Fallen Angel (The List #3) (39 page)

“Jax, what happened to his daughter?”

“He got her into counselling, that’s where he
made more connections with social workers and victim support officers. Over a
couple of years, she did a one-eighty. Apparently, she went from a quiet,
fragile teenager into a ruthless woman. She learned how to gain strength from
her ordeal so that she didn’t let the twisted, evil fuckers win. She became
heavily involved in her father’s work, against his better judgement, but she
wouldn’t take no for an answer… Years later—she introduced me to the Unit.”

“Carmel.” I whisper as I fix the warped pieces
together.

“Carmel.”

“Jax, I thought Chloe’s death and your guilt… and
the drugs… I thought that was the worst. I thought that was your darkness, your
hidden past. But that’s not everything, is it?”

Jax shakes his head and my heart drops into the
pit of my stomach. His touch feels different. I snatch my hand away from his
without thinking and he starts rubbing his head back and forth.

“It gets uglier, Beth.”

I feel hollow inside. Jax knows me and he was
convinced that this conversation would push me away. As certain he is of that,
I was just as certain that my love for him would hold strong. Have I been
stupid again? Have I put on my ignorant blinkers, which render it impossible
for logic to prevail over emotion?

“I don’t want to know.”

I blurt the words out before I’ve even
registered them myself.

“
What?
”

He looks back up at me in confusion.

“I’m scared that you’re right—that I can’t
handle it—that we won’t be able to move on from this. No matter how much I want
to.”

“Beth, I didn’t think that you could and I
wasn’t going to push you. But—but we
need
this now. You need to know
everything so that we can have a fighting chance of being together. You said it
yourself and that’s what I want too. I want to be with you and this time I
will
fight for us.”

“That’s unfair, Jax.”

We sit in an uncomfortable silence whilst I try
to gather my thoughts, which seem to have scattered like debris. He doesn’t try
to touch me. He just waits patiently for me to speak. I take in a deep breath
and blow it out slowly through my lips.

“So you joined a
gang
and then what, you
became some sort of criminal, vigilante wannabe?”

“I suppose you could call us vigilantes but we
weren’t wannabe’s, Beth. We were the real deal. The Unit was well established
and ran like clockwork. It was professional, successful and completely secure—I
wouldn’t have been a part of it otherwise. After I’d joined, I soon became the
most efficient member—”

“What does that
mean
exactly, Jax? You
beat up the most people for robbing old ladies? Terrorised the streets of
Birmingham? What?”

“It means I would carry out my assignments
better than any other. It came naturally to me and it wasn’t small time Beth. The
boss operated just outside of London but very few people got to actually meet
him—”

“Unless they’d
fucked
his dau—”

“Beth—” I instinctively shut up, reacting to
his dominance. “The Unit was spread across the country and only handled the
most heinous of crimes.”

He is stalling.

“Just tell me, Jax. I’m dying here. Shit—sorry,
I didn’t mean—ugh, just tell me, please.”

“We did hurt people Beth. But, more often than
not, it was more permanent than a beating.” I see it in Jax’s eyes how he keeps
drifting in and out of the here and now, calling on memories that he’s never discussed
with anybody before. “We dealt with abusers mainly. Anybody from spineless,
wealthy bastards that used hush money to get away with their crimes to lowlife
scumbags with no money or morals.”

“What do you mean by ‘more permanent’?”

I take another sip of my water. Jax eyes me
cautiously before answering.

“Sometimes, it’d involve maiming—”

“Jesus, Jax. As in what, they’d lose a finger?
A knee cap? A fucking arm?”

“Yes.”

“Yes? What do you mean yes? I didn’t mean…
Fuck. Yes to all?” I stand up and start pacing the room myself. My blood feels
colder. “I don’t know what the fuck’s going on here Jax but what you’ve just
admitted to, isn’t normal fucking behaviour.”

He obviously anticipated this reaction because
he barely moves. Now the whole room feels colder and the walls are closing in.

“Can you sit down please, Beth? Hear me out.”

“Why? What are you going to say Jax? There’s
nothing that can make this any less fucked up. I thought you were a drug
dealer. That was the worst of what I’d come up with. How could you, how could
do such things? I mean physically, how could you actually do that to another
person? In fact, I don’t actually wanna know.”

“They were all deserving of whatever they got
Beth. I’m responsible for my decisions—”

“That doesn’t mean you’ve made responsible
decisions.”

“Well, I stand firmly by them.”

The confidence in his eyes is unmistakeable.

“You
stand
by them? Even now, you
believe that what you’re doing is okay?”

“What I
did
… I’m out of it now, Beth.
But
yes
, I stand by everything. Everything was calculated, nothing was
done unless we were absolutely sure.”

“But that’s not part of your life anymore?
Since when?”

“No. I left a fortnight ago… Beth, it’s you. You’ve
put a new perspective on my life. I know that I found comfort in my work with
the Unit because I didn’t care about my future or seek happiness or approval. I
know that it may all seem sinister but our work was positive Beth. We made a
difference to good people.”

“Give me an example... Yeah. I want an example
of an
assignment
. I want to make my own mind up whether what you did was
deserved or whether I should be running out of that door right now.”

“Okay… My first assignment. A gang had been
terrorising a family for months. The son owed them a lot of money so they used
his younger sister as insurance until he could pay, which was impossible. One
of the main members of the gang took a liking to her—which as fucked up as it
sounds—was a good thing, otherwise she would’ve been passed around between them
like a spliff. When this prick clicked his fingers she’d have to go running
otherwise something worse would happen. One time she tried to reason with him
and asked if there was any other way to pay. That night, they beat the son to a
pulp and left him in the middle of the street as a warning.”

I’ve stopped pacing the room now and I stand
dumbstruck, entranced by every word. Jax looks at me with a silent question,
asking whether he should continue.

“Go on.”

I can’t hide the fear in my voice. Not fear of
Jax, I don’t think. I don’t know what from, but I feel it.

“The school nurse noticed bruising on the girl
and persuaded her to talk to a social worker in confidence. She eventually
began to trust them and told them piece by piece what was happening. The social
worker did her best to convince the girl to go to the police but she said
that’d be the equivalent to putting her family on death row. Thankfully, the
social worker had links with the Unit. All information was passed on and
checked out… Beth, she may have gone to his house knowing she was gonna get
fucked but it was still rape. She was an innocent schoolgirl who happened to
have a brother with a drug habit. She was a virgin, until Trax came along. He
raped her, he caused internal damage by using objects on her. He would force
her to inject drugs and beat her black and blue until she begged him to fuck
her. It went on for months. He was sick and twisted. What he put that young
girl through was nothing short of evil.”

This is like listening to a proposal for a television
drama, not real life. I know he’s gone quiet to give me chance to absorb what
he’s saying. He won’t continue until I tell him to but I can’t bring myself to
look at him. I don’t want to hear what comes next but I know that I have to.

Through Jax’s mannerisms, his tone, his
words—he paints such a vivid scenario that I can’t help but get sucked into it.

“So—” I clear my croaky throat, finding myself
needing to know the family were safe. “—what did you do?”

“I snatched Trax up off the street at gunpoint
one night. Right from under their noses.” Jax sneers at the memory. “His gang
all had guns but they knew not to open fire because I would’ve killed one of
their elders in a heartbeat, which would’ve been their fault. I took him to an
abandoned warehouse and… I tortured him.”

I don’t know when, but at some point I’ve
dropped to my knees. I sit back on my heels, frozen to the spot. Jax waits
until I can bring myself to look back at his face and then continues.

“I cut off his trigger fingers and poured acid
on his dick, amongst other things.” A wave of new pain lands through me. “I
didn’t tell him why I was doing it, but I made certain he knew not to fuck with
anybody again. I took his money and gold chains to make it look like a robbery,
which is the story he stuck to afterwards.”

My hands are covering my face, forcing myself
to disconnect from Jax as though that will miraculously make everything disappear.
This can’t be happening. I’m nauseous. I don’t know which is more sickening;
the thought of Jax doing those things… Or the fact that I’m glad he did.

“Jax. I can’t—I don’t know what to say or what
I’m feeling. You
tortured
him. I don’t even understand how that helped
the family?”

“That’s what they wanted. The gang used their knives
and guns to terrorise the neighbourhood. The family wanted me to take his trigger
fingers. It was symbolic and I agreed wholeheartedly.”

“This is insane. How does that even make the
family safe?”

“We moved them anonymously to a safer place and
gave them a new beginning. The girl got counselling and the son was helped with
his drug problem. She will live with those nightmares for the rest of her life
Beth, nothing can change that. But what I did, made a difference to them and I
don’t regret it for a single second.”

“What’s happening here, Jax?” Continuously
shaking my head, trying to make sense of the nonsensical. “I feel like I’m in a
nightmare right now. Is this really happening to us?”

I love him, I really do. But what he’s telling
me could shatter us apart and break me forever. My emotions flit from one to
the other too quickly for me to grab hold of one and stick to it.

“This is it Beth. Unfiltered—”

Rage. I settle for rage.

“Don’t. Don’t even say that this is unfiltered
honesty.” I suddenly feel like a storm within the limitations of a tear drop.
But when it lands in my lap the emotion explodes. “
This
is bullshit and
I can’t even comprehend what you’re telling me. Well, this is too fucked up for
me.” I drag myself up from the floor. “In case you hadn’t realised by now Jax,
I’m just a boring girl with a sweet little bookshop. Being with you was
supposed to bring me happiness, not a broken heart and a prison sentence.”

“You’ve done nothing wrong.”

“Are you sure about that? Falling in love with
you feels like a pretty fucking bad move right now. Here was me thinking we
could tackle this together and get through it but I didn’t realise that your
past was creeping up behind us wielding a goddam sledgehammer.”

I dig my fingers into my scalp, attempting to
get a grip of the situation.