Chapter 5
Jude
Twenty-one years old
The heavy oak desk quakes beneath Victor Crane’s fist, the sharp crack of his knuckles against its polished surface reverberating like thunder through his London office. The storm raging outside is nothing compared to the tempest in his eyes, and I, for one, am stunned by this sudden shift in demeanor.
I’ve never seen him like this.
Crane is usually all English charm and sophistication—a man who I’ve seen more than once disarm any stiff room or rigid environment with a smile and a joke.
But today?
Today, he’s demonstrating exactly why he holds the title of Boss.
There’s a reason he’s in charge.
And the promise of hell burning behind his eyes is it.
“Look at this!” he roars, shoving a stack of newspapers at Felix’s feet, who stands silent beside me, stone-faced as always. “Fifteen dead in two days. Add that to the thirty-odd souls we lost last week, and we have almost fifty deaths on our hands. Fifty, Felix! And all because some bastard is cutting my product with fentanyl.” His voice drops, cold and deadly, as he stares into Felix’s eyes. “This will not be my legacy. I won’t be known as the man who let his people die on his streets just because some arsehole decided to increase his profit margin by adding poison to it.”
Felix remains stoic while listening to his boss’s rant and rage, letting Crane burn through his fury. Only when the fire dims slightly does he feel it’s safe enough to step forward.
“My men are on it. We’ll find whoever’s behind this and make an example out of them.”
Crane doesn’t miss a beat.
“ No ,” he snaps, jabbing a finger at Felix’s chest. “ I’ll make an example out of them. Get the word out—anyone selling this rancid poison answers to me, and only me. Understood?”
Felix nods once before pivoting on his heel now that Crane has signaled the conclusion of our meeting. I mirror his movement, and together, we walk away, leaving Crane to seethe in his anger as we grapple with the intensity of his fury.
“Are you packing?” Felix asks once we’re outside of the Crane building, situated right in the heart of the city.
“Always.” I flash my holstered 9mm.
“Good. Get in,” he commands, his voice steady as he moves with quiet confidence to the driver’s seat of his car, utterly indifferent to the downpour drenching his shoulders.
I settle into the seat next to him, and the second my seatbelt clicks, Felix pulls us into the chaos of London traffic. I watch in silence as he makes call after call, instructing his men to keep their eyes and ears open.
It’s Thursday night, and the city pulses with life. There are bound to be plenty of people ready to slip up and make some uncalculated mistakes tonight, and if we’re lucky, those slip-ups might lead us to the culprit responsible for these unexpected deaths.
The hours stretch on, taking us from back-alley clubs to underground bars, shaking down anyone stupid enough to deal on Crane’s turf.
But after five hours of grueling search, we’re no closer to knowing who is behind tainting Crane’s product as we were when we first started.
For the past three months, I’ve been shadowing Felix Ibrahim, observing his every move as he teaches me how best to navigate the complexities of his work and all the pressures that come with it. And throughout that time, I can say that Crane’s underboss reminds me a lot of my father—aloof and unyielding.
Felix rarely displays frustration, and yet tonight, I can sense it simmering beneath the surface. I can see it in the clench of his jaw, in the way his grip tightens on the wheel.
He’s losing his cool.
And if he is anything like my father, that’s not a good thing.
“What?” he suddenly cuts the silence between us, his voice cold and deadly.
“Nothing,” I reply just as arctic, keeping my sights steady on the road ahead.
“There’s obviously something on your mind. Stop wasting my time and say it already.”
“Fine,” I relent. “I think we’re going about this the wrong way.”
“Do you, now?” He scoffs.
“I do,” I reply, meeting his stern gaze without a flinch. “Rather than wasting time trying to figure out who’s dealing on Crane’s turf, we should concentrate on identifying who in our own ranks has the audacity—or better yet, the stupidity—to try and pull a fast one on Crane himself.”
“I don’t follow.”
“The product that’s being cut is Crane’s, correct? Then, it’s safe to assume that whoever is cutting it must be working for Crane, too. Even if they are colluding with a third party, the stink is coming from inside the house. We should be looking inward, not outward.”
I can tell Felix is chewing on my words, but when his phone rings, he hits the hands-free without hesitation.
“Talk,” he orders, only to scowl when a taunting chuckle filters through the speakers.
“Well, hello to you too, Felix.”
Remus Crane.
I don’t need to see his face to know he’s smirking.
“What do you want, Remus?” Felix exhales sharply.
“I think the better question is—what do you want?”
Felix’s scowl deepens at the whimsical tone in Remus’ voice.
There’s no love lost between him and the Crane twins, and everyone knows it.
Though neither has openly shared the reason for their animosity, I have my suspicions. I can’t help but wonder if it’s the same reason it took me so long to warm up to Felix.
And that all comes down to Mina Crane.
If Felix really is the man her father envisions marrying her off to, then I can understand why the twins hate him on mere principle alone.
God knows I did.
“I’m busy,” Felix rebukes sternly, bringing my attention back to the phone call. “I don’t have time for your games.”
“Too bad. I just thought you’d like to know that Rolo and I have a little present for you, all tied up nice and neat at an abandoned warehouse in Tottenham.”
Felix stiffens.
“You’d better not be bullshitting me.”
“Do I ever joke about business?” Remus laughs, low and lazy. “No, I don’t.”
“Fine. Send me the address so I can verify what you’ve got. Once I know that we have the right person, I’ll tell your uncle. The boss wants a spectacle.”
“I know he does. That’s why he’s already on his way. If I were you, I’d get here before he does.”
And just like that, the line goes dead.
Felix curses, slamming his palm against the wheel before turning the car around and gunning it toward the warehouse.
I don’t question why Felix is so upset about Remus getting to the culprit before him.
I don’t ask why he’s pissed… because I already know.
This bust just won the twins major points with their uncle.
Which doesn’t bode well for Felix.
Though Remus and Rolo might only be eighteen and have less field experience than Felix has in his pinkie finger, they possess something Felix does not.
They’re blood.
Crane blood, to be more precise.
Combine that with the fact that they are the most lethal, ambitious, and dangerous assholes I’ve ever encountered, it’s clear that they will do everything in their power to ensure Felix’s days as number two come to a quick and swift end.
Unless he marries Mina, and then he’s the one calling the shots.
Felix isn’t stupid.
He sees the writing on the wall.
He knows that Victor will have to name an heir sooner or later.
This means that the Crane twins aren’t just a threat to his way of life—they’re a threat to him directly. Because there is no way they will ever let Mina sacrifice herself just to put a male ass on the throne. Remus and Rolo would burn this whole city down before they’d ever let that happen.
And if I thought Felix was a real threat to Mina, I’d hand them the torch.
Forty minutes later, Felix curses under his breath the moment we pull up to the warehouse and see Victor’s car already parked outside.
“Keep your eyes peeled,” he mutters once we get out of the car and start walking toward the warehouse. “Just because the twins bagged our guy doesn’t mean he’s alone. Someone might be stupid enough to try and rescue him.”
I nod, hand already resting on my holster as we step inside.
The air is thick with the metallic tang of blood and the acrid stench of burnt cigars. Three men sit slumped in chairs, wrists bound, their faces barely recognizable beneath swollen bruises and dried blood. Nearby, two steel tables hold the tools of their trade—pills, powder, scales, baggies. This must be where they brought Crane’s product to cut and prep with their poison.
Judging by their state, the twins have been at this for a while.
Victor Crane sits in an old chair in front of them, cigar smoldering between his fingers, eyes unreadable as he watches the men struggle to lift their heads.
“Well, well, well,” Rolo smirks as we approach. “Look who finally showed up. You were this close to missing all the fun.” He reaches out, tugging at Felix’s tie.
Felix doesn’t rise to the provocation, preferring to remain silent while keeping his posture tight. Talking back to Rolo in front of Victor wouldn’t do him any favors right now, no matter how much he wanted to.
I don’t have such problems.
“You ready to pop your cherry, Romano?” Rolo grins, flicking the lapel of my suit.
I swat his hand away.
“Don’t touch the suit. Stupid doesn’t come off in the wash.”
Rolo’s eyes flash a deep, menacing blue, his cocky smirk twitching with barely concealed rage.
“We have work to do,” Remus steps in, ready for business before Rolo’s temper has time to escalate. “You two can play later.”
Fucker.
Victor, however, is completely oblivious to our exchange, his attention fixed on the captives sitting in front of him, especially the one at the center.
“Who do you work for?”
“You, boss. We work for you,” the one in the middle says maniacally, snot and tears running down his face.
I don’t know all the associates who work for the Firm, but from the way Victor singled out the one in the middle, he must be the one to have ties to the organization.
“No.” Victor shakes his head, looking calm and collected. “You don’t work for me. If you did, you wouldn’t have been adding junk to my product. So I’ll repeat… who do you work for?”
“We don’t work for anyone,” the man to the right, the least battered one, says hurriedly. “I swear… we did this. We came up with it all by ourselves.”
Victor exhales a slow stream of smoke before he leans forward. “I don’t believe you.”
“That’s your bad luck, innit? ” the guy to the left spits, a glob of blood and saliva hitting the floor between his feet.
“Are you thick, lad? Do you know who you’re talking to?” Felix interrupts, knowing that this idiot is about to get himself killed.
“Some old geezer?” He laughs with a bloody grin.
Victor stares at him for a bit, long enough for the tension to coil tight, before rising from his chair. Without further warning, he swings his gun and puts a bullet in the skull of the man sitting to his right. The crack of the shot echoes through the warehouse, the spray of blood painting the floor in an instant.
One of the captives flinches, his eyes widening in horror as his accomplice’s body slumps sideways, head lolling unnaturally, while the other beside him relieves himself of his bladder, too afraid to be embarrassed about his now drenched state.
Victor barely reacts, blowing out a slow breath of smoke.
“That’s right. An old geezer with a gun. ” He crouches down, looking straight into the eyes of the man who dared defy him. “Now, how about you start telling me what I want to hear?”
The guy trembles, chair rocking as he tries to jump away from the corpse beside him, his breath coming out in ragged gasps.
“You won’t get away with this, you old fart!”
“Is that so?” Victor laughs, though there is no humor in his tone.
“You have no idea who you’re messing with.”
Victor’s grin sharpens at the idiot’s slip of the tongue.
“Then enlighten me.”
But instead of the fool telling Victor what he wants to hear, we’re all met with nothing but silence.
And that silence tells me everything.
The idiot is more afraid of whoever’s pulling his strings than he is of dying here, which means that his boss is someone worth worrying about.
Either way, he won’t make it out here alive.
With one captive too traumatized for coherent thought and the other with no self-preservation skills to attest to, Victor doesn’t press further. Instead, he shifts his attention to Remus.
“Were these the only ones you found?”
Remus nods.
Victor hums, considering his options.
“Take them to the factory. A few days as Rolo’s playthings should loosen their tongues.” Victor turns to the defiant one, his grin sharp as a blade. “After a few hours alone with my nephew, you’ll realize there are far worse things to fear than your employer.”
The hostage’s eyes go wide, his mouth parting just slightly as if the full weight of Victor’s threat is crashing down on him. But before he can utter a word, the warehouse suddenly erupts in gunfire, the sounds of bullets ricocheting all around. Instinct quickly kicks in, forcing me to drop low, gun already in hand, aimed high into the shadows above. One minute, shots seem to come from every direction from the darkened rafters of the warehouse, and then the next, it goes eerily quiet.
“Did you get them? Rolo, did you get whoever is up there?” Victor shouts behind a flipped table, Felix right at his side, both holding their guns.
Remus and Rolo don’t seek shelter, preferring to stare at the pitch-black shadows above, coaxing whoever is up there to make the first move.
Only I’m the one to track the first movement.
I don’t hesitate and take the shot.
A figure crumples from the ledge, flipping over the rail and crashing hard onto the cement floor. After a few minutes of silence, I rise to my feet and step forward, nudging the body over with my boot. However, the face that blankly stares at me isn’t who I expected—a woman.
A ringing sound fills my ears as I stare at the body in front of me.
The woman’s vacant eyes bore into mine, lips slightly parted as if frozen mid-breath. The blood pooling beneath her dark brown hair spreads like ink on the concrete, making me take a step back to prevent getting under the soles of my shoes.
It’s only when a hand grips my shoulder that I’m propelled to the here and now.
“Are you okay there, Romano?” Felix’s voice is steady, but there’s something else in it, too.
Something cautious.
I clear my throat, shaking the haze from my mind, and reply, “Yeah. I’m fine.”
Felix doesn’t look convinced, but he doesn’t push further.
Instead, he turns toward Victor, who frowns at the bodies—the ones we brought in and the new addition, riddled with bullets.
She wasn’t here to save them. She was here to silence them.
Victor exhales, flicking his cigar onto the floor.
“Clean this up. Then call the Yard. Let them deal with the rest.” He adjusts his coat and strides toward the exit.
“Oi, where the fuck are you going?” Rolo calls out, but his irritation isn’t aimed at Victor. His eyes are locked on Felix, who’s already ushering me toward the door.
“You two were the ones who didn’t sweep the damn place properly,” Felix throws back. “You clean this shit up.”
Rolo looks ready to lose his mind, but Remus, ever the calmer of the two, steps between them with a lazy smirk. “Let the ladies get their beauty sleep. We can handle this.”
Felix doesn’t wait for a reply. He pulls me out of the warehouse, and before I even register the world outside, we’re already in the car, the city lights blurring past the windows.
Everything feels sluggish. Distant.
I don’t even realize we’ve left London until the iron gates of Victor’s manor in Kent loom in front of us.
“What are we doing here?”
Felix doesn’t answer right away. He pulls through the gates, following the winding driveway until we reach the manor’s entrance. Only then does he shift the gear into park and turn to face me.
“I think it’s best that you stay here for the night.”
I shake my head.
“Take me back into the city. I have classes in the morning.”
“You can take a day off.”
“I’m fine.”
Felix exhales through his nose, gripping the wheel, having lost all patience with me and the fucking night we’ve had.
“No, you’re not. That was your first kill. And unless you’re a psychopath like Rolo, that shit leaves a mark.” He glances at me. “You need a day to get your head on straight.”
“I said I’m fine.”
Felix doesn’t argue. He just gets out of the car, walks around to my side, and opens the door. “Get out.”
I stay put.
“Felix—”
“Get out.” His voice is quieter this time, but there’s no room for defiance. “You think you’re fine, but I’m telling you from experience that you’re not. The next time you use your gun, no one’s going to give you a chance to process this shit. This is the only time you’ll get it. Take it.”
I want to tell him to go to hell.
That I don’t need his pity.
But then I blink, and I see her again.
The way she dropped like a ragdoll from the first story to the floor.
The blood seeping through the cement cracks.
How her lifeless eyes will always haunt me.
Felix must see my train of thought on my face, too.
“You never forget your first. The others… they’ll end up blending together. But your first kill… that one stays with you forever.”
Having no strength to fight him on this, I get out of the car.
Satisfied with my decisions, he offers me a curt nod and gets back in the car.
I just stand there with my hands balled into fists, watching his taillights disappear down the road before I head toward the door.
The manor is quiet, the first hints of dawn creeping through the massive windows as I walk inside. One of the maids is already moving about, setting fresh-cut flowers on the tables in the great hall. She’s about to say something to me, but when she sees the crazed look in my eyes, she instinctively steps aside, allowing me to go up to my room uninterrupted.
The second the door shuts, I strip off everything and quickly make my way into the shower. The water is scalding, but I don’t flinch. Instead, I lose time just watching the water swirl down the drain, vanishing into nothing.
I knew this day was coming. I knew that I’d have to use my gun eventually. Killing is part of the job description. I just never imagined that the first person I’d ever kill would be… a woman.
Once my fingers start to prune, I get out of the shower, put on sweatpants, and slide into bed.
I try my best to compartmentalize my actions and tell myself that the person I killed today—regardless of gender—was ready to take my life, too, without remorse.
But instead of logic seeping through, I stare blankly at the ceiling, watching the room’s colors shift, light filtering through the curtains as the sun creeps higher into the sky.
Sleep doesn’t come. Just numbness.
I’m still lost in my turbulent thoughts when I hear a faint creak. I quickly stand up, gun in hand, my heart hammering inside my chest at the slightest sound.
“It’s me! It’s me!”
Mina.
She stands in the doorway, hands raised in her school uniform.
I exhale, lowering the gun.
“The fuck are you doing here, Mina? I could’ve blown your head off.”
“I’m sure glad you didn’t,” she giggles as if it were a joke. But when her gaze drops to the seriousness in my expression, her smile fades.
“Go away, Mina,” I groan, turning away from her and placing my gun back on the nightstand.
But instead of leaving me, she walks right over to my side of the bed, taking a seat on the edge.
“What’s wrong?” she asks softly.
“Nothing.”
“You’re lying. It’s Friday morning, and you’re here. In bed.” She tilts her head my way. “Tell me what happened for you to come home a day early.”
When I don’t reply, she inches closer.
“I’m not complaining. I like it when you’re here. But I can sense that something is wrong. Tell me. Maybe I can help.”
“Leave me alone.” I close my eyes, hoping she’ll get the hint.
She doesn’t.
“Something is troubling you, and I won’t leave until I know what it is.”
I stand midway off the bed and look her straight in the eyes.
“Why can’t you just leave me alone?”
“Because that’s not what friends do. They don’t leave each other when the other is in pain.”
I fling back on the bed, pressing my closed fist on my temple with my eyes shut.
“If you don’t tell me, I can always call the twins and find out,” she threatens.
I scoff.
“I really don’t understand how you can be friends with those two. They’re psychotic,” I mumble.
“They’re not that bad.” She shrugs off.
“They’re psychotic. ”
“No, they’re my family. And I love them. I know they can be a little rough around the edges, but they truly aren’t that bad,” she continues to defend.
“Yes, they are. You either can’t see it or refuse to.”
“Fine.” She lifts her hands in the air only to drop them with a loud thud on her bare knees. “Maybe they are that bad. But the twins have my back. I don’t know if you’ve paid attention over the last year you’ve been with us, but the twins are all I have.”
“That’s not true,” I retort, slightly offended.
“No?” She hikes up a brow.
“You have your father. And you have… me.”
“Do I? If that were true, you would tell me why you’re so upset right now.”
I frown when my chest tightens under her devoted stare.
“I have all day. I can wait.” She smirks but doesn’t push for more. Instead, she follows through on her word and waits. And somehow, that’s worse.
I exhale sharply. “I killed someone.”
Mina stills. “Oh.”
“A woman.”
Understanding instantly flickers across her face.
“And you’ve never done that before, I take it? Killed a person, I mean.”
“No.”
She leans forward slightly, studying me.
“And are you upset because you killed someone? Or because she was a woman?”
I don’t answer.
She doesn’t need me to.
She nods as if she already knew. Then, without hesitation, she shifts closer. “Scoot over.”
I frown. “What?”
“I said, scoot over. If you’re going to spend the entire day in bed wallowing, then you’ll need some company. I refuse to leave you alone today.”
And before I have time to stop her, Mina takes off her shoes and slides under the sheets with me.
“I don’t think this is appropriate. What if your father—”
“Like you, Daddy only comes home on the weekends. The twins won’t be around either since they like staying at the loft in the city during the week, too. No one will know.”
I’ll know.
I know that I should tell her to leave, to get out of my bed, but the warmth of her body soothes the coldness running through my bones.
She lays my head on her stomach and runs her fingers through my hair. It’s so comforting that my eyes start to get heavy.
“Mina—”
“Shh. Don’t talk,” she whispers softly. “Just close your eyes.”
I do as she commands, relishing in her light touch, her flowery scent invading my senses.
It’s with the sound of her heartbeat that I fall asleep.
And instead of blood and death, I dream of her.
I dream of Mina.