“Am I boring you?” O’Sullivan drawls.
“Just placing my bets, Cian,” he replies smoothly, drifting out to the hallway. “The same way you are placing yours in here.” His gaze glides over me like water, drowning me with indifference, and then he’s gone.
And I’m screwed.
No one speaks as O’Sullivan approaches my chair. No one moves, or even coughs. He’s so close I can smell that revoltingly familiar mix of sweat and musk. It’s all coming back to me now. The stronger the odour, the closer he is to the kill.
“Maybe you can cut through the bullshit for us, Ada. Just tell us who your lover’s new business partner is, hmmm?” As he says it, he leans over to balance his cut-glass tumbler on top of my head.
My heart explodes with terror. I’ve seen him do this trick before, and every single time it's ended with a mutilated dead body.
“Stop shaking,” he snaps. “If you spill a single drop of this single malt, your husband will be destroying more than just your legs this time.”
“Please.”
“Don’t beg, Ada. It’s so boring when you beg.” Stepping back, O’Sullivan leans against the edge of the table and considers me again. “I imagine you’re wondering why I’ve allowed you to have that dance studio for so long. I’ll let you into a secret. I much prefer a fluttering bird in a cage, beating her broken wings against her bars. It’s so much prettier to look at than a listless prey who knows her life is already over. But enough about my wife. Let’s get back to your lover.” He smiles down at me coldly.
“I don’t have a lover,” I whisper, trying not to move my jaw. I can feel the cool, dead weight of the glass pressing down into my skull as he reaches into his jacket and pulls out his gun.
“Have you seen him?” he says idly, inspecting the weapon.
“No. Like I told Kirill earlier this week.” I suck in a shaky breath. No sudden movements. No regrets. “You were the one who told me he was dead. I believed you. It’s been fourteen years—”
“O’Sullivan,” interrupts a silky-dark voice. “I do not see how Semenov’s wife has anything to do with this…situation.”
“Then listen up, Mario,” he sneers, staring straight at me. “Lastra will be returning for Ada, one way or another, and when he does, we’ll be ready. You see, she and him like to think they’re the twenty-first century version of Romeo and Juliet, and I’m here to ensure that it all ends in fucking tragedy again.”
“What if the rumours are true?” the Italian muses. “What if Lastra is working with someone else?”
O’Sullivan’s chilly grey eyes narrow to black points as he turns back to address the room. “Do you know the difference between standing at the head of the table and where you are, Mario?” He taps the barrel of his gun against his chin, giving him time to ponder it. “I’m the one with the cock, and it’s your job to take what I give you, with your mouth wide open like a good little slut. Same goes for all of you!” With this, he stares down every man at the table. Daring them to contradict him. “You think I don’t know who Lastra’s working with? Kirill and I had this intel two days ago. I’ve sat back and watched you fret about who it might or might not be all goddamn afternoon. If I were a suspicious fuck, I’d say you were questioning my authority.”
“Who?” Mario’s voice rings out again, his tone a couple of shades darker.
“Danny Razor.” O’Sullivan catches my shocked expression and smirks. “Ada’s half-brother. You see, gentlemen? Bait.”
His satisfaction is like a crown of thorns pressing down on my head as well.
“Five days ago, Razor left Spain on a private jet with Lastra. My guess is they’re already in London. But they’re still boys thinking they’re men. They have no weapons. No army. They think they can come to my city and take it with their fucking threats?” His voice escalates as he turns to point his gun in my face. I flinch and then freeze when I feel the glass wobbling. “Nearly, sweetheart… Time?” he barks at one of his security guards.
“Horses are under Starters Orders.”
“Three miles, Ada.” I watch his hand flexing around the grip of his gun, never lowering it once as he walks back to his chair. “You better start praying to the racing gods that my new filly runs a flier. The more places she loses, the more chances I get at firing that glass off your head. We need you alive, but in what state is up to the skills of my horse trainer.”
As his threat sinks in, the huge flatscreen to my left flickers into life. My eyes find Kirill’s but they’re just as cold and dead as always. I’ve outlived my usefulness. He’s passed me back to O’Sullivan to torture as he sees fit.
There’s a flash of brown and silver as the horses erupt from the starting gates. I spot O’Sullivan’s immediately. She’s the dark bay in the middle of the pack. I saw her in the Parade Ring. Turning my head a fraction, I watch her move up to third position as the excited roar from the crowd starts filtering into the private box.
O’Sullivan’s watching it all unfold from his chair. Throwing his feet up on the white tablecloth, he leans back, gun still trained on me. “Are you praying yet, Ada?”
“Yes.”
For your death. May it be painful and drawn-out, and delivered by mine and Frankie’s hand.
As the horses reach the second mile, his filly is still in third.
O’Sullivan raises another drink in toast to me, his eyes rarely straying to watch the race unfolding on the flatscreen. Many of the other men have moved out to the balcony to soak in the atmosphere and, I suspect, to get a temporary reprieve from O’Sullivan’s vicious mood. Only the Italian, Mario, remains seated, flanked on either side by his associates. Kirill is still lurking in the background like a nightmare that never seems to go away.
“Did you miss me, Ava?” he murmurs, flexing his fingers again. “How long has it been since we last saw—”
“Two years, five months, twenty-six days.”
His ugly face breaks into a smirk. “You’ve been counting.”
Only in relief.
“Why?” I ask.
“Why, what?”
The noise from the grandstand is escalating. Those two words are deafening. The horses must be entering the final half mile.
“Why did you lie about Frankie?”
“Broken wings,” he says smugly. “I told you how much I love to watch you suffer.”
“You took everything from me.”
“Not quite… but it’s only a matter of time. Now that Zaccaria is dead, I’m free to kill Lastra in any way I please.”
Is this the earthquake I suspected? Was Zaccaria the one who forged our chains?
“This is the woman I have heard so much about?” Mario’s dismissive snort rings out across the table, slicing through the crowd’s excitement. “My father said she was a great beauty…but this is not the kind who starts wars, O’Sullivan. This is the bitch who serves me my meals when I summon her.”
I’m too numb to feel the sting of his words.
“Ah, this is ‘dull and boring Ada’,” he surmises. “Wait until you see ‘shiny and in love Ada’. And in the future, please refrain from insulting my daughter, or you won’t be walking out of this room alive.”