He was too kind. Too willing to do anything for anybody. It was why he’d done a stretch in prison. To keep his mate out of jail because he had a baby on the way and Ben thought he could handle it. I have no doubt he could. But I had no respect for him as a man. Sometimes you had to do something. You couldn’t just stand there and keep taking it day after day, year after year. I had no concept of how he did that without a plan to move on, or go up the ranks or get into a better situation.
He thought everything would turn out sunshine and rainbows if I just kept waiting a bit longer. But I was done having everyone else dictate the terms of my life. I wanted to take back control and this seemed like the best way.
He dug deep in his pocket and pulled out a box of bullets. “Thanks Ben.”
“I really… I definitely think you should think this through again, though Liz.” For a minute I thought he wasn’t going to hand them over. I was prepared to take them off him if I had to.
Shaking my head, I slung the bag onto my back. “Don’t give me that. If you really thought that you wouldn’t have gotten it for me.”
Ben looked exasperated.
“You would have gotten it somewhere else, though wouldn’t you? You know this ain’t a good choice.”
“No? What am I supposed to do, Ben? Just sit back, do nothing. Carry on letting him get away with it. He got off scott free for what happened to Mum and that’s the only reason I’ve stayed where I am. Well, it’s ending now. Just as soon as I finish my last exam, it’s over.”
Ben flinched. “Why don’t you just go to the cops? They’d help. You could tell them what he’s done.”
I let out a laugh. “You’re telling me to go to the cops? They stitched you up for something you didn’t even do. You’re an idiot, Ben.”
“Fuck you too, Liz.”
I swallowed hard, shook my head. “Shit, okay. I’m sorry. But I’ve seen what he does, Ben. He’s too well connected. He’d get himself the best lawyer he could afford and they’d spin some story about me being vindictive, making it all up. I know how he works. I’ve seen how he lies. He gets people to believe him. That’s what he does every day. It’s his job.”
His shoulders sagged and he thrust the small box into my hands. “Just try not to get yourself caught, yeah? Dad’ll bollock me if he finds out what your planning.”
I patted him on the shoulder, barely believing that out of the two of us, he was the one that needed telling how to handle his parents, even though he was over a decade older. He really needed to break away. “So don’t tell him.”
“Yeah. That’s all well and good until you turn up on the six o’clock news, ain’t it?” He squinted at me, taking another drag of his cigarette and I watched it burn down close to his yellowed fingers. “You even know how to use that thing?”
I gave him a long look of my own, turning on my heel to look back at him over my shoulder as I started out of the alleyway, towards my bus stop. “I’m sure’ll figure it out. Don’t you worry yourself Ben. I’ll be just fine.”
Maxim
The Chelsea townhouse came into focus when I adjusted the camera, and I tested the hook up to the screen. For all his talk about secrecy, Sutherland wasn’t very security-minded at all.
I was glad. If he was, I wouldn’t have been able to follow Elizabeth as she walked around the house, flattening herself out of view to avoid bumping into Pierce on the landing, and scurrying up and down the stairs like a thief in her own home.
Her behavior had confused me before I’d figured out what was going on.
She was wealthy. Or her parents had been. By right she should have the same dim, horsey look that the rest of the Chelsea Elite inhabited. But she was different. I’d known that since I first set eyes on her from across the street.
She’d come in out of the rain, and kicked her shoes off, clutching them in one hand as she bounced on the balls of her feet, compact and powerful. Running up the stairs, she stripped off her wet clothes like some kind of otherworldly nymph, and I halfway fell in love with her before she’d even reached the landing.
I knew I shouldn’t have watched, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
Wet clothes revealed a taut stomach and long, muscled limbs. Her perfectly rounded breasts were small enough to fit in the palms of my hands, tipped by dark, inviting areolas and perked nipples begged to be kissed and sucked. I was transfixed, right from that moment, horrified with myself that I couldn’t look away, and I was getting hard watching this girl who was barely a woman strip down to her bright white underwear, thinking about how well I could warm her up.