “And the one night he lets his walls down and admits he needs you by leaving us all behind to seek you out, he wakes up to that.” I remembered him crying, feeling the tears on my stomach and his arms tight around my waist as he told me they’d all been taken away. Then I recalled his cold, dead eyes as he left my flat without ever looking back.
I’d seen what they were describing. I’d seen the crack he’d opened in his thick armour. For a few cherished hours, I’d seen the man underneath, the man kept hidden behind an iron cage. And instead of caressing him, I’d plunged my sword into the fracture and pierced the fragile body inside, watching as he bled out.
“He’s keeping away from you,” Betsy said. I could barely see her through my blurred vision. “He’s put me in charge of you.”
“He’ll keep you safe, but he’s going to keep you at arm’s length,” Vera said.
“I don’t want him to,” I said, feeling a new kind of purpose pushing through me. One with Arthur as the goal. I would erase the hurt the unwanted ring had caused. I would heal, not widen, the crack in his armour.
“Doesn’t matter.” Vera tipped her head to the side. “He’s fucked up, you know?” She smiled, and I knew it wasn’t in pity toward Arthur. It was with pride. “He kills. A lot. He’s a fucking death-delivering master.”
“I know.” I thought back to the men in Marbella when we were eighteen. How he’d cut them down easily and made the fourth guy cut off his own dick.
“And it doesn’t faze you?” Vera asked.
I tried to find hatred in my heart for what and who Arthur was. But I had always known. I had always known about his family, about what he had done. I’d witnessed it and still gone back for more. And I couldn’t find it within me to hate something that had saved my life.
Twice.
He had now saved me twice.
The world was fucked up. Maybe it took being equally as disturbed to truly thrive. In this moment, with mostly numbness and bitterness running through my veins, it didn’t bother me at all.
“Not like it should,” I finally replied. The women all looked at each other. I saw something like relief, and maybe a hint of excitement, spark in their stares. It made me feel something. It made some cavernous part of me fill with something unknown. But mostly, I let the fact that they were saying Arthur loved me sink into my bones, eradicating the aches.
I couldn’t believe it. A part of me wanted to question them, believe they were winding me up, teasing me somehow, trying to get me to flee Arthur’s home. But I could tell by their open faces that they weren’t. They adored Arthur; anyone could see that. But they were scared for him too. Scared that this life they all loved was swallowing him, drawing him down to a level of hell from which he could never return.
“It won’t be easy,” Betsy said. I wasn’t sure if it was to me, to Vera and Ronnie, or to all of us. Her gaze was lost to the fire raging in the hearth. “He’ll fight it. He’ll test her. Push her to the limits to see what she can take.” Betsy blinked, bringing herself back to the here and now. “He will challenge you if you try to show him your love. He’ll resist, because it’s all he knows how to do. He’ll try to sabotage it. A future he was told he could never have, warned not to have.”
“That’s not a pass for him acting like a complete twat, of course,” Ronnie said, lip curling into a smirk. “Don’t let the arrogant fucker get away with anything that pisses you off. Don’t allow him to treat you like shit.” I found myself smiling at her. She winked. “Push him back. Challenge him back. Give him a taste of his own medicine.”
I tried to imagine a world where Arthur could love me and I could love him freely. I hadn’t ever let myself believe it outside of my deepest fantasies, so it was a difficult concept to grasp. But these women were telling me it was possible. That he wanted me as much as I wanted him. That it was there for the taking, if only I could wade through his darkness to find him.
The flicker of light that apparently still remained.
I was drowning in grief. Crushing waves of sadness were swallowing me whole, dragging me down to the depths. But the possibility of having Arthur—loving him and him loving me in return—was akin to having his hand delving into the choppy, rough sea and pulling my head above water.
I thought of my life now. The strange and unfamiliar path that now lay before me, the one now built from blood and the deaths of those I loved. Unease shuddered through me … but not when I thought of Arthur walking beside me. Holding my hand.
With him in my grip, I was calm.
“I love him,” I said again, stronger this time, with more conviction. “I have always loved him. No one else. Only him.” I laughed, not caring that the cut on my lip burned as I did. I had harboured that confession for too many years, never confessing it to a soul. But I was confessing it now, as honestly as a Catholic pilgrim emptying their soul to their priest.
It seemed fitting that confession would be made in a converted church, and ironically about a man who was aptly likened to the devil himself.
“Good,” Vera said, and I caught her fleeting smile. Maybe she wasn’t as difficult as she made herself out to be.
“Now, on to other business.” Ronnie pulled a piece of paper from her pocket and laid a picture before me. It took me a few minutes to refocus from the ember of hope that had sparked in my broken heart. The picture featured a mark of some kind, a brand on someone’s skin. It was circular with a V-type shape inside. “Do you recognise it?”