Page 12 of Spearcrest Devil

Willow

The Swing Swan isa bar on the edge of the Square Mile. It’s by far the fanciest bar I’ve ever worked at and a far cry from some of the shitty pubs I’ve endured over the years.

Not that bartending was always the plan. When I was a little girl, I dreamed of being one of those dirty-mouthed tattooists that men are too intimidated to date. But life had other ideas, and vengeance eventually became my career.

Blackmail and bartending are just my side hustles.

When I arrive for my shift on New Year’s Eve, the bruise on my face has almost completely faded, but Paddy, the bar manager, notices anyway.

For such a big, bumbling man, he’s surprisingly perceptive. Scratch that: for aman, he’s surprisingly perceptive.

He stops me as I sweep past him on my way to the staffroom, hands in my pockets and woollen hat shoved low on my head. Catching me by the elbow, he wheels me back around to face him, looming over me with a comical cocking of his bushy eyebrow. I push my headphones down around my neck.

“What now?”

He frowns. “Oy, don’t be so rude. What now, what now—what do you mean what now? What the fuck isthat?”

I yank my elbow free of Paddy’s hand, and he lets me go, stepping back to put distance between us. Paddy knows I don’t like being touched, and to be fair to him, he just forgets. He has five kids, and he’s handsy with all his kids. He grabs them and squeezes them and kisses their faces and cuffs their heads and slaps their backs. When he takes my arm or pats my shoulder, I know it’s only ever because a part of him sees me a little bit as a daughter.

As if Paddy would have what it takes to father someone like me.

“It’s nothing,” I tell him, rolling my eyes dramatically. “Kickboxing class.”

Not a lie exactly. The bruiseisnothing; Idogo to kickboxing class.

Well, I used to, three times a week. Then I kneed some guy in the crotch (he deserved it) and got asked to take a break.

“Again?” Paddy says in an outraged voice.

“Pads.” I roll my eyes at him. “I don’t go there for cuddles, do I?”

“Don’t you go there to learn toavoidbeing hit in the face?”

“Yes, but sometimes you can only learn to avoid a punch by taking a punch.”

“I fucking hate this,” Paddy says with a whole-body sigh. “What’s the world coming to that men are putting their hands on women?”

I laugh in his face. “The world’s not changing, Pads. It’s staying exactly the same as it always was.”

“You’re too young to be so cynical,” Paddy says. He’s always assumed I’m in my early twenties, and I’ve never disabused him of the fact. The less people know about me, the better,especiallypeople who like me.

That’s where most people slip up. Not trusting people you hate is easy. It’s trusting people you like that fucks you up.

“Cynic by nature,” I tell him with a grin, walking backwards to the door to the staffroom. I make a finger gun and blow him a kiss for a bullet. “Bitch by choice.”

“You’re not a bitch,” Paddy calls after me, a tinge of melancholy in his voice. “You’re just misunderstood.”

“You fuckingbitch,” Simon grunts later that night. New Year fireworks are still going off in the distance, but it’s almost three a.m. when he comes back home from the pub.

I’m on my break, and I have less than twenty minutes left to do what I need to do and get back to my shift at the Swing Swan. Nobody will even know I was gone, and my alibi will be untouchable. Not that I’ll need one. Dodgy little fucks like Simon never go to the police.

Simon is so drunk he can barely stand straight as he lurches to a stop in front of his front door in an affluent suburb of London. He doesn’t hear me when I walk up behind him. I grab him by the hair and place my knife right to his neck and I yank him away from his door and onto the square of short green grass he calls his front garden. I kick my steel-tipped boot into his legs, forcing him to drop to his knees.

“Hello, Simon.”

“W—Willy? What the fuck are you doing here,” he slurs, the entire sentence mushed into one word.

His breath mists in the cold, dry air, but he’s bright red and sweating, more alcohol than blood in his veins.

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