So, I would believe him. My soul cried out for me to trust in him, to find solace in his words. And as the sun rose and London began to wake, Arthur held me tighter as his queen, safe in his protective arms and in his care.
Chapter Thirteen
ARTHUR
She was fucking breaking me.
I sat in my car, arriving at the docks thinking about Cheska. That’s all I fucking did. Think of her when I wasn’t with her; she was haunting me, fucking with me. She was in my bloody head as if she was possessing me. Her green-brown eyes, and the way they fucking cut through me. Like she always knew what I was thinking. Like she could claw at my chest and grip my heart in her hand, squeezing it and ripping down its walls.
I stepped out of the Bentley, the sky grey and overcast, the freezing rain chucking it down in buckets. I didn’t care about the downpour as it ran down my face and soaked through my suit. I didn’t give a fuck about anything but Cheska and being inside her cunt as she clawed at my back.
I met Freddie in the woods. I stopped in front of the tree and the stupid twat tied to it. I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out my knife. I closed in on the prick, who was holding his chin high and trying to glare me down.
“He’s saying fuck all,” Freddie said. This tosser had been caught wiping route information from one of our haulage ships. One of the haulage ships that had been targeted at sea, millions of pounds worth of coke now getting the fishes off their faces in the North Sea.
I didn’t have time for this shit. Lashing out, I slit the twat’s throat, his blood spurting to the ground, then headed back to the car. “Be at home for seven,” I called back at Freddie.
I climbed into the car, and the driver pulled out onto the road. I stared out of the window and felt fucking twitchy, like I couldn’t sit still, like I was crawling out of my skin. I felt fucking undone.
And I bloody hated it.
Since Cheska. Since Chelsea Girl met me in the pits and threw her crown at my feet. Since she threw her old life the fuck away and joined the fucked-up darkness that only I offered.
I love you …
Her voice played in my fucking head on loop. Fucking haunted me. Drove me insane.
I never wanted it to stop.
I pressed my thumbs into my eyes, seeing her on her knees as she sucked my cock, as she lay on her back as I fucked her—no, not fucked, made love, she said.
I love you … your broken queen …
She was like me. Just fucking like me. My chest ached like it had been punched by a heavyweight boxer. My pulse thundered in my neck and wrist, pounding and pounding, never-fucking-ending.
Cheska was fucking up my head. I’d let her in, and she was fucking tearing me down. I couldn’t think with her around me, couldn’t bastard think without her. All I wanted to do was keep the bird close and fuck her, sink inside her pussy and listen to her scream as she pressed her tits to my chest, then … I love you …
The car turned into the driveway of the church. Fireworks were already in the sky. Bonfires littered the fields, Guy Fawkes effigies burning on the pyres.
Fucking Bonfire Night. The fifth of November.
And Cheska’s birthday.
She’d been quiet since the other night at the pits. She sat alone a lot, lost in thought. I didn’t know how the fuck to help her. She’d lost her mates, her old man and the fuckwit that was Hugo Harrington. She wasn’t used to death like I was—especially death by murder. Then it had been piled on her like petrol would be poured on bonfires up and down the country tonight.
The car stopped and I got out. I went straight to my bedroom, my feet almost fucking faltering as I passed by my old man’s room. Something inside me tried to pull me to him. The part of me that had cracked open when Chelsea Girl had barrelled back into my life, when she’d stood in the pits in her leather trousers and thrown down the gauntlet, dragging her pristine white queen down my bloodied chest and telling me she was mine.
Mine. That she was the fucking dark queen ready to reign at my side.
The crack she’d caused never fucking closed. The more time I spent with her, the more it widened. And with every inch it grew, the fucking pain almost brought me to my knees. It made me fucking hate her, made me want to push her away and stop fucking up my life. But then she’d smile at me, cast those fucking green-brown eyes on me and … I love you …