“And who is your fucking real family?” I smiled. It was cold and promised a slow and painful death.
Freddie stood. “You’ll get to meet them. Pretty bloody soon, in fact.”
“Let them go.” I followed the sound of a quiet voice coming from the door to the bedroom, and my face fucking blanched as I saw Gene stood at the door with a gun in his hand. His hand was shaking. The kid’s hazel eyes were wide and wild.
“Gene!” Cheska managed to say before they pushed tape over her mouth. Tears fell down her cheeks as her eyes darted to mine, and I saw the fucking terror there. Not for her. Or me. But for Gene. She’d grown to love him.
“Gene!” I called, just as he was rushed at by one of the fuckers at his side. The kid fired off a shot, but the twat attacking him hit his arm away, directing it to the ceiling. Then he knocked the kid out cold with a punch to the face.
Gene buckled and went down. A heap of black on the ground.
“Leave him,” I said to Freddie. “Leave him here, and when I finally get to kill you, I’ll make it a little less painful.”
Freddie smiled, then said to the twat beside Gene, “We’re taking him too. Can’t have my old family knowing I was involved in any of this shit.” He shrugged. “Plus, it’ll piss off Eric and Vera.” Freddie smiled wider. “And Charlie, of course. I’d pay anything to see that tosser brought down a peg or two. Or better still, six feet in the fucking ground.”
“I’M GOING TO FUCKING END YOU!” I roared at Freddie.
Freddie stepped right before me. My brother. For all intents and purposes, this was my fucking brother. All those bloody years he’d lived with us. Here. In this fucking house. I could barely breathe as he looked dead into my eyes. Cheska had gone still in her captors’ hands. She met my eyes, and I saw understanding in her green-browns. I was getting her out of this. Some fucking how. I was getting her out.
Freddie snapped his fingers in my face, and a red mist fell over my eyes. He leaned in close and, putting his gun back into his suit jacket, said, “You’ve lost, Artie.”
I boiled inside. Raged. Screamed a fucking silent battle cry in his face. But I became the grey man once again. I let the fuckers behind me think they had me. Let the emotion drop from my face like my dad had always taught me. Freddie laughed, and some of the men in the room laughed back, reading my silence for weakness. Inside, I was a volcano, fire and brimstone and fucking excruciating death.
Freddie faced me again. “You’re the great chess master, Artie.” He leaned forward until he was only an inch from my face. His smile fell, but laughter still danced in his fucking eyes. “Checkmate.”
Externally, I didn’t move a muscle. But inside … inside I had stabbed the traitor with a knife in his eye and was gouging out his still-beating heart from his chest while he still had breath left in his body and could feel every strike.
“Take them,” Freddie said when I gave him fuck all back, and the men dragged us from the room. Cheska looked back at me, and I gave her a slow nod. It’s going to be okay. I won’t let them hurt you. I’ll get us out of this. I’m never fucking letting you go.
I love you, her eyes said, like she was done, like this was our motherfucking goodbye. Like she was never coming back to me. I fought to fucking breathe, to not explode. I had to think.
I had to fucking think.
Some fucker behind me carried Gene out after my girl. The fuckers behind me pushed me to move next.
As we stepped out of the door, two small vans and a car waited for us. I scanned around us, to the churchyard and drive. My men were on the ground, throats slit. Silently, they’d been killed, no fucking warning, no fucking honour. Freddie had been waiting for my family to leave the house—
The text message, I thought. The message he’d got as he sat beside my dad. It wasn’t from Charlie. It was to say whoever the fuck these men were, they had killed the soldiers watching my house and were ready to take us. My mind raced. I wondered if there had even been an attack on the west dock, where my family had rushed to. Or had that been a set-up too? Were they fucking ambushed when they got there?
Were they all fucking dead … ?
“Split them up,” Freddie said, ripping me back to the here and now. I swung my head to him, already tasting the scent of his imminent death on my tongue. “Those two in that one,” he said, pointing to a van, then to Cheska and Gene. The fuckers put Gene in the van first.