“Find her.”
The London Mafia Syndicate who managed to get to the hotel in Lambeth we use for meetings all appear stunned for a second, as they stare at the paper with Emily’s name on it that I’ve slapped onto the old brown wood table, or me.
“He can speak.” The Bratva Pakhan of Rotherhithe looks like he’s seen a ghost.
“Shit, was that a full sentence from you, Mortlake?” Artem, the Bratva boss of Mayfair says, shaking his head.
“There’s a verb, and an object? That counts,” his wife, Lina, replies.
“Genuinely thought he was mute.” Richmond’s Italian undertones come through with his surprise, and I turn and curl my lip at him. We’ve been friends and neighbours for a while, but yeah. I don’t think I’ve really spoken to him, as such. “No offence meant.” He puts his hands up in surrender.
“Yes or no is a full sentence, though?” Mayfair adds, and he and his wife digress into a conversation about fucking grammar, as if that matters.
I rub my chest, and fuck, I can’t bear this. I just need Emily back.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard your voice, Mortlake. Always imagined you had a Russian accent you were embarrassed about,” Rotherhithe comments casually, regarding Emily’s name with a head tilt.
I glare. This is totally irrelevant, and only goes to show why I don’t do conversation. I point at Emily’s name meaningfully.
“We’ll try to find her if you can find more words like ‘please’, and an explanation of why we should locate Emily Smith.” Richmond grins.
I hate her name in his mouth.
“Is Russian tendency to leave off words,” Mayfair says, hamming up his Russian accent, his voice full of amusement. “No please.”
“Emily Smith,” I repeat, tired of their shit-talk. If they aren’t going to help. I’ll… Well. That’s the problem. I have a lot of money and resources, but this isn’t the sort of thing Mortlake is good at.
These bloody idiots are my best bet.
Every instinct in me says to either shut up, or leave, or both, as they regard me with a range of wary interest and amused curiosity.
“I have to find her,” I say, slowly and deliberately, my heart racing.
For fuck’s sake. I can kill men without my pulse going above sixty beats per minute, but since Emily arrived in my life, I’ve had to do all sorts of things that are as comfortable as a coat made of hedgehogs.
But if I get her back more quickly, it will be worth it.
“It’s so weird to hear him speak—” Rotherhithe marvels.
I smash my fist onto the nearest table, making a bang so loud that several people duck and Mayfair’s wife squeaks and burrows into his arms and he pulls her close.
“Alright.” Mayfair strokes Lina’s shoulder and looks again at the scrap of paper. “It’s a common name, Smith. Who is she?”
I genuinely have no idea what the right answer is.
My employee? The much younger girl I fucked raw yesterday on her desk? The centre of my universe and every hope for joy I have in this world or any other? The woman I’ve fallen in love with, had my first time with, and who understands me like no one else.
Or so I thought. Until she ran off without saying anything.
I try to swallow, but my mouth is dry. I growl the only thing I can think of to explain. “Need her.”
And thank god, they all seem to accept this. Perhaps it’s the benefit of being married? Mayfair glances down at his wife with affection.
I turn away. I don’t want to see anyone being cute and in love when I’m torn apart.
“Do you have a photo of her? Or a date of birth?” Richmond asks.
I shake my head and grit my teeth. I have nothing. Just an address with an empty room, a corpse in the office where I lost my virginity, and a gap in my heart the size of a London bus.
“Who do we have who could help with this?” Mayfair muses aloud.
“King’s Cross will check if she left the city to the north, and he might persuade Euston and Paddington to go through their transport surveillance,” Richmond says, head tipped to the side.
I’m nodding along, because yes, this is good. My chest doesn’t loosen, but the knots go from titanium cords to steel.
“But if she’s still within London, or she went another direction, maybe south? We won’t be able to track her. And what if she used cash to buy a ticket?” Richmond continues.
“There might be dozens of Emily Smiths just in London,” Mayfair says, stroking his jaw thoughtfully.
“There were three Emilys in my class at school,” Lina pipes up. “It’s a really popular name for girls my age.”
“Hundreds on that video app my wife likes,” says Rotherhithe, setting his phone down with pinched eyebrows.
“You have it on your phone?” Richmond says with faint derision.
“Yes,” Rotherhithe replies firmly.
They’re as easily taken off topic as toddlers.
“I’ll pay.” They all look slightly disconcerted at the sound of my voice again.
Honestly, so am I.
But I’d give anything to get Emily back in my arms. She’s my oxygen. Combustible, elemental, necessary.
“What’s required is some way to sift through them all, and the person to do that is Blackfen,” Rotherhithe says with quiet authority.
I wish right now I kept up more with London mafia dramas and politics, because the taut silence doesn’t inform me of anything beyond the fact that this is going to be difficult.
Mayfair shakes his head. “I’ve been trying to get him to join the London Maths Club for ages. I don’t think—”
“Contact details,” I grunt.
Mayfair sighs. “He’s more of a pin a note on a lamp-post and hope he gets back to you sort of a guy. I only know him because of the Bratva connection, and you don’t call him, he finds you, and you don’t want that, believe me. But Blackfen is the best hacker in London, and his mafia is smart enough that they once got through my security and left a calling card and a bill for the improvements they made to my system.”
“Fucker, he did that to you too?” growls Rotherhithe.
“We should be grateful he didn’t kill us, or ransom all our data.” Mayfair leans back in his chair. “If anyone can find an Emily Smith among the hundreds of Emily Smiths, it’s Blackfen.”
“Offer any price,” I demand.
“He won’t just do it for money. He has some… Code.” Richmond states with deceptive casualness. “Why do you want her?”
“Mine.” The answer bubbles up out of my chest, instinctive.
“And why did she leave, exactly?” Mayfair’s wife interjects.
I think of the soft feel of Emily’s cunt around my length. The way she moaned for me. Then how I walked away when her mother called because I have all the experience of dealing with the aftermath of sex of a coffee table.
Because I’m a fucking idiot who didn’t use his words. Because it was my first time with a woman—with being so blissfully close to the love of my life—that my brain totally vacated the building, washed out of my body along with the white sticky mess I pumped into her.
Then I think of Denis Petrov’s brains all over Emily’s desk.
“Misunderstanding,” I say, low and ashamed.
I thought she’d be there, as she’d been for the last three months. I assumed she understood that this was far from casual for me.
It’s not as if I’m known as a playboy, like Kilburn or some other prick. I’m called the Silent Kingpin of Mortlake, for fuck’s sake.
“This isn’t the death kind of misunderstanding is it?” Richmond says suspiciously.
“No,” I snap.
“How old is she?” Rotherhithe asks.
Oh good, just when I thought this couldn’t get any worse, I have to admit I’m cradle snatching. Shoving my hands in my pockets, I aim for a careless attitude, and miss totally when my voice comes out questioning.
“Twenty?” I gulp. “Twenty-two?”
“Blackfen is not going to like this,” Mayfair mutters. “How did you say you met her?”
“Employee.” I stare him down.
“Your twenty-year-old employee ran away, and you’re tracking her down?” Mayfair shakes his head and glances down at his wife, rolling his eyes.
That does sound bad, but all I can see is Emily’s smile, and how her eyes sparkled when she lifted her head and saw me walking into the room. How right she felt beneath me, her hand on my back and in my hair.
“I will burn London, England, the world until I find her.” My words are low but emphatic.
“I’ll put the word out to see if she’s been kidnapped, but if she just left, we’ll need Blackfen’s help.” Mayfair sighs. “There’s an internet forum he sometimes responds to posts on.”
“Thank you.” I nod.
Look, that was polite? I can play nice when it’s important.
“Not at all,” Mayfair drawls. “I’d rather you didn’t get out the flame thrower.”
“It would be inconvenient,” Richmond agrees.
I nod and turn. I’m halfway to the door, because we’re done with this conversation and I have Private Investigators to hire and instructions to give to my men, when Richmond’s voice calls after me.
“Mortlake.”
I don’t trust myself to go back, but I stop, head bowed. I’m vibrating with the need to do something. Anything. I have to get my men scouring London street by street, though in the pit of my stomach I’m aware it won’t do any good.
She isn’t in London. Her cleared-out room after she was sacked is obvious. I’ll check that no one took her, but I think I’d know in my heart if she was in danger.
Even so. I need her home. With me.
“Do you care about her?” he asks.
I jerk my head in a nod.
I hate this. I hate that these men know how I feel about Emily before she does. Because if she were aware of how I love her, surely, she’d have come to me before leaving.
“We’ll find your girl,” Richmond promises.
My throat tightens.
And it’s only as I leave that I realise there’s another reason I have to find her. And soon. Because when I had her over the desk yesterday, there were words of love and filth, gravelly declarations and demands.
And no protection.
She could be pregnant.
