The Family Firm

Chapter 54

Stella finally felt free. As she headed west on the M25 towards Heathrow, she felt an excitement she hadn't felt welling up in her chest since she was a girl. With the sun rising behind her, glinting off the sparse early-morning traffic—at least, sparse for the M25—the motorway looked like the yellow brick road and she was headed straight for the land of Oz.

She could have laughed. In the boot of her dark red '94 Jaguar XJR, she had a holdall containing over five hundred large. That was half a bloody million! At least, anyway—she hadn't had the time to count. It had been like something out of a Guy Ritchie flick. She burst into the barn, opened up the latch in the floor, broke the locks on the troughs (she had forgotten about those!) with a shovel hanging on the wall and then she was all quids in. She had gathered as many bundles as would fit, though she hadn't taken all of it—Freddie deserved that much; after all, he had earned it.

She didn't feel bad, though. No, of course she didn't. Freddie was the biggest Face in East End, more notorious than her own father or any other hard men she knew. He wouldn't miss it. Part of her almost pitied him, having nearly lost his nephew, but she was only taking advantage of a situation anyone else would have if given the opportunity. No man would be noble in such a situation, and Fred had always said he liked that she thought like a man! In any case, the money was hers rightfully now that she had bested her dear old Fred and she felt like the cat who got the cream.

Now her thoughts drifted to Fyodor. She loved her Fedya, as she called him. Really, truly loved him. She had never wanted to allow herself to fall into what she considered "girlish desires" but Fyodor was more than just a handsome foreigner, he had completely swept her off her feet. She was arse over tit, as the crass saying went, and she had been for years. Of course, during her little tryst with Fred, things had been . . . a bit funny, to say the least, between them. But she assured him almost every night that she was doing it for them, that once they had the money they would be on the first flight to Malta.

That was precisely where she was headed. She had already rung her Russian lover and told him to meet her at the airport for their own little fly-drive holiday in St Julian's. Things were going to be good for them from now on, she had a feeling about it deep inside her. Together, they'd disappear, away from the hardness of the life she had been brought up in, from "the business", from the crime and the violence and the bloodshed. Together they would live on the beach in solitude, where she could rest easy, where she wasn't constantly worried about the stress she put on her heart. All the dieting and exercise in the world couldn't reduce the anxieties that came with being the daughter of a prolific gangster.

Part of her knew the worry would never really go away, that she had developed habits from childhood that were deeply ingrained in her being. After her mum had died, she had turned cold. Her father Jack tried to give her a somewhat normal childhood by taking her on expensive holidays all over the world, but in the end, something had broken deep inside her, and she had never been the same little girl again. Jack had decided to stop sheltering her from the life he had sought out to protect her from, and instead had allowed her to see what he truly was. It was only a matter of time before she was working beside him, calculated and shrewd as the rest of them. She had thrived, flourished in the business, but in doing so she had sacrificed her girlhood.

Now, she wanted to take it back. She wanted someone to love, someone that could meet her intellectually. Maybe one day she might have children, something she was never comfortable humouring herself with when she was working for her father. Now things would be different. Now she could be more than a business woman, but a woman.

As she pulled into the long stay terminal at Heathrow, where she had told Fyodor to meet her, her eyes scanned the car park for any sight of her big eastern lover. Sure enough, he stood out like the stripe on a dun horse, all dark cropped hair and black leather, and she was as giddy as a school girl as she parked her car near his. Nearly leaping out, she jumped into his arms and kissed his cheeks, leaving maroon lipstick stains along his bristly maw.

'Oh, Fedya,' she said between kisses. 'We've done it. We've finally done it!'

Fyodor seemed oddly stiff, but just as she noticed this, he gently pulled her away from him.

She spoke first. 'Fedya . . . What's wrong?'

He looked at her seriously, his dark eyes tinged with something she couldn't read. 'It's your father,' he said at last. 'He's . . . had a heart attack.'

Stella's heart sank into the pit of her gut. Not her father. Not now. Just as soon as she was ready to make her daring escape, he had a heart attack!

'Is . . . Is he all right? Where is he, has he . . . ' she rambled, feeling worried tears prickling in her eyes that she blinked away rapidly. Fyodor nodded and grasped her upper arms.

'He's fine,' he said softly in that thick Russian accent Stella loved so much. 'He is at his home resting, with a private nurse. You know how he is with hospitals. . . . But he needs you, Stella. You cannot possibly leave without seeing him first?' It was a question.

Stella stamped on her feet back and forth in anxious thought, but there wasn't really much to consider. She couldn't leave, not now. Her father needed her. And even though she was going to leave him and the business, she loved him more than anyone on the planet. He was her only family. And right then, he needed her, whether it thwarted her plans or not.

'God damn it,' she whined out as she returned to her car. 'Ride with me, Fedya. Please. We'll sort this out later.'

As she got into the driver's seat and started up the car, she felt her heart racing at double-speed in her chest. Closing her eyes, she took a breath and silently willed it to slow down back to normal. All she needed was her condition to act up again.

At least, she reasoned with herself, it would be some time before Fred discovered the money was missing. She had been careful not to alert his aunt or that Pole worker of hers. Hopefully she could sort out business with her father and be gone before that damned Freddie Evans ever found out she had taken a penny.

She sped all the way to East Dulwich where her father's detached home was, swallowing tears and her own anxieties down, reassuring herself that he was okay, and that if she was lucky she could still make another flight before noon. Fyodor was her silent rock the entire way, and with him there she knew things would be okay.

She parked crookedly in the drive and immediately headed inside, unconsciously aware that the door wasn't locked. If she wasn't so hurried, she might have noticed the black BMW parked kerbside across the street, or the absence of the private nurse's vehicle.

Inside, she heard Roy Orbison playing loudly from the speakers, her father's usual morning ritual while he showered. The gently crescendoing crooning of "Running Scared" provided a temporary comfort of familiarity, even though it wasn't really her type of music. Following the sound into the bedroom, she strode inside but stopped short at what she saw.

There was her father in his usual brown dressing gown, just-showered, laying outstretched on top of his bed almost perfectly positioned. Looking past his enormous belly, she saw that he was looking up at the ceiling, his mouth slightly agape. There was a single bullet hole in the centre of his forehead, and a splash of blood on the wall above the headboard.

The scream got trapped in her throat as she saw Freddie standing in the doorway to the en-suite.

'Hello, Stella.'