The padlock rattled again, just as it had when I’d been talking to Freddie. Stark fear stole a breath. What would happen when I let it all in? Would it crush me? Would it destroy me? Would it take me to a place that I couldn’t return from?
Arthur opened my hand and thrust his gun into my palm. The metal was cold against my skin, and it felt too heavy to hold—not just the weight, but the responsibility, the gravity of what it meant if I ever pulled the trigger that brushed tauntingly against my finger.
My hands were shaking. The padlock rattled harder.
Arthur moved behind me. He straightened his arms, taking mine with them. His body enveloped me and his cheek pressed against mine. He moved my hand into the correct position on the gun. “Unlock the safety,” he said, using my hand to do so. “Aim,” he added, then held his trigger finger over mine and pulled. “Fire.” The boom from the gun was swallowed by the soundproof walls of the fighting pits. The bullet pierced the white paper target that was attached to a bale of hay, the hole going right through the red circle.
My blood roared through my ears, and a cocktail of adrenaline and fear and the addictive feeling of control raced around my body.
“Good,” Arthur said. “Again.”
I lined up the shot, then fired the gun. The bullet hit the target, and a rush of relieved breath left Arthur’s mouth. His cheek was still next to mine, and he leaned in and kissed me. I felt the tenderness of it shiver down my spine.
Arthur released the gun and left me holding it myself. “Again,” he ordered and stepped back. As I felt the trigger under my finger, the balaclava-clad face of the man who’d slit Freya’s throat came to my head, the memory slipping through the cage’s door. Then the man who’d plunged a knife into Arabella’s chest followed quickly behind, showing me her eyes widening as the blade sank inch by inch into her still-beating heart. I remembered how she took the blade without crying or begging, how she met death with a steely bravery and an eerily calm façade.
As I aimed the gun, my hand shook harder. Tears built in my eyes, and the bales before me became a hazy beige blur. I fired, having no idea where the bullet landed. No idea if Arthur spoke to me, tried to help me. I felt it then. I felt the padlock snap and the cage door burst open. My heart plummeted toward the well of grief I had tried to keep sealed off. A place of sadness and despair, a hole of quicksand that wanted to drag me down too deep to return from.
I held the gun steady and aimed again. My head filled with Hugo and my father tied to chairs, frantically begging for their lives. The floodgates of my mind wrenched themselves open.
And as if my dad’s and Hugo’s and my friends’ murders weren’t enough for my mind and heart to endure, an image of my mum came next. Her soft but bony hand clutched in mine. How weak it was as she tried to hold me tightly and say her goodbyes. My mum, the one person who had ever shown me love—true love—leaving me, cancer stealing her from my side. I saw her laughing and smiling and taking me to the park. Afternoon tea at Harrods and holding my hand as we walked along Bond Street.
Then she disappeared, her body and bright smiling face misting away with the gale-force wind of death.
Gone.
I fired a bullet as I remembered watching her fade in her bed. When her chest rose, fell … then never moved again. Her hand, already weak in mine, went limp. Hours and hours passed, and I still couldn’t let her go. A little girl staring at her mum’s pale, still face, wondering why she couldn’t get better. Why she couldn’t smile at me again. Why she couldn’t heal and not leave me alone.
Because I was. After she had left me, I was alone. Maternal love gone, and a distant father’s embrace the pitiful replacement.
Mum.
Dad.
Hugo.
Freya.
Arabella.
I fired the gun over and over until the bullets were replaced by empty rounds sending nothing but air and lost dreams into the bales. Tears flooded my cheeks, and all the fight drained from my body. The gun seemed to weigh ten tons in my trembling hands. My arms fell, dropping it to the ground. My legs felt like jelly, and I felt myself collapsing to the sandy ground, but strong arms caught me before I hit the floor.
All I could see was blood. All I could see were my friends tied up and crying to be free. Their terrified eyes as they realised they weren’t getting saved. Dad and Hugo as they silently begged their attackers for mercy on the video. Two men who were not exactly affectionate or loving to me, but who I loved because they were mine. My only family … I saw my mum kiss my head as she said goodbye, as she told me to be a good girl and that she would watch down on me from heaven …
My family … all gone.
I didn’t realise I was falling apart, wracking sobs tearing from my chest, until Arthur sat on the floor and pulled me into his arms. His hold was like a balm to my torn soul. “They’re dead,” I said, hearing gunshots in my mind. The sounds that would have engulfed the room as the attackers fired into my dad’s and Hugo’s heads.
And my best friends … they died because of me.
“It’s my fault,” I said, my throat raw from the sadness, from the guilt. “My friends died because of me. They’re gone because of me …” Arthur held me tighter, and despite the emptiness in my heart, I felt safe. As I collapsed and exorcised weeks and weeks of repressed sadness and guilt, he kept me upright in his arms, never letting me fall.
“Arthur,” I cried, clutching his arms just for something to ground me. To stabilise the emotions threatening to tear me apart. “They’re gone. All I have, everyone … they’re gone.” I was twenty-four, soon to be twenty-five. And they had all gone.
Arthur lifted me until I was firmly in his lap, until I was curled into his chest, and I cried for the four lives that had been lost. Four lives that were my family, that I loved. Taken so brutally, so quickly.
And my angel, my mother, taken from me so young.
Arthur’s hands moved to my cheeks and lifted my face. His thumbs stroked away the mass of tears from my eyes, and he leaned in, kissing the wetness from my face. We stayed there, him kissing me and caring for me, until my body shook with exertion, my emotions raw and wrought. He kissed each falling droplet away, my tears glistening on his lips. He consumed my sadness; he savoured my pain.
I was breathless, my chest sore from overuse. When my sobs had ebbed and my tears had begun to dry, Arthur met my eyes. “You’re not alone, princess.”
I stared into his eyes, needing more. Craving more. Arthur’s shirt was wet, and I saw the lines of his tattoo through the now transparent material. I knew my cheeks would be red and blotchy, but I didn’t care. I was numb yet wracked with sorrow—erratically flitting from one sensation to the other.
“I didn’t think it was possible to feel so much loss,” I whispered and let Arthur push back strands of tear-dampened hair from my face. I put my hand to my chest. “I didn’t think it was possible to feel such emptiness in here.” I sucked in a shuddering breath. “In your heart.”
Arthur’s piercing blue stare captured mine and didn’t let go. Gripping my cheeks harder, he repeated, “You’re not alone.” Each of his words was a salve. A door unlocking that had been bolted shut. Hope bursting into glimmering light.
“I’m not?” I whispered.