NO!” Vera spat when she saw what I was fucking glaring at. Cheska grabbed Ronnie’s arm and tried to pull her away, knowing something was wrong. But Ronnie wouldn’t move. She fought to get Cheska to stay near the girls, to help her open more of the cages.
Like fucking slow motion, the world tripping into half speed, I saw the fire ignite at the back of the container as I reached Cheska. I threw her to the ground, covering her with my body as the fucking thing blew. A thunderous boom took out the dumped container and all the trafficked women inside, the smell of burning flesh immediately lashing around us.
Cheska was still beneath me. I reared back, turning her over. I hadn’t been quick enough. She took too much of the fucking blowback. Scratches and cuts covered her skin, dirt from the ground. “Princess,” I said, pulling her into my arms. The fire from the burning container singed the back of my coat. I didn’t fucking give a shit. “Princess, wake the fuck up!” I snarled and felt my stomach sink. A fucking great big hole burrowed in my chest, caved in my fucking bones as I stared at Cheska’s closed eyes.
Emptiness chased everything else out of my body as I pulled her closer to my chest. She was dead. She was fucking dead …
Someone touched me, and I lashed out, grabbing their fucking hand. I yanked them to me, ready to rip out their throat for coming too close to me and my bird. “Artie, it’s Charlie. You need to move from the fire.” I stared into my cousin’s brown eyes, letting my brain calm the fuck down and back off from slitting his throat.
“She’s gone. She’s fucking gone!” I roared. The need to destroy whoever did this consumed me, became all I fucking was. I held Cheska tighter. She still felt warm. Still felt perfect in my arms. My Chelsea girl. The only fucking bird who had ever got through the darkness, the blackness plaguing my fucking half-dead heart.
“Artie, move.” Charlie took my arm, dragging me to my feet. I held Cheska tighter as I moved toward the cars, my vision blurred with red. I couldn’t breathe, every fucking inhale like taking in boiling-hot air.
I looked up and saw Vera holding Ronnie, Ronnie’s fucking stunned eyes on Cheska in my arms. I scanned the yard, the fire raging and the bodies on the ground. Freddie and Vinnie running around, dragging men from the flames. Eric, arms around Betsy and Gene. Cheska limp in my motherfucking arms.
All the life fled from my veins and, in that moment, I became death. I became nothing but evil, revenge all I could crave, the bitter, addictive taste of bloodlust filling up my mouth.
A noise travelled to my ears and I looked down. I fucking froze when Cheska’s eyelids started to move, when her arms and legs shifted. “Cheska,” I rasped, and her eyes finally opened. She blinked, and then those fucking green-browns fell on me.
“Arthur,” she said, dazed, but I saw the fog in her mind clearing by the second. Then her eyes widened and she looked back at the container, at the flames clawing higher, the last of the night’s fireworks fizzling out in the sky above us.
“The girls,” she whispered, kicking out of my hold until her feet hit the ground. “The girls.” She tried to get back to the container. But my arm was a fucking iron cage around her stomach. She was back. She was bloody breathing. And I was never letting her fucking go again. “Arthur!” she cried, trying to break from my grip. “The girls!”
“They’re dead,” Betsy said from behind us. I heard a fucking agonised wail from Ronnie. She was in her girlfriend’s arms, sobbing, clutching Vera like there was no bloody tomorrow. “None of them survived the explosion,” Betsy said as vans came racing up the road, our soldiers coming to contain this shitshow. To find me fucking evidence of who it was so I could decapitate the fuckers who were attacking us, once and for all. So I could destroy them and tear their organisation apart.
No one fucked with what was mine.
No one fucked with my fucking woman!
“We’re leaving.” I dragged Cheska, kicking and fighting me, back to the car. I pushed her inside, nudging my chin at Vera to bring Ronnie in our car too. The soldiers piled out of the van, their eyes turning livid as they saw the carnage.