Is there anyone in London he hasn’t bullied?
It feels strange to be talked at, instead of talked down to for once. I’m not allowed girlfriends, and neither is she, and if we’d met before this nightmare started, I doubt we’d have been more than an annual Christmas card exchange.
But that was before Frankie.
Before I understood the game of survival she was playing, when I mistook her cruelty for fear. She showed me her true colours in the grey days after Alex was born. She risked everything to help me. She did things I never expected her to do, and that kind of sacrifice forms a bond between women that no man can tear apart.
“I wouldn’t even know how to place a bet,” I admit, fanning my face with the racing brochure. My black dress is too hot for today, my coral-pink shawl is too thick. Summer crept up on me when I wasn’t paying attention. “I’ve never been to the races before.”
“Lucky you.” She gazes out at the track. “It’s O’Sullivan’s newest obsession. He never misses a Meet when one of his horses is running.” She moves in closer and makes a subtle show of resting the back of her hand on the cream railing. I glance down at it and freeze. She’s written Help Me across her wrist in red lipstick.
My gaze finds her face again. Her eyes are glistening with unshed tears. I’ve never seen her cry before. It’s like the Walls of Jericho are crumbling.
“Maybe you could show me?” I touch her skin briefly, trying to convey a thousand comforts with just my fingertips. Meanwhile, Adrik is still hovering in the background like a bad-tempered wasp.
She nods, understanding right away. “There’s an on-course bookmaker exclusive for the VIPs in the box next door.”
“Great, let’s go.”
Let’s try because God knows I owe you, Roisin.
Adrik has other ideas. “Stop. No movement from this box and balcony. Pakhan’s orders.”
“I’m placing a bet,” I tell him firmly, his eyebrows lifting at my rare spark of defiance. “We’ll be two minutes, and we wouldn’t expect to be ‘unchaperoned’ for any of it.”
He opens his mouth to crush our plan again, but we’re already pushing past him.
There’s an oppressive atmosphere waiting for us inside the private box. The air is thick with cigar smoke and self-importance. O’Sullivan’s holding court at the head of a table, still laden with the remnants of the six-course meal we’ve been forced to endure.
Just being in the same room as that monster again is making my stomach churn. I don’t live in his house anymore, but his grip on my life has never loosened. His cruelty has never abated. I hear his voice behind every decision Kirill makes for me, and his eyes still follow me around the room with the same hunger I used to fear from my husband.
His hair is more grey than red these days, and his expanding waistline is more than middle-aged spread. He uses it to his advantage, projecting some merciless twenty-first century distortion of Henry the Eighth to hurt and terrorise London with.
I still don’t know why I’ve been summoned. He hasn’t said one word to me, but I keep my eyes down, remembering all the old rules. Roisin and I are the only two women in the private box, and it’s making me nervous. These ‘social events’ tend to be littered with high-class whores, drunk on the company and free champagne, but there’s not so much as an inappropriate giggle in here today.
It means some serious business is about to go down.
No distractions.
Are those the kinds of women Frankie likes to fuck?
Did he see me after all this time and change his mind?
I stumble in my heels, unbalanced by this fresh wave of self-doubt. Hating it. Hating myself for thinking it. Angry at those two words that seem to mock me more and more as Roisin glances at me with a silent plea in her eyes.
Move, Ada. Move.
Gritting my teeth, I ignore Adrik’s mutter of disapproval as we slip past the long table. There are twenty men sitting with O’Sullivan, many of whom are devoted Red Compass disciples—the criminal masterminds of the London underground scene—including that animal, Guido Rossi, who betrayed me and Frankie the most. He’s sitting next to Kirill’s Lithuanian coke supplier, and a couple of dark-haired, anti-gentlemen I’m not familiar with, their sun-kissed olive skin all too reminiscent of the man I loved and lost.
I’ve already scanned the box a hundred times for a glimpse of my son, but Kirill’s keeping Alex away from me. My husband never passes up the chance to be needlessly cruel if the opportunity presents itself.
Half of my heart aches for Alex constantly.
To lose a child is like a knife in your back that you can never hope to reach.
We’ve nearly reached the door when angry voices erupt from the table.
“Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” A split-second later, there’s a crash of cutlery as O’Sullivan brings his fists down hard onto the white tablecloth.
Rebukes and excuses start flying around in a variety of different languages as waiters hover nervously in the background with trays of drinks. Somehow, I manage to hold myself back from breaking into a run. Now isn’t the time to draw attention to ourselves.
Three metres from the door.
Roisin seems to sense the urgency too and quickens her pace.
Two metres.
My limp is more pronounced. My sore knees are like lead. I can feel them throbbing as they take offence to the heat and my choice of footwear.
One metre.
I can almost smell the fresh air as I’m reaching for the handle.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
O’Sullivan’s voice is like a lasso of barbed wire. Roisin turns sharply, her panicked eyes meeting mine before she’s rearranging her face and her fear at warp speed. “To place a bet on your horse, darling. She’s racing in fifteen minutes.”
Every gaze in the room turns as Kirill halves the distance between us in two giant strides. Snarling something harsh and unpleasant at Adrik, he drags me back to the table by my wrist.
“Sit,” he says, throwing me into an empty chair.
“Get my fucking wife out of here,” I hear O’Sullivan say. Seconds later, Roisin is being pushed into the hallway and the door is being slammed shut on her terrified expression.
At least one of us made it.
But it’s a hollow victory. He’ll make her pay for trying to sneak out after he’s done with me.
O’Sullivan considers me dispassionately for a moment, gaze roving, tilting his head to one side as if I’m a piece of rotting meat and he’s choosing which part has the least maggots. His eyes tell a different story, though, and the way they linger on my breasts has me shivering with hate. “You demanded to know what our bait was, Mario,” he says, slowly rising to his feet. “Let me introduce you to her personally.”
Bait?
I go very still as he makes his way towards me, collecting a whiskey from one of the waiter’s trays as he passes before telling him and the rest of the waiting staff to, “get the hell out.”
They don’t need to be told twice.
Guido stands to leave too, fastening the front button of his suit jacket as he moves towards the door. Leaving me to the wolves of fate without any qualms, just as he did to me and Frankie all those years ago.