Ten Thousand Lies (2 page)

“A bearded big baby.” I sighed.

Ollie scowled at us. “Ha-ha.”

“So, yeah,” I said, “you know about the Godwins. You know about the shoot-out.”

“Yeah,” Ollie replied.

“The night of the massacre was the night Ronen and I met Rex and Xanthe,” I said. “The massacre happened actually because of Rex.”

Ollie’s deep-set eyes bugged in surprise. “I thought…it was the rival family—the Frasers, right? They had a couple of their people go and assassinate…no?”

“That’s the official story,” said Ronen, “the one history will remember. It gave the Godwins the excuse to go after the Frasers in retaliation, eliminating the competition.”

“It was a bloodbath,” Ollie said.

“Yes, it was,” I agreed.

“What does any of this have to do with Rex and Xanthe?” His voice went even deeper, softer.

It made me wonder if he’d have a change of heart when he found out.

I looked to Ronen. He nodded, encouraging me to continue. Somehow, he could pick up on the vibes of people, situations, and he’d never steered us wrong yet. His intuition had saved our arses on more than one occasion.

When I faced Ollie once more, his whiskey-colored eyes pierced mine. It was always something I respected about him; he looked people in the eyes, and he held the gaze.

“Xanthe didn’t meet me as Ricki. Back then, I was someone else,” I said.

“Who were you?”

“My name was James Charles Godwin. The night I met her…was the night James died.”

Ricki

Fourteen Years Earlier…

We are so fucking screwed.

Although I’d been to the cells on several occasions, I’d never gotten used to them. Dark, freezing, a strange moisture constantly hanging about, a mold-like smell mingling with unwashed body odor and raw meat. Dirt, concrete, blood, shit, and vomit all coalesced to promise the cattle their situation was as nasty as it could be.

Cattle.
It was what my father called them.

Sure enough, when we’d come down to the basement cells in the warehouse where the cattle were kept, Ronen and I had been greeted with heavy grunts and the screams of the poor kid getting Willis’s dry cock up his arse.

Both of us snuck into the cell, and then I pressed the barrel of my Glock to the back of the twisted motherfucker’s head, the single overhead light flickering off his scarred, meaty face. Willis pulled out of the young man, and the kid spun around and clocked the bastard, knocking him out cold.

Ronen held up his hand to stop me from grabbing the kid and hauling him out of there.

Using his rapist’s own belt, the kid bound Willis’s hands before dragging, lifting, and then securing the motherfucker to an iron hook mounted on a wall. The adrenaline rush gave him fucking superpowers. Finding the lone wooden stool in the cell, the kid busted off one of the legs. I closed my eyes, unwilling to see what would happen next.

Willis squealed like a pig being slaughtered.

“How does it feel, motherfucker?” the kid snarled. “You like that shit?”

Willis howled, and I bit my cheeks in order not to tell the kid to stop.

This is what Willis deserves.
I couldn’t bring myself to stop Karma.

“Were you a virgin? I’m honored to be your fucking first—and last!” the kid screamed.

I opened my eyes to see what Ronen thought about all this. He had a bored expression on his face; he’d seen worse. The sounds though…the hatred on this young man’s face—for a split second, I thought I was witnessing demonic possession.

It will be a long fucking time before any of it leaves my head.

I had to get out. Stepping outside the filthy cell, I called Deo to pull up to the warehouse door.

When I came back in, the screams had died down, and the kid had Willis on the ground. Taking the man’s own knife that had been poking out of his boot, the kid sliced Willis’s throat. Willis didn’t make it easy. Even as his blood sprayed the kid from face to bare thighs, he kicked and gurgled, fighting to live. With a hairy, beefy hand, he grabbed the kid’s face, forcing him to watch while Willis died.

And the kid did. He stared into Willis’s piggy black eyes until the life bled out of him. Willis’s hand dropped from the kid’s face, flopping with a quiet smack on the concrete floor.

Ronen looked at me, his face splitting into a huge smile. “That was some beautiful poetic justice right there.”

Poetic justice or not, Ronen and I had just witnessed the unleashing of a darkness. No one could come back from doing what the kid had done. Worse was the fact that Ronen and I had let it happen. Willis had stolen the kid’s innocence, but we’d let his soul be corrupted beyond repair.

Ronen grabbed the kid’s jeans and tossed them at me. Then, he hauled the kid off Willis and held him up, so we could shove him into his pants.

Dragging the kid between us, we made our way out of the subterranean maze and up to the ground level. It wasn’t until we were halfway to the exit when one of the guards spotted us.

“The fook is goin’ on ’ere?”

“Fucking mind your own business, Wallace,” I snapped. “This doesn’t concern you.”

Wallace didn’t agree. “I’m callin’ yer da, boy.”

Shit escalated quickly. It didn’t matter that I was Godwin’s boy. Busted was busted. To save our arses, Ronen and I dropped the kid and opened fire on the four warehouse guards. At the sound of gunfire, the kid started crawling toward the exit, and then Ronen and I scooped him up and booked it out the door.

Deo was waiting for us right outside. We wrenched open the van door and tossed the kid inside.

“What the fuck was that shit?” Deo screamed.

“Just fucking go, brother,” I told the massive Viking Maori, hopping into the front seat.

So motherfucking screwed. All of us. We’ve sentenced Deo to death, too. How do I get us out of this?

Lies on lies on lies…

“Deo, man, if we get pulled over like this, we’ll be fucked from all sides,” I said, glancing nervously at the speedometer. “Slow the fuck down.”

Deo eased off the pedal. No lie, if the bloody fuzz busted us, not even my father—Charles bloody Godwin—could help us. While Deo looked clean, Ronen and I were covered with blood, and there was a half-dead minor in the back of the van.

A half-dead minor my father considered his property.

Ronen and I had murdered a few henchmen to get the kid out, people on my father’s payroll. We would be seen as traitors and thieves, and Charles Godwin didn’t tolerate either.

“Hey, kid,” I called over my shoulder. “What do we do when we get your arse to Oxford?”

“Take me to my parents’ house,” he replied. “I need to see my dad.”

It was obvious he didn’t consider his parents’ house his home.

Why would he?
His father had
sold
him to mine.

“We have to take the bastard out, Jamey,” said Ronen.

“I get to do it,” the kid said, his jaw clenched.

No doubt, he was in some serious pain. When we’d gotten wind of who was watching over the cattle tonight, it had been well into the shift change. Willis had been known to abuse the fuck out of them before they were shipped. He wasn’t supposed to; he’d been told countless times to knock that shit off, but he’d been friends with my father since they were kids, and Dad had let the motherfucker slide since he’d done such a good job at keeping the cattle in line.

“This is bad, Jamey,” Ronen whispered.

He was looking at the kid, but I knew Ronen wasn’t talking about him. He was talking about the fucking situation, and that shit didn’t settle well with me. Ronen got vibes. It was always wise to listen to him.

The kid was lying on his side on the floor of the van, his eyes black voids of pain flashing in intervals from the highway lamplights. He couldn’t take any pressure on his rear; Willis had done a hell of a number on it.

“What have you gotten me into?” hissed Deo.

Ignoring him, I asked the kid, “How old are you?”

Those half-dead eyes swiveled to my face. “What?”

“How old are you, kid?”

“Sixteen.”

“What’s your name?”

“Rex.”

“Your douche-bag father named you Rex?” asked Ronen.

“No. The douche bag named me Richard, after him. I changed it to Rex.”

“Too bloody right,” grunted Deo.

Halfway to Oxford, we still had about forty-five minutes to go. Rex was adamant about going after his father. I didn’t know specifics, but apparently, the motherfucker was a real piece of work. He’d gotten in deep with one of my father’s bookies, and he couldn’t pay up.

Richard Sr. wouldn’t be missed.

Richard Jr., however…
fuck
.

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit!

Suddenly, I felt fucking stupid for blowing all of this over one piece of sixteen-year-old arse. Rex had been the only fucking piece of cattle in the holding cell. My father wouldn’t be restocking for another couple of weeks. We’d have had plenty of time to figure out a plan instead of going in with guns blazing, like we had.

Once is one time too many.

Rex was our responsibility now. He was one of us. He was
ours
. Ronen, Deo, and I—we never left a man behind.

Glancing at Ronen over my shoulder once more, I saw it behind his John Lennon specs. He was thinking the same damn thing.

Weirdly enough, I was
proud
of the kid.

Charles Maximillian James Godwin would
not
feel the same way about me when he found out I was the one behind this fucking fiasco.

For generations, the Godwins had ruled the organized crime of Britain. We were filthy rich. We owned just about fucking everything from police forces to politicians. Our money was drenched in blood and tears, lies, and the souls of those who’d gotten in our way. We controlled everything from the drug to weapon to human cartels.

The drugs and weapons, I couldn’t care less about.

But the
people
, man. Mostly women and children were coerced, kidnapped, or drugged—sometimes, all three—and delivered to my father to supply the sick needs of other filthy rich twats. It was huge money.
Huge
.

From all over the world, my father would accumulate people and subject them to rape, torture, humiliation, and—if they were lucky—a short life. These souls would be exposed to Willis-type fuckers who got their rocks off from brutalizing the less fortunate. Once their spirits were broken, they would be cleaned up and shipped out to buyers to work in brothels and other establishments. Massage parlors, spas—that sort of shit.

The most attractive would be mentally destroyed to be subservient. My father
would pay people to break down, humiliate, terrify, and then train them into being top-notch sex slaves.

My own mother had been one of the attractive ones. She had come from the Ukraine with the promise of a better life. My father had taken one look at her and claimed her for himself.

It hadn’t gone down as we’d planned. We weren’t supposed to off anyone, but the moment I’d held the gun to Willis’s head, I’d known he’d have to go. He’d have run straight to my pops and blabbed that I was rescuing the cattle.

“You sure you’re up for this?” I asked Rex. “We can drop you off somewhere safe. I think you might need to go to a hospital. We can take care of your dad—”

“I get to do it,” he repeated. “No hospital.”

The hairs on my neck stiffened. I’d already witnessed what Rex was capable of.