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I turn away from the red sun and the bloodied mountains.
“No, Nadine. This is a matter I wish to personally handle.”
Whoever dared to lay their hands on Willow Lynch—my enemy or hers, I don’t care—I have only one resolution as I make my way back to London.
To make them face the consequences of their recklessness.
On the jet backfrom Switzerland, I receive an update from Nadine. Two names, alongside photographs and a flurry of scanned documents. Simon Doughtry and Terrence Murphy. Their photographs are almost identical images of bulldog-faced English men in their forties, one bald, the other with a greasy mop slicked back.
I’ve never seen these men before in my life. Further reading tells me these two walking sacks of human excrement belong to one man: a Declan McConnolly. A wealthy London businessman with a whole array of businesses to his name. I scan through them. Financial Consultant, Private Lending Firm, Wealth Management Solutions, Legal Funding Services, Mortgage Brokerage.
I can barely repress a rictus of contempt.
A loan shark.
I open my laptop and do some research of my own. I’m not the most skilled of hackers, but I’ve learned a lot from my hacking teams over the years. Besides, Declan McConnolly, like most people in the world, doesn’t know enough about good cybersecurity. Nor is he a discrete man.
It takes me less than ten minutes to gather a trove of information. Criminal record, all of Declan’s past arrests, and known illegal activities. His financial transactions across multiple accounts, which include, unsurprisingly, offshore accounts. After that, his properties and assets are all easy to find, including his family residence in Hampstead.
His address is all I need, but Declan McConnolly reached out his hand to rip the deadly nightshade right out of the devil’s garden. Forgiveness and forbearance do not come easily to the devil.
So I avail myself of every scrap of information I can find. His associates and affiliations, all and any past legal actions taken by or against him, his medical records, his personal, educational,and professional history. I step into his life and dig up his hobbies, the horses he’s bet on, the golf club he attends, the names of his friends and family, the car his wife owns, the schools he sends his children to.
Once I hold all those things in my hand, all it takes is for me to decide when to close my fingers into a fist.
I’ll crush Declan McConnolly into pulp for what he did.
But first, I need to take back the flower he stole.
And Declan and his associates better pray they’ve not so much as crumpled a petal of that poisonous little fuck.
32
Blood Tally
Willow
I was twelve yearsold when I decided I’d never let my pain belong to anybody else but me.
It was a year after Mum met Richard. For the first few months, Richard was nice enough. He bought Mum gifts and took her out to nice restaurants. Sometimes, Mum would bring something nice folded in a napkin. At first, I was excited about Richard. He dressed nice and smelled nice and he didn’t shout or swear.
He made Mum happy, and Mum was always so verysad.
It didn’t take me long to realise Richard didn’t like me. I didn’t know why. Later, I learned it was because I was in the way. If it wasn’t for me, Richard would have had Mum all to himself. But I was always there, in the house, and Richard didn’t like that. He hated that.
Then Mum started borrowing money—a lot of money. Much more money than she needed for normal things, like Christmas presents or holidays. She started dressing in expensive clothes, wearing expensive perfumes. I realised she was trying to look and smell and sound more like Richard. I started to understand that Richard was different from us.
At the time, I didn’t know who Richard was; I didn’t even know he was married. I didn’t know he was from another world, a world of power and privilege where your name means you are exempt from the law. At first, I thought Richard was just rich—later, much later, I found out he was rich in name only, another broke British aristocrat.
Maybe that’s why he was so angry all the time.
Richard didn’t raise his voice, but he was an angry man. His anger wasn’t the burbling drunken bluster of Mum when she was cross at me. Richard’s anger was turgid and vicious, a red bloated anger he just couldn’t contain.
A gross, devastating anger that needed to taint and destroy everything it touched. Mostly, that was Mum.
Of course, Mum was used to being hurt. She was a very damaged person. She was trained from very early on to accept pain, no matter if it came from people who were supposed to love her.Especiallyif it came from people who were supposed to love her.
Her parents were the first people to teach her that. Charles and Catherine Lynch—the wealthy couple who broke their daughter and threw her to the world when she came home pregnant after a night she didn’t evenremember.
