like broken glass in the silent room. I tensed. “Dad’s in a coma, but they don’t think he’ll ever wake up.”
My eyes widened in the darkness, then I inhaled slowly, trying to organise my scattered thoughts. “Who has gone, baby?” I asked tentatively, keeping my voice soft and quiet. I had never called Arthur “baby” before. But I couldn’t help it as I held him so protectively in my arms.
“All of them,” he said, his finger moving up to my breast. “My uncles, my father … all the bosses of our firm.” My stomach sank as I realised the gravity of that information. His father and his men were notorious. Infamous gangsters, the most feared men in London, in England, and, hell, in most of Europe.
“Gone where?” I asked, stupidly, but needing to hear the actual words from his lips.
“Dead.” Arthur held on to my waist as if the admission would take his strength away. I squeezed my eyes shut in sympathy for the pain he must have been in. Then it dawned on me. Arthur was Alfie Adley’s son. That meant Arthur was the heir, and thus …
Arthur leaned over me, his stomach pressing flush against mine. He put his hand on my cheek, and I instinctively leaned into its warmth. I kissed his wrist and heard his almost silent hiss at my touch. Arthur’s gaze tracked over every part of my face as though it was the last time he would see it. I could still smell the whisky on him and knew that the only reason he ever would have allowed himself the liberties of shedding tears and touching me so intimately, lovingly, was because he was drunk.
“It’s my time now to rule over hell.” His words cut through me like a knife. “It’s my time to embrace the darkness, princess.” He dragged his thumb over my bottom lip, the move I always loved best. He’d done that on the yacht in Marbella all those years ago when we’d first been together. Even now it made me crave him, brought me strictly under his command.
“Arthur, don’t,” I begged, not wanting him to talk this way. It was too disturbing, too sad, too final.
He smiled at me, and it almost stopped my heart.
“My soul isn’t mine anymore,” he said, leaning down and kissing across my breasts. “It’s Satan’s. And, tomorrow, I will become the devil on earth.”
“Arthur—”
“You were the good thing, princess,” he said, cutting me off. “You were the one good thing I had been given.” But now that’s gone, I finished for him, knowing that was his meaning. I brought his mouth up to mine and kissed him. I kissed him softly and lovingly, exactly like I had wanted to for years. And if this was truly it, I had nothing to lose. Arthur kissed me back, and I replayed his words in my head—I will become the devil on earth.
I didn’t believe he could ever be the devil.
I wasn’t naïve. I knew he had a darkness in him that I had never reached, that, frankly, was terrifying. But up until now it had been a mere fragment of the boy I had been obsessed with since the age of thirteen. A part of him that I had been exempt from knowing, except in the bedroom. The way he fucked was depraved. The way he kissed me was savage and revealed that he was made of anything but good and light. But he was still mine. That was my Arthur, one I cherished and, over the years, never wanted to lose.
I didn’t know what Arthur Adley, boss of the Adley crime syndicate, looked like. I didn’t know him as that man in that role. And I knew by his tone that I would never find out.
So I kissed and kissed him until my lips were bruised and he fell asleep in my arms. I stared down at him and wondered what path lay ahead of him. As I stroked his hair, the four-carat engagement ring Hugo had given me less than forty-eight hours ago glared back at me. In that moment, that ring seemed more menacing than Arthur could ever be.
I didn’t want it. I didn’t want to be Hugo’s wife. But I didn’t know how to be anything other than Cheska Harlow-Wright, daughter of the Harlow dynasty, and soon to be spouse of Hugo and socialite of Chelsea.
I closed my eyes and tried not to think of my life’s bigger questions. I knew this time