Chapter 47
FORTY-SEVEN
Harry
I think I’m coping well. Then I arrive home.
The door to my flat creaks open, the light already on. Emily’s sitting on the sofa, curled up under a plaid blanket. I don’t have the energy to think about why she’s here.
She lifts her head when she sees me, face dropping as if she already feels my torment. “Harry.”
“She married him,” I say.
My voice cracks in the middle from how badly I want things to be different. Not just because I’ve lost her, but because I was stupid enough to think I never would.
Emily stands slowly. She reaches to help me shrug off my jacket like a child who’s been hurt. I feel her watching me as she stands in front of me, waiting.
“I saw her kiss him.” My voice breaks with every word. “She chose him.”
And I fucking lose it.
I stagger towards the sofa and fall onto it, pressing my palms to my eyes as if it will push the images out of my skull.
They’re branded there – the white dress, the bells.
I want to scream. I want to burn something. I want to drive back to that church and tear it apart brick by brick.
I peer up through my palms, pleading through glazed eyes. “What do I do, Emily?”
She pulls me into her arms. I press my face into her shoulder, my own shaking.
“You’ll survive this,” she says. “Even if you don’t want to.”
She’s right. I don’t want to.
“And if I can’t?” I ask. “What then?”
“You will.”
The post-wedding coverage is the only evidence Gigi isn’t dead, since we haven’t heard a peep from her. And there she is … a minimum two-page spread in every magazine, tabloid, and newspaper in the entire country.
The pictures make me wretch when I first see them, but I torture myself by returning to the kitchen counter to look again. Gigi hangs onto Jamie’s arm, the veil framing her face. I stare at the image for long enough that Poppy finally rips the paper in half and throws it in the bin.
We’re day five following the wedding, and I know she said a week, but my pulse is only racing faster with each hour.
Poppy’s liaising with Jack through an encrypted server. Her coping mechanism is productivity. Mine is watching the front door. We’re clutching onto the last few minutes of the day, the clock blinking mockingly at me from the oven.
Headphones in, she mutters, “If you stare much longer, you’ll burn a hole through it.”
“Good.”
She rolls her eyes, but I notice when her glaze flickers to it too. She’s just pretending not to be worried.
A new hour ticks in. And then the clock turns: 12:01 a.m.
Gigi’s late.
The days start to pass in a blur.
Emily checks in, having annoyingly taken on the role of my mental health guardian. I tell her I’m fine, but we both know I’m full of shit. Frankly, she’s making things fucking worse.
Mia visits at least once a day, even if it’s only for a few minutes, to check on Andy, who’s still holed up in the bedroom. The conversation is almost always the same.
“Heard anything?”
I shake my head.
She nods, pushing away the concern with rolling shoulders as she walks down the hall and knocks on his door.
Andy barely emerges from the room, only to eat (minimally) and go to the toilet.
We’re all playing our part in trying to bring back the man he once was, but he’s still in the depths of recovery.
The same night, after falling asleep on the sofa facing the door, he appears in front of me. “Anything?” he whispers.
I blink, sitting up against the cushions. “Not yet.”
I try my luck by offering him a beer. He declines, returning to his room.
On the following day’s offer for a drink, he reluctantly agrees.
I bribe Whizz Tech Dan to hack Jamie’s private phone just to hear Gigi’s voice. There are no voicemails nor texts between either of them. The only logical solution is that they’re together.
But I need more.
Another bribe, the cash under the floorboards dwindling, shows surveillance footage from Jamie’s house. The most we find is a glimpse of Gigi’s back as she turns a corner. Unless all other footage is wiped, she’s purposely avoiding the cameras.
Jack gets in contact through the burner phone on day nineteen.
He picked up through Richard’s phone transcripts that the buyers are due to arrive at Pixies any week now.
Gigi is the only way we’ll have the upper hand, and unless she magically appears in the next week, we’ll have to start making plans without her.
Poppy searches the Circle headquarters to no avail. Jack makes the call to send Sacha, a high-ranking member of his crew, to investigate.
Jack’s mole sent in to infiltrate Richard’s network goes dark.
Jack knows Sacha well. They train together, drink together. She’s one of the only people he trusts with the job.
Her body turns up in the River Thames four days later.
No witnesses.
Day twenty-four, I break protocol.
I send a message on the most secure line we have.
You swore.
There’s no reply.
Day thirty-two, Jack tells us there’s chatter in Richard’s inner circle: one of his assets has gone missing. The meetup at Pixies is delayed, with a new date to come.
Poppy doesn’t say what she’s thinking, but I see it in her eyes.
I don’t say it either, but I wonder.
Jack is now drafting plans for us to infiltrate Pixies alone.
Someone will go in and gain the buyers’ trusts by appearing interested in purchasing the merchandise.
Jack hopes to send in a trained crew, but we know the risk …
Pixies doesn’t allow strangers. I refuse to consider the other alternative.
We’re all reaching the same conclusion. Gigi’s dead, or she betrayed us. Either way, she’s gone.
Poppy goes out to fetch supplies for the heist, needing to escape cabin fever. She doesn’t ask if I want to come. She knows I won’t leave the apartment.
It’s been five weeks, and now the silence crawls under my skin.
I haven’t slept properly in a week, my hands shaking when I smoke a cigarette. I flick a lighter open and shut, calming the tick.
Three knocks echo on the door. I puff out a breath, my limbs groaning as I step up after hours of sitting still. My hands find the gun in the waistband of my jeans before my brain can argue with the reflex.
Voice rough, I call out to Poppy, “Forget the key again?”
I unlock the deadbolt, pulling open the door with a practiced scowl—
My breath stops, my heart spiralling down into my stomach.
Gigi’s standing in the hallway, dripping with rain, her hair wet and tangled, face pale, eyes darker than I’ve ever seen them.
My hand stays on the doorframe as if I need the wood to keep me upright.
“You came back.”
Her voice is barely above a whisper. “I swore I would.”