Ruthless - [3]

, would he stay?

She almost did it, but her pride stopped her.

Then the moment was gone. Max brushed past her, walked across the hall, picked up his suitcase and bag, and left.

Annie gulped hard, trying to compose herself. It was finished. Leaving her with a heartbroken girl to look after. It didn’t matter how she felt, she had to focus on Layla. She walked towards her. Layla’s sobs had died away to hitching little gasps.

‘Honey, why don’t you go and find Ros-’ she started.

‘Don’t you come near me,’ yelled Layla suddenly, stopping Annie in her tracks. ‘This is all your fault. All you had to do was be here, but you always had to be running around doing your stupid business. I hate you.’

She ran past Annie, shoving her aside. She flew across the hall and up the stairs.

Annie stood there, feeling sick with hurt, and heard the door to Layla’s room slam shut. She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. The silence of the house enveloped her. She was alone again.

On shaky legs she walked over to the leather-tooled desk and sat down behind it, slumping there in exhaustion and despair. She didn’t even know who she was any more. She took the decree absolute out of her pocket and put it on the desk and stared at it.

Well, I’m not Mrs Max Carter, that’s for sure.

God, she was tired. Too tired to think, but still it all spun around, unravelling in her tortured brain – losing Max in Majorca, believing him to be dead. Then her involvement with Constantine Barolli, Alberto’s father. All the troubles and the dangers she had endured to come to this point.

Was it worth it?

Ten years ago she had been an underworld power to be reckoned with, running the streets of Bow. Until Redmond and Orla Delaney, the psychotic twins who’d ruled Battersea with an iron fist, tried to kill her. And that had ended in their deaths, organized by her Mafia contacts.

So much trouble.

So much pain.

The attempt on her life had caused her to step away from all that. She’d thought she could leave it behind her, sit back and enjoy the good life – but it hadn’t worked out that way.

Annie gazed around her at the empty, opulent study with its tan Chesterfield sofas, its walls lined with books, the costly Aubusson rugs on the floor. She had everything… and she had nothing at all. She’d lost her husband, and her daughter hated her.

Raindrops pattered against the window panes. She stared out of the window at the darkening sky, and wondered how the hell she was going to come back from this. She’d fought so long and so hard, but all she felt was defeated. She was too worn out even to try any more.

Annie sat there and thought of old friends, old enemies, her weary mind a tangle of jumbled images. Two faces emerged from the fog in her brain and she shuddered.

The Delaney twins.

She could see their faces, their cold, pale green eyes, their red hair. Those twisted, horrible bastards.

It was raining harder now and she was dimly aware that she was crying. She never cried. Dig deep and stand alone, that was the motto she’d always lived by. And she’d never been more alone than she was right this minute.

Well, that was one thing she no longer had to worry about. The Delaneys were gone. And she couldn’t help thinking that, perverted as they were, evil and vindictive and out for her blood as they had always been, the Delaney twins were the lucky ones. She was here, alone and suffering: Redmond and Orla Delaney had been fortunate in comparison.

They were out of it.

They were dead.

3

Over the Irish Sea…, 1970

Orla Delaney had always been a nervous flyer. She was nervous anyway, on this flight – for it was a flight in every sense of the word. Along with her twin, Redmond, she was fleeing for her life in the Cessna 210, knowing that London was over as far as they were concerned. Orla’s only comfort was the knowledge that, before their crime empire had collapsed, they had finally got rid of Annie Carter.

Barumph!

The wind buffeted the small plane with a vicious swirl and she clutched harder at her seat, stifling a scream as the four-seater rocked from side to side and then plummeted, dropping like a stone, leaving her stomach somewhere up on the padded ceiling. She wondered if she was about to be sick.

‘Rough night,’ said Fergal the pilot, a big grey-haired Irishman who sat unperturbed at the controls.

Orla was reassured by Fergal. He’d worked for the Delaney firm for years, ferrying illicit cargoes – drugs, arms, people – in and out of Britain. He boasted he could land the Cessna on a gnat’s tit, he’d been flying it for so long. Orla believed him. He’d been a British Airways pilot once, then he’d done a stint crop-dusting in Kenya before Redmond had recruited him into the far more lucrative family firm.

She glanced at Redmond. He seemed calm. He half-smiled, squeezed her hand briefly. It was only she who was panicking.

It felt like an eternity since they’d left the airport. After a wild drive down to Cardiff in the dead of night, Fergal had flown them into the tumultuous skies unauthorized, with no co-pilot, no mechanic, no clearance. They were in violation of air traffic safety guidelines and aircraft operation rules. But Fergal didn’t give a shit about any of that. Neither did either of his passengers.