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  “If you really are Gayle’s sister...” Clark struggled to get his words out. “Then that boy—our boy—he is your nephew.”

  Estelle snorted out hard at that. The poor desperate fool was clutching at straws now, she felt sure of that. There was no way. No fucking way…

  “Horse shit.” Estelle finally spoke.

  “I swear. I swear on my family’s life. And the life of my wife and son. It’s true.”

  Clark’s wife Victoria, paralyzed with shock and fear herself, found the strength to gently nod at her husband’s words. For the first time in a long, long time, Estelle didn’t know what the hell to do, what the hell to think, what action to take. What to believe. Her every instinct and every fiber in her body were telling her to kill them. Shoot them all. Then get the hell out of there and deal with the consequences later.

  But what if Clark was telling the truth?

  What if this little boy did belong to…?

  Estelle closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “No,” Estelle blurted out as she fought the truth with all the cold hard darkness inside her.

  “Look at him!” Clark roared up at her. “Look at how much he looks like Gayle. LOOK!”

  Estelle opened her eyes again. She didn’t want to believe it. It went against everything she stood for, everything she’d become, everything she’d trained for over the years, to hesitate and ponder over something like this. A simple action. But she had to. She had to do it for the memory of Gayle. Just to be sure. Just in case there was any small shred of truth there.

  Estelle studied the boy hard. Every square inch of his little young, pale face. Another flash image engulfed her. Her little sister Gayle as a small child filled her mind. She had the same hair. The same eyes. Fuck even the same pasty chubby little face as the small boy.

  “My wife and I wanted a baby. We couldn’t have children.” Clark anxiously stated, speaking quick and fast. Finding himself having to explain everything all at once, but with so little time to do so. His desperate words were like a rapid machine gun fire. “So, we found someone through our contacts six years ago, when I was still a lawyer, someone who was willing to have a baby for us and walk away at the end with a nice big fat pay cheque at the end of it all. No questions asked…”

  “Gayle did this for you?” Estelle softly asked.

  “Yes. And everything was fine. Perfect, in fact, up until last year. My man on the force, Detective Jonas, approached a football gang to do some… illegal work for me.”

  “Illegal work?”

  “Yes. We recruited a football gang to make some race hate attacks for us around the city. I hired them to mug and attack white middle- and working-class citizens of Glasgow. The gang pretended to be Eastern European and Muslim immigrants. We thought it would make both me and my party more popular up here. To scare the white Scottish public like that. Drive a deep fear of immigrants into their hearts. The media even billed it as out of control immigrants on the loose in the streets of Glasgow, savagely attacking its white working-class Scottish citizens who had welcomed them into their city with open arms. And it worked. It worked a fucking treat. But when I met with the gang leader, Luke, one evening to discuss more work in another city—well, he brought his bloody girlfriend along too. And just by sheer fucking chance that woman just happened to be Gayle…”

  Clark took a deep breath as he struggled to continue. The life and blood still draining out of him thick and fast. If he didn’t get help soon then he’d be dead in at least ten minutes.

  “…And of course, she remembered me from all those years ago. When she gave us Phillip, her son. At the time we told her that we were moving to Canada. And that’s where Phillip would be growing up with a great life and a new home. Never to want for anything else in his life again…”

  Clark stuttered. Desperately he tried to compose himself and find some rhythm to his breathing.

  “And what—she wanted to get to know her son again? Now that she knew you still lived in Glasgow?” Estelle casually stated.

  “Yes.”

  “And you told her that she couldn’t see him, I suppose?”

  Clark hesitated. He gently bowed his head. An aura of shame and disgrace engulfed him.

  “I did.”

  “So what? She tried to blackmail you?”

  “Not at first, no. When she found out where I lived, she kept coming around to the house, trying to see Phillip at all hours. Even to catch a glimpse of him. So, I told her boyfriend Luke to keep her away, because if she tried anything or talked about the race hate gang attacks and how it was all my doing, then we’d all be fucked.”

  “So, you had her killed instead?”

  Clark fell deathly silent.

  “A junkie, working-class foster girl from the wrong side of town with no family. No life. No ties. Who would miss her, right?” Estelle continued. Her tone growing harsher and colder by the second. Clark remained silent. Inside the bathroom, Victoria began sobbing out uncontrollably.

  “I didn’t want my son to know that he had a junkie drug dealer for a real mother, okay? If that got out too, then I’m ashamed to admit, it was going to destroy everything that I’d worked so hard for.”

  Estelle took a step back and away from the bathroom. She sat herself down upon the edge of the large double bed, trying to come to terms with everything she’d just heard. Trying her utmost to process all the information she’d just taken in and the entire crazy and messy situation she now found herself in.

  Then something clicked. She looked up and gazed curiously through to the bathroom again and straight at the little boy Phillip who still didn’t seem to be looking at anything in particular. Just gazing down at the bath beneath his feet then slowly along the tiled walls above. She had a strange feeling in her gut that there was something not quite right with the little boy.

  “Why did you only cover his ears?” Estelle asked Victoria. “Did you want him to see me? Did you want him to see what I was going to do to him? To you?”

  Clark’s wife hesitated. She looked a little confused before she realized what Estelle was talking about.

  “He was born blind,” she finally replied. “He can’t see a damn thing.”

  Estelle looked even more taken aback. She was about to kill a child who couldn’t even see her or knew she even existed for that matter, if Clark hadn’t of convinced her otherwise. Suddenly her thoughts shattered to pieces as the scrunching sound of cars, possibly two roaring vans on gravel, pulled up outside the front of the house, completely distracting her.

  Estelle’s first thought was the police. Shit. How could she have been so careless? She should have been long gone by now, leaving the house in flames and burning down to a cinder with no witnesses to state that she’d ever been there in the first place. She hurried out of the main bedroom and back towards the front of the house but still on the first floor. This time she entered a small guest bedroom, not the study room she’d previously entered through by the window she’d smashed.

  Estelle hurried over to the curtained window of the small guest room. When she glanced outside at the front of the house, she could make out Luke through the net curtains, his broken arm still in a cast from what she’d done to him the previous night was unmistakable. All around him were at least another eight men, she counted; hardened young gang members who were all climbing out of the two sets of vehicles parked out front in the driveway.

  Estelle peered over towards the main gate which had been left wide open with the two dead bodyguards she’d recently killed still lying beside it. She retuned her gaze back over to Luke as he remained beside his open car door, almost using it as shield. He’d learned his lesson well from their previous encounter.

  Luke suddenly called out for Clark at the top of his lungs.

  “Oh, Clarky boy? Are you home, mate? Your gates have been left wide open and your bodyguards don’t look to be in such great shape neither?”

  Luke chuckled at his callous joke, so did a couple of his t
hug gang members who were spreading out all around the other two vehicles.

  “Are you still alive in there?” Luke cried out again. This time he raised his gaze up to the rows of first floor windows. His attention quickly caught the broken one directly above the wide open, bullet-riddled front door. In the back of his mind he knew that bitch Estelle was somewhere inside too.

  Estelle stood hidden at the next bedroom window along. She knew she had to act first and fast and take as many of these bastards out before they made their way inside. She had to take the reckless initiative and at least gain the upper hand. Estelle smashed the bottom of the window pane with the butt of her gun handle. She began shooting down at Luke and his gang immediately, but the damn net curtains kept getting in her way. Like scuttling cockroaches after a switched-on light, all nine men including Luke began diving swiftly for cover. This way and that. Most of them racing behind the safety of the two parked cars.

  One of Estelle’s bullets missed Luke’s head by centimeters, taking out the back-passenger window of his car instead before he swiftly ducked down behind the safety of his car door. The net curtains were still affecting her aim, constantly getting in her way and blowing in her face with the gentle breeze. Once Luke had ducked well out of sight, she turned her attention to the other runners before they had a chance to take cover. She managed to take out two of the fuckers, both of them taking her shots in their upper back and necks before tumbling onto the front lawn, dead or dying.

  Luke howled out like a wolf with ridiculous but chilling laugher.

  “So, we meet again, Estelle, old friend. What happened to your knives?” Luke continued in jest.

  With her first gun out of bullets already, Estelle backed away from the bedroom window and rushed back over to the rear of the house just as Luke and the rest of his gang pulled out their own guns and began firing back up at the first-floor windows with a tidal wave of gunfire.

  Estelle entered the main bedroom where Clark remained sitting against the outer bathroom wall while still bleeding out bad. How much blood was inside this guy? Estelle briefly pondered before she whipped off the thick duvet cover from the nearby bed, hurried into the ensuite bathroom, and threw the thick blanket on top of Clark’s wife and son—her nephew, her sister’s child. Both of them still huddling up inside the tub.

  “Stay here. Stay hidden and don’t fucking move.” Estelle told Victoria who hugged her son even tighter against her chest at Estelle’s harsh words before lowering herself further down into the bathtub and slipping well beneath the covers that engulfed her and Phillip.

  Estelle closed the bathroom door firmly shut before leaving the bedroom. She didn’t even glance back either at the dying Clark who seemed to be sinking ever deeper into a dark pit of unconsciousness that he wasn’t likely to emerge from anytime soon.

  Chapter 21

  Estelle crouched down and patiently waited at the top of the main staircase of the house. The gunfire from outside had ceased after less than a minute, and all she could hear now was the movement and scuttling of feet across the gravel out front as Luke’s gang of assembled thugs made their way towards the house.

  Through the gaps in the staircase railings Estelle could make out one young thug edging slowly through the open front door. Immediately, she took aim through a gap in the banister and shot straight into the young man’s knee cap. When the thug collapsed like a sack of potatoes, howling in agony and clutching his knee, he managed to fall back in such a way that he tumbled both out of Estelle’s line of sight and her second would-be-fatal shot.

  Estelle’s ears pricked up as she heard two more men enter the first-floor study beside her. They’d both climbed up the front porch pillars and onto the small stone awning directly above the front door, trying to climb as quietly as they could, and in through the shattered window without making a sound—just like she had done when she’d first entered the house.

  Estelle moved with stealth like precision, creeping along the first-floor landing and towards the open doorway of the study. One heavily-tattooed, middle-aged thug had already made his way inside, while the other was still climbing carefully through the broken shards of glass that remained wedged inside the window frame. She shot the first man through the crack in the door just as the second man flung himself back through the window to cower on the stone awning outside.

  Estelle hurried into the room and towards the window, readying herself to finish the second man off, when out of nowhere she was suddenly taken by surprise. A third man, who she’d completely missed, had already entered the room and stood patiently hidden away and waiting behind the shadows of the open doorway. By the time Estelle realized there was someone else behind her and had whipped around to face the sneaky culprit, he’d already pulled the trigger of his handgun and shot straight for her.

  Her sharp instincts made her duck immediately, while shielding her head with both her arms as she dropped intentionally to the floor. The bullet hit her right upper arm which was still covering her face, still protecting herself from being killed outright. Doubly lucky, the bullet imbedded itself into the bone just below her shoulder instead of going all the way through her flesh and into the side of her jaw.

  As soon as Estelle hit the deck, she chucked her gun from her bad hand straight into her good one and shot the hidden man standing behind the door. She aimed for his chest and didn’t stop firing until she’d blasted several holes of lead all the way through his lungs and heart.

  The man dropped to the floor with a sickening thud, bloodied and dead. Estelle winced as she tried to move her wounded arm. She felt a terrible agony but took it well. It was going to be a real discomforting pain in the arse to reload her damn gun though. Before she could even attempt that act, the second man, who had jumped back out through the window to take cover, quickly cottoned on to Estelle’s wounded condition and immediately reemerged through the broken window, gun in hand and aiming straight for her face.

  The thug took aim, ready to blow a hole clean through the front of her skull. By sheer bad luck, he caught himself on a piece of jagged broken glass still embedded in the window frame. It ripped a deep gash of flesh, blood and pain right through his hip and love handles. The shock of the deep wound made him stumble and land in such a way that it gave Estelle the window of opportunity to throw her empty handgun straight at the off-balanced man’s head, smashing him ferociously hard in the face and breaking his nose.

  The man stumbled around like a dazed and confused zombie. He dropped his gun blindly onto the floor, while caught in two minds about whether to attend to the deep wound on the side of his stomach or the throbbing cracked gash in the middle of his face.

  Estelle didn’t waste another second. She put all of her physical pain of the day to one side and swiftly slid herself along the vinyl flooring straight towards the dazed and confused thug. With her right leg, she swept the fucker violently off his feet with a devastating blow, shattering his knee in one direction while his lower leg unnaturally snapped back in the other.

  As the man blindly buckled over and fell back off balance, his head thudded hard against the same broken piece of glass in the window frame, the same jagged shard that had cut a deep hole in his side and now impaled him straight through his ear before imbedding itself six inches further inside his head.

  Estelle grabbed the man’s hand gun and scrambled back up onto her feet. Her arm ached like a badly abscessed tooth, but she just didn’t have the time to spare it a fleeting thought. Another two men were already coming up the main staircase and directly towards the first-floor landing. She could hear their stomps as clear as day like baby elephants. Both men came to a cautious halt at the top of the stairs. The first man had already glimpsed a small part of Estelle’s bloodied blonde hair and hooded top as she desperately tried to compose and rebalance herself by the study room window, their dead fellow gang member lying impaled right beside her.

  Immediately a rage consumed both thugs and they began recklessly firing their guns in
unison into the study. First through the open door and then through the plasterboard walls as Estelle desperately dove and rolled herself into the far corner of the room and well out of the thugs’ line of vision.

  She gathered herself quickly and began shooting back, right through the walls in the direction of where she believed the two men to be standing, still on the top of the stairs. She caught one in the chest then the other right through his jaw. Their guns fell silent as both men’s dying bodies stumbled and crashed back down the wide staircase from where they’d came.

  On the edge of the park directly opposite the gates of Clark Wallace’s big old Georgian house, a middle-aged woman out walking her dog with her headphones wedged firmly in and minding her own business, suddenly heard some of the continuous and rapid gunfire from within the property.

  Peeking through the opened security gates and driveway, she could clearly make out the hump-like outline of two dead bodies: the bodies of the two security guards still lying on the graveled driveway beside the front gates. In a delayed hesitation of shock and confusion, the woman pulled out her mobile phone and quickly dialed for the police.

  Back inside the house, Estelle staggered to her feet with what little energy she had left. A raw silence engulfed her. Taking a few short breaths, she composed herself as best she could. She hobbled painfully over towards the doorway just to make sure the two thugs she’d recently shot through the walls were dead or at least dying and not lying in wait to take her out.

  As she made her way out of the study, Luke’s seventh and final gang member sneakily appeared at the broken window behind her. He held two large knives in both hands as he quietly watched the bloodied and broken Estelle hobble away, disappearing onto the first-floor landing.

  Using the dead and impaled gang member’s head for balance, as quietly as he could, the final thug climbed in through the broken window after her.