pulling me back to the moment. The harsh winter wind whipped around us as I listened to the mad man before me. The devil who had tricked the world into thinking he was some kind of benevolent god. But here he was in front of me, showing me his fanged teeth, scales and horns.
“They would attack you, and I would save you. That was the fucking plan—simple, but effective. I would save you, and you would see me.” I froze, trying to cast my mind back to whatever he could be talking about.
Harlow cunt …
The way my attackers had spat my name at the spa. The way the men in Marbella, all those years ago, did too. “You?” I said, shock rendering me almost speechless. “You set that up? In Marbella?”
“I did,” he said, almost proudly. “But Adley stuck his bastard nose in where it didn’t belong.” He smiled softly at me. “My old man wasn’t happy about that little stunt I pulled. Not when your old man had just come to us for help with his failing business.” My heart thudded slowly, as if my chest had become quicksand and was denying it air. “He’d gone to one of our more obvious associates, one of our fronts, and our man led him straight to our door.” My blood ran cold. “Our fathers ended up doing quite a lot of business together—”
“You mean you lent him money you knew he could never pay back,” I spat.
Ollie shrugged. “It was your father’s choice, and the start of a beautiful working relationship.” He paused. “Until it wasn’t, of course.”
“You killed them,” I hissed, nausea rolling in my stomach as I saw my dad and Hugo take bullets to their heads in my mind.
Ollie stared at me a second too long to be casual, and then cupped his hands and blew into them as if staving off the chill. “It’s bloody cold out here. Shall we take our conversation inside?”
Ollie nudged his head at the men who had taken us from the church. One grabbed my arm. “Don’t fucking hurt her,” Ollie warned them, and the man slackened his grip. “Don’t want my girl in any pain.”
His girl.
He was delusional.
Ollie Lawson was fucking bonkers.
My mind reeled with the knowledge that it had been him in Marbella. He had set up an attack just so he could appear like a white knight and “save” me. So that I would see him, notice him … want him.
I had gone for lunch with him the next day. Shivers ran down my spine when I remembered him pushing me to see if I was okay. Constantly asking. He’d been fishing for answers. Trying to piece together what had gone wrong.
And exactly who had got in his way.
I felt even more nauseous as that information circled my head. Then, the revelation that he was a trafficker. His underground organisation, the masses of money it brought in, was built on the loss and vulnerability of humans. People sold into slavery and sex work. I shuddered. Because he wasn’t some ugly monster, some wicked man whose very demeanour kept you at bay. He was an ordinary man; his father had been a seemingly ordinary, good man. Self-made … but they stood on an invisible empire built on broken dreams and victims’ unheard cries.
Gene and I were led into the old garage Freddie had disappeared into. It looked as though it had dilapidated offices at the back, but Ollie led us to the opposite side of the building, ordering us to sit on the floor in a larger room that I assumed must have once been a waiting room of sorts.
Old, frayed and faded furniture was dotted about the room. A fire in an empty oil can blazed in the centre, and Ollie moved beside it, holding out his palms to the roaring flames. I watched him like a hawk, covertly edging closer to Gene, needing to keep him safe until Arthur could get to us.
“That’s better,” Ollie said after a few minutes. He smiled at me as if his men hadn’t just kidnapped us, murdered Alfie Adley and left carnage in their wake.
When he was apparently suitably warmed, he pulled an old cushioned chair toward us and sat casually down. Freddie stood in the corner of the room, watching me and Gene like we were nothing, not even worth being alive. I sensed that if he’d had the choice, we would have already been worm food.