Page 21 of Beautiful Scars

“What is one girl’s life—not even her life! Just a temporary blip in her life—in comparison with the empire we’ve literally killed for. How many people rely on us to feed their families? To clothe their children?”

“Stop. Jesus, you’ve made your fucking point.”

He sighs and takes a step toward me, and this time I don’t brush him away. He squeezes my bicep, which is about as affectionate as we get with each other. “You’re doing the right thing.”

“Fuck off,” I tell him.

Patronizing cunt.

With that, he turns, and I hear his footsteps retreating up the stairs.

He knows I’ll do it. I always do.

Right from wrong? Good or bad? They matter little to me. That’s the way it’s always been. That’s how I sleep at night, and fuck, I need some sleep.

With the girl still secure in my arms, I take her over to the bed and lay her down. He’s already attached thick leather straps to the bars of the headboard, twisted bastard. I remove the blanket so I can tuck her in once she’s strapped down, and brush all the stray strands of hair away from her face.

Then I realize I can’t just leave her here like this. There’s a lot of shit in her system and if she’s sick, no one would hear her. Frankly I can’t think of a worse way to die than choking on your own vomit.

I’ll strap her down before she wakes up.

I place the comforter over her body and lie down on the carpeted floor beside her bed. If she moves, I’ll either hear her, or she’ll step on me. Either way, I’ll wake up.

I could kill Cole.

It’s always him. He’s never satisfied with what we have, or what we plan to have. Always wants more. More money, more danger, more excitement, more power. It’s not the first time in my life I’ve contemplated how the hell I’ve got myself into such a mess, and right now, I don’t see any clean way out of it.

Maybe there was never a clean way out of it.

Ford, she knew what she was doing. She knew there would be consequences. She has the entire underbelly of this country on a fucking ceasefire while she becomes public-enemy-number-one. And I mean every person who’s ever sold so much as a twenty quid bag of weed. Every one of us wants to see her destroyed.

For as much as we call her a stupid bitch, that’s just because we hate her. She’s not stupid. She’s calculating and sly and more cunning than Cole.

She knew this would be messy.

But did she know it would be her own daughter paying the price?