Prologue
Never been normal
The two girlssat on the floor of the wardrobe waiting for the grunting to stop. For the clients, the girls could be in the living area of the flat whilst Mama went to the bedroom, but they’d learnt early on that when Mama’s boss came it was better if they were truly hidden. During the day it wasn’t a problem; during the day they made sure they were either at school or in the library, but when the library closed they had to come home. The smaller, blonde-haired girl closed her eyes and tried to remember one of the English stories she had read recently: visions of wardrobes leading to foreign lands, lions with magical powers and children who ruled kingdoms floated through her mind and she relaxed.
‘You stupid bitch!’ The gruff Russian voice shook the girl out of her mental escape and she peered through the gap in the slats, gripping her older sister’s hand more tightly. ‘You think you can cheat me? I know this is not full amount.’
Her mama’s voice begging him to re-count it was cut off by the crack of his fist connecting with her jaw. There was silence for a moment until another crack rang out through the small room, and another. Sickening sounds of bones breaking filled the air, and the blonde girl held back a sob.
‘Useless whore,’ she finally heard the man mutter as he picked up the wad of notes from her mother’s side table and headed to the bedroom door. After they’d heard it shut the two girls emerged from the cupboard, and on silent feet went to their mama’s side; she was lying completely still on the bed, her eyes open, staring sightlessly out at nothing. The taller, dark-haired girl threw herself onto her mother’s body, sobbing as she had been taught: silently. The blonde girl reached out and lifted her mother’s lifeless hand, curling her small fingers around her wrist to feel a pulse. When she felt nothing she reached under her sister with her other hand to lay it on the centre of her mother’s chest, and held her breath.
Minutes passed as the sisters remained like that: the brunette lying pressed into her mother’s side and the blonde standing over her, feeling for a heartbeat or a pulse. As the blonde girl looked down at her mother’s face she saw the Christmas lights that Mama had scrimped to buy for them reflected in her glassy eyes, and she felt the fear slowly leave her body to be replaced by white-hot anger. She withdrew her small hands from her mother’s body and coiled them into fists at her sides; her fury was so overpowering it was like a physical presence in the room, and it moved her towards the bedroom door.
‘Myshka!’* the dark-haired girl hissed from the bed, her eyes wide with fear. The blonde gestured for her sister to stay put, then pointed to the phone on the bedside table before slipping from the room.
The arrogant bastard was still there. He was sitting down on their frayed sofa, talking on the phone to one of his lackeys, telling them to come and ‘clean up this shit’. She presumed the shit he was referring to was her mama. The blonde girl took a deep but silent breath and tamped down the seething fury threatening to explode so she could process the scene and decide her next move.
This particular little girl had never been normal. She could read books faster than any adult she knew, she could assess people and situations rapidly, make decisions instantly. She even paid all the bills and did all the accounts for her mother, kept a roof over their heads, bought the food, bartered for everything at the market. That’s how she knew that the money her mother had given her boss was right; he was either stupid or greedy: the little girl suspected both.
After a few seconds she started inching towards the kitchen. Years of practice in having to keep quiet when her mother was with a client meant that she could move with almost eerie silence. She went to the chopping board and lifted the knife resting on top, clasped it firmly to her side, and then padded over to behind the sofa where the man was still on the phone.
Her mind flashed to the book on anatomy she had read recently; the medical section of the library was the farthest from the reception desk and the sisters found hiding there to be the most effective plan when they wanted to avoid being chucked out. She’d found the textbooks boring, but devoured them all the same, and now she was glad. Her almost perfect ability to retain anything she had seen written down meant that she could picture the anatomy of a man’s neck in her mind: see where the arteries and veins ran, knew the best place to strike. She lifted the knife behind him and waited until he’d hung up the phone before lunging forward and plunging the knife into his carotid artery.
‘Argh!’ he shouted, dropping his phone and clutching at his neck with one hand whilst he made a grab for her with the other. He managed to drag her over the back of the sofa, and pain exploded down the side of her face when he backhanded her, one of his rings splitting the skin next to her eye. He went to hit her again but his wild eyes took in the blood that was spurting from his neck all over her face and body, and he clutched his throat desperately with both hands before losing his strength and falling forward on top of her. The little girl struggled out from underneath the huge man and rubbed the blood from her eyes. She stood next to the sofa, her face and hair soaked with red, and stared at the him before coughing up some saliva and spitting on his cheek.
‘Spokoynoy nochi zhopa,’* she muttered under her breath as her face was lit up by the flashing lights from outside, and the sound of sirens filled the night air.
*myshka– little mouse
*Spokoynoy nochi zhopa– Goodnight, asshole
Chapter1
Devoted employee
Smooth as silkthe lift doors swept back, revealing the imposing entryway of Nick’s penthouse office floor. As he did every morning, he stared straight ahead, straight at her, and just asshedid every morning, she held his stare and smiled a smile that didn’t quite reach her startlingly clear-blue eyes. They had entered into this ridiculous staring contest every day for the last three months and every day, without fail, she bloody won.
Now, Nick was not a man who took losing particularly well; in fact he was known for his stubborn tenacity. But there was something about the way she held his eyes which made him uneasy; which made him unable to stop himself from flicking his gaze away from hers by the time he had reached the front desk. Even after he had turned the corner to his office, he couldstillfeel her eyes boring into his back, almost as if she was taunting him for his weakness, and it pissed him off. She was a sodding receptionist for Christ’s sake, why on earth did he feel intimidated by her?
‘What ho!’ Bertie boomed as Nick swept past his desk.
‘What ho, Bert,’ Nick called back with a half-hearted grin as he slammed his door. He rolled his eyes when he was in the safety of his office; between Bertie, Ed and that bloody receptionist, he was being driven slowly insane. Snatching up the phone, he started punching in the number of the New York office, but after a couple of failed attempts to get through he realized that he was so unsettled by the receptionwitch (he’d christened her that on the first day they had locked eyes), he couldn’t even dial a simple number. Everyone else seemed completely taken in by her front: blonde bimbo receptionist – happy to gossip with the girls, charm all manner of clients and business associates, babble mindlessly about nothing. But Nick was convinced there was something off about her. Her smile never met her eyes, her laugh never quite rang true, the way she flicked her hair or filed her nails looked practiced and even slightly forced.
After the first month of morning stare-downs, Nick had decided to act on his rampant curiosity. He convinced the company’s industrial espionage expert to look into Miss Lucinda Quinn. The report that was produced was more than a little dull. It seemed that Lucinda had lived the most average life imaginable: growing up in Bognor Regis of all places, attending the local comprehensive school and achieving very average grades, before a string of dead-end jobs and equally dead-end boyfriends. Clearly there was nothing in the least bit interesting about Miss Quinn, and his head of security had rightly looked at Nick like he was a little unhinged before handing over the slender file.
From then on, unwilling to make any more of a fool of himself, Nick had ignored his suspicions, and attempted to ignoreher. One slight hitch in this plan was that she stayed late in the office every night, her excuse being that she needed to study for her Open University course and shared a flat with a riotous group of girls, making that impossible for her at home. Nick had no idea what she was studying, and after the whole investigation debacle he had no intention of finding out. All he knew was that he not only had to enter into a stare-down on his way into work but also as he left, a state of affairs made worse by the fact that he had to suffer the entire ride down in the lift with her, which she invariably filled with pointless chatter about celebrities he’d never heard of, television programmes he had no intention of ever watching, and the exploits of her completely unexceptional and interminably dull family.
The weird thing was that despite her willingness to talk his ear off, and giving every appearance of a devoted employee, Nick somehow knew that she didn’t like him. This was not a normal experience for Nick; from a young age he had been able to charm every female in his immediate vicinity with ease. The fact that this vacuous female seemed completely immune to it was … odd. He also knew that she didnotlike lifts. His office was twenty floors up and he was an expert in body language. She tried to hide it, but he could feel the tension rolling off her as they descended together every day.
Determined to avoid a repeat of this torture for the fifth day in a row, Nick leaned forward and flicked through the contacts on his phone until he found Lila’s number. At least Lila didn’t bang on about everything under the sun or disconcert him with any penetrating stares.
She answered on the second ring (a fact that Nick barely noticed, having never had to leave a message on a woman’s answerphone in his life).
‘The Russians are here, boss,’ Bertie’s disembodied voice said through the intercom as Nick was wrapping up making plans with Lila – all of which she’d agreed to without complaint; even the weird request that she come and meet him at his office rather than the restaurant.
‘Send them through to the conference room,’ Nick said into the intercom, attempting to fake a level of confidence that he wasn’t really feeling. This meeting was absolutely crucial: if they couldn’t get these guys on board they’d lose a big part of the block of investment from Eastern Europe and might risk the site they were securing in Slovakia, setting them back by anything up to a year. The delay could come close to killing the project.
‘Ed,’ Nick bit out into his mobile as he dragged his jacket on from his chair, ‘where are you? The meeting’s scheduled for ten o’clock and it’s five past, you dullard.’
