Tears streak down her cheeks, her mascara leaving tracks on her pale skin. She holds her phone to her ear, speaking quickly even as her sobs make her chest heave. I can’t hear what she is saying or who she is speaking with, but I want to get closer. I want to touch her. Comfort her.
When she puts the phone down her eyes scan the street, but she doesn’t see me where I’m sat in the front seat of the car, watching her.
Being near her is a craving I cannot deny. It’s what had me turning up at her apartment building last night, it was the need to see her that had me leaning on that car watching up at her apartment. She feared me and that only fueled it more.
I hoped she would accept my invitation to come to Crimson. I wanted to see all that innocence seep out of her, I wanted to swallow it down and make her scream.
I would corrupt her. Ruin her and I’d smile while doing it.
She disappears into the building, wiping furiously at her tears. What could have happened to spill those tears? What did her sadness taste like?
I would have her. There wouldn’t be a question about it. She may fear me, may want to stay far, far away which of course is the smart choice, but I’ll follow. She won’t escape me.
With a sigh, I hit the button on the dash and start the Mercedes, pulling away from the curb to head across the city. She wasn’t a distraction, I tell myself, having Eleanor will do nothing to my plan. If anything, she’s going to be my salvation, quite possibly the thing that will finally help me release all this frustration, if how she makes me feel now is anything to go by. My cock has been semi hard since the moment I saw her in those tiny little cotton shorts, all that creamy leg on show, her face flushed and pinked in the cold, skin pebbled with goose bumps.
Images of her wide, frightened eyes gaping at me on that quiet dark street flash before me, her lips parted in shock. It took everything in me not to back her against the wall, to press myself against her just so I could inhale that fear. I don’t think she realizes it, I don’t think she even notices how her thighs tremble as that fear courses through her veins, how she mistakes the feeling as terror rather than what it most likely is. Arousal.
Her fear of me turns her on. I know it.
It would be such a fun game to play.
The car is quiet as I flow through the traffic of the city. I’ve only known a busy life, a chaotic and bloody life so the traffic and the hordes of people on the street does nothing to me. Little fazes me anymore, not when I’ve experienced every heartbreak, every horror one person could possibly survive. But I did survive, I did more than that. I conquered.
As my car idles in a line of heavy traffic in the city, I use the time to remember why I am here. Why I am doing this.
It had been a normal day, or as normal as any could be when raised by a man who not only killed your parents, but stole you away to raise you himself. My uncle, my father’s brother, was a criminal mastermind, he had plots and plans and schemes. He ruled the city of London underground, kept the cops in his pocket, the officials on his payroll. He moved drugs and guns and money without even a flick of an eye, but my father, he wanted to be better. He was a threat, so my uncle killed him, and then killed my mother to prove that he could. To show that he had no mercy and no soul.
Once he had murdered them in their own bed, he found Isobel and me hiding in a closet downstairs, huddled together, crying and shaking. He lifted us out, shoved us in a car, and then burned the house down with everything, including my parents, inside.
From there our life was a whirlwind of witnessing all the horrors and violence the world had to offer. My uncle wanted us to be strong, to take on his legacy, but as we grew, Isobel and I only became closer. She was my best friend and me, hers, and we would have always chosen each other over anything else.
I didn’t shy away from death, I didn’t shy away from murder. If my uncle told me to pull the trigger or slice someone’s throat, I did it. I didn’t ask questions. I knew what he wanted from me, and I gave it to him.
I would hold out and keep going until the time came when my uncle was either too old to continue his reign or dead because one of his schemes backfired – though that was unlikely seeing as nothing he ever did went wrong. Once he was gone, once I was in control, I would have let my sister go. That had been the plan. I didn’t mind being the monster, the killer, not when I had a clear goal. She would have been free from this hell and free to do whatever she wanted with her life, while I remained here, looking after the city like our uncle wanted.
My uncle made it a point of not having weaknesses, of any kind, he took women to bed but only ever once, he never married, never had children, after all we were his heirs, he didn’t even care enough about his own family to keep them alive. His men were just bodies to be used to his biding, and Isobel and I were much the same. Soldiers on his lines to maintain the delicate balance of ruling a city.
He saw more in me than he did in Isobel. She was good, or as good as this life would allow her to be. She used to second guess her decisions, her kills, she would try to get out of them if she could, and if our uncle told her to make it slow, she made a point of making a kill as quick and as painless as possible.
Too soft, he used to say, too weak. Not worth the air she breathes.
I remember the night he came to me, it was late summer, the evening air humid with a suppressed storm that had been promised for later. I sat on the hood of a car overlooking the Thames, watching the boats pass, sucking on a cigarette. My uncle stood close to me, watching the water.
“I want you to do something for me,” he said, voice quiet even though no one was around to hear us. I was only eighteen at this point, forced to grow up quickly and yet still a child in so many ways. Eighteen wasn’t old enough to rule. Eighteen wasn’t old enough to understand every single situation and decision, “a test if you will.”
“What is it?” I asked without looking at him.
Truth was, I resented the man, I hated him for what he had done to us, to what he had done to my parents.
“Isobel,” his voice never wavered once, a toneless sound that revealed no emotion. That was a lesson too, show nothing on your face. Show nothing in your voice. Have people questioning whether you’re even human.
My back stiffened and my hand paused halfway to my mouth, the cigarette dangling between my fingers, the end still burning.
“I want you to kill her, she’s become a liability and a weakness for yourself. Kill her and prove to me that you are ready for this. Ready to fill my shoes.”
For a long while we were silent, his words echoing inside my head like the sound of war drums. Me. Kill my own sister. I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it.
“Let her go,” I said, “If she’s a liability and a weakness,” I spat the words, “let her go.”
“She knows too much to simply just let go, Kingston. She doesn’t have the backbone to do what is needed to keep us Heart’s on top and has too many secrets to be set free. This is the only way.”
“I will not.”