Primal: London Mob Book Two (2 page)

She let Lily climb the slide after the swings, watching her scrabble up the slippery metal slope only to slide down on her bottom a moment later, and called out warnings as Lily climbed ever higher on a trapezoid of criss-crossing metal bars, holding her breath as she thought of the possible injuries — a chipped tooth, a broken arm, a cracked skull. At this rate she wouldn’t survive seeing the child all the way to adulthood. Her nerves couldn’t take it.

She was so preoccupied that she didn’t notice the swiftly lengthening shadows until the street lights came on. She reached for Lily’s bag and called across the playground.

“Come on, Lily. Time to go.”

“One more!” Lily said, clambering up the slide and dropping to her bottom to slip back to the ground.

“All right,” Jenna said. “That’s it.”

Lily walked over, smacking her palms together to clean them of sand. Jenna gave her the backpack and took her hand.

“My goodness, you’re cold. Let’s get you home to a warm bath.”

They exited the playground and made their way toward the little flat Jenna had rented. Living with her mother wasn’t an option — not with the ever-looming specter of her alcoholism. Jenna wouldn’t have that for Lily. She and Kate had barely survived it. Lily would have a normal childhood, whatever the cost. Leo handed her a fat stack of cash every month. She knew it came from Farrell’s business — Farrell’s illegal business — but she wouldn’t let pride stand in the way of giving Lily the best future possible. Still, she wanted to provide for Lily honestly, and she set every bit of Farrell’s money aside for her, using her own paltry salary to pay their living expenses even when it meant stretching their budget to the limit.

“I’m cold, Mummy,” Lily said as they stepped into the shadow of an abandoned warehouse about a block from the park.

Jenna stopped, bent down, fastened the top button of Lily’s jacket. “We’ll be home soon.”

She took Lily’s hand. They were about halfway down the block when she thought she heard footsteps behind them. She clutched Lily’s hand tighter, trying to focus on the sound, hoping she was wrong. But it only took her a moment to realize she wasn’t.

Someone was following them.

F
arrell hung
back a couple of blocks as Jenna started for her flat. She wouldn’t like that he was following her, and while he understood it, it didn’t change anything. She and Lily were his responsibility, and he would gladly face Jenna’s wrath in exchange for their safety.

He crossed his arms over his chest like it would protect him against the assault of her on his memory. She was as lovely as ever, her long dark hair twisted loosely at her neck, a few stray tendrils escaping around her face. Her legs were long and shapely under the skirt she’d worn to work, and he had to resist the image of her slender ankles slung over his shoulders as he drove into her. Back when they first met, before she’d left for New York, he used to get hard just watching her across a crowded room. She was so polite, full of a rare innocence that left her completely the minute he got her into his bed. There she had a dark side he relished, a part she saved only for him. He’d never met anyone like her. Had never felt someone so necessary to his happiness.

He’d fucked up in Cornwall. It had been sloppy to assume the estate would stay hidden. He’d shielded his ownership behind several shell companies, but the people behind the Stafford Institute, behind the murder of Jenna’s father and the development of a bio-weapon that would quickly cull the human population, weren’t average criminals. In fact, the last three months of research had only made him more convinced the conspiracy went higher than Adam Denman, especially given Adam’s position as Senior Aide to Bernard Morse, an up-and-coming MP in Parliament.

Adam. His best friend since childhood, and Farrell hadn’t thought twice about putting a bullet in his brain when he’d been holding a gun to Jenna’s head. He didn’t like to think about it. The dynamic of their friendship and Adam’s betrayal was too complicated to sort, but Farrell had clearly miscalculated Adam’s loyalty. What was the point in mourning something that had been a lie? The friendship they’d shared when they were kids, sneaking into the movies to escape their respective realities, was long dead. Besides, Adam may have been his friend, but Jenna was his woman. Lily, his child. That made them his family in a way even Adam couldn’t touch.

Jenna needed time. He understood that. What happened in Cornwall was traumatic. But he’d had eyes on her 24/7 since she’d decided to move back to London alone. To cut him out of her life. Usually it was Leo who trailed her, and Farrell had been more than happy to give up the security of his best man to make sure Jenna and Lily were protected.

But sometimes the loss of them — of Jenna — was too powerful for him to bear. Then he’d take Leo’s place, watching her from a distance, making sure she was safe and drinking her in, trying not to think too hard about the feel of her skin under his hands, her body opening to his as he took her.

He’d suspected she was being followed as soon as they left Mrs. Hodges’ flat. It had been hard to keep his distance. To watch the man in the leather jacket trail Jenna and Lily from the shadows as they talked and laughed on the way to the playground. But he needed more information. Needed to know if there was a bigger threat. If whoever was having them followed had put more than one man on them. If it was an informational tail — someone following solely for the purpose of feeding information to someone else — or if there was something more sinister at hand.

He’d watched as Jenna pushed Lily on the swings, listened as she shrieked, her tiny legs pumping as she got higher into the sky. Normally he would have ached to join them. To stand beside Jenna where he could look into her eyes. To be close to the family that was his even as he was separated from them.

But he was too busy assessing the risk, and he’d watched as the man remained in the shadows of a nearby building, his narrowed eyes focused on Jenna and Lily. There was something voyeuristic about his gaze, a kind of violation that made Farrell want to pound flesh, feel warm blood flow from the man’s skin. His fury had only risen when Jenna and Lily left the playground with the man still behind them.

He kept close to the buildings, one block back from the man in the leather jacket. A block and a half ahead, Lily chattered to Jenna, clutching her mother’s hand as they stepped in and out of the shadows cast by the setting sun and the old factory buildings and tenement houses that rose on either side of the street. He was mindful of his footsteps as he walked, rubbing his knuckles, scraped and scabbed from the street fights he’d returned to in the wake of Jenna’s most recent departure from his life.

He’d grown up educated and affluent, but life had taken a radical turn after the death of his father, a renowned virologist who spent more time in the lab than at home after the car accident that killed Farrell’s mother. After that, Oxford had seemed pointless. Why be upstanding when you were going to die like an animal in the streets anyway? Better to be predator than prey.

The realization had been liberating, and Farrell had taken to fighting every chance he got — first at pubs around university and anywhere else he could get someone to rise to the bait, and later in street fights organized by the criminal network that secretly controlled London. It was how Jerome Ruskin, then head of the London mob, had found him, and while Farrell had eventually advanced to the top of the hierarchy, he’d never lost his taste for blood. Other than being with Jenna, fighting was the only time he felt alive, and he’d frequented the underground fighting circuit more and more since she’d left him for the second time in five years.

Up ahead, Jenna stopped near an old warehouse and bent down to button Lily’s coat. The man in the leather jacket stopped, too, and Farrell stepped back against the crumbling brick of an abandoned row house, watching as Jenna fastened the button. They exchanged a few words, then Jenna stood and resumed walking. The man stuffed his hands in his pockets and continued behind them.

S
he waited a few minutes
, hoping whoever was following would enter one of the old buildings or turn onto one of the side streets. They’d gone another block, the footsteps marking out a steady rhythm behind them, when Jenna finally dared a backward glance.

It was a young man, hands stuffed in the pockets of a leather jacket, his head bent against the slight chill in the air. She got the sense of a gaunt face and sharp cheekbones, a wiry but strong body, in the moment before she forced her eyes forward.

Her stomach fluttered with nervousness as she realized her vulnerability. Not fear for her own safety, but Lily’s. It had been a frightening epiphany, having Lily and realizing that she would be forever vulnerable. That there would never come a day when she didn’t have something precious to lose, when she would be able to act without fear.

She thought about Alex Petrov. She’d heard nothing from him since the day she and Lily left for Cornwall. The memory made her feel ashamed. She’d liked him, had even been mildly attracted to him. It had been nothing like the firestorm that swept her body when she was with Farrell, but he’d seemed nice.

Normal.

She hadn’t suspected a thing until her father’s football ring, taken when he’d been killed, had fallen out of Alex’s pocket. Jenna still had it, still took it out of the drawer in her bedside table from time to time, a reminder not to trust too easily. That no one was ever what they seemed.

She’d half expected Alex to pursue her after Cornwall. To come after the research papers from the Institute. He hadn’t, but she’d never quite shaken the feeling that the whole affair was nowhere near over. Now she wondered if the man behind them had been sent by Alex. If their time was finally up.

She drew a deep breath, trying to calm her nerves. It was eight o’ clock on a Wednesday evening in June. Even in this part of town, someone was bound to be out and about, enjoying the relative warmth of London during one of the two months when it wasn’t gray and cold.

Except the man’s footsteps seemed loud now. She had the sense of being watched, of eyes on her back. She fought the instinct to run. Lily wouldn’t be able to keep up, and she was too big for Jenna to carry with any efficiency.

She searched her brain for a solution, but they were in a quiet, nearly deserted part of town, one of three blocks between Mrs. Hodges’ flat and her own that were even less desirable than the not-very-desirable nature of the neighborhood as a whole. A vacant lot, overgrown with weeds and surrounded by a decrepit metal fence, took up the other side of the street while a line of old row houses loomed on this side, casting shadows on the sidewalk and into the road.

She knew the neighborhood wasn’t a good one. She hadn’t even been very surprised when her father had been killed coming home from the pub in the Spring, although now she knew it had been no random mugging. But it was her neighborhood. She’d run wild with Kate in the years her mother had spent mostly drunk. Had played in the park until well after the street lights came on, racing home with her sister through the darkened streets, half convinced someone was chasing them but equally convinced they would make it home in one piece.

It was a stupid kind of naivety, and she suddenly wished for Farrell. For the brick wall of his chest, the breadth of his shoulders, the iron fists capable of destroying men, the weapon that was always strapped to his side. Her sister’s words echoed through her mind;
It’s a shitty world. A dangerous world. Look what happened to Dad. Maybe it’s better to stand behind someone like Farrell.

Lily’s voice broke into her thoughts. “We’re almost to the colored windows, Mummy.”

Jenna exhaled, trying to calm herself. They were almost to the old church with the stained glass windows, just a block away from a busier stretch of road.

“That’s right,” Jenna said. “How many steps do you think it will take?” It was a game they often played, counting steps, seeing who could come closest.

“I think thirteen,” Lily said.

“You might be right,” Jenna said. “Why don’t you count them?”

She listened as Lily began calling out the numbers, forcing herself to believe the footsteps behind them weren’t getting closer as they stepped again into the shadows.

F
arrell kept his head down
. He wasn’t worried about the distance between him and the man in the leather jacket. He was hanging back on purpose, giving the man enough confidence to believe he had a clear shot at Jenna and Lily.

His fists tightened at his sides, already primed for the beating he would give the man. It would take restraint not to kill him. Mercy was for the innocent, and no man who threatened Jenna or Lily was innocent. But Farrell needed the man to deliver a message. Unfortunately, that required him to be alive.

Even from a distance, he could hear Lily and Jenna conversing, could hear Jenna’s solid, sure voice punctuated by Lily’s small, sweet one. He wondered if Jenna knew she was being followed. Wondered if she was scared.

The thought sent a current of frustration through his body. He was surprised she hadn’t been followed before now. He’d never expected whoever was behind the Marburg research to let them go quietly. Had Adam been important in their equation? Or simply a body, expendable in their quest to recover the papers Jenna’s father had stolen before his death?

Farrell had no way of knowing, but the fact that Adam had worked as a Senior Aide to Bernard Morse made it fairly easy to connect the dots; someone in the British government — or someone with powerful ties to it — was probably involved.

And apparently they were done biding their time.

Jenna and Lily stepped into the shadow of the old church, and the man quickened his steps as Lily tipped her face to the tall, stained glass windows, chattering to Jenna about the colored glass and the story told by the image.

He saw Jenna’s shoulders tense as the man strode toward them and knew that she heard it, that if she hadn’t known it before, she certainly knew they were in danger now. He watched as she looked around, casting about for someplace to run or hide in the split second before the man began running, closing the distance between them in a handful of long strides before he shoved Jenna roughly into the alley between the church and the old rectory.

Farrell was there less than ten seconds later, adrenaline coursing through his veins like water through a floodgate. Time seemed to slow as he took in the scene; Jenna backed up against the wall, hugging Lily tightly against her thigh while the man pressed himself into Jenna’s body, his face only inches from hers as he fisted her blouse in one hand, his other holding a gun against her cheek.

A wash of red dropped over Farrell’s vision. He was no longer cognizant of anything but the need to destroy the man putting his hands on Jenna, the man frightening their daughter, whimpering as she clutched Jenna’s leg.

“Please,” Jenna said, her voice eerily calm. “Let my daughter go. I’ll give you anything you want, just let her go.”

The man cracked his hand, still holding the gun, across Jenna’s cheekbone. “I make the rules here, bitch. You give me what I want, I maybe give you what you want. Now where are the papers?”

Farrell strode into the alley, moving toward the man with single-minded purpose. He was only vaguely aware of the man’s slow turn toward him, the look of surprise in his eyes as he registered Farrell’s approach. It was all secondary to the rage boiling his blood.

He grabbed the man’s gun and tossed it aside, then lifted him a foot into the air before throwing him against the church wall. He was still scrambling to get to his feet when Farrell reached for him again.

He held the thug off the ground, his feet kicking frantically as Farrell held onto the leather jacket with one hand and punched the man’s face with the other. The bones of the man’s face gave way under Farrell’s steady blows. It was satisfying, familiar. The crunch of it, the slight give of flesh, the warmth of his blood when it started flowing. The man’s eyes were swollen shut when Jenna’s voice cut through the haze in his mind.

“Stop it, Farrell! Enough!”

He didn’t turn to look at her. If he did that, he wouldn’t want anything but to take her in his arms, to make sure something like this never happened again.

And he wasn’t done here.

“Who sent you?” he asked the man, head lolling to one side as a rivulet of bloody saliva dripped from the corner of his mouth. “Who are you working for?”

The man opened his mouth as if to speak, but no sound came out.

Farrell reached for his own gun and held it to the man’s temple. “You better start talking. While you still can.”

“I don’t know.” The man’s words were barely decipherable through his ruined teeth. “Never met him.”

“Keep talking,” Farrell said, pressing the gun more firmly into his temple.

“Please… none of us have met him.” Farrell cocked the gun. “I swear! It’s how he works. We communicate through secure channels. We get our orders, payment’s deposited into our account. That’s all I know!”

Farrell felt the brush of disappointment. The guy was a flunky. From the sound of it, there were more like him somewhere, but whoever was giving the orders hadn’t counted on Farrell. If they had, they would have sent at least five more men. He was almost sorry they’d underestimated him. It would have been more satisfying to lay more of them flat.

Farrell shoved the gun in the waistband of his jeans and patted the guy down, removing his wallet and phone. He opened the billfold and removed the guy’s ID, reading the name aloud.

“Albert Beake, two-eleven Tavistock, flat one-twelve,” he said, slipping it into his pocket. “If you deliver a message, I might not break into your flat and slit your throat in the middle of the night.”

“Wh-what kind of message?”

“Just tell whoever sent you that the woman and child are off limits. If someone comes after them again, they’re going to find body bags on the steps of Parliament, and it’s going to take a long time to sort out the parts. They want something, they come to me. Got it?”

The man nodded, peering at Farrell through the slits of his eyelids.

“Good.” Farrell slipped the man’s phone into his jacket.

“Not my phone, bruv,” the man complained through his split lips.

Farrell delivered a fierce punch to the man’s gut, then let him slide to the pavement. “You don’t tell me what to take,” Farrell said. “I take what I want.”

He drew in a breath and turned toward Jenna and Lily. Lily was frozen, eyes wide as she stared at him from her position against the wall of the church. Farrell wanted to wrap her in his arms, tell her nothing would ever hurt her, ever frighten her again.

But it was Jenna’s face that made his breath catch in his throat, her eyes flashing green over the soft rise of her cheekbones, her full lips parted in shock. There was something more than surprise there, something even more than fear. He almost dared to believe it was relief. Maybe even love.

He moved slowly toward them, not wanting to frighten Lily after what she’d seen. “Are you all right?”

Jenna nodded, then looked down at Lily. “You okay, love?”

“Who was that man, Daddy?” Lily asked. There was no fear in her voice, only a kind of breathless wonder.

Farrell swept the little girl into his arms, exhaling his relief at the feel of her against him. “He was a bad man, darling.”

“But you stopped him, didn’t you? You stopped the bad man from doing bad things,” Lily said.

Farrell didn't know what to say. The truth was more complicated, but this wasn’t the time to explain that some people thought Farrell was the bad man. That he did bad things in the name of protecting what was his.

“Just looking out for my girls,” he said.

“Are we your girls?” Lily asked. “Mummy, too?”

“Always,” Farrell said, daring to look at Jenna. The brief window he’d had into her soul had closed. Her eyes were shuttered, her expression unreadable. “Let’s get out of here.”

They stepped out of the alley and started toward Jenna’s flat. It was full dark now, the street lamps casting sickly yellow orbs of light onto the cracked pavement. He thought about going back for his car, then decided against it. They were closer to Jenna’s flat, and he wanted only to get her and Lily off the streets as soon as possible. He didn’t know how long it would take Albert Beake to report back to his superiors — or how long it would take them to know something had gone amiss — but he wasn’t taking any chances. Whoever was behind the attack didn’t know it yet, but they’d fired the opening salvo in a war that wouldn’t end until Farrell had finished it once and for all.

Until Jenna and Lily were safe for good.