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He winces, dragging his hand through his black hair. “One thing my old man was great at was making contacts. Used to joke they were the fuel for The Firm. Made sure I was there for the introductions, so they became my contacts too. Every business. Every borough. Fire stations, restaurants, hospitals…” He pauses on that last word, letting it linger. “I know what Silas told you about Alex, Frankie. The guy at the hospital records department called me to say he’d been snooping around.”
I’m sensing the bomb that’s about to drop next is the big one.The nuclear one.The one that levels everything.
“What’s this got to do with our son?” My voice is like stone.
“Part of me wanted to tell you in Spain, but then I thought to myself, nah, Viper. Mafia boy’s been gone a long time. Let’s wait and see if he deserves her first because she’s a fucking diamond. She’s one of a kind. There’s special, and then there’s her, you know what I’m saying? Her good makes all the bad bearable. Then I watched you two together, and you were a fucking natural, Frankie. It’s as if you already knew…” He stops to take a breath. “Roisin’s last words to me were a plea. I needed to stop holding onto something that wasn’t mine. It was time to let her go.”
Ada gets it before I do, her hands flying to her mouth to catch a shuddering cry. As for me, I’m still lost in a land of confusion.
“You never had a son.” Viper’s looking directly at me again. “I had the records forged to make Semenov believe he’d died, and then Orla took your daughter far, far away from his evil. It was the only way we could get her out.”
Daughter?
“We knew she’d be a paedophile’s plaything because of who her father was.” He shakes his head slowly. “Couldn’t do it, Frankie. Couldn’t let her have that kind of life.”
Daughter?
I glance at Ada who can’t seem to catch her breath, and then the mushroom cloud hits, only it’s not exploding upwards and outwards, it’s consuming me completely because I’m standing right in the middle of it.
But I’m not alone.
She’s been there all along, ever since I walked into a deserted swimming pool on the outskirts of Córdoba.
A beat later, I’m launching myself at the bars.
CHAPTER 38
ADA
As soon as the full force of Frankie’s anger crashes into the prison bars, alarm bells erupt overhead. The sound is deafening. It’s drilling shock down into my soul, exposing the nerves, and making the truth all the more tragic for it.
Alex isn’t dead.
Alex wasn’t a boy, she’s a girl.We had a girl.A beautiful girl who grew up to be just as smart and strong as her father.
I held her
I held her.
Two days ago, she was in my arms. I felt her heart beating against mine. I saw her eyes, and on some intrinsic level I knew, but I didn’t believe it. And now she’s gone, stolen by the same man who stole me.
Frankie is still raging and cursing at Viper who’s standing like a statue, taking it all. His grief for our son is now an onslaught of recrimination over the fate of our daughter.
“I told you not to bring her back to London with us! You dropped a kid right in the middle of a fucking warzone, and now O’Sullivan has her. You were right, that bastard has her!” Reaching into his pocket, he slams his phone against the bars with a harsh metallicthwack.“He sent me a video message of her this morning. It’s really unpleasant. Want to see it?”
“What the fuck was I supposed to do, Frankie?” he fires back, throwing his arms up in the air in frustration. “You’d be trying to kill me right now if Ihadn’tbrought her with me.”
There’s the sound of footsteps in the hallway outside, and then the room is full of policemen dragging Frankie away from the bars, threatening him with arrest if he doesn’t calm down.
“Where has she been, Viper?” I say quietly, needing to know everything as the alarms are finally shut off. Meanwhile, Frankie is being escorted into the hallway, still cursing his name.
“Orla took her up north. Manchester. She was happy, Ada, I swear to God she was happy. That woman was really good to her. Best of all, the Red Compass didn’t have a clue. We beat them…for once we fucking beat them.” His voice is rough with fatigue and emotion.
“But I was so certain Orla hated me.”I was so sure Roisin did too.
“Because she wasn’t allowed to like you. That house was pure evil, Ada. I felt it the moment I stepped inside it. I knew I wouldn’t be walking out the same way again.”
I take a moment to digest his words. So much information is coming at me. It’s like trying to catch the fragments of a falling star.
