Her lips pull into a soft smile. “You love her?”
Her words pierce through me like a bullet, straight to the chest, at someone discovering the forbidden secret that I’m in love with Lilliana Parker, my best friend's younger sister. The woman I had bought, stolen kisses from, watched as her body leaned into my touch, draped her in so much darkness she could never escape it, me.
“More than love.” It comes out scratchy, as if confessing my sins. Her eyes widen, before a small frown appears. As her phone goes off, she looks down at the caller ID.
“I’ve got to take this.” She looks around me to Gage’s body once more as her phone stops ringing, before starting again. “What about him?”
I shrug. “Feed him to the fish for all I care, unless you—” She cuts me off, her face hardening, lips curling into a sneer, all the softness disappearing.
“I don’t care,” she answers before walking away, lifting the phone to her ear. I look back at Gage’s lifeless body. A sinister smirk curls at my mouth as I take a few steps back toward him. Kneeling, I study the man whose name alone brings terror, a living nightmare, lying dead in a pool of his own blood.
“I am going to rip your empire apart with my bare hands. Watch as it burns. Say hi to the devil for me.”
The door opens, revealing three of his henchmen. I rise to full height, straightening my cufflinks and staring them all down. “Get rid of the body.” They all look between Gage and me, before each other. As I take a seat behind the desk, their eyes fill with disbelief, making my brow rise.
“Yes, boss,” Derek says, blinking at me, my father's faithful second. How fast loyalty can change. Not thirty minutes ago, he would have died for my father. Slit the throat of the man who would dare spill even a droplet of his boss’s blood. Now, he’s wrapping that same man up in plastic, getting ready to destroy the evidence. His loyalty now to man he thinks drew his boss’s blood.
My phone beeps again. I pull it out of my trousers and open the message. Grabbing onto the desk, my fingers turn white. I stand, and all three men take a step back at the lethal look in my eyes, moving out of the way fast as I race past them.
“Where is she?” I look around the empty room as if I will find her, only finding blood spots on the floor. Whoever they belong to is bleeding severely.
Marcus shakes his head. “I don’t know. I brought her here. I just grabbed something to drink! We are talking four minutes!” A rage burns through me as I push open the metal door leading to the outside of the building.
“Malachi.” I turn to see Marcus standing over a body; Declan is out cold, blood running down his face like a scarlet river.
“He alive?” In truth, I’m not bothered. That may sound cold but it’s the truth.
He may be blood, but he isn’t family. Hasn’t been in a long time. The reason Hayden was in that carpark was because he was getting Saskia, Declan’s twin sister, out of here. We had found out my uncle was arranging a marriage to a bastard of a man named Charles Duncan, who was known for treating women with less than respect and had a mean backhand and more than one wife. Charles is a top lawyer, took payments to keep men that deserved hell out of a cell. Having someone like him in with a Kingston was a good business opportunity.
Hayden had planned it all out. Saskia had gone ahead to not make it suspicious. She told her father and Declan she was staying with a friend, and none of them had been any the wiser. Hayden was waiting for the bus to join her. He was a good man, the best. Something that started out as him protecting her, listening to her as she told the truth of her world, opened him up too. They had fallen in love hard and fast.
When he got jumped, no one knew he was going to be there, but the beating he took was planned, surrounded by all angles, no chance to fight back, to even run.
It wasn’t a mugging like everyone tried to say. Hayden still had his wallet on him with hundreds of pounds in it. I was arrested at the scene; I couldn’t let him leave without saying goodbye.
I was the one that found his broken body. The police turned up as I knelt beside him, drenched in his blood as tears raced down my face and rage held my body prisoner.
Declan hated Hayden because he thought he was keeping me away from my rightful place, a place that was carved out for me before I was born. Head of the Kingston empire, where he would stand as my righthand man. He had always craved the power, what the name means, the life of luxury bought with the blood money. Without me at the top, he knew he never would be.
It's why we kept Hayden and Saskia’s secret relationship away from him. That day changed everyone, and even seven years later we all feel the ripples of his death.
“Out cold but alive,” I hear Marcus say. As I scan the area, my blood whooshes around. I run to the curb, lifting a grey heel. The same one Lilliana was wearing.
I hear Marcus curse. “I’ll check the cameras.”
I search the street once more, before walking to the security room. Marcus is sat in front of eight screens shaking his head, brows pulled down in confusion. “They’ve all been wiped, even the hidden camera.” His brows pull down deeper as his fingers works the keys of the computer. “Got you.” He stares at a grainy screen as he zooms in on the corner of a car. It's too grainy to make out what type it is, just that it’s light in colour. I watch as he tries to clear the image.
“I will find you,” I growl in a sinful promise at the screen. No one takes what is mine, and Lilliana Parker is mine.
27
Lilliana
Pain pulls me from the depths of the blackness. Coming awake, a scream rips from my lips as my stomach cramps, making me curl into the foetal position. As another cramp hits, I double over, gripping my stomach before its aftermath ripples through the rest of my body.
“Shh, you don’t want them to come.”
It’s a soft voice, one I don’t recognise, but I moan as a damp cloth presses against my forehead, cooling my heated skin, before gritting my jaw as the pain ebbs away to a lingering heaviness.
“Where am I?”
The cloth wipes at the sweat that covers my face, drenches my skin.
“Hell,” the voice whispers, just as the pain peaks again, coming so hard I start heaving. A green, frothy bile escapes, burning my throat.
When I feel a thick, warm liquid covering my thighs, a metallic smell fills my nostrils, making me gag again.
A whimper leaves my lips as blood pools around me. I look down, bringing my hand back to find it coated in my blood.
“What’s happening to me?”
Fear shakes my whole body as it trembles. I push backwards, seeing the bright red puddle beneath me. A small blonde girl comes into my view, her face pale, making her eyes look bigger, almost cartoonish. They’re deep green in colour, but what scares me more than the pain gripping me, holding my body prisoner, is the look in them; haunted, lifeless yet holding so much pity for me.
Her eyes lower as she starts to scratch at her thin arms, already covered in deep scratch marks, with dirty fingernails.
“When we are brought here, we are given a tablet to make sure we’re not pregnant, and if we are—” I cut off her words with another agonising groan as the pain starts to rise. I reach out and feel the steel post of the bed I realise I’m in, tightening my fingers against it. My body bows as the pain reaches full force, stealing my breath as the biggest cramp takes over.