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31
My body thrums with anxiety as Ford, Camden, Kate and I sit at the dining table with our food left untouched. Sonny has already feigned illness and as far as everyone’s concerned, he’s in his room dealing with a sudden onset of ‘man-flu’. Eastern is making his way to the surveillance room as we speak, having wolfed down his dinner and then excusing himself to ‘check on Sonny’ loud enough for everyone to hear.
In front of me Ford looks at his watch, waiting for the long hand to fall on a quarter to the hour. Shit is going down in less than five minutes.
If we fuck this up, Pink is dead.
There’s no room for error. Sonny has to get hold of a laptop for Kate and we have to break out of Oceanside tonight and get to Pink. If we manage to pull this off, then the next stop is the palace and facing Monk and the King.
Camden reaches for me, his hand finding my bouncing knee. He rests it against my leg, squeezing gently, forcing me to stop moving. “Breathe, Asia. You’re giving yourself away.”
“This needs to happen soon,” I reply under my breath, noticing how everyone has almost finished their food and are preparing to head out.
On the other side of the dining hall are Bram and his crew. They’re laughing loudly at something, seemingly without a care in the world. I grit my jaw.
Ford looks at me, his grey-green eyes filled with determination. “Eastern should be dealing with the surveillance team right about now…” his voice trails off as one of the two guards, who normally watches over us all as we eat, mutters something into his walkie-talkie then runs out of the room. “Looks like it’s a go,” Ford says, nodding once to Camden who turns to Kate.
“I know you can fight, Kate, but I want you to head out when shit kicks off. I don’t need you with a concussion today, okay?”
“You got it,” she agrees, looking relieved frankly. I don’t blame her. This is going to get nasty and fast. Cal might have managed to make us behave with all the security guards, the cameras and the controlled fights in the ring, but none of that can dampen the bubbling violence that’s been caged within us all. This fight was coming. Tomorrow, a week from now. It doesn’t matter, it was always going to happen.
“We all have our roles to play. Let’s get this done,” Camden says, getting to his feet.
He gives me one last lingering look before striding over to Bram’s table. His shoulders are taut, his long-sleeved t-shirt tight across the wide expanse of muscle. Despite the pain he must be feeling, he holds his spine straight, his head high and fists clenched. Everything about him right now screams danger. In this moment, whatever he feels inside is pushed down and tucked safely away so that he can be the man they all once feared.
Camden, leader of the Hackney Hackers. Violent, brutal, fearless.
My fallen leader steps up one more time to show everyone just what he’s made of.
Ford glances at me, presses his lips into a hard line. “When the time comes, you need to stop him from taking this one step too far. Can you do that?”
“I can do that,” I nod tightly, understanding what Ford isn’t explicit in saying. Camden is in the frame of mind to commit murder. We can all sense it.
“Thank you.” He turns away from me, then hesitates. When he turns back, his eyes flash with emotion. It’s so powerful and unexpected that it takes my breath away. “Don’t do anything stupid.We need you… I need you,” he admits, the tiniest bit of vulnerability piercing through the steel core that is Ford.
“I won’t,” I reassure him, knowing he’s talking about this morning and not what’s about to go down. The guilt I feel is still raw, but now isn’t the time to address it with Ford, with any of my boys. When this is over, we’ll talk about it then. That’s if we survive what’s to come, of course. He reaches for my hand, grasping it in his, the rough skin of his palm warm. He seems to decide something and when his mouth pops open, I wait patiently for whatever he has to say.
“I need you to know something just in case I wasn’t clear when we slept together…” He swallows hard, and we’re both acutely aware of the tension filling the room. Behind us Camden is talking in barely veiled anger to Bram. Fortunately for us, everyone’s attention is on them. “I thought I was incapable of feeling, Asia. I thought I could never love another person after my parents stripped me of my humanity. Now I know I can. That’s because of you.” His fingers tighten around my hand. “Do you understand me?” he asks.
I want to hear the words, just to be certain, but I know that they’re too precious to be shared with others looking on. So, I don’t ask him to say them. Instead, I nod my head.
“I do,” I respond.
With one last lingering look, Ford spins on his heel and strides over to Camden’s side.
“Fuuuuuck!” Kate exclaims, reminding me that she’s still sitting at our table behind me. Her expression a cross between awe and wonder.
“My feelings exactly,” I respond, a little breathlessly.
Half a minute later, Camden leans over and grips Bram by the throat.
A second after that the room erupts into chaos.
Fists fly, kids bray in anger, the kitchen staff scream, and the one and only security guard tries and fails to break up the fight.
Like the ripple on a pond, the fight spreads outwards from the centre. All the rules and regulations we’ve had to live by recently fly out the window as the need to fight spreads. Violence catches on like a flame, leaping from one kid to another. Over the other side of the dining hall Camden is pummelling Bram who is playing dirty, having grabbed a knife from the table and jabbing it towards him. Thank god Camden is used to dirty fighting, because he disarms him quickly enough, the knife clatters to the floor, and Bram receives a powerful punch to his lip for the trouble. Good.
Beside him, Ford is fighting three different kids, all of them Monk’s wolves. Dagger appears to be the most evenly matched, although I have no doubt Ford would be able to outfight him if there weren’t two other bastards going for him at the same time.
