His grim expression softens as he takes my hand. “I am a mannerless bastard. I haven’t brought you over to greet my father.”
“I would love to,” I smile.
I remember being pinned in my broken seat, twisted in the metal and looking at my father’s poor, bloody face, his blank eyes… and I didn’t recognize him. I held on to his body, crying and begging him to come back. My dad was larger than life, with a booming laugh and always a smile for me. It was unimaginable that anything could strike him down. There were sirens and people shouting, the creak of twisted steel, but all I could hear was the lack of Dad’s voice.
It’s the silence that’s terrifying. Maybe Wallace is feeling it, too.
Alastair is covered in tubes and wires, his chest heavily bandaged, but he looks large and intimidating, like he’s ready to open his eyes, sit up and start barking orders.
“Dad,” Wallace’s voice is unbearably gentle. “I’m here, Scarlett is with me. We’ll look after Mum. Do find your way back soon.”
Chapter Thirty-One
In which we learn there is a human version of the gadfly that is even worse than the insect one.
Scarlett…
I am so caffeinated that my skin is vibrating.
Wallace urged me several times to take a nap on the very comfortable couch, but I couldn't. It feels like we’re in suspended animation, his father lying motionless in his ocean of blinking medical equipment. Then, Wallace and Alec will discover some new outrage and time speeds up again.
“They hit our legitimate businesses?” Wallace snarls, gripping the table hard enough that I hear the wood creak.
“They firebombed the Medusa Club and destroyed a high-end clothing shop we just opened on Sloane Street in Chelsea,” Alec confirms grimly. “Whoever this is has no problem with risking innocents, nor attracting unwanted attention from Scotland Yard. So far, the inspectors we have in our pocket are holding off so that we can take care of our own problems.But if this gets worse, there’s bound to be a few politicians we haven’t paid off who’ll raise a stink.”
“I’m always happy to pay a visit to the first one to open their fucking mouth,” Wallace says. There’s an eagerness in his tone that chills me.
There’s a loud ‘ding!’ on the laptop and I jump half a foot. Definitely, too much caffeine.
“It’s Xenia. She put the image together.”
The picture I’d seen pulled from the security camera was terrible, fuzzy, and hard to recognize anything. This masterpiece is crystal clear. The construction site is empty of people on the level where the girder is dangling, except for the construction worker on the girder, he’s swarthy-looking, wearing an ill-fitting hard hat and yes…
“You were right, Scarlett. Well done,” Alec says. “It’s a long-range sniper rifle modified with the shorter barrel.”
Wallace points to the next image, a closeup of the man’s arm. “Recognize the tattoo?”
“Fuck!” Alec says, but he says it in a posh British accent, so it sounds elegant.
“What are we seeing?” I ask.
“The tattoo. He’s working with the Krasniqi mob, they’re an Albanian crime family,” Wallace explains. “They’re a fecking nightmare.”
“The Gadfly,” Alec says. “I can’t believe he took this job.”
“Gadfly?” I’m confused. “Like the insect that exists only to bite animals and people?”
“Exactly. The human - well, subhuman - version of the gadfly is a person who irritates or instigates,” Wallace says. “This useless feck makes a fortune off doing the dirty work, the destructive, shitty attacks, keeping the target busy cleaning up the mayhem while his client does the real damage behind the scenes.”
“The Gadfly,” I nod. “He sounds like one of those bargain basement villains, like the Temu version of the Joker.”
They both look at me blankly. Everyone here is too rich for Temu, I guess.
“He signed his death warrant when he shot my father,” Wallace says. He sounds completely emotionless. “I’m going to kill every man in his mob. I’ll burn down everything he has to bone and ash. This motherfucker will be the cautionary tale of the decade.”
Staring at my husband’s remote expression, I believe him.
“I’m going to be busy for the next few weeks.”
