Page 2 of Callous Shot

I only have snapshots after that. Neil’s shaking hands gripping the steering wheel, mumbling something about needing to leave before the police arrived to investigate. The black plume of smoke obscuring the sky in my wing mirror. The broken words scraped out from Neil’s raw throat, insisting that he could’ve stopped the tragedy if only Roy hadn’t chosen to keep secrets from us. My son, running out of the house and clinging onto my trembling legs as my tears began to fall.

There was no way a human could withstand being engulfed in the epicentre of that explosion.

Two men entered the warehouse that day, and neither returned.

I lost a husband. Neil lost a brother. Stephen lost an uncle.

And Daniel lost a father.

I still hear my son’s heartbreaking cries for his daddy, even now.

I still see his tear-stained face as he sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.

And although he has no memory of that night anymore, I still vividly remember the words he said, right before our lives were torn apart.

Daddy. Fire. Fire. Fire.

1

DAN

“I don’t like the sound of this Operation Foxglove.” Neil paced up and down, as he always did when he was thinking. There was even a path worn into the Aubusson rug, fading the pattern in a distinct line. “I might have to talk to Mike Bellingham.”

At the mention of the Bellinghams, his lip curled, and I knew mine did too, because I could feel it.

Fucking Bellingham.

Here’s the thing. Our families were on opposite sides of the law—literally. Harold Bellingham was a senior barrister specialising in commercial law with a practice he shared with his wife, Cressida, who was a renowned solicitor in demand all over the Home Counties. Then there was Harold’s brother, Michael, aka Mike. He’d followed the path of the law like the rest of the family, but he’d gone down a different route. Mike was a sergeant in the local police force, and he was currently a part of the Operation Foxglove task force, a rural crime investigation spearheaded by his boss’s boss.

Our rivalry wasn’t even to do with the fact that we were on opposite sides of the law, not really. It all stemmed from the case Harold had lost. He still held a grudge, but who fucking cared about that when my dad was gone for good? I’d grown up knowing exactly what kind of family the Bellinghams were—callous, cold, and uncaring. There was no empathy for the loss of my dad, only hatred that we’d denied Harold a win in court and had lost him a lucrative client in the process. It was unfortunate, because while we were essentially rivals, Neil had an accord of sorts with Mike. Basically, Neil fed him information that might help him out here and there, and in return, he redirected unwanted attention away from us.

But now we had a problem. A big one. Operation Foxglove were sniffing around my best friend’s family clinic.

“You already spoke to Mike,” my mum pointed out. She shuffled through the papers spread out on the huge mahogany desk, her lips pursed. “Hmm. Maybe… Don’t worry, I’ll come up with something.”

Watching her silhouette framed by the late-afternoon light spilling through the huge, lead-paned window, I could see her instantly calculating and discarding scenarios in her head. I grinned. Rachel Hoyton was a force to be reckoned with. Even before my dad’s death, back when I was just a toddler, she’d been heavily involved in the Hoyton Firm, and once he’d passed away, she’d stepped up her involvement. Now, she pretty much ran the entire firm alongside my uncle Neil. Neil’s son, my cousin, Stephen, was set to eventually inherit the firm, but he was currently away on business in Thailand, and we had no idea when he’d return.

“I’ll speak to him again,” Neil said. “There has to be something he wants. We have plenty of information.” He glanced over at me. “Can you try not to antagonise his only nephew for a couple of days while I set something up?”

I gasped. “How very dare you? That bellend is the one antagonising me, not the other way around.”

My mum and Neil both rolled their eyes, which was fucking rude in my humble opinion. They knew first-hand that the rivalry between me and Lincoln bellend Bellingham was personal. Yeah, there was the whole family thing, but also, he was a giant fucking wanker. He’d gone to a posh private boarding school, where he was on the lacrosse team, and yeah, okay, the school wouldn’t accept me when I applied, so maybe I was bitter about that, but he acted as if I was too stupid to get in. It wasn’t even about my brain capacity. It was the fact that the school didn’t want a member of a notorious crime family as a student. Simple as that.

Anyway, who wanted to play lacrosse? Not me.

So, back to my personal nemesis. On the occasions we’d been forced to interact over the years, he’d always acted exactly as you might imagine an arrogant little rich boy would—like a complete and utter asshole who liked to lord it over me.

Then he got into Whelford University, which was basically a smaller version of Oxford or Cambridge, and I was forced to study for my degree at Whelford’s rival uni, Cranham University.

Did I mention it was a former Victorian prison? Yeah. I wish I was joking. It was just about as bleak as you imagine.

And then there was the whole Cranham Kings–Whelford Flames hockey rivalry. Fun times.

“Daniel?”

I blinked, registering Neil’s hand waving in my face. “Yeah?”

“Zoning out thinking about Harold Bellingham’s son by any chance?”