Chapter Eighteen

Andrew

“You sort your family shit out,” a huge bearded biker directed at Vince. “We’ll hit The Sticky Vicar around the corner.”

“Ha, you go. We’ve got an invitation.” Another biker laughed and waved up at the window where Bridget and Trixie were making come-hither signs.

“This way,” I said to Vince. “We use the back door.” I took Chelsea’s hand and led her ahead.

“We’ll leave you to it.” Phil pulled out a smoke and leaned on the fence. “Keep an eye on the screens, will you.”

“Of course.” I marched forward. Of all the things I’d been expecting this morning, Chelsea’s brother turning up wasn’t one of them.

“Wanna sit?” I nodded at a chair.

“No. I’ll stand.” He stood feet hip width apart, big arms crossed.

He was the exact opposite to Chelsea, wide, pumped up, masculine, and with a mouth that appeared immune to smiling.

“What’s going on, Chelsea?”

Chelsea sat and picked up the mug of tea she’d been previously nursing. “Dad, he’s out, seemed he didn’t do what you said he did.”

“I’m not wrong about him.” His lips tightened. “He’s a piece of shit.”

I leaned my bum against the counter and kept my thoughts about Vince to myself.

“The police think Mum was involved in something, something criminal.” She took a deep breath.

I resisted going to her. She was stronger than I’d initially given her credit for. I had to remember that.

“Some kind of human trafficking and—”

“What? Are you insane?” Vince frowned.

“It feels like that, it really does, but they’ve let him out. All he did was take her phone and laptop, to protect her name, to protect us.”

“I don’t need protecting.” Vince shook his head.

“She had a pseudonym, her number is in this book, a criminal’s address book and…”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck.” Vince closed his eyes and scraped his hand over his crew cut. “This is a shit storm of crazy.”

“I know. But we need to speak to Dad. Find out what’s going on from him.”

“I agree.” He looked at me. “Can you watch my sister for me?”

“You don’t even need to ask.”

“But not here. I don’t want her here.”

“I’m coming with you, Vince.” Chelsea jumped up. “I want to see Dad, too.”

“No, let me go first. If this is all true—which I hope it isn’t—I have an apology to give, and I’d rather do that on my own.”

“But…”

I pushed away from the counter. “She’s safe with me.”

He eyed me. “You reckon?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“So what was this emergency you mentioned?” He turned his attention back to Chelsea. “What happened?”

A knot formed in my stomach. This wouldn’t shine me in a good light.

“We went to a club and—”

“What club?”

“Red Leather?”

“You took my fucking sister to a sex dungeon?” He rounded on me again.

I stood my ground. “She’s an adult, surprise, surprise, she has sex.”

He made a low growling sound. “Fuck.” He turned to Chelsea. “What happened there?”

“This guy, this asshole, he had a gun, he dragged me outside, he was going to rape me, strangle me and, and…”

“Fuck,” I muttered. She was going to say it. I couldn’t stop her.

“And I shot him.” Chelsea clasped her hands beneath her chin.

“You…you shot him?” Vince’s eyebrows flew upward. “You killed him?”

She nodded. “I had to. He was an asshole, he’d killed before, and raped before, and I was going to be his next victim.”

“Where the fuck were you if you took her there?” He spun to me.

“Right behind her. I actually had a gun on him when she shot him. The situation was under control.”

“Like fuck it was.” He bared his teeth, and a flash of fury sliced over his eyes. “You’ve turned my sister into a killer. She’ll be looking over her shoulder forever, the nightmares, and…fuck, you bastard.”

The asshole took another swing for me. I grabbed his arm and shoved it into his back, used his forward momentum and his bulk to slam him against the wall. I dug my knees into the backs of his so he was barely standing.

He swore and twisted his head, his cheek squashed on the wall. “Get the hell off me.”

“When you get your damn fists under control. I’ve had enough of them for one day.”

“Vince. Stop. Please, Andrew, leave him alone. Let him go, you’re hurting him.”

“Not until he’s calmed down.” I shoved into him a bit harder and heard a satisfying grunt of discomfort. “Your sister and I are together, and you’re going to have to get used to that.”

He closed his eyes. “You’re sick, she’s half your age. You’re her fucking professor, Ness told me.”

“There’s barely a decade between us, and this is not sudden, we waited until she graduated, you and no one else gets a say in it.”

“I don’t want her with you, or here. Have you seen where she grew up? Have you any idea about her world? This is not a place for my sister.”

“I love him and I want to be where he is,” Chelsea said, flitting around from one side of us to the other. “We’re in love, Vince, you have to understand that.”

He said nothing and remained as tense as a slab of concrete.

“But I will do one thing,” I said. “I’ll take her to my place while you go and speak to your father. You don’t want her here and I respect that, we’ll go.”

He huffed and then shrugged. “Yeah, okay.”

“Can I let you go now?”

“Yeah, for fuck’s sake.”

I stepped back, and he spun to face me. I would have put a hefty bet on his blood pressure being high.

“Where you gonna take her?”

“To my place, it’s round the corner.”

“Now.” He hadn’t said it as a question.

I glanced at the screens. All was okay. “Yeah, now, come on, babe.” I took her hand and gestured to the back door. “After you, Vince.”

* * * *

Chelsea

Andrew’s apartment was on the next street to Rose Cottage. I could see how he’d come to house the sex workers so close to where he lived. It made sense if he was going to protect them.

“Nice.” I stepped in and kicked off my sandals. “Tidier than I’d thought it would be.”

He chuckled and set his phone, gun, and wallet on a dresser.

The place was open plan with a gleaming kitchen, shiny leather sofas, and a polished dining table. The view of the park gave the place an even airier feel.

“What’s through here? A bedroom?” I grinned at him and pushed open a door. Sure enough, a king-sized bed with a silver-gray headboard and soft white sheets filled the room.

“I like the way your mind works. But I’m gonna take a shower. I’ve still got some of your brother’s blood on me.”

I pulled a face. “Yeah, sorry about that.”

“Not your fault.”

He disappeared, and water came on. Another door, to the right, caught my attention, and I opened it and peered inside. Unlike the rest of the apartment, this room was dark, the curtains closed and the wooden furniture thick and heavy.

I flicked on a light and stepped in. Bridget’s words came back to me about a wall of Post-it notes and string linking them like a giant web. She might have been joking but she was right. The largest wall was a maze of interconnected information about people. And the desk was piled with books and files. A computer had several hard drives and a bowl of memory sticks at its side. A few lights flashed as though it was always working—always searching for the criminals who deserved to die.

A rosy apple sat on the desk. I picked it up and bit into it, the tart juice spreading on my tongue. At the center of the wall were a bunch of names tacked into place. Some had pictures with them, some had question marks beneath them. String moved outward to other names, mainly women, and some had black crosses over their photographs.

Did that mean they were dead? If so, there were a lot of them.

I moved along the wall. There were place names, last seen dates, birth dates, pseudonyms, and then countries, drawn out geographically and with more people and names dotted over them.

It was a huge piece of information, spanning continents, two hundred people at least, maybe more if some of the long lists of names were included.

A shudder went through me when I spotted an image of Brian Dix. Unlike the man next to him, he didn’t yet have a black cross on his photograph. But he was dead, I knew that for sure.

And at the center of the wall, above a picture of a thin man with a scrawny moustache and the name Ranson, were several blank images, string linking them to Ranson and countries—Romania, Kosovo, Armenia, Albania.

Albania.

My mouth dried. What did this mean? Ranson, it was his book Mitch had had back at the house. He’d said Ranson bought women from abroad for his whore warehouse. Were these blank images the unscrupulous people he ordered them from?

A well of nausea built up, because if so, my mother was Albania. This grand criminal web had her factored into it—Andrew just hadn’t known her name.

I locked my knees, it was as if my bones had gone, they felt weak. I looked closer and saw that there were other countries linked to Ranson: Bulgaria, Turkey, and Syria. These each had a photograph, one woman, two men, and black crosses over them.

“They’re dead.” I pressed my hand over my mouth. I understood what I was seeing. Galahad had killed these three human traffickers. Or someone had. They’d been taken out.

There was a noise behind me and I turned. My heart was thudding. I dropped the apple, and it rolled across the floor.

Andrew had a towel wrapped around his lean hips, and his hair was damp from the shower. He stared at me through narrowed eyes.

“You…” I pulled in a shaky breath.

He tipped his head.

“You had my mother on your kill list.”

He didn’t speak.

I wanted to scream.

“I can see how you’ve been following these gangs, Andrew, picking the ringleaders off. You would have got to her soon, killed her, wouldn’t you?”

“What do you think?” He stepped up to me.

The scent of shower gel swirled around me, a heady smell that fractured my thoughts further.

“I…I don’t know what to think. She…she was my mother.”

“If you play with fire, you get burned.”

Tears formed and spilled down my cheeks. “I loved her.”

“She was a monster.”

“How can you say that?” My heart squeezed. “It might not be true.”

“It’s true.” He gripped my shoulders. “I’m sorry, but it’s true.”

“No!”

“If her number is in Ranson’s book, she was supplying him. We’d have confirmed it but…”

“No. No.” I banged my fists on his bare chest over his goddamn scales of justice tattoo. Where was the justice for me? I’d had my life ripped apart, my heart broken.

“Chelsea!”

“No. Get off me.” I spun away and marched to the door. “I have to go.”

“Wait.” He was behind me. He pressed his hand on the door, and it slammed shut right in front of me.

Then he was pressed against me, his long, hard body pinning me to the wood.

I stared at the handle and the lock beneath it. I longed for my old memories of my mother.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You shouldn’t have come in this room.”

“It wasn’t locked.”

“I’m usually home alone.”

I dashed at my tears. “How could she have done it? Those poor women? It’s barbaric? She must have known what she was sending them to.”

He didn’t speak. His mouth was by my temple. He kissed me.

“If she did this, I hate her.” I spun to face him. “She’s a terrible human being and…” A fresh thought came over me, and a sob so violent I thought it would rip me apart burst from my chest. “She used the money for our…our…lifestyle. Fuck! We had so much money.”

Everything I’d ever had. Holidays, ponies, private education, designer clothes, the multi-million-pound house, it was all bought with the profits of misery, addiction, slavery and, most likely, death.

I fell to my knees.

Andrew kind of caught me and gathered me close. The tears were agony as they flowed from me. It was like being ripped apart, the very seams of my soul shredded.

“It’s okay. I’m here,” he soothed, his palm stroking my hair. “I’m here. I’ll always be here.”

It was something my mother had said to me, tenderly, when I’d been upset about a school bully. Yet how could I remember that now when she’d sent women and girls to such a vile future?

“Chelsea,” Andrew said. “Come on, let’s get you a drink.”

I allowed him to pull me to standing. My fingers clung to him of their own volition, as though without him I’d fall apart.

He sat me down and poured whisky. “Here, drink this.”

I knocked it back in one go then shuddered at the slap to the back of my throat.

“Another.” He poured more, and then one for himself.

He placed his hand on my knee. “It’s okay if you’ve changed your mind about us, now you know what I do.” His mouth was a thin flat line.

“What?”

“When we found out who she was, likely in the next month now we have Ranson’s book, I would have killed her, we would have killed her. I can’t say that wouldn’t have happened, Chelsea.”

“Oh my God.” I shakily lifted the glass to my lips again. “But…but she hadn’t killed anyone. She wasn’t a murderer. I thought you just killed murderers.”

“Mitch got word that one of the girls died in detox, heart failure, and that’s just one batch of girls. This has been going on for years. Your lavish lifestyle, since birth, proves it. A lot of women will have died. Miserable, painful, addiction-riddled, with no dignity left.”

I took a deep breath and remembered my studies on the justice system. “She would have faced a criminal trial.”

“If she’d agreed to confess, yes, that would have been an option.”

I blew out a breath. So my boyfriend wouldn’t have actually murdered my mother on sight.

If she’d confessed.

But would she have? I knew enough about criminals to know when they were in that deep for that long they didn’t confess—they’d rather die than face justice or drop their criminal colleagues in the shit.

“I need to understand what my father knew about all of this. How deep in it with her he was.”

“I agree, you need to know that.”

The clock showed mid-afternoon. “I should go.”

“No, let Vince have his time with your father. You never know, Vince might get more facts that he can tell you later.”

“Vince sees me as a little girl in need of protecting from the big bad world. It’s a pain in the ass.”

“Big brothers have a habit of doing that.” He glanced away.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…Sadie…I should have thought.” I touched his arm.

His phone rang. “Mitch. What’s up?”

I leaned closer so I could hear Mitch speaking.

“This fucking book, it’s the Holy Grail.”

“What do you mean?” Andrew asked, swirling his whisky around his glass.

“It’s the who’s who of the underworld. Your wall, it’s gonna have a lot of blank spaces filled in. I’m telling you.” Mitch spoke fast.

Excitement flashed in Andrew’s eyes. “Really?”

“Yeah, really, and each phone number is a fucking asshole we need to attend to.”

“I like the sound of that.” He looked at me. “Gotta go, Mitch. I’ll come over when you’ve finished your shift, gather whoever else is free.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

He ended the call.

“You love it, don’t you?” I sat up straighter and studied his eyes.

“What? What do I love?”

“Justice.”

“Of course.” He touched his tattoo. “It’s the foundation for civilized society.”

I nodded. I didn’t disagree with that. “You also love being a vigilante, doling out your own justice.”

“Yes.”

“And killing?”

He snapped in a breath, his shoulders tensing. “What do you think?”

I tipped my head, studied him. “I think you’re taking me into a world that’s scary and sexy and I’m not sure I can resist it.” I pushed my hair from my face. “But I didn’t enjoy killing that man. I saw it as a necessity, justice, but it wasn’t anything to do with my pleasure.”

“I understand.” He cupped my face. “I totally understand because that’s exactly how I feel. And I’m glad you’re so strong and eloquent.” He kissed me, forcing me onto my back.

I closed my eyes, longing to forget everything and go back to the orgasmic, submissive, pleasure-soaked state he’d taken me to before.

“Want me to make you forget everything…for a while?” he asked.

“Yes.” I nodded and tugged his towel loose, threw it aside. “Yes, I need that. I need you.”

“And I need you, more than you’ll ever know.”

I lifted up my skirt and spread my legs. “This is the start of something, isn’t it?” I stared into his eyes as his cock prodded my pussy.

“No.” His lips brushed mine, and he entered me deeply. “This is the start of everything.”

To continue the story of the BEAUTIFUL CREEPS grab book #2, THE TWINS , and delve deeper into the secrets of Ranson’s little black book, find out how Cillian and Finn get on with their shared date, and are Chelsea’s gut instincts about her mother correct?

*THE TWINS is currently on pre-order but the release date will be much sooner than stated.