“Your daughter?” the Italian splutters, looking disgusted.
“Not by blood, but by right.”
“No,” I argue softly. “You had no right to take me or to keep me prisoner.”
“I took her when she was just a child,” he says to Mario, ignoring me. “And I will take her again in all the ways I want to, whenever I fucking feel like it.”
My stomach lurches in disgust. Outside, there’s another explosion of noise as the horses enter the home straight.
“We need your assurances, O’Sullivan,” says the man to Mario’s right. “We don’t want this ‘mess’ with Lastra interfering with our business with the Brigăzi. That deal is worth billions, with a twenty percent cut for you and for Semenov. But it comes with conditions. No drawing attention to ourselves until this new opportunity grows roots in your city. The Brigăzi have warned us that the first sign of trouble will see them diverting their supplies to the US. The Red Compass needs this deal to maintain superiority. I don’t have to remind you that the first shipment of girls is due into Dover next week.”
Girls? Is O’Sullivan expanding into human trafficking now?
“You have a ten percent stake in this deal too, Rocco, and you too, Mario, so I suggest you make it a priority to keep the Brigăzi as sweet as pie and looking the other way. Concentrate on that, you Italian motherfuckers, and leave Lastra to me.”
A huge roar from the crowd signals my final roll of the dice. The race is over, but I’m too afraid to look at the screen.
“Ada, Ada, Ada.”
I hear him chanting my name as my vision blurs on a silent prayer.
I brace myself for the bullet, but when the shot rings out, it’s not O’Sullivan who’s firing it.
CHAPTER 19
FRANKIE
“The private boxes are located next to the Clubhouse. Here, let me show you.”
A cloud of pink appears in the rear-view mirror as Bambi leans forward from the backseat to shove her iPad in Viper’s face. At the same time, one of the marshals tries to usher my SUV into the main car park.
Opening the window an inch, I offer him the dirty temptation of a fifty-pound note. “Owners,” I murmur, and he nods, slipping us a couple of gold-plated pin badges in return. I give him another fifty for the trouble, and he points us in the direction of a second, more exclusive car park to the left.
“What are those?” Bambi asks curiously, as I chuck one at Viper.
“VIP access to trackside and the Parade Ring.”
“Is there one for me?”
“No. You’re staying in the car.” Viper tilts his head to get a better view of the grandstand from the window, running his fingers along the inside of his shirt collar as if the thing is strangling him. “Thiago, keep an eye on her, would you? Make sure she doesn’t start any fires.”
The huge man sitting next to her nods. “Sure thing, boss.”
We’re coming in slim today—just the three point five of us—but there’s another vehicle with six of Viper’s men in a side street nearby. Any reservations I had about Bambi being here were shot down in flames. I’m quickly learning that she and Viper are a two-for-one deal.
“You and Frankie have all the fun.” With a sigh, she slumps back into her seat.
“We get all the death and danger, too.” Parking up under a large oak tree, I lift my gun from its holster to check the clip. “Keep your phone on. If we need you to check the security feeds in a hurry, can you do it?”
She looks at me as if I just insulted her favourite Taylor Swift record. “That’s like asking if a zebra can eat grass. Why are we at this racecourse again?”
“Studying. Which is something you should be doing.”
“Are you planning on killing anyone today?” she huffs, returning the dig.
“Not unless they fire first,” interrupts Viper, giving me a look.
He knows that a run-in with the Red Compass could cost us Santiago’s good graces. If I come face to face with O’Sullivan, there’s every chance I’ll forget my head in the rush to put a bullet in his. Still, we’re living on the edge now and hungry for intel. We know that the Irish and Russians are planning something big, and we need to figure out what it is.
Opening my door, I watch as Viper leans into the backseat to gently chuck Bambi’s chin. “Stay out of trouble.”
“You know I hate it when you do that.” She brushes his hand away, acting like he’s an annoying dad, but I catch their secret fist bump in the side mirror as he climbs out of the passenger seat.
Blending in with the other racegoers, we make our way into the course, keeping trackside and anonymous.
“I look like a city wanker.” Viper tugs at the lapels of his black Armani as we circumnavigate the Parade Ring. “Does my cock look big in this?”
“You’re the one who calls himself a snake.” I scan the rows of private boxes above us, but all I see is tinted glass. “Besides, you lived and breathed these types of threads when you and your father were the new order answer to the fucking Krays.
“That was before.”
Before they took her and broke her.
Before… A beautiful Ada-shaped line, separating the heaven of her body under me, opening up for me, undoing me, with the fourteen-year hell of her absence.
“What happens if Ada’s in there with O’Sullivan?” he says, reading my mind again. “How far are you willing to bend the rules?”
I push back hard on a feeling, swallowing it down like bad medicine. According to Silas, a car picked Ada up from her brick jailhouse six hours ago and she hasn’t returned home since.
“I’ll make it up as I go along.”
“Sounds perfectly reasonable,” he says, looking unimpressed. “In the meantime, I need a drink to cancel out the taste of corporate arseholery.” He takes a step towards the nearest bar when my hand comes crashing down on his arm.
“Wait.”
He turns to see what’s caught my attention, and then my hand becomes a restraint as he’s surging forward, his drink and self-control forgotten. “Get off me!” He twists his arm to shake me loose, his expression rabid. “You know what that bastard did to my father.”
Mine too.
“Wait,” I repeat, spitting out the word through gritted teeth as the tall, unmistakable figure of Guido Rossi glides past us, less than ten metres away, before disappearing inside an on-course bookies establishment. “Not here. Not out in the open. Get Bambi on the phone. Tell her to send me through the course map.”
But it’s like I’m talking to him through a wall. The rest of me is in another room with my dead father, being hustled out of the door. Next, I’m on a bridge in London, fighting with him for a freedom that was never mine in the first place, until, finally, I’m lying on the basement floor, choking on his treachery, listening to the sound of his footsteps on the wooden staircase as he walks away.
But he won’t be walking away today.
“You did what?” Next to me, Viper is firing threats into his phone before hanging up with a curse.
“What is it?” I murmur, my eyes never deviating from the bookies.