Hello London
PART ONE
Isa- 18 years old
“You look beautiful, Isa.”
I tore my dark brown eyes away from the heavily tinted window of the armoured SUV where the City lights passed in a blur, distracting me from my purpose tonight.
I looked over my bare shoulder and gave my brother a practised smile.
“Thank you, mano.”
My older brother, Cristiano, or Don Cristo as he was now called, was a powerful Don in Mexico having taken over from our Uncle Antonio on his death. We had another brother, Santiago but we’d been separated as children when our family got into an accident in which our parents died and in which we were all placed in different foster homes. Then Santi went missing and I haven’t seen or heard from him since. Cristo told me he’d tried to find him, but sometimes I thought he wasn’t telling me the truth. My brothers never really got along. But I missed Santi so much. Sometimes in my dreams, I would see him laughing and playing with me. Then I would wake up and feel like he’d been torn from me all over again.
“Red really suits you.” he added, jolting me back to the present and I noticed the way his eyes slid down the form fitting red ball gown, assessing in an almost clinical way. I knew he wanted me to look perfect. The perfect doll to be at his side and just as mute.
He placed a warm hand over my bare knee, giving it a gentle squeeze before removing it quickly to look back out his own window.
I tried my best to disguise the disgust I felt every time he touched me, and instead, subtly tucked my thigh under the full skirt where it had fallen open at the slit.
We’d just arrived in London this morning from Mexico where we lived. Well, where I lived when I wasn’t in boarding school in Paris or Switzerland or wherever my Uncle or brother wanted to put me. Leading one of the most dangerous cartels in Mexico, Cristo’s enemies were constantly looking for ways to take him down and I was one of those ways. So he made sure to keep me locked away until he was ready to use me. That was what I was to him. A bargaining chip, as he’d told me countless times. He would ensure my protection and pay for anything I wanted including my schooling in whatever field I chose and in turn, I would have to agree to be bartered like an animal to whatever ally he deemed worthy when the time came. If I refused him, he’d put me to work like some of the girls he’d bought or worse, sell me off like chattel.
I’d always known that an arranged marriage was in my future. I could only hope that my relationship with Cristo would allow me to have some say in who my future husband might be. It was the only reason I indulged him in coming to these events with him. To keep up the facade of a doting sister. He had just asked for one thing: that I remain pure. I was more valuable to him untouched because no man wanted ‘someone’s used toys’ he’d once told me.
Not that I had anything to worry about in that regard, the students in my boarding school knew who my brother was and their families all made sure they steered clear of me. Even my room-mate-Skylar, tried her best to pretend like I didn’t exist. But I didn’t mind. I enjoyed the solitude. I got to focus on my studies and figure out an escape from my brother’s clutches. Until then, I had to play by his rules and be his whatever role he needed me to be.
So I was surprised when he agreed to me moving to London to study law at King’s College. This time I’d have my own apartment and no room-mate. Cristo insisted I stay at one of the luxury apartments the school recommended but I had no doubt it was less about security and more about all the ways he could have eyes on me- by paying the concierge to keep him informed of my comings and goings and having his men nearby to send me a message if it looked like I was straying out of the approved line.
I’ll never forget the last time I broke one of Cristo’s rules: by going to a party at a club for a class mate’s eighteenth birthday without having a bodyguard with me. I was sure the invite to my room was a total fluke because it looked like the birthday girl, Krystal, invited everyone from our class to the club. That didn’t stop me from wanting to have a night out without the eyes constantly following me. It was a small act of defiance that had immediate repercussions. The next morning, I was nursing a hangover and was startled to see Cristo sitting in my bedroom waiting for me to wake up. He was stroking his leather belt in his hand like one would the skin of a lover. But the look in his eyes had my heart threatening to jump out of my chest. For the next hour I knew Skylar could hear my screams from down the hall.
I swallowed down the memory and tried to focus on tonight. My last night with Cristo before he went back to Mexico and I had some semblance of freedom again. He’d insisted he accompany me to ‘settle me in’ at College but I knew there was more to it than that and I was right when he insisted we attend a birthday party for the Cosa Nostra Boss Elio Ricci at his house in Hampstead. I’d heard it was a sprawling estate with manicured lawns and not one but two large fountains, a stable -because the Boss loved riding- and a lake that in the summer, was perfect for swimming. It sounded like paradise even though I was positive it was bought with blood money.
Cristo had business connections all over the world, so I wasn’t surprised he had events to attend to in London. In fact, he liked to use me for such occasions because no one ever suspected me of anything, no one was even paying me any attention. Recently, he’d been trying to broker deals in the UK and Europe and so far he’d been succeeding. I was worried that a time would come when he would be untouchable.
“You know why you’re coming with me tonight, don’t you?” Cristo’s voice was soft but with that undertone of steel that I was well acquainted with.
I nodded, because I knew it wasn’t out of the goodness of his heart.
“When I give you the signal, you’ll go to the ladies’ room where the contact will be waiting,” he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small item that looked like a women’s Chanel compact but really had a memory card on the inside, “And give her this.”
I took the compact from him and tucked it into my clutch, not bothering to look at it too closely. I hated doing his dirty work for him, but defying him would mean I’d have to miss a few classes while the bruises he would inflict on me, had healed. I had made the mistake of asking him what was on the memory card one time and could still remember the pain of his palm against my cheek. I never asked questions after that.
The car moved through the wrought iron gates where a queue was already forming at the entrance.
“If I’m not with you at any time, stand at the bar and wait for my signal there. Understood?”
I allowed him to help me put on my coat.
“I understand.”
Gio- 23 years old
“Are you sure you don’t want to join us, Gio?”
I took a sip of my scotch, letting the burn settle in my chest, before I looked at Mikhail.
“There is still room to put your name on the wall.” Camden added.
My two best friends, Mikhail Levin and Camden Bell and I met in King’s College where we all attended classes together when we weren’t causing trouble. Now, they were opening their own Firm in less than a week and I’d had to bow out of joining them because of my family commitments aka running the Cosa Nostra in London with my father.
“You know the old man would have my head on a spike if I did that.” I pointed my glass in my father’s direction where he was laughing with some of his associates. Elio Ricci was a force to be reckoned with. He was cruel but fair, but he’d had enough of the dealing and backstabbing and was ready to retire to the Canary Islands and so he was grooming me to take over his throne. My mother, Noella, passed away five years ago from cancer and it had changed my father significantly. Theirs was a love match and not arranged like most of the mafia marriages we knew. I could only hope that one day I would find the same. It was my mother’s dream for me as well before she died. But right now, I was too young to be thinking about any of that.
The three of us were standing at the bar in the estate’s main ballroom and drawing the curious stares from the ladies in the room, even as they held the arm of their partners.
Camden loved the attention and was winking at them every time one caught his eye. He was typically British with dark brown hair and clear blue eyes that made him look like Jack Lowden's dopplegange. He wasn’t as tall as Mikhail or I was, but still had the body of an athlete because he’d been on the rowing team for as long as I can remember. Mikhail, on the other hand, was the biggest of us three. When he wasn’t managing things at the Club or at the office he was doing underground cage fighting. He wasn’t as pretty as Cam was but that didn’t mean he didn’t draw the same amount of attention. However, the women who approached him were usually drawn to the dark aura they could see in his grey eyes. Mik acted like the women didn’t exist though. But we knew why. There was only one woman who could get under that steely control of his and there was nothing he could do about it because she was his step-sister and five years younger than he was. Camden liked to tease him and tell him that Daria was eighteen and technically legal and if he didn’t want to do anything about it, then maybe he should, but that landed him with a black eye. We knew never to bring up Daria again. I, on the other hand, had no trouble getting a woman in my bed whenever the mood struck. Nowadays, I was too focused on getting up to date with my father’s business while working on a side business with Mik and Cam.
Our exclusive club, Onyx, that was membership only and catered to any type of kink or fetish. It was the only business I could get into with them that my father couldn’t care less about. In fact, he encouraged this venture. After all, Elio Ricci was all about combining business with pleasure.
“Who's managing the Club tonight?” I asked Mik, who was usually in charge of the roster because he was such a control freak.
“Mario.” Mikhail replied, “I’ll check in with him when I leave here.”
I nodded and lifted my glass again to take another sip when a flash of red caught my eye.
“Jesus.” Camden murmured from my side, “Who the fuck is that?”
I lowered my glass and frowned, because the woman in red was drawing attention from most of the men in the room and scowls from the women. But it wasn’t the colour of her dress that drew the eye, it was the woman herself. She could wear a paper bag and she would still be stunning. She was on the arm of Don Cristo who was new to the mafia game, but no less ruthless. He was what some women might call pretty, but I knew he had a black heart under that designer suit. I was curious because I’d never seen him with a date before.
“Don Cristo’s sister.” Mikhail answered giving us an almost bored look, “She’s starting law school in a few days.”
We didn’t have to ask how Mik knew all this. He knew everything that went on in this City because his favourite client was the Russian Pakhan, Aleksandr Kozlov who liked to be in the know about everything and everyone.
Cam grinned and glanced at him whereas I couldn’t seem to take my eyes off the dark haired beauty.
“At King’s?”
Mik nodded.
“Beauty and brains.” Cam replied polishing off his scotch and setting his glass back on the bar, “I think I’ll go get an introduction.”
“No.”
The word was out my mouth before I could hold it back making Cam jerk to a halt because it was so rare I would object to him approaching a woman.
Both of them turned to stare at me. Cam with undisguised excitement and Mik with a frown.
I watched the couple move towards my father and shoved my glass at Cam and he caught it against his chest before it spilled on his bespoke suit.
“I will.”
