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Our gazes meet again—this time under the table—as his men fall around him like dominoes. “We came for you, Ada,” he wheezes, clutching at the spreading crimson patch on his white shirt. “We came for—”
Before he can say anything else, he’s being lifted to his feet. There’s a loud thump above me as he’s flung across the table, and then I’m being hauled up myself.
The smell of death hangs thick over the room. My dress isn’t white anymore, it’s red.
Razor is still alive, but not for much longer. He’s slumped in his chair, blowing crimson bubbles from his mouth, with a bloodbath strewn at his feet.
O’Sullivan’s eyes are glittering with that same hateful malice again.
“They underestimated me, Ada. They all fucking underestimated the great Cian O’Sullivan. If you walk into my house with your dick swinging, you better come in peace, or you’ll be carried out in a coffin, eh, Charlie Boy?” Surging forward, he buries another knife deep into his left shoulder. “This is myfucking compass! Myfucking city!” he screams, like a man in the grips of madness. “You boys have had your fun, running around with your guns and whores, and messing with my business, but that ends today!”
“Ada.” Charlie Razor is looking right at me. Mouthing words that have no meaning.
“Took you long enough to figure it out.” O’Sullivan steps between us. “I know she’s the real reason you came here tonight.” He holds his hand out to Kirill who passes him a gun. “She’s also the reason you’re going to die…”
“At least I die with the truth on my lips, you Irish cunt.”
“Aye, that you will... Remember this moment, Ada,” he hollers out to me, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as he presses the muzzle against Razor’s forehead. “This is your lineage going up in gun smoke.”
“You piece of shit,” rasps Razor. “Don’t you make her watch this.”
“On the fucking contrary, it’s why I brought her down here. Thought I’d give you a proper family reunion before I sent you straight to hell.”
“Cian, let her go!”
“Never.”
I can’t stop looking at Razor’s salt and pepper hair. It was so flawless when I first stepped into this room, and now it’s in such disarray. I can’t stop thinking how much his green eyes look like mine.
“Ready to be an orphan, Ada?” yells O’Sullivan, as my whole world shudders and shakes. “That’s right, sweetheart. You’re a bastard Razor child. Your old man here never even knew you existed until last week. Your mother kept you a bad secret until I found out.”
“No,” I whisper, but my word is lost to the thunder of bullets.
Razor’s body is driven backwards off the chair by the force of the firepower.
“Four become two,Charlie Boy.” O’Sullivan spits at his dead body and wipes his mouth again. “It’s only Irish and Russian flags flying over London now, with a little Italian flavour.” He nods in respect at the giant who’s busy dragging Razor’s dying son out of the room. “Take the lad down to the basement. We’ll work him over there. You’re coming too, Kirill. Leave Ada to say her first ‘hellos’ and her final ‘goodbyes’.”
The door slams shut, and I find myself alone again, only this time I’m counting the drips of my father’s blood as they hit the parquet floor; grieving for my mother and a stranger I never had the chance to know.
This time, I’m shaping my future into a needle-sharp point that I’ll be driving into Cian O’Sullivan’s murderous black heart one day, if it’s the last thing I do.
CHAPTER 8
FRANKIE
Hooking my arms over Westminster Bridge, I stare down at a River Thames that’s as black as the sky, watching the lights on the surface ripple violently as a water taxi passes by underneath.
Like the rest of this city, the water looks innocent enough, but there’s always darker shit going on if you look closer. The cops pull an estimated thirty-five bodies a year from this river, and not all of them are suicide. My money’s on Cian O’Sullivan and his crew making up the shortfall with anyone who displeases them.
Big Ben is chiming out eight times behind me when a black cab pulls up to the curb. There’s movement on the backseat, and then a huge monster of a man emerges. I watch him peel off a couple of crisp tenners from his money clip and thrust them through the open window at the cabbie. When he turns toward me, he’s still buttoning up his light grey suit jacket. It doesn’t hide the blood smeared across his knuckles though, or the dark stains on his cuffs.
Time changes all of us, but some of us not so much.
He’s still big enough to make me conscious of the knife in my back pocket. He’s still the man who saved my life when he shot my father’s underboss, Antonio, right between the eyes.
“Francesco?” He lets a herd of tourists pass before cutting the distance between us. “It’s been a long time, kid.”
“Three years,” I say, thrusting my hands into the pockets of my leather jacket. “Good to see you again, Guido.”
