Fearless Read online

  I’m dimly aware that my fingers are fumbling around in my purse.

  Cell phone.

  Call for help.

  Tracker.

  She knows where I am.

  Help—

  Cillian whips the purse from my hand with a flick of his fingers. Lipstick and credit cards scatter on the bed. He twists aside and opens the nightstand drawer, then lifts a condom packet into the air.

  He drawls, “Open wide for Daddy,” in his thick accent as he brings it to my mouth.

  My lips part without instruction from my brain.

  My heart should be pounding, but I can barely feel it in my chest. What I do feel is Cillian’s heavy body crushing mine and, when he leans forward to shove the condom packet between my lips, his hard-on pressing against my inner thigh.

  Tears leak from my eyes. Somehow, I still have feeling in my face. My cheeks, my throat. That’s how I know his hand is around my neck, slowly tightening.

  Cold jade eyes settle on me. A rush floods me, and I feel like I did step off into the night out there.

  Falling.

  Drowning.

  In those pond-green eyes.

  There’s something in his hand. Pink. Rectangular. Glittery.

  My phone.

  He slaps my cheek, hard, a wicked grin putting a cruel light in his eyes.

  “Smile pretty for me, princess.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CILLIAN

  I plonk my arse down on the leather cuddle chair that sits in the far corner of the room and undo the top three buttons of my shirt.

  I’m sweating like a rapist.

  Ha.

  Correction. Sweating like a pig on a spit. That’s a better phrase. Not quite as close to the bone.

  It’s hot in here though. Cole must have left the heating on, which is about as homely as this place gets. Everything is so clinical, which I suppose reflects how little time he spends here. He made a big song and dance about getting his own place—we’re grown men and shit—but I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes him a few months to notice the stain on the carpet.

  I’m still trying to wrap my head around where that little outburst came from.

  Maybe there’s a bit of fire inside her I didn’t see before. Even so, it’s well and truly extinguished now.

  I glance over at her little knocked-out body while I pick up my phone and start scrolling through my contacts.

  I’ve made up my mind about her, and decided she is stunning after all.

  To be honest it was probably the tears that did it. Such extravagant displays of emotion fascinate me.

  Aye, I’m aware that makes me odd, and more than a little fucked up. There’s probably a Wikipedia page out there for whatever the fuck condition I have.

  It’s one of the reasons why I mostly stay away from women and let Cole do the fucking for both of us. That, and the fact I’ve never met one yet with an ounce of loyalty.

  I’m not a psychopath. I know what right and wrong are. Good and bad. It just never occurs to me to do, or not do, something based on whether it’s good or bad. I do what my gut tells me, and sometimes that just happens to be bad. As long as it’s not bad for me, or Cole, I don’t tend to lose any sleep over it.

  Sleep.

  I could be doing with some of that right now.

  But I still have a long night ahead of me.

  I’ve not even completed phase one yet.

  I feel like one of those night shift workers, the ones who dress the fancy department store windows and put the mannequins in all these unholy positions.

  That’s me tonight.

  And my little doll has only just started her shift.

  The photo I took earlier was a spur of the moment added extra, because when opportunity knocks, I always answer. And because, yet again, she rejected me. She’s beginning to make a habit out of that.

  Maybe I should have been more patient with her.

  Shoulda, woulda, coulda.

  It doesn’t even matter, at this point she’s stuck with me. For better or worse. Probably worse.

  I pull up in front of my house. Cole’s BMW X7 is parked diagonally across the double garage. He thought he was being the big man buying the X7, when I drive an X5, but he’s the fool because I personally think the X7 looks like a big ugly hearse. And we both know my house is nicer, so I’m still winning.

  It wasn’t part of the plan for him to be here. He has a bedroom set up, because he frequently forgets he doesn’t live here anymore, but he knows that Sarah isn’t allowed in my house.

  My rules on that are final.

  I slam the car door behind me, not worrying about waking my cargo. She’s been bouncing in and out of consciousness but seems to have given in, finally. She’ll be out cold for hours now. I had her bundled up in a blanket on the back seat, and she’s exactly where I left her after our final stop on our Magical Mystery Tour of Coercion.

  I lift the little thing into my arms and kick the door closed behind me, heading for the front door. The sun is on the rise, but there aren’t any neighbors for miles so nothing to worry about.

  I bought this place years ago off a footballer friend who needed to settle one too many cocaine debts. It’s about forty minutes away from the city, which roughly translates to the middle of nowhere, and that suits me perfectly.

  It’s an old building, all stone and gabled roofs, though completely modernized. All except the front door, which I remind myself needs oiling every time I walk through it.

  The living room door creaks open to reveal my brother lying on the couch in a pair of gray sweats, a bottle of Peroni in one hand and the remote control in his other. He’s watching the boxing, and Sarah is curled up at his feet like a cat, sleeping.

  “Get her out,” I tell him as I walk into the room and take the couch opposite.

  He shoots up. “Don’t be a dick, Kill. She’s sleeping.”

  “I can see that. Doesn’t change a thing.”

  Cole chuckles. “She stayed here with me for the whole week you were in Manchester.”

  Is that supposed to make me feel better about it?

  Fuck it. Whatever.

  I’m honestly too exhausted to get into it with him after the night I’ve had. “She’s not here when I wake up.”

  He nods. “Fine, fine. How did it go?”

  I adjust Meisie’s position so I can get my phone out of my pocket, then throw it over to him. He unlocks it easily because we have the same face.

  The lights from the video footage flicker across his features, and he glances up toward me occasionally, biting down on his knuckle and grinning like a child with a lollipop.

  “Happy?”

  He throws the phone back to me. “Delighted. Did you fuck her?”

  “Behave. Course not,” I tell him.

  Cole shrugs and lies back down on the couch. “I would have ”

  I chuckle. “You wouldn’t have. She’s not exactly... agreeable.”

  Cole’s a fan of an easy conquest.

  He smirks over at me. “We’ll see about that. Just wait until she sees what I’ve planned next.”

  My eyes narrow, but he’s still smirking.

  Next?

  There is no next. We got what we wanted, and thanks to the impromptu photo session on Cole’s bed, we got even more. Now all we have to do is send the proof to the right people, and wait. She’s free to leave as soon as we get what we want.

  “What are you talking about?”

  He jumps up from the sofa, exhibiting far more energy than any normal person should have at five in the morning. “Come. Let me show you.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Come!” he shouts as he walks through the living room door.

  I haul myself and Meisie up off the couch and find him already halfway down the hall. He stops under the staircase, where there’s a door that leads to a cupboard, which leads down into the basement.

  “You’re shitting me.” I can already see wh
ere he’s going with this. We used to keep the basement for parties and… other things when we were in our mid-twenties and lived for the weekend. It was a way of making sure the house didn’t get wrecked and people couldn’t snoop where they didn’t belong. But I’ve not been down here in years. I still remember what it looked like, though, and I’m not about to let him lock her up down there. “We’re not recreating the fucking Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Cole.”

  He laughs while he unlocks a padlock I swear wasn’t on the door this morning. “Nope. It’s better.”

  The door opens with a creak and he pulls the cord to turn the single bulb on. The cupboard is rammed full with I don’t even know what, but I follow him along until we get to the second door.

  Another padlock.

  No good can come of this.

  We have to duck so as not to hit our heads on the low hanging beams coming down the stairs, but as soon as I’m in the basement and my eyes adjust to the dim red—fucking red—light I can see, quite clearly, that this is not the same room.

  “What—When did you do this?”

  “When you were in Manchester. Behold,” he says, bowing dramatically. He’s on drugs. The man has lost it.

  This is so far away from the original plan I feel like I’ve just walked into another dimension.

  I shake my head. “Not a fucking chance.”

  “You’ve not even thought about it!”

  “I don’t even need to think about it. I’m not a rapist, Cole.”

  Because that’s clearly what he’s asking me to do.

  It looks like I’ve just walked onto some high-budget porn set. Everything is red or black, from the walls that used to be cracked and are now covered in drapes, to the massive bed that sits against the back wall. The lighting comes from spotlights dotted along the floor and shining up, giving the whole place a sinister, rapey vibe.

  “Okay, okay,” he says, nodding his head as he glances down at the little bundle in my arms. “I’ll do it then.”

  Anger shoots through me at his suggestion and I have no idea where it even came from. I just know he’s not getting his hands on her. Not when this is the sort of shit he comes up with.

  “You fucking will not,” I tell him. “This is crossing the line. And I’m not even talking about a moral line, this just doesn’t even make sense. We have the evidence. You saw the video. She wrecked the car, Derek did a grand job of getting hurt, it’s all on film. We don’t need to turn her into a fucking porn star on top of all that.”

  He looks deadly serious when he stares me in the eye and says, “Why not?”

  “Why not? Where does that end, hmm? Me coming home one day to find you knee-deep inside your own fucked-up snuff film?”

  He lets out a sigh and holds onto my arm to stop me from walking away. Instinctively I turn away from him, wary that he’ll crush the little thing still fast asleep in my arms.

  “If it came to that then I wouldn’t hesitate,” he says. “This goes further than her mum trying to cover up a bit of bad PR, Kill. Think about it.”

  “I’m thinking, and I still can’t see any logic in this.”

  “I know imagination isn’t your fortitude, but just imagine—”

  I cut him off. “My imagination is just fine, Cole. Yours is the product of a bad acid trip.”

  He laughs. “You’re not thinking far enough ahead. That’s your problem, Kill, always so black and white. The original plan has flaws. We show the evidence to Ford, she agrees to revoke the law, and then what? We just take her word for it? We wait? How long do we wait? Two months? Two years? This gives us what we need, and that is a deadline. She revokes the law passing within the month in order to save her daughter from her miserable life of sex slavery.”

  I stare at him, still unconvinced.

  “How hard have we worked for this, Kill? How long has it taken us to build this?”

  I continue to stare.

  “You’re forgetting what’s at stake. Our business will be decimated the day that law passes.”

  I let out a sigh.

  “What is one girl’s life—not even her life! Just a temporary blip in her life—in comparison with the empire we’ve literally killed for. How many people rely on us to feed their families? To clothe their children?”

  “Stop. Jesus, you’ve made your fucking point.”

  He sighs and takes a step toward me, and this time I don’t brush him away. He squeezes my bicep, which is about as affectionate as we get with each other. “You’re doing the right thing.”

  “Fuck off,” I tell him.

  Patronizing cunt.

  With that, he turns, and I hear his footsteps retreating up the stairs.

  He knows I’ll do it. I always do.

  Right from wrong? Good or bad? They matter little to me. That’s the way it’s always been. That’s how I sleep at night, and fuck, I need some sleep.

  With the girl still secure in my arms, I take her over to the bed and lay her down. He’s already attached thick leather straps to the bars of the headboard, twisted bastard. I remove the blanket so I can tuck her in once she’s strapped down, and brush all the stray strands of hair away from her face.

  Then I realize I can’t just leave her here like this. There’s a lot of shit in her system and if she’s sick, no one would hear her. Frankly I can’t think of a worse way to die than choking on your own vomit.

  I’ll strap her down before she wakes up.

  I place the comforter over her body and lie down on the carpeted floor beside her bed. If she moves, I’ll either hear her, or she’ll step on me. Either way, I’ll wake up.

  I could kill Cole.

  It’s always him. He’s never satisfied with what we have, or what we plan to have. Always wants more. More money, more danger, more excitement, more power. It’s not the first time in my life I’ve contemplated how the hell I’ve got myself into such a mess, and right now, I don’t see any clean way out of it.

  Maybe there was never a clean way out of it.

  Ford, she knew what she was doing. She knew there would be consequences. She has the entire underbelly of this country on a fucking ceasefire while she becomes public-enemy-number-one. And I mean every person who’s ever sold so much as a twenty quid bag of weed. Every one of us wants to see her destroyed.

  For as much as we call her a stupid bitch, that’s just because we hate her. She’s not stupid. She’s calculating and sly and more cunning than Cole.

  She knew this would be messy.

  But did she know it would be her own daughter paying the price?

  CHAPTER SIX

  MEISIE

  A gunshot wakes me up. I don’t realize what I heard straight away, but when another quickly follows it, I’m wrenched from la-la land to real life in an instant with my heart in my throat.

  I’m in a red room, which is all the sensory input I get before another gunshot sounds out.

  I let out a soft laugh. Not a gunshot. At least, not in real life. Somewhere within earshot, someone’s watching a movie on full blast.

  Well, now that that’s sorted out…where the fuck am I?

  Silky sheets caress my skin as I move into a sit. The lighting is so dim in here that it’s difficult to make out more than a few indistinct shapes.

  I’m on a bed. From the feel of the sheets, this isn’t some polyester blend.

  But something’s wrong. Over and above me not recognizing my surroundings. I run a hand through my hair as I try to piece together the last thing I remember.

  And that’s the strange thing.

  I can’t.

  Red room. Red room—Purple room?

  Asylum. The club. That I remember. Dancing. Awful crowd. A tall man at the bar, dark hair. Exactly the kind of guy I was looking for.

  I pull in my legs, hugging them hard to my chest. Shit. Shit, shit, shit!

  There’s a muted explosion from the hidden TV set. I scan the room again, and now that my eyes have adjusted, more of it is visible.

  No
windows—but they could be hidden behind the thick drapes lining almost every inch of the walls. A bit of bare brick peeks through here and there. A wooden door. There’s a hum coming from somewhere. Air-conditioning?

  Besides the bed, there’s a couch against one wall and a closet off to one side. A light behind it could be shining on stairs.

  This room’s too big to be a bedroom.

  That’s because it’s a dungeon.

  I try to laugh off the thought, but my throat’s too tight.

  Well, either way, I’ve decided I don’t like it here. It’s time to leave.

  I start to swing my legs over the side of the bed, and stop.

  There’s a dark smudge on my inner thigh. When I bring my leg closer, it resolves into a streak of blood.

  An invisible sledgehammer slams into my chest. My fingers dig into the sheets.

  But by then, the panic attack has me in its claws.

  You are not dying, Meisie. This is just your PTSD kicking in. Think nothing of the fact that you’ve just woken up in a strange room covered in blood. You, not the room.

  Fuck, what if the whole room is covered in blood?

  A shriek tries to claw its way out of my throat, but I bite it back with ruthless determination.

  Calm. The. Fuck. Down.

  It’s simple. You’re going to get up, and you’re going to find the door—

  What if there’s no door? What if I’ll be trapped down here forever?

  —there’s always a door, so shut up and listen. You will find the door, and you will leave. It’s that simple.

  Because this time, you can leave.

  I clap my hands over my face and burrow my head between my knees.

  “He’s not here, Meisie.”

  This time the voice isn’t mine, but that of my overpaid psychiatrist whose brilliant idea it was to try regressive hypnosis.

  I’m sure she did it just for kicks, the sick bitch.

  It’s like she’s sitting a yard away, her long nails tapping on the screen of her iPad because she’s too progressive to write shit down in a notepad like normal people.