He so rarely showed signs of joy that any mere hint of it was breathtaking.
I slipped my feet into my trainers and took Arthur’s waiting hand. He pulled me from the room and straight out of the house. He unlocked a Range Rover, and I stood in shock—there wasn’t a driver in the driver’s seat.
“You’re driving?”
“Shock horror,” he replied dryly. My chest warmed at the hint of good-humoured sarcasm in his response.
I got in the passenger side, fighting my smile as Arthur pulled out onto the East End streets. I stared out at the houses and the closed pubs. It seemed like a different world to where I was from. Same city, completely different lives. But this one was fast becoming my new home.
We arrived at the warehouse that held the underground fight club. I tensed, realising we were going down there again. But when Arthur led me to the steel doors and they opened, it was only us. I frowned, looking at the empty pits, the empty stalls and seats. It had been cleaned, fresh sand in the pit floors. All traces of blood gone, a heady stillness to the air in the underground room. As if nature knew it was a place of depravity, death and violence.
“Why are we here, Arthur?” I asked, squeezing his hand.
He led me to a back room. It was long and narrow, and at the end were some haybale targets. Arthur threw off his jacket; on the side of his chest was a gun in a holder. He came toward me and pulled out the gun. “You have to learn to shoot,” he said, and my stomach sank. I looked at the gun in his hand and recoiled. I’d never held a gun in my life.
“Princess,” he said, voice laced with reproach. “I have a fucking massive target on my head.” Arthur seemed to lower his walls a fraction. “If you’re with me, if you stand by my fucking side, then there’s going to be a target on you too.” He pounded his chest with his palm, voice hardening and rising in volume. “People want to kill me. Many people. For revenge, power, drugs, docks, routes—you fucking name it. Wankers from all over want me dead for either what I’ve done or what I own. They’ll come for you.” His voice dripped with the inevitable promise of death. “Or at least they’ll fucking try.”
He gripped my jaw in his hand. “The wolves at my door will now be at yours too.” He laughed, but it was humourless. “And they’ll want your blood. Because of me, they’ll want your blood.” I went to speak, but he promised, “And I won’t let that happen.” His voice cracked a fraction, and so did my heart. “I can’t fucking let that happen.”
It was the closest Arthur had ever come to letting me know how he felt about me. The closest I’d seen to him losing his cool, to his usually expressionless face betraying his feelings. I stepped closer to him. He swallowed. “They’ll come for you, princess. They’ll come for you because of me.”
This was because of tonight. This was all because we had made love. Not fucked. Not screwed. But made love.
It had rocked him. It had affected him more than I ever thought possible.
I nuzzled my head into his hand and kissed his palm. Meeting his wild eyes, I said, “They have already come for me, Arthur. The wolves already came. And not because of you.” I closed my eyes and chased my threatening grief from my chest again. I couldn’t let the sorrow catch up with me just yet. Then I thought of the trafficking, the blood, and the brand that marked the slavers who had tried to take me, but I couldn’t think of it all yet.
The padlock rattled again, just as it had when I’d been talking to Freddie. Stark fear stole a breath. What would happen when I let it all in? Would it crush me? Would it destroy me? Would it take me to a place that I couldn’t return from?
Arthur opened my hand and thrust his gun into my palm. The metal was cold against my skin, and it felt too heavy to hold—not just the weight, but the responsibility, the gravity of what it meant if I ever pulled the trigger that brushed tauntingly against my finger.
My hands were shaking. The padlock rattled harder.
Arthur moved behind me. He straightened his arms, taking mine with them. His body enveloped me and his cheek pressed against mine. He moved my hand into the correct position on the gun. “Unlock the safety,” he said, using my hand to do so. “Aim,” he added, then held his trigger finger over mine and pulled. “Fire.” The boom from the gun was swallowed by the soundproof walls of the fighting pits. The bullet pierced the white paper target that was attached to a bale of hay, the hole going right through the red circle.