it’d seen a fucking ghost.
My cousin pressed play on the video. Betsy and Vera kept their eyes trained on Ollie as I watched. But Lawson only had eyes for me. I could feel the weight of his stare as the video started playing.
I watched as some fucker in the usual black clothes and balaclava carried my sister out of the back door of the cottage. The place was burning, my mum inside, but someone had gone in for Pearl. My heart fucking pounded like a canon at seeing my sister alive, but being taken away.
The video cut off. My hands were fucking shaking with rage, when another scene started to play. Of a woman in a suit. A blond woman with Pearl’s eyes. A woman in her early twenties …
My lungs seized up, and I knew what I was seeing. My mind tried to fucking catch up.
Pearl …
“Annie,” Ollie said, speaking my mother’s name. He didn’t deserve to speak her motherfucking name. I would rip out his dirty fucking tongue if he said it again. “That right there is my sister, Annie Lawson.”
Victory spread across his face as his words sank into my head. Ollie’s arm hung by his side, his leg was broken, but the fucker still glared at me. “What better way to fuck you all up than to take your beloved little sister and make her one of our own?”
“You lie,” I snarled, but I stared down at the woman sitting in a café in some other fucking country—France or Switzerland or some shit by the looks of things. Someone approached her table, and she smiled, shaking their hand. Every part of me froze. Because I knew that fucking smile.
It was Pearl … They’d fucking taken Pearl!
“Cunt!” I flew at Ollie, but the fucker was prepared. He pulled out a gun and fired a shot, grazing my arm. I didn’t feel the pain, I didn’t stop coming at him—I just needed this arsehole dead.
As I lifted my hand to smash his face, he said, “Annie runs our European enterprise.” I stilled and pictured her in that suit, shaking someone’s hand. The video she clearly didn’t know was being recorded.
“Trafficking?” Betsy asked, devastation in her voice. “Pearl’s involved in trafficking?”
Ollie raised an eyebrow at my cousin. “Annie wouldn’t stand for that shit.” He looked at me again. “Quite the spitfire, my sister.” I was going to kill him. I had to fucking kill him. Pearl was my sister, not his. My fucking little sister.
“She’s more suited to drugs and guns.” He smiled again. “Quite similar tastes to you, actually. She knows nothing about the human trafficking side of our business.” He shuddered. “Annie can be quite the little sadist if she doesn’t like someone—likes to make them pay. And she loves me. Her big brother. I would never tell her about the true nature of our London ventures. Wouldn’t want to incur her wrath.”
“Where is she?” I snarled.
“Where the fuck is she?!” Vinnie screamed behind me, still being held in Charlie’s arms.
“Not here,” Ollie said, and my mind became a fucking sludgy mess. Pearl was fucking alive, and working for the Lawsons. No, not working for. She was a fucking Lawson. A fucking Adley adopted by the Lawsons, wearing our murdered mum’s name.
“She doesn’t remember a thing about you,” Ollie said, and I heard Betsy suck in a sharp breath like she’d been fucking shot. “She doesn’t know that the famous Adley family was once hers.” He laughed, and the sound of it grated on my nerves. “In fact, she fucking hates you. Loathes you …” Ollie leaned into me. But I was fucking paralysed, the crack in my chest draining of lava and hollowing out to nothing.
My sister hated us. Hated me.
“And if anything happens to her dearest big brother—me—then she has orders to bring you all down.” All I could see in my head was Pearl. Pearl was alive. Sitting at the café, smiling and shaking some wanker’s hand.
My little sister was fucking alive.
Ollie moved the gun to my forehead. The barrel pressed into my skin, and fire lit in his fucking eyes. Death. He wanted to bring me death.
I saw blackness dance in my vision, Satan himself ready to drag us both down. “Do it,” I snarled, eyes fucking lit, pushing against the gun. “FUCKING DO IT!” I shouted, lifting my own gun to his skull. Ollie smiled a wide smile, clicked off the safety of his gun just as I clicked off mine. We