Chapter 24
It’s time for you to step up
Clara
I took a deep breath and pushed open the front door to my family’s house. The first thing I saw as I walked in was Mum standing in the middle of the hallway, facing the entrance.
“Hi, Mum,” I said softly. Her vacant expression cleared for a moment as she met my eyes.
We were both small women, just a touch over five feet, and delicate – too delicate.
It had been the same for generations – the women of the family were tiny, the men all tall and well-built.
Zach was really the only skinny aberration, but I suspected that if he wasn’t under so much stress and didn’t have to avoid the common areas of the house so much, he’d fill out quickly.
“Mum?” I pressed when she didn’t respond.
Mum wasn’t really there anymore to be honest. She was present in body, and she functioned…
Well, most of the time, she functioned. Sometimes she just sat at the kitchen table and stared into space.
She still wore make-up. Concealer was a must, as it was a rarity for her face to be totally clear of bruising, but she wasn’t the beauty that she once was.
Her nose had been broken a couple too many times, and she had a cauliflower ear on one side.
I doubted that she cared though. I doubted she felt much of anything now.
“Clara,” she breathed, moving to me and giving me a weak hug. I hugged her back more fiercely but mindful of her fragility. “You’re late,” she whispered as she pulled away. “You know your dad doesn’t like it when you’re late, love.”
“Okay, Mum. How are you?”
She looked confused for a moment. For Mum, direct questions, let alone those asking her about herself, were a rarity.
“I’m fine. Don’t keep your dad waiting.”
I swallowed down my bitter response. This had been the pattern of my childhood.
Don’t keep your dad waiting.
Don’t run. Don’t make too much noise, your dad doesn’t like it.
Put those toys away, your dad likes a clean house.
Everything had centered around what my father liked or didn’t like. Nothing had been for us; nothing had been for Mum. It was all to please a cruel man who didn’t deserve to have a family.
I sighed. “Okay, let’s go through.”
Nobody acknowledged me when I entered the kitchen. Dad, Ruben and a man I knew as Pinky (so named because he had a penchant for chopping off people’s pinky fingers if they pissed him or my father off) were sitting at the large table.
“If they’ve lost the product,” Dad snapped, “then that’s their fucking problem. They still have to pay, understand?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Pinky replied. “We’ll get it sorted.”
They talked business for a couple more minutes, and I stood stock still in the middle of the kitchen, hands clasped in front of me, waiting.
I knew better than to interrupt my father or do anything that might piss him off.
My mother, for her part, drifted into the kitchen, removing the empty beers from in front of the men and replacing them with new ones.
I hated this house, but I especially hated the kitchen.
For some reason this seemed to be my father’s preferred area to conduct business, especially if he was “sending a message.” I’d accidentally walked in a few times as a child to those types of scenarios.
Frank Mason liked people to kneel in front of him; he liked total submission before he did whatever sick, violent thing he was going to do to those he considered had “fucked him over.” More than once, I’d walked in on men kneeling in front of my father, shaking in fear.
If I’d been lucky, I would escape before Dad saw me.
“Right, off you fuck, Pinky,” Dad finally said. “I’ve got to speak to the runt here.”
Pinky nodded to my dad and grabbed his beer, barely glancing at me as he strode out of the kitchen. I still didn’t move. It was better if I waited. Nobody took a seat in Frank Mason’s house without his express permission, not even his children.
“Little Mole,” Ruben said in a grumpy voice. “What the fuck are you doing here?” His tone was annoyed, but there was an edge of worry there too.
I wasn’t scared of Ruben. He’d never hurt me physically.
Yes, he’d been cruel and dismissive, but, in a way, I felt sorry for him.
He’d been groomed from a young age to be just like my father.
But when Dad had caught me revising with Zach and punched me before throwing me down the stairs three months ago, it was Ruben who’d told him to back off.
It was Ruben who’d driven me to hospital.
“I’m sorry, Little Mole,” he’d muttered when we pulled up outside the emergency department. “But you shouldn’t have come to the fucking house. Dad’s proper mental at the moment. The police are all over us after everything with Freddie. Just stay away, right?”
My father scowled at Ruben. “She’s here because I bloody well told her to be here,” he told him. “So you can fuck off an’ all, son.”
Ruben looked between me and Dad.
“You heard me, boy,” Dad said in a low, menacing voice. Pinky appeared in the doorway then, jerking his head to the side to indicate for Ruben to follow.
“We don’t need no more trouble, Dad,” Ruben said. “Not with Freddie banged up and his trial round the corner.”
Dad’s eyes flashed. “I’ll say what we need. Now piss off.”
Ruben’s jaw clenched before he let out a deep sigh, grabbed his beer and stalked out of the kitchen.
I flinched when Dad kicked out a chair from the other side of the table.
“Sit,” he barked. I moved then, darting to the chair and sitting down, my hands in fists on my lap to stop them from shaking. Dad, as usual, got right down to business. “Skinny Pete tells me you’re now fucking that barrister. Is that right, Clara?”
Cold fear trickled down the back of my spine as my eyes flew wide.
“N-n-no,” I forced myself to say, and saw a flash of annoyance in my father’s eyes at my stutter. He hated my stutter. Never mind that he was the most likely culprit behind its development.
“Don’t lie to me, Runt,” Dad said in a low, dangerous voice.
Runt had been his favourite name for me for as long as I could remember.
“You’re living with the guy. There’s no other reason for him to move you in there.”
“I’m a teacher, Dad,” I told him, something he already knew. “His son has dyslexia. You know that I teach additional needs and I...”
Dad’s snort cut me off. “Even if his kid is a total no-hoper, he’s not going to move you into his house without fucking you.”
“Dad, it’s not like that. I—”
“Shut the fuck up,” he snapped. “Listen to me. You’re a part of this family, Clara.
You owe us loyalty. You know that. So far, you’ve been a useless piece of shit in terms of helping us.
But you fucking that barrister changes things.
I have to say, when we engineered to have your Mr High-and-Mighty Law Maker prosecute Freddie, we didn’t realise just how good a play that would turn out to be.
I mean, we knew you taught the bloke’s kid and hoped you might be able to pull some info for us, but I would never have believed you had it in you to fuck the guy. ”
I blinked at him, my whole body going cold now, no longer able to control the shaking in my hands despite them being still clenched into fists under the table.
I knew that my father had a number of corrupt police officers (or grasshoppers as they were known in Dad’s circles – coppers who liked to grass) in his pocket, but I had no idea the corruption went high up enough for him to be able to influence the choice of prosecuting barrister for his son.
“It’s time for you to step up,” Dad said, a sly grin forming on his lips. “It’s time for you to do something useful for the family for a change. Your brother’s going to need the prosecution to go easy on him, and maybe your Lord Sterling needs a bit of… persuasion.”
I had no idea what sort of “persuasion” my father was talking about, but I felt like I was going to vomit. Somehow even me just being near Rafe had infected him with my family’s bullshit.
“He d-doesn’t discuss his work with me, Dad,” I said in a rush. “There’s no way of me being useful to any of you. He doesn’t allow me that k-kind of access.”
Dad smirked, sitting back in his chair and crossing his arms over his barrel chest, causing the muscles in his biceps to flex.
I eyed his fisted hands warily; flashbacks of one of them driving into the side of my head ran through my mind.
I had to swallow down another lot of bile at the sudden surge of fear.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “You don’t have to steal any information. Just stay in that house for now and keep fucking him. We’ll let you know when you can be useful.”
I swallowed again and forced myself to speak past the lump that had formed in my throat.
“I’m not going to help you with this, Dad,” I said, just above a whisper. “I can’t. You’ll have to think of another angle.”
I let out a small squeak when anger flashed through my father’s eyes and his fist crashed down on the table.
“You’ll do as I fucking well say!” he shouted.
My eyes stung with tears but I held them back.
Crying only made Dad angrier. He leaned forward on the table towards me, and I leaned back in my chair in response.
When he spoke again, he was no longer shouting, but the danger in his voice was even more evident.
“It would be a shame if Zach decided to drop out of school,” he said softly and my heart dropped.
Dad shrugged. “Happens though. Happens all the time. You know, kids like that, they get in with a bad crowd. Drugs, alcohol.”
My brother had never taken even a sip of alcohol before in his life. And the idea of him taking drugs was completely laughable.
“They go off the rails,” Dad continued. “Run away from home. Disappear. You know, there’s never really any questions asked, is there?”
I felt the blood drain out of my face, and for the second time that week, my shoulders slumped in defeat.
I looked down at my hands for a moment, acknowledging that, yet again, I didn’t have any choices.
I was powerless. Eventually, I managed to look up and meet my father’s steady gaze to whisper, “What do you want me to do?”