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“I wanted to give you both a history lesson with the bars still between us.”
“Whatever it is can’t be that bad. Christ, we don’t have time for this shit!” I spin away from him in anger. Twenty-four hours have passed, and she’s still out there.
“Has he been in contact yet?”
“Who, O’Sullivan?”
“You know he took her, Frankie. Same as me.”
“No, we don’t know that.”
I’m lying, but I’ll tell him the truth once he’s out of this place.
A video message came through from Silas’s old number this morning. There were bruises on her arms already and terror in her eyes, and there’s fuck all we can do about it until O’Sullivan makes contact again.
“What about Santiago?”
I shake my head. “Nothing since Grayson’s call yesterday.” The tone of that silence is more than a warning. “Does this have anything to do with you going AWOL yesterday?”
“Partly.” He walks over to us and rests his wrists on the bars. “It’s good to see you, Ada,” he says, shifting his attention to the woman on my right.
“It’s good to see you too, Viper.” She steps forward to rest her hands on top of his. There must be unspoken words in her touch because the next thing I know he’s nodding and blowing out a heavy breath.
“I was the one who took Roisin from the hospital.”
“I fucking knew it.” I spin away from him a second time, debating whether or not to be mad as hell or impressed.
“Frankie, let him talk.” Ada’s soft reprimand pulls me back to her.
“I knew it might jeopardise the deal with Santiago, but I couldn’t let her die in that place. Not with the constant threat of O’Sullivan hanging over her like toxic smoke. She didn’t deserve it. She lived her hell for eighteen years, and she was fucking done with it.” He grits his jaw and drops his head. “I took her out to North London, and she died in my arms. That was an hour before your message came through.”
No one speaks.
What the hell do you say?
She was one of us, but she never got the chance to be a survivor.
“How did you know she was in hospital?” asks Ada, swiping at her cheeks and trying to be brave again, though I can tell her reserves are exhausted. I tug her into my arms and let her burrow this new grief into my chest.
“Bambi showed me your letter.” His grip tightens around the bars. “Man, I was so pissed at her for going to see you, but mostly I was pissed at the world for breaking Roisin. That’s one of the reasons I came back. I wanted to get her out too, but I didn’t manage it fast enough.”
Ada reaches out to him again, but he moves away.
“I came back before.” His haunted gaze shifts to me. “Eight months after all that other crap went down. I tried to persuade her to run then, but she was too scared. She knew O’Sullivan would never let her go and it would draw too much attention to…” He trails off and looks away.
“I’m taking it you didn’t just stroll into O’Sullivan’s house?”
I’m watching him carefully. He has that expression again.The movement of a spider’s web when an insect is trapped.He’s hiding something, but he’s tired of the burden of it.
“Her housekeeper set up the meet.”
“You mean Orla?” Ada looks shocked. “I remember her.”
“Where?” I demand.
He drops his wrists from the bars and takes a couple of steps back. “Didn’t know if I could trust you, Frankie. Didn’t know if I could trust you with her.”
“Who, Ada?”I say, confused.
