Page 3 of Coal (QUEENS WRAITHS MC #2)

THEA

“Don’t fuck up, Thea. Remember what I can do if you do,” Alfred barks out.

He was my da, but as he didn’t deserve that name, I never referred to him as such.

I’d stopped calling him that at the age of eight when he killed my ma.

Oh, there was no proof, but all who knew him knew he’d done it.

My hatred for him went deep. It was the type of hate that gnawed at the gut.

A hatred and anger that grew and grew over the years until you felt like you’d explode from it.

I’d not piss on him if he was on fire. But for the minute, there was nothing that I could do about it. He held all the cards, and he knew it.

The threat he held over my head was the only thing that held me back from taking my chances and packing up and leaving. He knew I’d do anything to keep her safe from him.

As bad as he was, he had the same type of scum working for him, and I had no doubt that if I took my daughter and ran, he’d find us and make good on his promise of selling her.

He’d already proved that by killing my daughter’s father in front of me when we’d made those exact plans.

He’d expected that to break me, but all it did was light a fire in my belly to put plans in place to leave.

All my siblings were on board, from my brother, who my father thought was under his thumb, to my two sisters, who had a different life than what my father thought they lived.

After he’d killed my mother, which was shortsighted of him considering the work she did for him, he’d moved on to my brother Aiden’s mother, moving her into the family home.

Until then, I’d had no idea I had an older brother.

But there was no denying we were siblings, from our curly red hair to our height.

Aiden was over six feet and broad as a barn.

He was older than my twenty-six by five years.

I was next in age and topped out at just under six feet in my socked feet.

We looked so much alike that some thought we were twins.

I’m not sure if Alfred thought we’d immediately hate each other.

Instead, we were as tight as siblings who both hated the same person with all our hearts could be. Alfred hated our relationship.

No matter how often he pitted us against each other, we never folded.

I loved my brother with my whole heart. Other than my daughter, my brother and my sisters were the best things in my life.

Aiden’s mother lasted no more than a year before she disappeared.

Kara and Maeve’s mother lasted a little longer, but when she birthed another daughter when I was twelve, she ‘conveniently’ died in childbirth.

Where Alfred went wrong was leaving Aiden and me to raise our siblings.

It meant we all forged an unbreakable bond that remained unbroken, no matter how hard he tried.

Oh, we let him think he had, but behind his back we were making plans.

I hoped we’d be able to put them in place soon.

Our family was from old wealth. I’m not sure how exactly they’d initially made their money, but however it was, I doubt it was completely legal.

Alfred made his money legally as a District Court Judge, but he made more from dealing in arms, taking backhanders, gambling, and loansharking.

About the only thing he didn’t touch was drugs.

Aiden was following in his footsteps. Well, Alfred assumed he was.

In reality, he was working from the inside to take him down.

We had to work to get rid of him sooner rather than later because Kara had just turned seventeen, and Maeve, who was fourteen, had overheard Alfred talking about marrying Kara off to someone to strengthen a deal.

She’d immediately let all of us know what she’d overheard.

I was the only one that didn’t live at home.

Since sixteen, I was living in my own cottage on the property Alfred had assigned me.

He told me I wasn’t attractive enough for him to want me in his house, unlike my sisters.

I’m not sure if he thought his words would hurt me or not.

I wasn’t blind. I knew what I looked like: a tall, big-boned woman with bright red hair, brown eyes, and freckles.

I wasn’t someone most would find attractive, whereas both my sisters were gorgeous, petite blondes, with blue eyes.

Legally, my father only had three children.

He’d never been on my birth certificate, and sometimes I wondered if he’d impregnated my mother just to keep her under his thumb.

It didn’t bother me moving out of the big house and into my cottage. I loved being away from him. And for the most part, he left me alone as long as I built him the untraceable weapons that he wanted.

Building weapons wasn’t something that I’d set out to do as a living.

I’m not sure that anyone woke up and decided that their career choice would be manufacturing weapons.

Initially, it had been a way to keep my mother’s memory alive, and while I hated what my creations were used for, I couldn’t deny that I was good at what I did.

I loved designing new weapons and figuring out the best way to get them to work and to make them untraceable.

Weapons of all sorts had been a big part of my life from the beginning.

Some of my earliest memories were of spending time with my mother in her workshop, the one that I now worked out of, and her showing me how to build and put together different types of weapons.

After she’d disappeared, I’d spent a lot of time in her workshop poring over her notebooks.

When Alfred had found out what I was doing and realised that I was an asset, he’d kept me even more hidden.

As most weren’t aware that he had another daughter, it was easy for me to disappear.

Then when I was twenty-two, on one of my jobs, I met one of his men, Brian, who loved me for who I was.

It didn’t matter to him that I didn’t feel the same.

I cared for him, and I was sure we’d have been happy together if he’d been allowed to live.

At first, Alfred hadn’t cared, seeing it as another way to keep me under his thumb.

Brian and I’d been together for two years when I fell pregnant.

It wasn’t planned, but we were happy about it.

It was when Shea, who I’d named after my mother, was born that things changed. Brian started making plans to get us away from under my father. He was worried because, over the last few months, he’d been sent on the most dangerous jobs and had nearly not made it out alive from the last one.

While he’d recovered, we’d made plans. He had family that lived abroad. We paid for new documents and were ready to leave. We had what we thought was a foolproof plan. But someone, somewhere, told my father what we were planning.

Everything went according to plan until it didn’t. We’d agreed to meet up in town and would drive over the border and into Northern Ireland and catch the ferry from there to the UK. We hadn’t wanted to go the direct route as we thought they would find us too easily that way.

Once in the UK, we’d pick up another car there and then we’d drive to Heathrow and fly out.

We’d almost made it as far as the border when our car was run off the road and Brian was dragged from the car.

I’d grabbed four-week-old Shea from her car seat and cradled her to my chest, holding back my cries of despair as they’d beaten Brian right there on the side of the road where anyone could see.

It was then I realised how far-reaching my father’s power was.

My father’s men shoved me into one of the vehicles with Shea and dumped Brian’s body into the back. He hadn’t been moving, and I wondered if he was dead.

We’d arrived back at the estate to find Alfred standing on the steps like the lord of the manor. His gaze met mine, and the anger in his eyes had me shrivelling and covering Shea up when it landed on her, as if I could stop his hate from touching her.

We’d been taken to one of the barns at the back of the property that I knew was used for unsavoury things, and I had to watch as they strung Brian up, stripped him naked, and whipped him until the flesh on his back and legs was flayed so badly it was falling off him and blood pooled at his feet.

It took everything in me not to cry out because I knew if I did, it would only get worse; although how anything else could be worse, I didn’t know.

Finally, Alfred called a halt to the whipping and turned to me.

“You see this,” he waved a hand towards Brian, “this is your fault. You don’t get to leave here unless I allow you to.

And that child that you are trying to protect, well, you can say goodbye to her.

I can get a lot of money for her; she’ll be used up and spit out by the men I’ll give her to.

And I’ll have them send you photos and videos so that you know that it’s your fault.

Never, and I mean NEVER, try this again.

You belong to me, as does that child. Do you understand? ”

I didn’t respond fast enough for his liking as I was still staring in horror at Brian hanging from the hooks in the barn.

I knew Alfred would make good on everything he’d just told me.

He’d sell Shea the first chance he got if it meant hurting me.

A hard slap across my cheek had my head jerking to the side.

The slap was hard enough that it brought tears to my eyes.

Eyes that I turned towards my father. I was careful to keep my hatred for him from my gaze.

Keeping my face a blank mask, I looked at him when he asked me again, spittle hitting me in the face with the force of the way he spoke, “DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”

Nodding, I answered through tight lips, “I understand. ”