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“And?” I nod a silent greeting to the butler that greets me.
“What else did Simon tell you?” I press, taking the stairs up to the fourth floor one at a time, slower than I normally do, as I buy myself time for her to confess.
“You’re sending one of your…”
“One of my…?”
“Girls,” she growls, disgust coating her response. “You’re sending one of them behind enemy lines. You’re sending a whore to a whore house. Like sending a prisoner home.”
“Yes, I am.” Clutching the file that Julian gave me the other day, I grin at the anger in her words.
Margaret Dorchester-Sloane is the epitome of grinning and bearing it. You’d sooner bleed a stone than get any real emotion from her. But since her husband died, it seems her walls have cracked.
“Do you want to know why?”
“Because you’re either extremely foolish or very certain of the outcome you desire.”
“The best way to torture a man is to gut him of his entrails one by one. Take every organ that keeps him living and crush it in front of his eyes.” The sound of her audible swallow makes me chuckle. “I’m going to gut the bastards, one organ at a time. Starting with the Republicans’ kingpin friend Charles Chapman. I’m going to bleed that cunt dry just as he had my father bled dry.”
“Henry…” she sighs with trepidation.
“Isn’t that what you want, Mother? Justice? Blood for blood? A life for a life? Isn’t that what I promised you?”
“Yes.”
“And it is what you want, isn’t it?”
There’s a stretch of silence as I walk inside the meeting room and put the file down at my seat. The ornately carved table has a large oak tree in the middle with nine branches leading to nine seats, each hand carved with the crest of its wolf. The three other seats are at the roots. They’re the only seats that never change—the monarch, the Gloucester, and the Rochester. At one point or another, the others will change according to the ties the monarch chooses to keep closest.
“Answer my question, Mother.”
She’s taking her time answering me as though she’s debating her reply. Or perhaps it’s her conscience she’s battling with. Either way, I don’t have time for it.
“Yes,” she finally whispers. “It’s what I want. Justice.”
“Good.” Because I’m painting this fucking town red.
Ending the call, I focus on the file, opening it so that my notes stare up at me, along with the ones Julian had already made and the photos.
“Your Grace.” A female voice calls my attention. “Mr. Kent said you wanted me to come up.”
I glance up to find one of the prettier girls in the club standing in the open doorway. She’s in her normal clothes, a floral dress and bright green heels that make her appear almost as tall as I am. Her hair is loosely braided down one shoulder with her long fringe tucked behind her ears while her make-up is very minimal. She looks better like this than when she’s draped in gold body chains and her make-up is dark and dramatic.
“Close the door, Elizabeth.” Her eyes widen, watching me carefully as I pull out a chair for her and gesture for her to sit once she closes the door. “I have a job for you.”
Just as I slip Chapman’s photo from the file, placing it in front of her, the door opens, and Simon walks in with Julian traipsing in behind him.
“You started without us,” Simon observes, stating the obvious as a way of announcing his presence. Not that any could miss it. He’s like a dark shadow looming in the room.
He’s not happy with my plan or the fact that it involves him getting his hands dirty. It doesn’t matter how well we pull this off, there’s always going to be something that goes awry.
“I have other things to do today aside from hiding in my hotel.”
“You don’t have a hotel,” he retorts, sitting in his seat like a king on a throne.
“Neither do you.” Blowing out a deep breath, I continue addressing Elizabeth. “That man”—I point at the image in front of her—“is Charles Chapman. He’s an East End gangster, the head of the Coster Kings syndicate.”
Picking up the photo, she scans it carefully. I give her a moment before I go into the details of her assignment. The girls of the club are our eyes and ears. Lord Varys had his Little Birds, and the Wolfsden Society has Hush.
