I would be speaking to Old Sammy tonight to find out what he knew.
The soldiers looked at me as I stood by my car. “Clean up, but search the grounds for any evidence of who did this. I’ll pay any of you who get me leads or any kind of answer a truckload of money.” I met each one of them in the eyes. “Someone is trying to fuck with our firm. Now they’ve fucked with my family, and that’s taken this from fucking child’s play to an out-and-out fucking war. Keep your ears to the ground and find me the fuckers who thought it would be wise to mess with me.”
I got in the car and got on the phone to Charlie. “Get men stationed around our house. No fucker but family gets in and out. We’re staying together—tell everyone to get their bags packed and get their arses to the church.”
“Got it, Art.” Charlie hung up.
Cheska was staring at the flames of the container through the window, her eyes fixed on the one bird they’d managed to pull out. She was already dead, fucking died alone, naked in a cage. I threw my arm around Cheska’s neck and pulled her close. I turned her face to me, gripped her cheeks and kissed her shaking lips. Tears fell down her face, and I tasted the salty water on my tongue.
“You’re alive,” I said, feeling some of the molten anger inside me turn to smoke at the fact that she was here, beside me, fucking alive.
“Those girls …” Cheska said, her breath hitching. She shook her head. She took my hand and fucking squeezed my fingers with all she was made of. “The one we pulled out …” She closed her eyes, more tears falling. “She looked like Freya. For a minute …” Her mate. Her mate whose throat had been slit in front of her. “I tried to save her. I needed to save her.” Cheska looked up and found Ronnie. She reached across the seat and gripped her hand. “Ronnie …”
“They had the brand,” Ronnie said to all of us and no one at the same time. Her dark eyes were like fucking glass, her deep skin paling. Vera held her girlfriend closer, kissing her forehead, but Ronnie was fucking lost to the past. Locked in the days when she’d lived in a fucking cage, been branded just the same as those birds who were now nothing but ash and charred remains.
“I met them at a nightclub,” she said, and Cheska tensed. Ronnie met Cheska’s eyes. “I snuck in underage. I met them at the bar. They bought me drinks. They offered me a job, saying they didn’t care that I was too young.” Ronnie’s voice was tight and weak, but she was speaking. She was fucking exorcising her past in the Bentley’s back seat as it took us back to the one place no one would dare come for us. The one fucking place I could keep us protected.
My fucking family’s fortress.
“I was young,” Ronnie said. “I said they’d need to speak to my parents.” Ronnie swallowed like she was choking back a lump made of stone. “I didn’t know my dad had gambling problems. I didn’t know he had racked up thousands of pounds in debt with a loan shark.” She shook her head. “Only, it wasn’t a loan shark. It was a group, an organisation.” Ronnie looked at Cheska’s focused face. “A pack of demons pretending to be good people.”
“What did they do?” Cheska asked.
Vera pulled Ronnie close, and Ronnie continued. “They came to our door. I thought they were there to get permission for me to work for them, so I could help bring in cash to the house. We were poor.” Ronnie gazed out of the window. “But we were happy. When my dad opened the door, I knew something was up. His voice started shaking, and my mum could see something was wrong too.”
Ronnie’s free hand fisted on her thigh. “They were there to offer my old man a deal—all his debt wiped if he handed me over. If they’d let them take me away.”
“How old were you?” Cheska asked.
“Seventeen,” Ronnie said. “He said no, of course. My mum was screaming and praying to God to save us from their evil. He didn’t.” Ronnie’s voice grew hoarse. “They shot them.” The air in the car became charged with hatred and rage. Not just from me, but from Vera, from Ronnie, and by