Chapter 39
E verly
Connor directed us to the basement. The sounds of music grew fainter, and sweat broke out on my brow. I glanced at Genevieve.
“Are you going to be okay down here?”
She’d been hunted here during the game. I’d found myself thinking about it often.
She pushed her blonde hair behind her ear, and a flush spread across her cheeks. “Arran and I spent some time down here recently. I have better memories now.”
We entered the cavernous space, bright-yellow lights spilling over the vast concrete expanse. I imagined how a hundred years ago, this was where they’d take goods in and out of the warehouse, via the huge doors that exited onto the rear car park just above the height of the river. Now, a glimmer of pink from one of the neon club signs outside glowed at the edges of a high window, a testament to its changed use.
Around the edge of the room, a metal gantry ran the length with steps up and down to it and a suspended room above the floor. An overseer’s office.
Our target, I gathered.
Ahead, Cassie marched on as if she was ready to throw down. At the bottom of the nearest set of steps, she spun around and regarded Connor. “They’re in there, right?”
He grumbled agreement.
“How are we going to do this thing? Those men are three of our suspects who could’ve played a part in killing innocent women. What can we do to them?”
He straightened his jeans at his ankle, a knife appearing in his hand which I’d had no idea was holstered there. “Other than killing them? Go for it.”
“Can I hurt them?”
“If it helps extract information, do it. I’ll make sure that when we let them go they’ll keep their mouths shut. I only made the mayor choose between them to show me where his priorities lie. But whatever ye do, Piers is last. I need to break something of his.” His gaze came to me. “I captured them for ye, Everly. Take control whenever ye want.”
I swallowed fear. “I can’t hurt another person.”
Genevieve hugged her arms around herself, her expression saying the same. “I need to know if Slaughter knew Cherry was pregnant, but I can’t torture him. Cassie, you’re voted in as our champion.”
Cassie’s blue eyes darkened. She held out her hand to Connor, and he offered her the weapon, hilt first with his fingertips on the blade.
She claimed it. Tested the edge with her nail, just like I’d seen him do in the past.
I’d always been proud of strong women, my heart happy when a confident girl stepped up at a conference and spoke on a subject she was an expert in. Or when she commanded a room and got everyone organised. A buzz of the same respect filled me now.
In a little black dress, with glittering silver fingernails, one now with a notch taken out of it from the knife, and her black curls loose, Cassie was a vision of vicious and deadly lass. If any part of what we needed to do now fazed her, she didn’t let it show.
With the devil in her eyes, she stalked up the steps.
We hurried after.
Outside the door, Connor handed out skeleton masks from a waiting box. It felt a little pointless when we were far more recognisable, and Cassie rejected hers. Like him, she entered the room bare-faced and exuding menace.
I crept inside, nausea rising, and my focus flitting from one man to the next. All three were still tied to chairs in a row, shirtless, bloodied, and bruised, with their heads down and their mouths gagged. The scent of urine hung in the air where one of them must’ve soiled himself. All three were out cold.
What should’ve been horrifying somehow felt right.
The policeman I’d seen on the video earlier had gone, but Riordan leaned against a wall, his arms folded and his watchful gaze taking us in. He’d been put to work as the prisoners’ guard, I gathered.
Cassie stared at my new brother for a moment, and another series of thoughts crammed into my head.
When Connor had come to rescue me, Riordan had been at the other end of the live feed, listening in. Just like I’d heard my father state that he’d kept tabs on his son, Riordan would have heard that, too. I couldn’t imagine how he felt.
He’d been known about, watched to some extent, but rejected.
Later, I’d find him so we could chat. I had so much to share but most of all wanted to welcome him as a family member. Maybe he needed that. At a minimum, I intended for us to be friends.
Riordan tracked Genevieve and me as we took a position at the back of the room, out of the eyeline of the men, and then settled his focus on Cassie. He squinted at the knife in her hand, and his eyes flared.
Cassie commanded Connor’s attention. “Wake them up. One at a time.”
He collected a bottle from a shelf, drew fluid into a needle, then returned to stab it into Councillor Slaughter’s upper arm, tugging off his gag with it.
After a few moments, Slaughter woke with a jerk and his chest rising and falling. His gaze flew between the two people in front of him.
Cassie took a step forward, pulling his attention to her. “I’m going to ask some questions. If ye answer me quickly and truthfully, I won’t hurt ye. Much. Fuck me around, and I’ll count my level of pissed off in slices to your dick. Understand?”
He gave a jerky nod.
She tapped the knife on her thigh. “Ye knew Chelsea Gains, correct?”
He hesitated. “Who?”
“Her working name was Cherry.”
“Oh. Yes. Somewhat. I didn’t kill her, though.”
Cassie tilted her head. “Did I ask that?”
“No, sorry.”
“Did ye know she was pregnant with your bairn?”
Slaughter’s jaw dropped. From my view of him, I couldn’t see fear in his eyes, but I sensed it. We didn’t know who the father of Cherry’s baby had been either, but I got why Cassie phrased the question as such.
“I…I had no idea. None. She didn’t tell me.”
“Seems to me reason enough for ye to end her.”
“It isn’t! It wouldn’t be.” His chair squeaked under him, his jerk of protest dragging the rubber feet an inch across the floor. “Two of my kids’ mothers are sex workers. I take care of them.”
Behind my skeleton mask, I gaped. I hadn’t been able to tell that from the research I’d done, but it was something we could check.
“If I’d known,” he continued, talking fast, “I would’ve taken care of her, too. She never said a word about it, and I hated her working on the streets. I told her every time to join the brothel. You have to believe me.”
Cassie’s gaze connected with mine, and we traded disappointment. I reached for Genevieve’s fingers and held them. Her hand shook. Cherry had been her friend. To present a different future like that was awful.
It pared back any motive he had, too.
Cassie worked her jaw. “Who was the second man ye were taking to Cherry the weekend she died? She didn’t like him.”
He gave an eager head tilt towards a still-unconscious Councillor Blake, next to him in the row and with some kind of grime in his fair hair. “Cherry said he smelled bad. She didn’t like it when I brought him along.”
“‘Not so keen on that one.’ That’s what she said,” Genevieve whispered. “Thinking back on it, that might not have been fear. I took it that way because I was scared for her.”
Cassie peered over at us, and I gave her a soft nod to continue.
“Have ye ever hurt a woman?” She turned the knife over in her hands, the blade flashing in the office light.
Slaughter smiled. “I’m a lover not a fighter.”
Cassie slammed a fist into his jaw. The violence came out of the blue, and I yelped then clamped a hand over my mouth. Riordan jumped forward but stopped at a pausing hand from a relaxed Connor. Riordan clearly didn’t like the role Cassie was playing. But she was good at it. We were getting answers.
She shook her fist out. “Jokes piss me off. Try again.”
Slaughter groaned, blood bubbling in spit on his lips. “I sometimes pay to spank them. That isn’t a joke. I don’t want to leave anything out. I don’t know what else you want me to say.”
“That you’re a disgusting misogynist who’d be better off dead?” she quipped.
He hung his head in silence.
Cassie twisted to Connor, a head tilt at the next man in line, cueing him up to ready a needle. As Blake came to, he moaned low and long.
“Councillor Blake. Chelsea Gains, otherwise known as Cherry, didn’t like ye,” Cassie stated. “Ye have one chance to tell me why or I’ll remove your balls.”
Blake lifted his gaze to her. He took in the knife, then Connor at her back, and lastly, his colleague trussed up next to him. Awareness of his situation seemed to hang heavy over him. “S…she had issues with my personal hygiene.”
“Ugh, that tracks.” Cassie heaved a sigh. “Did ye kill her?”
“No! I could never. She was Benjamin’s favourite to start off an evening. We both miss her.” Blake peeked at Councillor Slaughter.
“Has any other woman been hurt at your hands or at your order?”
“I never ordered anyone. My…my wife tells me I cause her emotional pain. I never touch her. I mean, that was the problem and why our marriage fell apart. She wanted more?—”
“Jesus. Enough. Did ye ever meet Natasha Reid or Amelia Martin? Either alive or dead.”
Both shook their heads, nothing sly in their posture. No recognition at all that I could tell.
Exasperated, Cassie turned to Connor. “I’m getting nothing. Is it worth torturing them?”
The men made noises of protest.
Connor tapped his lip as if considering the notion. He moved to stand next to Cassie, over a foot taller than her and twice as wide. She handed back his blade.
Connor used it to point to the two awake men. “Your answers have won ye a reprieve. For now.”
“Thank you, thanks so much,” they babbled.
Cassie cut in. “But any hint that you’ve hurt, degraded, or even looked at a woman the wrong way and I’ll find ye and turn your balls into a pair of earrings.”
Connor nodded. “You’re never safe, not in your fancy workplace or your beds. I’m always aware. Always listening in. And boys?”
He gestured to me, out of sight behind them.
I stared back. He was giving me the opportunity to have my say. He hadn’t used my name, so I could stay put and continue pretending they hadn’t hurt me. Or… I circled the men on shaking legs to stand the other side of Connor. But I couldn’t speak, my voice wouldn’t come out.
“Get on your knees and beg Everly’s forgiveness for being the lowlife scum that ye are,” Cassie said for me.
With a swift lift of a biker boot, Riordan kicked their chairs so they tipped forward, still tied on and clattering down to the floor with no way to protect themselves from the fall.
“Everly? I mean Miss Makepeace,” Blake spluttered with his face to the grubby lino. “I’ve never…oh God, the conference? Benjamin, this is your fault. You and your big mouth?—”
Cassie unleashed a kick. “Focus, gentlemen.”
Blake groaned. “We’re sorry for the harm caused. It was unthinking. Unthinkable. A mistake.”
“My deepest apologies and regrets, Miss Makepeace,” Slaughter added.
I took a breath to give them my forgiveness when Connor strode over and grasped Blake by his hair. He raised him, pulled back his arm, and punched him in the side of the head. He repeated the act with the other councillor, and their heads thunked against the floor, the men unconscious once more.
Then Connor shrugged. “Not worth wasting good drugs on these arseholes.”
He stalked away to make a quick call, then had the councillors untied and a couple of crew members arrive to cart them away. Where they’d be left, I didn’t know, or care. Never again did I have to handle them, and it felt good.
The door closed after the retreating crew, and the five of us were left with Piers.
I once again moved to stand with Genevieve at the back, and Cassie took to the wall next to Riordan, her high heel kicked back in a show of nonchalance.
Riordan lowered his head to speak to her. “Are ye okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“What about your hand?”
“I know how to throw a punch,” she scoffed.
His eyebrows pinched together. “How?”
“Four older brothers and anger issues.”
I expected a grin to go with her words. Cassie only sighed.
Connor woke Piers. The vile man struggled out of his slump, bruises on his cheekbones and jaw that appeared to be a mix of old and new, and his more upright position revealing a wet patch on his trousers. He was the source of the urine smell.
Piers centred on Connor. “Who are you?”
Connor stared him down.
Piers tried again, his tone brash. “I demand an answer. I’m the next baron of Ryechester. You cannot do this to me.”
I squinted, the title a surprise. He’d told me his facts, and nowhere in that had been a barony. Surely that would’ve been a bragging point. I hadn’t gone looking up his family.
I did now, my fingers flying over my phone.
To the tune of Piers making demands at an ominously silent Connor, I scoured the web for the Baron of Ryechester, discovering records for a large estate and a stately home in Surrey.
Anwell Roache was the title holder. I clicked into his bio. He was forty-six and married, no children recorded, but there were siblings. Piers’ name was listed. There was another brother, too, with Piers the youngest. That didn’t make sense. Why would he claim he was the heir?
Another fact clicked in place in my mind.
My father adored the aristocracy. That family tree on our wall with its missing information was only one of his ways of connecting to roots he wished he was closer to. His very title of Mayor was one he’d sought in lieu of being a lord. He’d told me that so many times. He wanted the respect that went with rank so had gone to great lengths to achieve it.
Could that be the reason he wanted Piers?
I focused on joining the dots. If Piers somehow inherited that title and I married him, my child would one day be titled.
The room closed in around me.
I lost track of Piers’ angry ranting and instead saw myself as a pawn used for my father’s selfish aspirations. He’d use me to return our family to the glory he sought.
Genevieve’s warm fingers squeezing mine brought me back, and I stared at her then was moving. Half on autopilot, I travelled to Connor’s side so Piers could see me.
“Why would you inherit your brother’s title?” I demanded.
Piers’ lips parted then curled into a satisfied smirk. “Everly. Now it all makes sense.”
“Answer the question,” Connor ordered.
I didn’t know what I’d stumbled into as I hadn’t heard, but he backed me up. He always had.
Piers tongued a cut on his lip. “My brother’s dying. I’m next in line.”
Dying. God. “What about your other brother? Why isn’t he the heir?”
“Chandler served time in jail. Anwell chose to skip him in the line of succession. He’s named me in his will. A right choice.”
What had we found out about Piers—that he’d made a sexual assault charge go away? If he’d gone to prison or got entangled with a scandal, that presumably would’ve risked his position of heir, too. He’d been desperate for a solution.
“That’s what my father promised you,” I stated, my hurt and anger rising. “A wife to rehabilitate your image, not for your job but for your family seat, and in exchange the mayor would get a grandchild with a title.”
His expression of disdain told me I’d got it in one.
“He didn’t tell me you were such an ugly slut,” Piers added. “I learned that the hard way. But I’ll only have to face that when you’re in my bed.”
Connor unleashed a punishing uppercut that I wished I had the nerve or strength to deliver.
Piers’ chair tipped back and crashed to the floor, and the man howled in pain, his nose crooked and blood oozing over his upper lip.
“Say another word about Everly,” Connor gritted out to Piers. “See if ye can still breathe after.”
“That crunch of his nose breaking was so satisfying,” Cassie commented from the side. “Can I make him scream?”
Connor laughed under his breath and righted Piers’ seat then stepped back, his knife handed over once again along with a warning. “Don’t let him enjoy unconsciousness.”
The prisoner lifted his head at Cassie’s approach. “What is this, train a bitch day? You think you can hurt me?”
She unleashed an unnerving smile. “Ask me to. I’ll enjoy every second of it.”
I held up a hand. “One thing before you start.” All I needed now was for this to be over, for me to be out of Piers and my father’s game, and there was only one way to do it.
“I’m pregnant,” I told him. Jumping the gun but better for him to take the news to the mayor, or better still, leave and never look back. “I’m going to have a baby with Connor, so your plotting failed. I would never be the mother of your children. Never be the docile woman you wanted.”
Piers stared at me for a long moment, disgust crawling off him. Then, pointedly, he eyeballed Riordan still standing beside Cassie. “A pity. All your father wanted was a son he could be proud of.”
Riordan flinched. With a bloodied mouth, Piers smiled.
“Oh, fuck this guy,” Cassie stated. “Ye are a worthless little maggot. In fact, let’s see exactly how little I can make ye.”
Flipping the knife, she knelt in front of Piers. Without pause, she slipped the blade under his trouser leg and sliced up. The material parted with a rip, and she kept going, first one leg, then the other, leaving bleeding lines on his skin where she didn’t take care with the tip.
Riordan spoke low and against the spluttered threats Piers spewed at her. “It isn’t worth it.”
I tore my gaze from her to him. Cassie had flown into anger at least in part over Riordan, and likewise, he watched her with some degree of familiarity or concern. I’d had no idea they knew each other that well.
A cry of pure rage had me snapping my attention back to Piers.
Cassie shredded his boxer shorts, and her nose wrinkled. “Wet. Gross. Everly, film me, aye?”
She found her phone in her dress pocket and tossed it my way.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Piers roared.
Daring, I activated the camera and held it up. Cassie’s confidence bolstered mine.
Posing for the camera, she held up Piers’ ruined underwear on her outstretched finger. “Wannabe rapist Piers Roache pissed his pants when two women decided to take him on. He’s tied to a chair and bleeding, and from the smell of the guy, he’s sitting in his own shite, too.”
“Stop recording, you fucking whore,” Piers screamed.
This time, I smiled. The words didn’t hurt me. In fact, I wanted more of them as he suffered.
“Let’s see what Piers is packing.” Cassie tossed the soggy boxers and knelt to peer at the prisoner’s lap. “I spy a worm.”
A laugh flew from my lips. “A button mushroom, I’d call it.”
Piers bucked, trying to knee Cassie in the head. He stilled when her blade touched his shrivelled dick. It appeared to shrink further, the foreskin mottled and patchy.
“Looks to me like the mushroom dick Piers is hiding in his pants is disease riddled,” I observed.
Cassie tipped the knife up to hook his foreskin. Piers stopped breathing. Slowly, she lifted her gaze, her focus on him while she spoke to me. “Keep filming but take a photo,” she ordered. “Make sure I’m in it as well as Piers’ face and his sad little mushroom dick.”
I did, the camera capture loud in the sparse office.
Cassie nodded, her humour gone and pure malice in how she regarded her prey. “I’m going to upload that shot and tag ye so everyone who looks up your sorry arse sees it.”
“I have his account information,” I said. I’d found him online. He mostly followed gym bros and alpha male accounts, alongside corporations he aspired to work for.
She acknowledged me, still holding his attention. “I’m going to explain how disgusting ye are and how no woman is safe around ye. And even if ye block my accounts, I’m going to upload it once a week with your name attached so any poor lass who comes into your orbit is bound to find it. That, I do for the safety of womankind. You’re lucky we don’t eradicate ye altogether. It would serve the purpose better.”
She drew the blade up, piercing his taut skin so he released a horrified whimper into his stunned silence. Blood bloomed at the site. Spittle formed at the corners of his mouth.
“The video, on the other hand, is our collateral. Fuck any of us over again and I’ll upload it everywhere and tag your employer, colleagues, your family, every person ye follow or who follows ye. The lot. Think I care about getting arrested? Guess again. I will happily go down for the crime of ending ye, and believe me, cross us again and I will.”
Piers nodded, once and quickly.
One touch of his dick and he’d crumbled. The rage hadn’t left his gaze but was there in his jerky breaths. In his deathly white-cold skin.
“Keep the knife there.” Connor crouched next to Cassie and regarded Piers. “Tell me, Roache, have ye ever killed a woman?”
“No,” he released. “What would be the point? I can’t fuck a corpse.”
I’d half forgotten that he was a suspect, too.
Cassie repeated the names she’d asked of the councillors. Cherry, Natasha, Amelia. He denied them all with the same disdain, nothing to clue me in to a lie.
Which left no information gained from the interrogation. I was glad to have revenge on those who’d crossed me, though. That tasted sweet.
Cassie cocked her head at Connor. “I know ye said not to cut any pieces off this one, but I’ve always wondered how they do a circumcision.”
Connor smiled.
Piers’ screams filled the basement, and nobody but him batted an eye.