and carefully held the syringe by her fingertips. She showed it to Arty. ‘I think someone has taken Liam, unless Terrence is a drug user.’
Arty carefully took hold of the syringe and placed it on the granite worktop. He stared for a moment as Brooke looked at his expression of fear – pure fear. Visions of Liam being drugged and taken to a warehouse, naked, and strapped to a torture table, gave Arty a foul taste of bitterness in his mouth.
‘Are you okay, Arty? What do you think this means?’
Arty wasn’t about to divulge his inner terrors, and so, gently, he shook his head. ‘This could mean anything, but, listen. Let’s just stay put in the lounge and wait for Terrence.’
They didn’t have to wait long before he called – he was outside.
By now, Ricky had similar thoughts to Arty, once he’d been told what was found in the kitchen; however, Ricky wasn’t afraid. He was angry. This was a serious piss-take.
Terrence parked his car in between the two others. His men wasted no time in jumping out from their cars and scouring the perimeter. Terrence bundled the four youngsters into his Bentley and stood for a moment like a bodyguard. After all, as far as he was concerned, he had precious cargo to get to safety.
Once they were away from the villa, Terrence asked them to relay every bit of information before he would make that all-important call. He knew that it would turn Mike’s firm entirely upside down.
And he also knew it would set off a chain of events that would probably lead to a devastating outcome.
* * *
Zara decided it was best if they all returned to her father’s house. She couldn’t devise a plan alone as she needed their input on how they should move forward.
Mike phoned Eric and told him to go to their parents’ place and make sure they were ready to move out for a while. Mike knew what his father was like: it would take more than the threat of Torvic, the Russian, to have him running scared.
Eric reluctantly agreed to go, as he felt excluded from the decision-making, and he wasn’t happy about that. As usual, he reasoned, big brother Mikey was playing the role of top dog while he – barely ten months younger, for Christ’s sake – was the puppy once again. It was a fucking nightmare. He felt out of it, quite naturally, and it wasn’t as if this was the first time either. However, he wasn’t going down the road of another confrontation. This was serious business, and if he was being truthful, he really was best out of the way.
Sitting behind the desk, Zara looked at the men in front of her. They were all tired, and as much as she wanted to reel off a plan, in her mind, she had nothing that would ease their concerns or even get them motivated.
Mike’s phone rang. It was a distraction that Zara welcomed.
‘What? Go on. I wanna know everything,’ said Mike brusquely to the caller, as the others remained silent.
Zara noticed right away that Mike not only looked deeply troubled, but his eyes were intently focused on Willie. Her skin became covered in goose bumps.
Suddenly, Willie clocked that out of all the people in the room, Mike was looking at him.
With wide, frightened eyes he jumped up. ‘What the fuck’s ’appened?’
Mike ended the call and stepped towards Willie, preparing for an embrace. Yet, Mike’s sombre smile filled with grief and sorrow made Willie jump back.
‘What, Mikey? What’s ’appened? Just tell me, will ya!’
‘Willie, mate, I’m so sorry …’
Willie’s eyes darted around Mike’s face. ‘Nah, nah, not my boy, no way. He ain’t part of this. Fuck me, he’s …’
Mike leaned forward to reach out to Willie, to hold him before the man went nuts. But, to his surprise, Willie suddenly slammed his hand into Mike’s shoulder.
‘Get the fuck away from me! This ain’t my war, or my boy’s fight. It’s yours, Mike, and …’ He spun round and glared with spite at Zara. ‘And yours!’ He stared defiantly, looking Zara up and down. ‘Ya see, don’t ya? This is your fault! Why my boy, eh?’
‘Willie, please,’ said Mike, desperately trying to comfort or even calm a situation that could easily turn nasty. ‘Look, we don’t know what’s ’appened yet.’
‘Well, has he been shot or stabbed? What the fuck’s going on? Tell me! Now!’ he bellowed, as his eyes turned red with rage.
Stupidly, Zara thought that being a woman, she could intervene and somehow calm Willie down, but the moment she was a mere foot away, he viciously flung his arms about and knocked her prosthetic hand. The clanging sound made everyone jolt and prepare themselves for the backlash; either Zara would lose it or Mike would.
Willie’s actions shook him into sanity. Instantly focused, he looked from Zara to Mike, expecting a nasty repercussion.
But Mike held his hand out, still intent on comforting Willie. He knew he was the only man in the room who would know precisely how Willie felt.
‘Willie, don’t assume he’s dead. One minute he was in the kitchen, preparing a meal for them all, and the next, he vanished. Someone has taken him, but …’
He looked at Zara and then back at Willie. ‘But Terrence thinks he was drugged and taken away. Now, before you start jumping to conclusions, right, we don’t know he’s dead.’
Willie could hear Mike’s words but they just wouldn’t register. All he could see was his son being cruelly murdered.
‘Get fucking real, Mike. Look what we did to that cunt Torvic. Jesus, it was sick.’ He glared again at Zara. ‘What you made him do to his own son, it was obscene. And you reckon the bastard won’t do that to mine? What … are you lot fucking delusional?’
Zara felt physically sick because she knew no amount of talking would ever stop Willie from thinking the worst. After all, in his position, she’d feel exactly the same. ‘I don’t think it’s Torvic’s style—’
She didn’t get to finish. Suddenly, Willie was in her face. ‘Style? Style? What the fuck would you really know? ’Cos if you knew so much, he wouldn’t have fucking escaped, would he? And he wouldn’t now be torturing my boy!’
It was Lance who brought Willie back to thinking rationally. ‘Look, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Torvic hasn’t got your son because he couldn’t have got to Spain and set this up all in a matter of hours. The kids were rushed out of the country. He would’ve had to second guess everything. So, there’s no way Torvic’s involved. I don’t believe it was him.’
Willie kicked the chair out of the way, ran his trembling hands through his hair, and then punched the wall. No one said a word as they watched the man collapse to his knees with cries that would set off a pack of wolves.
Mike hurried to his side and flung his arms around the man, holding him close. ‘Come on, mate, try and stay with us. We all feel your pain. Ya know I do, what with all that happened to Ricky. You were all there for me, and we’ll all be there for you too. We don’t know what’s happened yet, but I swear to God, we’ll do everything to
