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“Fine.” Glaring at me again, she picks it up, cracks my password instantly and starts tip tapping away on the screen.
“Stick to stealing smokes instead of information, Bambi,” I warn. “Stay out of this mess. It’s nothing but trouble.”
Placing my iPhone back down in front of me, she bites her lip and drops the shitty teenage act, looking every inch a kid who knows she’s in the doghouse.
At least she can still tell the difference between right and wrong. We haven’t screwed her up that bad.
“Did you know that a Ghost Crab can growl?” she blurts out suddenly. “They use the teeth in their stomach.”
“No, I didn’t know that.” I slide my iPhone back into my pocket and resume chewing on the matchstick. “Did you know there’s a type of pig in China that’s the size of a bear?”
A smile threatens to break up her sulky expression. “Did you know a snail can sleep for three years at a time?”
I pause, thinking fast. “Can you get me access to all the security cameras inside dance lady’s studio reception?”
She frowns. “I thought you said—"
“If I’m complicit, it’s different.”
“What does ‘complicit’ mean?”
“That we’re in it together.”
She rolls my words around her head, and I can tell she likes the way they sound.
“I can get you access. When for?”
“I’ll let you know.” I watch her eyes flicker back to her laptop screen. “How are you related to Viper again, Bambi?”
“I’m his brother’s niece.”
CHAPTER 27
ADA
The last Red Compass meeting was all about business, but tonight it’s all about pleasure.
Theirpleasure.
Not mine.
God forbid these monsters might ever see past their own dirty ambitions and libidos. If they did, they’d understand my misery at being dragged to a place like this when all I desire is my freedom.
The club is dark. The vibe inside is black leather and sex.Shangri-Lais one of O’Sullivan’s more exclusive private Gentlemen’s Clubs, carved out of an eighteenth-century basement in Soho, with debasement filling in the cracks of the arched brickwork as barely legal girls strip and pout on the mirrored platform below.
Everything about this place is fake.
Fake smiles.
Fake nails.
Fake show of power.
O’Sullivan’s grip on London is slipping, even though he’d rather shoot himself in the head than admit to it. He needs to prove to the Italians, and ultimately theBrigazi, that the city is still under his control, now more than ever. What better way than with a reckless display of hedonism and subjugated women, when his own wife is lying in a hospital bed less than ten miles from here?
Roisin’s not dead.The doctors managed to stabilise her in time. I know this because I heard O’Sullivan bitching about it earlier, cursing her will to live when he was so sure he’d finally crushed it.
I’ve been watching the Irish mobster all evening from a circular booth in a dark corner, pretending to be invisible while replaying last night over and over in my head to keep myself sane. He’s strutting about the place acting like a dissipated god, but his reputation is on shaky ground after Guido’s death and the drive-by, and now the disappearance of two Lithuanian planes and millions of pounds worth of coke.
