Betsy left, and her words circled my head as I downed the vodka until the bottle was done. I looked up. Most of my brothers were still around me. Gene and Vinnie were the only ones who’d gone somewhere else, Ronnie and Vera too.
“I need them found,” I said to Eric, Charlie and Freddie as they sat nursing their own drinks. “I need them fucking gone.” My vision was hazy and I heard my voice. It was broken and slurred. The vodka hadn’t numbed the pain in my body like I’d planned. It made it pulse deeper, faster, made the crack sink lower, lower and lower until I couldn’t fucking stand it.
“We’ll get them,” Charlie said, and Eric and Freddie nodded their heads. I stared at the fire, seeing the flames of the cottage again. Seeing some cunt push my mum back into the house, locking her inside.
I sat up when the pain in my chest felt like it would fucking end me. “What the fuck is happening to us?” I said to them. “No one can fuck with us. I make sure of it.” I stared into the dying fire, the flames being snuffed out under the burned logs. “We’re the Adleys. We fucking run this town.” I smacked into the side table. “I’m meant to stop this shit from happening to us. But someone is sneaking through. Someone is fucking sneaking through. I’m blind. I’m fucking blind to them.” I took a half-full bottle of whisky and unscrewed the cap. I drank it down. “I can’t see them.” I looked at Freddie, Eric and Charlie. “I can’t fucking see them. They’re hiding in my fucking house, and I can’t fucking find them!”
“We will.” Charlie got to his feet. But I didn’t want them to come to me. I didn’t want anyone fucking near me. I was poison. The crack in my chest was full of fucking poison.
My shoulder smacked off the wall as I stumbled into the hallway. My room. I needed to get into my fucking room. No, the study. I needed to get into the study. No windows. No light. Just darkness. I needed to step into the darkness and let it swallow me whole.
I tried to walk. I tried to walk but all I kept seeing was my mum walking outside, wrapping her cardigan around her to stave off the night chill. Then he shoved her. The branded cunt fucking charged at my mum and trapped her inside the house. The fucking house that she loved. The cottage that she felt safe in. She took us there all the time to get us away from this life, a break from the firm and my dad, who only ever lived for this family, this fucked-up life.
And you’ll die alone if you keep doing it. Just like our dads did … Betsy’s voice circled my head. And you’ll die alone if you keep doing it. Just like our dads did …
I stopped at the door to my left. The door that I never let myself go through. I turned the knob, then stumbled through. The lights were off and his nurse had gone home for the night. My feet were fucking cement blocks on the floor. But I made them move. I took a swig of whisky and let it burn my throat as I closed in on my dad. On the man I hadn’t let myself get close to in over a year.
Everything smelled of antiseptic. The machines that surrounded him bleeped and pierced through my skull. I grabbed the footboard and held the fuck on. My eyes were on his covers, on the duvet that hid him from me.
“Look up, you pussy,” I said to myself, then forced my eyes up. I turned away when my gaze landed on his face. On his too-thin body that never fucking moved. Not even a finger moved. My hand shook around the neck of the whisky bottle, but I made myself turn back around.
“Kill him,” I heard my dad’s voice say, the memory barrelling into my head. I saw the man in my eyes. Saw him on the floor of the pit. Saw my dad stand behind me and put a knife in my hand …
“Kill him,” he said. I stared down at the knife in my hand. I was thirteen. I’d just turned thirteen. Charlie, Eric and Freddie watched me from the top of the pit. The knife felt heavy in my hands.
“Please, kid, don’t,” the man on the floor said. I looked at his face. He was bloodied and beaten, and he was on his knees.
“Look him in the eyes when you do it,” Dad said, his mouth at my ear. “Make sure he dies looking into your eyes—the future of our firm.”
“What did he do?” I stepped forward, closer to the man.
“He fucked with us. Ratted us out to an enemy. Some of our men died.” I felt it then. Felt the anger start to build. Dad said that no one ever messed with us, our family. And if they did, they had to die.
“Arthur,” Dad said again. “Kill him.”
I walked forward and stood before the man. I could smell the sweat and piss on his clothes. The blood. I lifted the knife as one of our soldiers ripped open the man’s shirt. I kept my eyes on his and pushed the knife into his chest, right through his heart. And I never moved my eyes away from him. I never moved my eyes from his as his mouth opened and he started choking on air. As the knife stopped when it reached the handle.
As he toppled over, and my dad put his hands on my shoulders. “Good, Artie. Real fucking good, kid.”
I blinked, and the memory disappeared from my head. I remembered feeling it then. I’d felt the darkness start creeping, the doorway opening to something evil, something that reached its talons into my soul and took up home.
That had been the night. That had been the fucking night that Mum and Pearl had burned. When I’d killed that man, that traitor, they were already ash and teeth lost in the cottage’s remains.
And you’ll die alone if you keep doing it. Just like our dads did …
Dad’s face was grey and sunken, nothing like the man I’d just pictured in my head. Shot by the fucking Russians. Ploughed down and only alive because I paid a fuck-ton of money to keep him this way.
No one ever came to see him.
He had no one outside of us. His mates were long gone. Mum and Pearl were gone. And me? I never came into this room.
… you’ll die alone …
I downed the rest of my whisky, and my head swam with memories. Of Pearl. Come on, Artie. Play with me. Hide and seek.
Of Mum. Come here, she said, arms out. I walked to her and she pulled me onto the couch. She kissed my head. Let’s watch TV. It won’t be long until you won’t want to hang around with your old mum anymore.
I couldn’t fucking take it. The pain, all the fucking pain in my chest. I couldn’t look at Dad. Couldn’t think of the video I’d just seen. I backed out of the room until I was back in the hallway. I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t fucking breathe!
But my heart wasn’t done fucking torturing me. Instead it showed me Cheska’s face as I told her to get off me. That I was like this because of her. I saw the agony in her green-brown eyes. The trembling of her bottom lip. I closed my eyes, back slamming against the hallway wall, and I saw her above me, riding me, head thrown back and lips parted. Saw her walking down to the pit, leather on her legs and fucking hellfire in her stare.
Saw her stand before me and drag the queen down my chest. I am your queen.
Your queen … your queen … your queen …
My fucking broken queen.
I scrambled off the floor, pictures slamming to the ground as I used my hands to steady me. I burst through the door to my bedroom. She wasn’t there.
My heart started pounding in dread. I had to find her. The fucking ache in my chest only stopped aching when she was with me. When she was next to me, when my mouth was on hers, when I was inside her.