And in his murdering hands, he held his very own Excalibur.
Betsy squeezed my knee in support, a silent request to be strong. When we’d entered these pits, I had not been prepared for how the night would end. The blood, the fights, the death.
So much death.
And then there were the “associates”. The infamous bikers that rode through London like they were a law unto themselves. The Irish and Romani mafias that everyone had heard of but no one I knew had ever had dealings with. All of them terrifying in their own right, and all of them looking down at Arthur like he really was the dark lord he had been titled.
Royal, the man Betsy told me was the president of the Hangmen, got to his feet. “A fucking show as always, Adley.” His men started heading for the exit. “Until next time, mate.”
Arthur nodded at each of his “mates” as they left, leaving only the Adleys. But Arthur hadn’t moved from the pit. His wild eyes stayed on mine, and I couldn’t move. I was a rabbit in his snare, locked in place.
“I take it that’s our cue to go,” Eric said sarcastically, then pointed in Betsy’s face. “You and me have an appointment, treasure.”
“Fuck off, Eric,” Betsy bit back, but there was a hint of something like excitement in her voice, and she got to her feet, her lips curling up. Eric grabbed her and spun her around. “You’re fucking riding my dick the minute we’re in that car.” He had put his shirt on over his bloodied chest, and red seeped through the expensive material. “It’s been too fucking long.”
“If you can even call it a dick,” Betsy snapped back. But her pupils had dilated, and her skin was flushed. Eric growled, then dragged her from the warehouse.
Just as they reached the door, Betsy shouted back, “Vera, Ronnie, I’ll see you back at the church. Seems like we might be taking the long way home.”
I didn’t pay any mind to everyone else leaving around me. I was too focused on breathing, on calming my skin, which felt as though it was setting alight as Arthur’s chest rose and fell in the pit and the air clogged with tension. I saw the blood on the ground and on his skin.
An Adley soldier dragged the final body from the pit and disappeared out of the warehouse. I tried to find sorrow for the men Arthur had so brutally murdered tonight, but all I saw in their places were my attackers. The men who had killed my father and Hugo. The men who had so easily slit Freya’s throat and stabbed Arabella right through her heart.
“Arthur had protected these men, provided for them, given them a place at our family’s table,” Vera had said as Arthur toyed with the men in the pit like a lion playing with his prey. “The fuckers betrayed him. Fucking Judases, the whole lot of them,” she spat, anger lacing her raspy voice.
“They knew what they were signing on for,” Ronnie had said as Arthur stabbed a man in the ear. “Their greed and lack of loyalty brought this to them. Stupid fucking tossers. They deserve to die. They knew the contract when they joined the firm. They broke it. They invited their own deaths.”
This was the world he lived in, a world I thought existed only in nightmares. In truth, it was at all of our doorsteps, just waiting to catch us off guard and drag us down to their fucked-up level. I had lived a “normal” life, and yet I’d found myself at the mercy of traffickers. Evil waited for any opportunity to sink in its claws. At least in Arthur’s cruel kingdom, there was some semblance of code and honour.
I knew something depraved must have burrowed its way into my soul when I realised I yearned to see the men who had murdered my family on the end of Arthur’s blood-soiled sword. I craved to see them beg at his feet for mercy and be prescribed pain and agony instead.
I heard a door shut. Casting my eyes around the warehouse, I realised we were all alone. Arthur still hadn’t moved. He still stood with a cigarette balancing on his bottom lip, his muscles ripped and shredded from the fights, his skin smothered in cooling blood.
And he was still watching me. He was waiting for what I would do.
This is it, I thought as I got to my feet. The choice. The decision I had to make. Arthur or my old life.
There was no contest.
I walked to the stairs that led down to the pit. Arthur scanned me the entire way down. I saw myself in his glasses as I approached, not even flinching when my stiletto heels landed on the pit’s sandy floor and the coppery stench of blood and cigarette smoke permeated the air.