firm. The shit hit the fucking fan for us all, and he came to you. The heir to the Adley throne. He left us all here shell-shocked and broken and travelled to Oxford to you. And you think you were just a fuck?” Vera leaned over the foot of the bedframe. “You might be a good shag, I can imagine that, doll, but no bird’s cunt is so fucking good that a bloke like Arthur would drop all his responsibilities in the middle of a murderous shitshow just to get his end away.”
I stared at her, not knowing what to say, my pulse racing so fast I thought it would bring on a heart attack. “But the way he left …”
Betsy took the ring from my hand. She held it in the air. “He never said, and would never say to us—Arthur is a bloody fortress.” She studied the diamond. “But I think it might have had a little something to do with this.” My stomach plummeted. I remembered waking up to him holding my hand, eying the ring then tossing my hand back to the mattress like I disgusted him. No, not me. That. That bloody tarnished ring.
“It was the start of his ascension.” Ronnie sat on the end of the bed and leaned against the bedframe, casual in my company, like we’d been friends for years. “His ascension to Dark Lord of London.” She spoke that tabloid-given title with a tired roll of her eyes. “He came home that night changed. Whatever light he’d had left inside of him been stubbed the fuck out.”
“You,” Vera said, sitting opposite her girlfriend on the bed, the heel from her stiletto boot almost piercing the duvet. “That night he lost our dads, his dad, and … you.”
“You’re not some posh bird he fucked for a few years, Cheska. You’re the only one he ever let in, as little as that might have been. It was more of his soul than he gave to anyone else. You’re his bloody saviour,” Betsy said.
“From what?” I whispered, unable to process it all.
“From himself. From the darkness that’s almost completely devoured him,” Ronnie said. “That will take him under until he’s got nothing left inside him, no humanity, no fucking life.”
“Everyone is terrified of Arthur, and that’s why no one fucks with our firm. You can’t beat a man who doesn’t fear death,” Vera said.
“And as much as that serves us well as a crime family, we love our cousin more than our place on the top of the fucked-up London underworld,” Betsy said. “If he keeps living this way, he will die alone, never knowing love and constantly haunted by the ghosts of all the people who fell by his hand.” Betsy sighed. “Just like his father.” She sipped at her wine. “As much as I adored my Uncle Alfie, in reality, he died years ago. He died when my aunt and cousin burned in the house fire. And instead of loving Arthur harder, he moulded him into a man who could never be fucked with. Who would make the most formidable crime boss in London. He made his son impenetrable. Unfeeling. He made him fucking lethal.”
“And a geezer who couldn’t express his feelings. Uncle Alfie feared it would make Artie weak if he did.” Vera reached across and held Ronnie’s hand. “Love, Ches. Arthur was raised to think love was a fast track to ruin.” She smirked, but it was laced with sadness. “The strong and formidable Arthur Adley, who kills without remorse, runs far, far away at the first sight of love. Ironic, no? I’d say it’s the only thing in life that actually terrifies him.”
“Then along comes you,” Ronnie said. “Rich, posh, and poles apart from his way of life.” She shrugged. “I’m sure it was easy to convince himself that you two would never last, would never really start.”
She pointed at the ring. “And the one night he lets his walls down and admits he needs you by leaving us all behind to seek you out, he wakes up to that.” I remembered him crying, feeling the tears on my stomach and his arms tight around my waist as he told me they’d all been taken away. Then I recalled his cold, dead eyes as he left my flat without ever looking back.
I’d seen what they were describing. I’d seen the crack he’d opened in his thick armour. For a few cherished hours, I’d seen the man underneath, the man