Chapter 27 #2
Early the next morning, Iona lies in the groove between my arm and chest, one arm banded around my waist. “I know what I’d like us to do to Galiene—if you can manage it.”
I tuck her bare arse in closer to my hip. “I can manage anything your sweet heart devises.”
As she unfolds what she has planned, a malignant smile teases my lips. “I’ll get right on it.”
Several hours later, I unlock Galiene’s cell and lead her out by a rope to one of Declan’s torture rooms, where Iona sits in a high-backed chair, a queen about to deliver judgment on her subject.
Galiene’s eyes shoot daggers at her as I push Galiene to her knees. “Receive your punishment at my wife’s hands.”
Iona clasps her hands in her lap. “For the next twenty years you must do only full-time pro bono paralegal work, nothing else. You’ll work under”—she consults a card—“Orran Towe, solicitor for Robinson, Barr, and Towe Legal Services.” She looks over at me before returning her gaze to Galiene.
“You’ve been blacklisted throughout Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen.
Every business knows if they take you on as an employee the Syndicate will come after them.
This is the only job you’re permitted to do.
” She swallows, gathering courage. “And if you should try to flee the country to live elsewhere, the Syndicate will track you down and bring you back.”
Galiene snorts. “Some punishment. There are still sixteen hours left of every day when I can live my own life.”
I step beside her, holding my phone up with a picture of Orran Towe, a squat man with coke bottle lenses and a permanent shrewd look on his face.
Her face falls instantly. “He’ll put you through your paces, Galiene.
You may have only twelve hours to yourself every day.
” And you probably won’t want to spend them with Towe, a slave driver who’ll make your life hell.
I pat her on the back. “Dinnae fash. After all those years you’ve been longing to help other people out—people without any means—you’ll finally have the chance to do them a great service. ”
She grinds her teeth so hard her jaw flexes.
I add, “Two Syndicate soldiers will be assigned to follow you during off hours to make sure you don’t get up to anything unsavory. So be on your best behavior.”
“For twenty years?” she spits.
“Would you rather serve them in a prison?” I chuckle at her ashen complexion. “I didn’t think so.”
“Forby, this way you’ll do the community more good,” Iona pronounces.
“Aye, it’d be a shame for your talents to go to waste,” I taunt at her ear as she blenches.
“And it goes without saying you won’t spill any of Iona’s or the Syndicate’s secrets.
If you do, we have plenty of evidence of your extorting Iona and abetting her kidnappers.
In case that isn’t enough to deter you, a painful, lingering death awaits you at our hands if you don’t keep mum. ”
In some ways my wee Flame has gone easy on Galiene, but in others she’s doled out one of the hardest punishments imaginable.
Galiene has to give over her labor for a low fee for twenty full years—the better part of her middle-age life.
By the time she’s no longer under Towe’s aegis, she’ll be a new, redeemed woman.
I love Iona all the more for her sense of justice and proportion.
* * *
Later that day, Irving asks to meet with Jason and me. I smile when Jason calls, knowing the handwriting is on the wall for my old pal Irving. We meet at the courthouse, where Irving tries to intimidate us into accepting twenty years in prison for me instead of life imprisonment.
I chuckle as Jason coughs into his hand and says, “I’m sorry, Mr. Irving, but we’re accepting nothing short of dismissal.”
Irving throws his small chin in the air. “You’re making a grave mistake. I could still have you put away for life. Your character is wrecked, you work for the Syndicate, and you have the motive and the means.”
“Aye,” Jason agrees. “But we’ve also built a very convincing counterargument in which Ms. Ormiston is guilty. You know the jury will consider this enough cause for doubt to dismiss the case. If you move to dismiss beforehand, you’ll gain credit with the COPFS. Choose the easy route, Irving.”
Gnashing his teeth, he doodles aggressively on his notepad, shooting me death glares every few seconds. I half expect he’s drawing a voodoo doll of me, when he finally slaps his pad shut. “Fine. But this doesn’t mean you’ve heard the last from us.”
“Actually, it does.” Smirking, I settle back in my chair. “Palmer agreed to leave the Syndicate alone going forward, and I can’t be tried for the same crime twice. You’ll have to find something new to throw at me, Irving.”
Not that he’ll have the chance. I have another punishment planned for him and Palmer, to be executed in the next few days.
* * *
Iona and I are in rare form when, on Thursday, we sit at breakfast and I make the call that’ll determine Irving’s and Palmer’s futures for the next twenty years.
Iona gives me an encouraging look and runs her pinky finger up my forearm as I call Palmer. My dick twitches, and I have dirty thoughts of ripping her shirt off so the buttons fly all over, but for the moment I rein it in.
“Hello, Cargill,” Palmer answers stiffly.
“Palmer,” I greet more expansively. “I’d like you to take notes, as I have quite a lot to share.”
“What’s this all about?” he demands in a surly tone.
I grab Iona’s wrist and place her hand on my rigid cock through my trousers. “Well, first off, your colleague, Hume Irving.”
“What about him?”
I suppress a groan as Iona strokes my cock through my slacks. “He’s going to serve out the rest of his career in Clackmannan, on the Firth of Forth.”
“What, the Wee County? That’s the smallest court district on the mainland!” Palmer huffs.
“Aye, that it is.” I breathe a sigh as Iona squeezes my stoner.
“But he’ll be miserable. He won’t have a chance to do anything there. The folks come in arguing speeding tickets and public fights. The last criminal offense on record was over a hundred years ago.”
“Aye, that it was.” I’m glad to see Palmer has boned up on his Scottish cases.
In 1912, an older townswoman was tried for using rat poison on her abusive husband. The sympathetic jury voted to let her off.
Irving has about as much chance to make a difference in Clackmannanshire as a newbie golfer has of making par at the Old St. Andrews course.
“Well, Cargill,” he hems, “if that’s part of your demands so everyone keeps mum about the other thing, I agree.”
Irving hoped to bring his career to a close with a bang. Now it’ll peter out with a whimper. Instead of fanfare, he’ll have fearties?3 calling in about noises in the attic.
“Good. And one more thing, Palmer.” I unbutton my fly and place Iona’s hand on my bare cock, which rages against my boxer briefs.
As she runs her thumb over the pre-cum leaking from my tip and slides her fingers along my shaft, I shudder with delight.
“You’re to donate one million pounds a year to the Lennox Petting Farm in Banton.
I don’t care how you come up with the money, but you’ll send it to the director, Peter Dargie. Clear?”
“Fuck, Cargill. I don’t have a mill?—”
“Come up with it, Palmer.” He makes plenty of money and can rustle up the rest. “Are we clear?”
“Aye. How long is this extortion to continue?”
“For ten years, starting this year. So through twenty thirty-three.”
“Fine,” he snaps. “Anything else?”
“Don’t try to fuck with the Syndicate again. Or you’ll find the penalties will be much steeper.” I end the call and force Iona to her knees at my feet. “Please me, wife.”
Her eyes blaze with eagerness. “Aye, sir.”
* * *
Since Iona and I have a lot of catching up to do in our work, we work together in my study that evening. She’s preparing for an Instagram live author interview on Friday, and I’m reviewing a case for a client who’s been extremely useful to the Syndicate over the years.
Several times I catch her staring at me, as if she’s trying to resolve a problem.
Finally I drop my feet to the floor and beckon her over. When she stands before me in her cropped jean shorts and T-shirt, I undo the button of her shorts and push them down her thighs.
“What are you thinking about when you look at me like that, Flame?”
She chews her lower lip. “You’ll be mad at me.”
I slide two fingers under the gusset of her panties and run them up and down her sopping divide. Fuck, she’s always so wet for me. “Now you have no choice but to tell me.”
I flip her around, pull her shirt over her head, and snap off her bra. Then I tug her panties down her legs. The bonniest sight known to man stands before me: Iona’s backside.
I slap a firm buttock, watching it bounce back from the impact. “What is it?”
At first she says nowt, so I skelp her other arse cheek, hard.
“I wonder if you murdered Annand,” she confesses at last.
I smile, seeing she won’t rest till she knows.
I bend her face down over my desk and unfasten my belt.
“The afternoon Annand was murdered, I returned at the time I told the police and found his dead body in the sitting room.” I shove my trousers down and free my cock.
“Beside his body was a small pair of furry dice that Liùsaidh Ormiston always carried in her pocket for good luck.” I drag my tip along Iona’s wet furrow, slicking it.
“At that moment I knew she had killed my guardian. At the time I thought it was to protect me, but later I saw it was also to protect her nephew and herself.”
“You never said anything?” Iona tries to twist to look back at me, but I hold her head down by the nape.
“I didn’t want her to go to prison, so I kept mum and hid the dice so no one would ever find them.
I knew the prosecutors didn’t have enough evidence to indict me.
I took a gamble and won. She lived out her life to its natural end, and I went free.
” I reach into a desk drawer and pull out lube, squirting it over Iona’s back hole and working it in.
Then I slather my dick with it. “Annand deserved all he got, and no one should’ve had to suffer for killing him. ”
She’s quiet for a spell, no doubt processing the fact that I didn’t kill Annand and that she’s about to have her arse filled to the brim with my cock.
“Have you ever killed a person?” She pants as I part her arse cheeks and angle my tip to her rim. “Besides the men you punished in Declan’s cellar?”
“What do you think, wee wife?” I nudge my head in through her tight wee rosebud, holding her hips firm so she takes it all.
“I don’t think you have. I think that’s what makes you such a good defense advocate. You understand innocence.” She groans as I shove deeper, inch my inch, packing her with my girth.
“Maybe I do. But I’ve also seen plenty of guilt.” I ease in further, relishing her tightness. “Fuck, you’re snug.” Unable to continue slowly, I push home, till I’m balls deep inside her.
“Oh, Leith!” she moans, shuddering.
“That’s it, Iona. Give your last hole to me like my dutiful wife.
” If her pussy feels like heaven, her arse is nirvana.
I start to move, emptying and filling her as I draw out and slam deep again.
“You’re mine, Scheherazade. All. Mine.” I punctuate the words with my cock, getting her more used to the feel of me in her tight hole with each thrust. “Feel how I own you. Feel how you burn for my cock and melt at its advance.” I retreat and ram into her over and over.
“I’m gaun to break you in pieces, so you can’t walk without thinking of me. ”
“Leith, please!” she begs brokenly.
I reach around and swirl her clit, pulling out. “Come now.”
Driving in all the way, I revel in the burst of fireworks exploding in my core and lighting a path of fire up my spine.
Everything from my center to my extremities combusts.
Her scream sounds attenuated beneath the roar of blood in my ears and my own bellow.
Reams of cum jet into her, spill from her rear entrance, and run down her thighs.
I love the sloppy feel of us mixing our juices, the weight of our bodies joined, and the heat radiating off of us.
But I especially love the smell of sex saturating the air.
Chest heaving, I gather her hair behind her. “To answer your question, no. I haven’t killed anyone apart from those we punished for attacking you.”
A satisfied and sated smile curves her lips. “I’m honored.”
“It was justice, Iona. And therefore the bare minimum—yet also the max—that could be done.”
Had any of these people deserved mercy, it would’ve been a different equation altogether.
“And Phyfe MacGilson?” she asks.
I pull out and reluctantly wipe our cum from her thighs. “It’s up to you to devise his punishment. Declan’s still holding him in his cellar.”
She stands, flushed and gorgeous with exertion. “Then I’m gaun to take care of that tomorrow.”
1?streams
2?child
3?fearful people