Her Trust : A Dark Syndicate Romance, page 29
I’d long since suspected as such but Ruby’s explanation makes enough sense for me to be certain and unbearable rage now fills my veins. I purposefully relax my muscles to stop the vibrating through my bones, a dangerous calm washing over me.
“I’d like to speak to them,” Ruby says, drawing me back to the conversation.
“No,” I snap, meeting her eye.
“I have pictures of some of the Kukri big hitters in my phone and I’d like to see if they recognise any of them.”
“They don’t need to be upset anymore,” Harvey says, matching my tone.
Ruby holds her hands up defensively. “I get that, and I don’t want to upset anyone, but if you want to find who’s behind this, you’ve got to ask the questions.”
I know she’s right but my instinctive need to protect my girls makes me sit still and glare at the woman across from me. A warm hand on my thigh brings me to look at Harvey, his eyes sympathetic and his mouth turned down.
“We need to do this, rainha,” he says softly.
My heart beats faster but I nod, he stands and leaves the room to collect the girls and I’m left alone with the Tanto. She smiles smugly again. “You hired a cop?”
I don’t answer, just stare back at her.
“And you’re fucking him?” She chuckles.
“That’s hardly your business.”
“Chillax babe, it’s just girl talk.” She crosses her legs and winks at me.
I clench my jaw but don’t rise to her teasing. “These girls are sensitive, and their experience has left them raw.” I narrow my eyes at her. “You will treat them with care and respect, or I will hurt you.”
Her eyes flare. “Now you’re just trying to turn me on.”
I groan at my own frustration, and she chuckles. “Relax, queenie.” She emphasises the nickname in a way to tell me she understands Harvey’s name for me. “I’ll be nice to your kids.”
The door opens and Harvey comes back in, followed by Mabel and Keeley. They’re both wearing their swimming costumes but are completely dry, obviously waiting for us before going swimming. Mabel frowns when she sees the strange woman on the sofa and looks at me.
“What’s going on?”
“Mabel, Keeley, this is Ruby,” I say. “She has some questions to ask you, if you’re up for it.” I try to keep my voice neutral to not let them in on my anxiety.
“Are you police?” Mabel asks, suspiciously.
Ruby chuckles. “Do I look like police to you?”
Mabel shrugs. “How should I know what all the police officers in the city look like?”
“I’m not police, kid.” Ruby smiles, clearly amused by the girl’s sass.
“Then why do you need to ask me questions?” Mabel sits down next to me, and Keeley clambers up on my other side.
“Well, I know you’ve been through some shit recently and I want to make sure other kids don’t go through the same. I think you can help me with that.” Ruby speaks gently and keeps a level gaze on Mabel with each word.
I can feel Mabel stiffen beside me and without thinking, I grab her hand in mine, but she doesn’t pull away. She squeezes my knuckles tightly, wringing the comfort she can take from me. “How can I help?”
“By answering some questions.” Ruby pulls her phone from her pocket and taps away on the screen. “Now, this might be hard, okay? But you’ve got to know that you’re safe here. You’ve got no reason to trust me, but I know you trust Annika and what’s-his-face.” She jerks her chin toward Harvey and without looking at him, I know he’s rolled his eyes at her. Mabel’s lips twitch at Ruby’s teasing and relaxes a little bit. “These are just pictures kid; they can’t hurt you.”
Mabel frowns but nods, her hand tight around mine. “Okay.”
“I’m going to show you some pictures of people. I need to know if you recognise any of them.” Ruby places her phone down on the coffee table in front of us, on the screen is a grainy image of a man taken from afar.
“From the house?” Mabel asks.
“From anywhere,” Ruby answers. “Even if it looks like someone who served you at the corner shop once, just let me know.”
Mabel huffs out a breath and releases my hand to pick up the phone. “Okay.”
“Just keep scrolling left until you find anyone you recognise.” Ruby then turns her attention to Keeley and gives her a wide and friendly smile. “And who might you be?”
“Keeley!” The little girl bounces excited.
“Keeley, is a nice name.” Ruby nods in agreement to her own statement. “How old are you, Keeley?”
“Six,” Keeley answers holding up five fingers.
Ruby smirks. “I was six when I was your age, you know?”
“Were you small like me?” Keeley asks thoughtfully.
“I think I was even smaller,” Ruby answers. She doesn’t over exaggerate her words speaking to the youngster as so many others do. She speaks as she would to an adult but in a way that Keeley obviously engages. “But then I’m still teeny tiny. You’re going to be tall when you’re all grown.”
“Can princesses be tall?” Keeley asks Harvey with a frown, her concern very real and very endearing.
“Of course, princesa. Princesses can be whatever they want to be,” he answers with a warm smile.
“You’re going to be a princess?” Ruby asks with a surprised face.
“Oh, yes,” Keeley nods with such seriousness.
“Well, I better get practicing my curtsies.”
“Oh, I can show you!” Keeley squeals. “Guinevere taught me!” She scurries off the sofa to demonstrate just as Mabel gasps and we all turn to look at her.
“Have you seen something?” I ask, looking at Mabel. She’s paled, her lips tremble, and tears form in her eyes. She doesn’t say anything. “Mabel?”
“You know these people?” she asks Ruby wobbly.
Ruby leans forward again, leaning her elbows on her knees. “I know of them. They’re bad people, people I’ve had…run-ins with in the past. I kept my eye on them for a while but if they’re hurting people, we want to know about it, Mabel. Do you recognise someone?”
Mabel squeezes her eyes shut, pushing the building tears down her cheeks and nods. “He…he…” She breaks, bowing her head and crying then slams the phone back down on the table, screen down.
Harvey pushes off the door where he’d been leaning and pushes the coffee table out the way so he can crouch in front of her. “Mabel look at me,” he says gently but she shakes her head, reliving memories she should never have had. “Mabel,” he soothes, gently pulling at her wrists to bring her hands away from her face where she is digging her fingers into her eyes. “Ursa, listen to my voice. Open your eyes.” She finally does, her crying breaking my heart. “You’re safe now,” he reassures. “No one can hurt you. No one will hurt you again. I will destroy them before they ever get the chance. You hear me?”
She nods and sobs. “He hurt me,” she whispers over her tears.
“He’s a dead man,” Harvey tells her, his jaw ticking. He finds my eyes and I know he’s telling the truth. The cop in him is gone in this moment. There is no innocent until proven guilty, the distress of this girl we both love and care about is enough proof. He’ll help me to end the life of the person who did this to her and a swell of emotion for him hits me, it’s like my soul leaving my body. It’s like love.
I’m so engrossed in the scene in front of me, in wondering how to comfort Mabel, that I don’t notice Keeley picking up the phone from the table.
“Anni,” she cries, dropping the phone and jumping into my lap, wrapping her arm around my neck. I can practically feel her little heart beating against my chest, her panting breaths close to my ear.
I wrap my arms around her. “Hey, it’s okay,” I soothe. “It’s okay, he’s not here, just us, I’ve got you.”
I look over her shoulder and Ruby is staring down at the screen of her phone, still on the table. I follow her gaze and see a picture clear as day. A mugshot. A familiar face. That rage is back, prickling at my skin like cheap wool and churning my stomach. We have a starting point, someone to question for more information, someone to kill to sate this burning desire to rid my girls of their demons. And the best thing about it is he’s already in my custody.
35
HARVEY
Calvin Gregson. That’s the man in the photograph that Keeley ran from in fear, her eyes staring at him as they fill with tears. Her chin trembles as she buries her head in Annika’s neck. Annika looks at me in a rare moment of vulnerability, not knowing how to help a distressed child and I want to throw the phone through the window and wrap them all in a hug, although I know none of them would appreciate it.
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Mabel whispers.
Annika slips the phone away and passes it to Ruby who quietly puts it in her pocket. “You don’t have to do anymore. Thank you for your help.” Her voice is flat and emotionless, her default.
“Don’t cry, Mabel.” Keeley crawls from Annika’s lap to Mabel’s and strokes her sister’s cheek, her wide eyes so innocent and unknowing of what’s really happening.
“Can we go?” Mabel asks, turning to Annika.
“Yes,” she responds calmly. “I have somewhere I need to be, but Miss White will be here.” As the girls get up to leave, she stands with them, placing her hand on Mabel’s shoulder and keeps her at a full arm’s length away, bending her knees to look her in the eye. “You did well,” she says so quietly that it’s obvious her words are just for Mabel, not for show.
Mabel nods and they leave without another word. All three of us stare after them for a minute, each in our own thoughts. Mine mostly consist of what I want to do to Gregson.
“You may leave,” Annika’s voice cuts through my violent imaginings and for a second, I think she’s talking to me, but then I see her glaring at Ruby.
The other woman just snorts, slipping her hands into the back pockets of her black shorts. “I’ll be off then. Until next time, friends.” She smirks at us both.
She leaves and once we’ve heard the door close behind her, Annika calls Lee in. His large frame fills the doorway, wearing all black against his dark skin.
“Find out how she got in,” Annika says, without looking at him.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And Lee?”
He looks at her expectantly.
“If you fail to have this house completely secure when those girls are here again, I’ll kill you myself.” She finally holds his stare, her face relaxed and neutral but her eyes blazing in anger.
The man stills and looks at her with actual fear. “Yes, sir.”
“Send Guinevere in please,” she dismisses him.
When the housekeeper scuttles in, Annika offers the closest thing I’ve seen to a smile since Ruby broke in. “I have to go somewhere. Can you please look after the girls and sit by their door tonight.”
“Oh, of course,” she says pulling her light grey cardigan further around her body. “But…uh…I thought you weren’t doing that anymore?” Her face immediately drops as though she’s done something wrong by questioning her boss.
But Annika isn’t bothered by her question. “They need it tonight,” she says, striding from the room and I follow her on instinct.
She doesn’t say anything to me but opens the safe box by the front door and tosses me the keys to the Lamborghini. I catch them and head straight to the garage with her, we don’t discuss where we’re going, there’s no need.
We’re silent the whole journey, Annika looks as relaxed as can be sat in the passenger’s seat, one leg crossed over the other and her hands loosely clasped together on her thigh. But something’s here that isn’t usually, a buzzing of emotion like the hum of power cables overhead. Anger. She’s radiating fire and I have to admit that I’m eager to see how this is going to play out.
I pull up to the purpose-built holding house out in the scummiest part of town. From the outside, it looks like no lights are on, but I know there must be. Annika is out of the car before I’ve even applied the hand break and I find myself scurrying to catch up to her. Heading straight up the hall to the back room where Calvin is being held.
Annika pushes the door open with such force that it bangs loudly against the wall. The three guards in the room all swing their gazes to us, tightening their grips on their weapons before falling back in line once they realise who it is. She storms over to Calvin sat in an old rickety chair, his hands tied behind his back, and she plants her stiletto in the centre of his chest kicking him so hard that his chair topples over.
“Fuuuuck,” Calvin groans. “What’s your problem, bitch?”
One of the armoured guards step forward as if to intervene but quickly jumps back again when the boss stands over the maggot on the floor, her heel poking into the fleshy part between his shoulder and peck. “You’ve got some explaining to do, Gregson.”
“I ain’t giving you shit,” he spits between gritted teeth.
“Someone, Calvin, has been running kids in my part of the city. What do you know about it?”
“What makes you think I know anything?” he growls, then groans when Annika puts more pressure on his chest.
“I don’t think, I know. You really are a pathetic shit, aren’t you, Gregson?”
“You know nothing,” he snorts. “You couldn’t know anything unless…” he trails off, his face slipping into a sickening grin. “Oooohh.” He chuckles evilly. “The runaways?” When her jaw clenches, he seems to revel in her anger. “We were wondering where those little cunts went. Pity, the little one was about to have her big debut. But her sister, she’s already one of my favourites.”
Annika’s somewhat limited composure snaps, she bares her teeth and drives her heel in until it pierces his flesh. Sticky blood overflows from the wound, almost like it’s boiling over. Calvin wails, moisture leaking from his eyes and rolling down his temples.
“Man up, Gregson. Your tears disgust me.” I can almost imagine Annika in Viking warrior dress, with war paint on her face and a sword in her hand. She is every part the ruthless queen as she stares down at the piece of shit beneath her shoe. My rainha.
“You fucking bitch, cunt-whore,” he cries, struggling against her but between his hands still bound behind his back where he lays and Annika’s weight on his chest, he barely jostles her.
Leaning over him, she snarls, “If ridding my city of degenerates like you makes me a bitch, I will gladly take the title.” She moves off him and steps back. “Stand him up,” she barks at no one in particular.
Two guards grab him under his arms and haul him to his feet. Coming nose to nose with him, she gives him a hard stare. I don’t like her proximity to the motherfucker; I want to pull her away, to stand between them, and stop her from breathing the same air. But that wouldn’t go down well, so I keep my arms folded across my chest, stopping them from doing something stupid.
“Where are the children being held?” Her question is quiet and eerily calm after her outburst.
“Go fuck yourself, whore.”
That’s it. No longer able to stay back, I reach him in two strides, grabbing the hair at the back of his head, and wrenching it back. “Answer the question, shit stain.”
“Make me, cop.” He spits the word like it offends him. I’ve felt uneasy every time Annika or one of her guys has called me a cop since I started this ill-fated mission. But for some reason, hearing it from this dickhead makes me seethe. He thinks I’m a brown-nosing, by the book, pencil pusher who won’t overstep some arbitrary line. He thinks he can push me, and I’ll hold back due to some professional sense of morality. He’s wrong. I didn’t do that even when I held my badge.
I pull my fist back and swing it into ribs, over and over again. Annika watches with no expression on her face. Rage fuels me, keeping my blows coming. My fist stings and I take great satisfaction knowing that his pain is worse, that he’s probably bleeding on the inside of his breaking and battered body.
A gentle hand on my shoulder halts my assault. Annika looks at me with the same neutrality she usually has but her message is clear. Enough now.
“Where are the children?” she asks again.
Calvin is bent double, wheezing in pain and heaving. “Fuck y—”
I sweep my leg out, knocking his feet from under him and slam my boot down on his shin. The satisfying sound of his bones crunching is only slightly drowned out by his pained scream.
“Where. Are. The. Children?”
He grunts and groans as the guards pull him back up straight, holding on so he doesn’t topple over. “George Street,” he huffs, defeated and deflated. “There’s a house on the corner with a bashed-up Transit van out the front. The house is used a bit but most of the product is kept in the basement.” He speaks through clenched teeth.
Annika tilts her head, looking down on him even though they are the same height. “You were sickeningly easy to break.”
Both Calvin and I jerk in surprise when she reaches between them, and flicks open his belt. What is she doing?
“The fuck you doing?” he asks nervously.
“Nothing less than you deserve,” she sighs, as though bored with the conversation.
Popping the button on his dirty jeans, she yanks them down. His lack of underwear means his soft cock is immediately exposed. “Wh-wha…what are you doing?” he asks again, this time sounding far less defiant and far more terrified.
Annika doesn’t answer, she holds her hand out to one of the guards, who hands her a small knife from his belt. Without taking her eyes off Calvin Gregson’s, she grabs his penis, pulling roughly and slicing through the base with the knife. My mouth hangs open watching the inordinate amount of blood spewing from his groin. He howls and struggles against the guards still holding him. In two or three slices, his member is completely detached. The keening coming from Gregson is almost enough to make me feel sympathy for him. Almost, but not quite. His knees have given way but he’s being held up by two strapping men who are reluctant to let him fall to the floor.
