Vengeful Love: Black Diamonds (26 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

Everything is blurred. My eyes struggle to focus. The first thing that hits me is the smell. Damp. Decaying. Then the cold. My clothes are wet. Rain. It was raining. A shiver courses through my body and the shudder brings the low-lit room into sharper focus. Blurred but less so.

My head throbs at the base. I try to touch it but my hands are trapped behind my back. I rattle my fists and feel the metal around them with my fingertips. I’m handcuffed to a chair. A metal chair. The kind you’d find in a roadside truck stop.

My feet are bare. My clothes look dirty but intact. A small feeling of relief comes but it’s fleeting. There are heavy bolts on the floor. They secure metal to the concrete ground. I scan the metal, lifting my head to follow what I realise is the leg of a table. A chair like the one on which I sit is on the opposite side of the table, a large horizontal mirror hangs on the wall behind it. I turn my head around the room, wincing as my neck rotates. It’s a small room. One miniscule glassless window looks onto what I think is concrete but the sky is still dark outside. There’s a lamp on the table that gives off a low orange glow. Wireless. Battery powered.

This is an interview room. An interview room similar to the room I sat in to give a statement that Saturday night in November. Except there’s rising damp here. The corners of the room are wet. Green, yellow and black. The plaster is cracked and peeling off the walls.

The large metal door opens in on the room and my heart rate doubles. I hold my breath.

“We’ve been waiting for you to come round.”

Katrina Martin.

Oddly, her familiar face settles my pulse a notch. I watch her move to the chair in front of the mirror. She’s been watching me from behind the wall.

“Like it?” she asks, sitting in her cheap black suit, her legs parted like a man in her flat, scuffed shoes.

I glance at her belt, looking for her badge, and remember that she’s been suspended. Yet, a handgun is holstered on her hip.

“Don’t fret. It’s mostly to let you know how things are going to go,” she says, following my gaze to her weapon. “As long as I get what I need, it stays right where it is.”

She looks tired. Worn. Haggard. Much older than her years. Older than she looked just weeks ago in Dubai.

“Not talking? You usually have so much to say.”

My mind is still processing everything, completely drawing a blank after those words left Stuart’s lips.
I’m sorry.

Stuart and Trina?

She stands now, one hand on her hip, the other turning around the room. “This one is a little run down. The building’s been derelict for a long time. But I thought it would be nice to give you a little taster. Once you give me what I want, you’ll be in a much nicer version to make your statement against your boyfriend.”

My throat feels like it’s being grated with glass as I speak. “That’s what you want? That’s why I’m here?”

She sits again now, glaring at me. Unresponsive.

“You want me to tell you something that isn’t true.”

She throws her head back with a deep, menacing laugh that comes from her gut. Then she stops it abruptly.

“Except, you and I both know that it
is
true, Scarlett. Don’t we?”

She leans forward, resting her forearms on the table between us. Her voice comes low and sinister. “You know what makes me sick, Scarlett? People like you. People like your boyfriend. Gliding through life, exterminating anything and any
one
who dares to stand in your way. And men. Men thinking women are nothing. Using us, hurting us. Not letting us get to where we
fucking
deserve in life.” She leans back with a loud, harsh snort. “They say they want to put away the bad guys. Think because they have a dick between their legs, they’re better than us at doing it. But you know what the truth is? They only want to fight the bad guys if the bad guys don’t pay. Bad guys can’t be rich. They’re the scum of the earth if they don’t have money. The dregs of society. If they have money, they
pay
to be good.”

My shoulders ache when I hold my head up but I do because I can’t tear my eyes away from her venom. Her hatred. I can’t help but wonder what or who made her this way.

“Do you see, Scarlett? Do you see why I have to do this? For us. For women. For the greater good of society. And you can help me. Don’t you want that? Don’t you want to set right a wrong?”

I lost my hold on what’s right and wrong a while ago. All I know now is that there are so many wrongs, the only thing to do is what feels right. She’ll never know how much I’d like to go back. To do things differently. But I’m not sorry that bastard is dead. It was right to take him out of this world, to take him away from Gregory and bring him the justice he deserved for everything he ever did. To Gregory. To Lara. To Elsa. To my father. Everything else that’s happened has to be right because it sent that man to hell.

“Let me ask you something, Trina. Where do you stand on doing something that may be wrong in the eyes of the law to put right an evil? To correct something that’s morally repugnant?” Her eyes darken and burn into mine. It resonates. “You think that your plan for the greater good involves putting a man behind bars for serving justice?”

“Justice is what the law is for,” she snarls. “Justice is why police walk the streets. Justice isn’t served by corrupt men.”

“You think kidnapping to uncover a non-existent bribe is serving justice?”

She leans forward and slams the side of her fist against the metal table, the sound echoing in the room. She stands, clashing her metal chair against the mirrored wall. My heart pounds as she moves around the table towards me. She takes her gun from her holster. Air leaves my lungs.

I stare at the barrel before she raises her hand and crashes the gun across my cheek and temple, sending me and the chair slamming against the concrete floor. My shoulder burns. My head rings.

“You said we weren’t going to hurt her.”

Feet. Converse. Combat trousers. I blink, trying to refocus, and watch Trina’s scuffed shoes storm out of the room. My breathing is erratic as the new feet move around the table towards me.

He grunts as he lifts both me and the chair back upright. Then Stuart Culliton sits onto the edge of the table, looking at my head. I can feel myself bleeding before a crimson bead rolls down my cheek.

My body trembles. Shocked. Cold. Terrified.

He rubs his hands harshly across his face and those familiar brown eyes are full of despair when he stops.

“Are you thirsty?”

I feel my brows furrow as I process the absurd question. Of all the things,
that’s
what he says. I nod, trying to understand how this boy, who’s shown moments of true sweetness, has come to sit before me now, taking a role in my kidnapping, messed up with Katrina Martin.

He reaches for a bottle of water behind him on the table. “Put your head back.”

I lean back, uncertain, but I open my mouth. He holds my chin as he carefully drips water into my mouth and I look into those eyes again.

“This is not you,” I whisper, not knowing whether he should be helping me, or who is behind that mirror.

He squeezes his eyes shut and when they reopen, they’re black. “You don’t know me.” He takes the water and leaves.

* * *

I don’t know how long I’m alone. I don’t know how long they’ve had me here. Rain continues to pour outside. The night is still dark. Wind blows in through the open window and whirls freezing cold air around my body.

“Gregory.” His name carries as a whisper in the room, drowned by the wind. I know he can’t hear me.

Tears mount behind my eyes. I close my lids to stop them from falling. They’re out there, watching me, and they won’t see me break. Gregory will be doing everything he can to find me. Jackson will have his team on this. I know it.

I won’t give him up. I won’t.

But as time passes and I don’t stop shivering uncontrollably, I wonder whether giving myself up is the only way to end this. Give Katrina Martin more than she bargained for. Give her the win she so desperately wants.

My teeth chatter and my head drops against my chest. My eyes close but I won’t sleep. My body wants to shut down but it can’t. They’re out there.

* * *

The door opens with the sound of metal grinding against concrete, making me lift my head up from my chest. Stuart takes off his coat and wraps it around my shoulders, still warm. I could cry out with delight but my throat is dry, my entire body aches. Tears don’t come. The heat of the coat sifts into my ice cold skin.

“Would you undo my hands?” I croak.

He stands on the opposite side of the table, looking at me with eyes full of pity, but he doesn’t move.

“Please.”

He doesn’t glance back at the mirror, which tells me we’re here alone. He moves to my back and unfastens the cuffs. I yell in pain as I move my arms from behind me, my shoulders burning through the change of position. I bite down on my lip, raising my numb arms until I’m able to rub my aching muscles.

“Thank you.”

He moves the chair forward from the wall where Trina left it and takes a seat opposite me. There’s nowhere for me to go. I don’t have any strength to fight and he knows it. Even if I tried to run, he’d catch me.

He rubs his face. He looks young. Helpless and lost.

“Why?”

My question doesn’t induce a reply but there’s a subtle change in him. Recognition? Regret?

“Why?” I ask again, louder this time.

“It’s not about you. It’s about him.”

Stuart’s head is down, his chin angled to the floor. He mumbles as he speaks.

“What did he ever do to you?”

His Zimbabwean twang is thick. “Men like him. Men who have everything.
He
has everything.”

“Christ, Stuart, she’s brainwashing you. You don’t know anything about Gregory and the shit he’s been through.”

“He worked hard for what he has, right? Don’t feed me bull, Scarlett, you’re better than that. I know what tough really is. I know what it’s like to grow up with nothing. No one.”

“He’s dealt with more than you know and he’s been nothing but nice to you.”

“He’s got a fuckin’ funny way of showing it.”

“He took you on.” I run a hand down my throat, trying to ease the pain as I speak. “That’s not something he’d do if he didn’t like you, if he didn’t see potential in you, if he didn’t want to get to know you.”

His body seems to soften and I allow myself to hope that I’m getting through to him.

“We
both
like you, Stuart. This is not you. We can walk out of here together.”

He stands, anger raging from him as he snatches the metal cuffs from the table.

“In front. Please,” I beg.

He cuffs me roughly, yanking my arms forward so they’re locked around the leg of the table. I’m alone again and the coat doesn’t hold off the cold for long. My muscles shiver and my head is increasingly weary.

Think. Find a way.

He grew up alone. That’s what he’s talking about. He told us in the first meeting we had with him that he didn’t know his parents, that he’d never met them.

I laugh internally.
He swore on his mother’s life he wasn’t involved.
Of course he did. He’s never met her.
How could we have missed that?

What else am I missing? What do I know?
Trina wants a confession that Gregory and D.I. Barnes were involved in bribery. Stuart wants what and why? Moreover, how in the hell do they think they’re going to get what they want?

Chapter Twenty-Five

At some point, I surrender. Whether it’s sleep, exhaustion or something else, I don’t know, but when my forehead rolls on the cold metal table and my eyes open, the sky is charcoal, not black, and the rain has stopped.

The living nightmare continues. I swallow, trying to soothe my dry throat, and push myself back, sitting as straight as my cuffed wrists allow, my back cracking as I rise.

I feel the presence in the room before I see the figure sitting opposite me. His tousled, dirty-blond hair looks dry, messy compared to his slick appearance at Thursday’s gala. Steely greys are focussed on me. His usually clean-shaven face is sketched with stubble and the remnants of a bruise I suspect Gregory made. He wears a thick, warm, duffle coat, fastened to the neck, making his shoulders look even broader than they are. His hands rest in the pockets of his coat.

“Scarlett, so thrilled you’re awake. And, if you don’t mind me saying so, looking significantly less smug than usual.”

I stare at the missing piece of the puzzle. Nick Henshaw.

He leans his head to one side. “Nothing to say for yourself today?”

“Why am I here?”

“Speak up now, Scarlett.”

“Why am I here?” My effort to raise my voice is lost in the gruff of my words.

He stands, moving slowly towards me. “Well, because you just.” His fist locks around my hair and yanks my head towards him as he grates his words into my ear. “Keep. Getting. In. My. Way.”

He releases my hair, pushing my head away from him, then pulls his chair around the table so it’s next to me, rather than opposite. He straddles the seat, leaning onto the back, his face so close to mine I can feel his hot, liquor laced breath. “You’re the brains of everything. Aren’t you, princess? So good. You excel at so many things, Scarlett.” He taps my nose with the tip of his finger the way he might torment a child. “Including getting yourself kidnapped.” Now he laughs, rocking back and forth on his chair.

“So you intend to kill me, Nick? Wind up behind bars for life. Is that your plan?”

He laughs harder now, throwing his head back on a chortle then rocking forward, thumping his hand on the metal table and making me jump. “Ah, she’s funny. You kill me. No. I don’t intend to kill you, princess. That would be a waste of such a pretty little thing.” He twirls a finger in my hair and I lift my shoulder fast, pushing him away. “Oops. Gutsy. Perhaps I’ll change my mind. My new friend—I think you’ve met her, Katrina Martin?—she tells me anyone can pay their way out of a murder charge these days.”

“If you don’t want to kill me, what do you want?”

“Oh, sweetheart, you’re just a pawn in a big boys’ game. There’s something that means a lot more to me than your life. Or Gregory’s. Or putting both your bodies into the ground.” He sits upright, drumming his fingertips on the metal frame of his chair. “The thing is,
you
keep taking it from me. First, you take my company when it was starting to turn a profit again. All those years of putting sweat and blood and money into my company, then you and the mighty CEO, try to take that all away from me. Then, you force me to resign and I
think
you forgot to write my goodbye handshake into that resignation letter, princess, didn’t you?”

He stands from his chair and starts to pace the floor behind me. I watch him move in the mirror, my body tense, waiting for a blow.

“My wife left me.” His face contorts in a strange mix of, I think, anger and tears. He swipes the back of his hand under his nose as he snorts. “She’s the only fucking reason I signed your letter. That bastard used her against me and she fucking left me anyway.”

“Maybe you should have thought about that before you fucked someone behind her back,” I snipe.

“Maybe you should have thought about that before you fucked someone behind her back.” He mimics my words like a puppet, then grabs my hair and yanks my head up so I’m staring at the scene in the mirror. “So fucking clever.” The veins in his neck and temples are fat. His face is red with rage.

“Third!” He releases my hair and his reflection holds up three fingers on a sadistic smile. “Third, you ruin my plan. AGAIN!”

“Black Diamonds,” I say, watching him move so his back is leaning against the mirror and he’s staring right at me.

“Fucking Black Diamonds. I was supposed to get a payout. The game for three million.” He folds his arms across his chest. “Poof! Like magic, there you were again, fucking up my plan. First, you convince Gregory not to pay what the game’s worth. But he screws up, he offers us an in, lets Stuart take a position on the inside where he can see your next move. And I know the market, so I start registering the game that
I
own. But there you were again.”

Finally, all the pieces fit together. “This is your new plan. You want a ransom.”

“Ding! Ding! Ding!” He rattles his hands in the air with an enormous fake smile. “Jackpot! And from where I’m standing, it looks like you can’t fuck this one up.”

“I’ve got to hand it to you, Nick, you’ve played a good game.”

He takes a theatrical bow. “Why thank you, although, I already knew that.”

“So call him, tell him where you are, ask him for what you want.”

He smiles, leaning his head to one side and pointing a swirling finger at me. “Oh, I’m going to, princess. But for now, I’m going to let him sweat. He can wonder whether he’s going to get you back, whether he’s going to get what
he
wants. You’ve been gone all night. He’ll be damn near broken.” He sniggers, his eyes rising to the sky, his hands forming prayer. “Then I win two times.”

He lunges towards me, grabbing my throat, digging his fingers and thumb into my flesh, hard. I try to breathe but I can’t draw air. My legs kick, desperate for oxygen.

He releases me and my head falls forward as I gasp.

“Don’t get up,” he says, laughing as he leaves me in the room alone.