Six months later
I deserve torment.
Don’t get me wrong, I have done many bad things in the pursuit of power and I’m sure I have a penthouse in hell waiting for me. Every violent and ruthless action I’ve ordered—I don’t tend to get blood on my hands directly anymore, but obviously I used to—marks my soul as much as scars cover my body under this suit. I absolutely should burn for all the dark acts I’ve committed to keep my people safe and my mafia as the foremost in London.
But surely, surely, I do not deserve this.
I wait a moment before I look up as Anwyn hovers in the doorway to my office. I pretend I haven’t given everyone strict orders that from Saturday afternoon to Sunday late morning I am not to be disturbed unless it is a crisis of the highest magnitude.
I feel her eyes on me and it’s this bittersweetness. Anwyn is an angel. Far too young for me. Much too innocent. She’s beautiful and funny and she’s my son’s ex-girlfriend.
“Hello.” I push my keyboard away.
She smiles tentatively. “Hello, Mr Crosse.”
“Benedict.”
“I can’t call you that.” She shakes her head ruefully, as she has a dozen times before.
I wonder if she knows she ought to call me Mr Crosse to keep me at a distance. If she calls me my given name it might be too easy to forget all the reasons Anwyn is forbidden to me. Not just because of her youth and her relationship with my son. No, I was forcibly reminded recently that the other mafias will use anyone I care about to leverage the absolute power I hold over London.
No doubt Marco Brent figured out that I have a soft spot for Anwyn because he has a bride even younger. There’s no such thing as too careful, so I’ve had to become more circumspect in my behaviour towards Anwyn.
But I want her.
From the tips of her honey-blonde hair to her pastel-varnished toes, I can never get enough. A glimpse of her peaches-and-cream skin, like today when she’s wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt, and I’m overwhelmed with the desire to find the places where she’s pink and sensitive, and make her feel good.
I suppose many people long for Saturday night as much as I do. I believe it’s considered something of an opportunity to relax. But it’s not relaxing when Anwyn is with me. She’s a temptation like no other, as she’s curled on the sofa in my office, reading. Not having her with me chips away at my soul, but her presence tests my patience. I thought my self-control was unbreakable until I saw her on the doorstep that night. Fucking egotistical. Every week I hold on by a thread, and manage not to ravage her. Wreck her.
My son’s ex-girlfriend. When I told him about Anwyn coming over because her house is a noisy shit-hole, he thanked me. He sounded surprised, and said to tell her hi, and he’d see her when he was back for the holidays. I think I know the reason he loves her as a friend, but still. She is—or was—his girlfriend and best friend.
Students should have longer terms, the vacations are too damn long. Thankfully Tom had plans for nearly all of it, only staying for a few days between mountain climbing trips with his new friends.
“They started the party early today, huh?” I lean back into my office chair and take in the sight of Anwyn in the doorway. She has her hair down today, falling over the small rise of her breasts. There’s a hint of anxiety in her blue eyes and she nibbles on the plush pink of her bottom lip.
It’s only four o’clock. Anwyn’s visits have crept forward, week by week.
“You don’t mind, do you?” She doesn’t meet my gaze, the whites of her eyes flashing like a wary animal.
I swallow, my throat dusty, and wave her in. “Of course not.”
I love that I get longer with her, and I hate it. Having to control myself even longer is my favourite punishment.
“I brought some work to do while you finish up.” She indicates her armful of books like they’re tickets of admittance and I’ll inspect them.
I did once. Amongst her textbooks about trees was a single paperback with a floral cover. Totally innocuous, and I’d have passed right over it.
But the way she snatched it back, cheeks bright red, and muttered, it’s just a novel, was not innocent. I looked up the title later, and suffice to say, it wasn’t just anything.
My girl was reading pure unadulterated smut while sitting opposite me. The book had an older hero and a virgin heroine. Knowing she reads that really doesn’t help the constant hard-on I have when she’s around.
I’m my own worst enemy.
This whole, spending the afternoon together, thing was at my instigation. At first Anwyn arrived just before ten o’clock and went straight to bed. It was good to have her safe under my roof, but far from enough. I suggested hot chocolate, and we stood around in the kitchen drinking it. Soon we were sitting in the library for two hours, spinning out the tepid drinks while we talked. When she accepted biscuits eagerly, I enquired about whether she’d eaten.
Suffice to say I was furious to discover she’d only had a snack since lunchtime. I shouldn’t have demanded she arrive in time for dinner the next week, it was a step too far. But she arrived at seven and a light casual pasta supper the first time turned into three courses with one glass of wine—only ever one—coffee and chocolates afterwards.
“More plant genetics?” I ask as she goes to her usual place—the leather sofa adjacent to my desk.
“Yeah.” She opens a textbook onto her lap. No girl porn reading today, and I don’t know if I’m relieved or disappointed. It’s a warm evening and she’s wearing a pair of cut-off denim shorts with a blue T-shirt that matches her eyes.
She’s so adorable my palms itch.
I click my mouse around, pretending to work, as I covertly watch her. Having Anwyn here has the weird effect of relaxing me as well as putting my whole body on high alert. “How did your exam go?”
“I got ninety-two per cent.” She says it cautiously, like that might not be enough, but raises those blue eyes to mine to drown me. “Top of my class.”
Never thought I’d be entranced by a girl half my age, and absolutely never imagined she’d be incredibly smart as well as beautiful.
“Good girl. I’m proud of how hard you worked for that.”
She glows under my praise, shoulders lowering and wriggling into the sofa, kicking off her shoes and tucking her feet under her to get comfortable. “Thanks.”
So pretty. I’d love her to snuggle into me like that.
I guess she sees me as a father figure, caring and asking about her work. I even scold her a little when she doesn’t do well on a test because she didn’t spend enough time studying. This dynamic we’ve fallen into is part Sugar Daddy, part friend, a smidge of mentor.
I enjoy all of that. I just wish we could add, lover. Husband.
The time before dinner was introduced by Anwyn, and it has crept up. She used to arrive just before food, letting herself in with the key I gave her. About two months ago I was firefighting a territory issue with Lambeth and couldn’t leave my office. She tiptoed in, and I murmured that she should entertain herself while I finished up. And that’s how we began to spend half of Saturday together.
She studies and I clear some emails for an hour—how mafia bosses still get emails I don’t know. I should just shoot anyone who asks questions I’ve already answered, but I don’t because Westminster has legitimate aspects to the business, pretending to be law-abiding. Can’t murder people; we have to disappear them.
Deniable. Westminster is all about the veneer of respectability over absolute power and wealth. That’s one of many reasons I cannot act on my desire for this young woman.
“Ready to eat?” I ask when a respectable amount of time has elapsed. Anwyn nods eagerly, and I have a sudden vision of her on her knees, eating something else. Taking my cock in her mouth. Heat flares and the thought is closely followed by the image of her on my desk, legs spread, my own personal buffet. I’d gorge myself on her.
What a fuck up. I’m rock-hard from the smallest fantasy of her.
She’s your son’s ex-girlfriend, you arsehole, I remind myself. The dignity of Westminster demands I keep my needs to myself, subtly hiding my erection as I stand.
My chef has excelled herself this evening, and I resolve to give her a raise when Anwyn falls on the aperitifs with a happy sigh and exclamations of how tasty the food is. Now we’re officially not working, she chatters about her week when I prompt her. We eat and talk, and I allow myself to enjoy her company.
This is bad. Painful, in a literal sense because I have to keep my aching cock under the table and away from Anwyn’s curious gaze, when what I really want is her touch.
But it’s only the beginning of my suffering, I’m aware that the worst is yet to come.
Once she leaves in the morning, that’s when the feeling of emptiness sets in. It’ll be a whole week without her before she’s under my roof again, giving me that shy smile, her caramel hair laid on her collarbones and her scent—roses—surrounding me.
It’s once she’s left to return to her student life, young and brimming with potential, that I’m stabbed with how alone I am. My son has turned his back on the mafia. There are my staff around me, but none of them see past the severe looks or the sharp suits. They don’t see me. Not like she does. I’m utterly alone without her and it’s agony for those hours until the scouring pain eases.
And every Sunday morning, like she’s my fucking religion, it’s the same worship. She says she’ll go. I insist on her eating first. We have breakfast in the light-filled kitchen, sitting at the breakfast bar side by side. She talks a lot on Saturday nights, but during our Sunday mornings there’s easy silence, with her stealing glances at me while she nibbles at the croissants and jam that are her favourite. I think it’s comfortable for her, anyway. For me, it’s a wrench, forcing myself not to spin out her company any longer. I repeat in my head she will never want me the way I crave her, and this has to be enough. It must be, because I cannot scare her away with the depth of my longing.
“I really have to go,” she says once I’ve scowled at her for refusing a third pastry, and we’ve irrefutably finished our coffees.
“Have a good week.” I don’t say that I’m insane without her and I miss her when she’s not here like she’s my frontal lobe.
When George has phoned me on the return journey and confirmed that she’s safe, I give in. I get into the shower, turn the heat to scalding, and jerk myself off to the fresh image of Anwyn.
I’m brutal with my poor aching dick, which doesn’t know what it’s done wrong and can’t help but respond to her more than any other woman. It’s bordering on pain, sharp and rough, when I spurt the evidence of my desire over the tiles.
Each week I wash it away and say I shouldn’t do this again. That I should send her to a hotel, or at least not make myself come with her name on my lips.
It’s a lie. Just one more bad action I’ve taken. Desperately lusting after this slip of a girl, too perfect, young, and innocent for me.
My son’s ex-girlfriend.
Fuck.
And the absolute worst thing?
There was a time, not so long ago, that I looked at her with utter indifference. I barely noticed her and I don’t think Tom saw her as a woman either. When I gave Tom “the talk”, he blushed furiously and confessed they’d never even kissed. Obviously I didn’t point out to my closeted son that wasn’t normal. I just told him I loved him and he could tell me anything.
I had forgotten all about Anwyn until she turned up that night.
A good man would wish that had never changed and I’d never opened my eyes six months ago and seen Anwyn. So sweet and ripe, I wanted her the same moment her eyes met mine. I was putty in her hands.
I am a bad man. Because I don’t want to go back.
Sunday is typically awful, and I throw myself into work. As the sun sets, red and purple through the window, I stretch out my fingers and sigh. Six long days until I see her again.
I work late, then collapse into bed, mercifully too exhausted to do anything but drag covers over me and fall asleep in the coal-black darkness.
The shrill ring of my phone wakes me. Dread wipes away sleep instantly. My people don’t call me in the middle of the night about nothing.
The screen shows my most-trusted lieutenant, my second-in-command. He accompanied Anwyn home this morning, always does.
“She’s in danger.”
Adrenaline floods me.
“Why?” I snap. I don’t ask who. We both know who. There is only one she who justifies waking me.
“We can’t be sure. I just got a tip-off. A message came through the website for the shell company that sells garden furniture saying there was a hit out from the Bratva on Anne. Tonight. No more details than that.”
“You think it’s her? And real?” Anwyn isn’t Anne. But neither do we have anyone called Anne associated with the company.
George hesitates. “It could be totally coincidental. It could be a spurious report, or common nonsense. But…”
“I can’t take the chance.”
Anger takes over. The arsehole Bratva mafia have been a thorn in my side for years now. The mafia boss is a nasty piece of work, barely restrained by his younger brother Artem and has been causing problems for my people that we’ve been constantly having to fire-fight. I accept that. Comes with the role of being the mafia everyone knows the name of in London. Westminster is the authority, making the laws and ensuring trouble is dissolved in a vat of acid. We set the example of appearing faultless, while using power to make more money than almost any other mafia in London.
The Bratva are the opposite. Uncouth, rich but brash, and with no interest in protecting those within his territory. I hated but tolerated them before.
But if they’ve touched my girl?
They’ll wish for death when I’m done.
“Get a car ready. No need to wake anyone else, I’ll deal with this.”
I hang up and throw on clothes. I don’t allow myself to acknowledge the fear that I might be too late. I can’t be. I will be there for Anwyn. I must. I’ll murder any and every person who gets in the way.
I’m a bad, ruthless man, but the head of the Bratva is an evil bastard. If there is even a two per cent chance they’re after my girl, I’m going over there in person. And I will rip the limbs off anyone who threatens her with my bare hands.
Despite my order, my second-in-command gives me a sharp look when I arrive in the armoury. George is plucking ammunition from a box and loading it into a pistol that he shoves at me without looking.
“Sure this is a good idea boss?” he asks without inflection.
There are a staggering number of ways this is not. I take the gun, starting with the fact that if the Bratva didn’t know before that I have a personal interest in Anwyn, they’re about to be certain. And she’s my son’s ex-girlfriend. Yes.
Anwyn’s student house is squeezed shoulder-to-shoulder with its neighbours in a residential street, a 1980s design that style forgot.
George grits his teeth when I tell him to stay in the car when we arrive. He doesn’t like to allow me to go into a potentially dangerous situation alone, but in this case he can put up and shut up.
The front door is unlocked when I try it, and that makes me shake my head. Either I’m going to have to lecture Anwyn about security, or this is bad.
The house is quiet and dark. My feet are silent as I creep up the stairs. No point in alerting her housemates that something is going on. If indeed it is.
Never thought I’d say this, but I really hope I’m sneaking around a girls’ student house for no reason.
A door on the second floor is open, and I swear inwardly. The intel was correct.
My heart is in my throat as I look through Anwyn’s door. A man dressed in black is leaning over her. I aim my gun at him, but the shot isn’t clear. I’d hit my peacefully slumbering girl too.
My sleeping beauty.
There’s a glint of metal and I recognise a syringe. Shit. That bastard is going to drug her. The needle is in her arm when three things happen at once.
“No.” I step into the room. The Bratva kidnapper jerks up, and Anwyn’s eyes fly open.
I shoot. The silencer takes most of the sound. The bastard’s brains splatter over the wall behind the bed, and he collapses, dead, over Anwyn.
She lets out a sob, and sees me, her eyes wide with terror.
“Anwyn, it’s okay.” My voice is a gravelly whisper.
“Ben…” Her eyes roll back in her head and she slumps into the covers.
I dive forwards, and only just remember to shove the assassin’s body off Anwyn but not off the bed. He’s a big bastard. Can’t be waking Anwyn’s housemates.
The horror grips me as I gather her up in my arms. So small and delicate. She’s wearing pyjamas and is as floppy as a rope, but breathing.
If I’d been another minute later. If we hadn’t had that tipoff… Cold skitters over my skin at the thought. I could have lost her. If the Bratva had got her, I’d have torn down the whole of London to find her. Return her to my side, where she belongs.
Not letting her go, I frisk the pockets of the dead man, hoping for another vial. An antidote perhaps.
Nope. Blank.
It’s the work of a moment to scoop up Anwyn’s keys, hold her slight weight close to my chest. I work efficiently, locking doors behind us and sprinting to the car.
“Drive,” I snap and arrange Anwyn on my lap as we speed away. I cradle her, my heart thudding.
She called me Ben. Probably she meant to finish that word and say Benedict. A slip of the tongue. But hell. My girl called me by my name.
