Page 27 of Savage Justice

He shakes his head. “Oh no, I’m done with all that. Been there, got expelled to go with the T-shirt.”

“You got sod all else, though. You’re a bright lad, or so they tell me. I know school didn’t work out for you the first time, but it will be different now. To start with, you can choose what you study. Computers. IT. Technology. Electronics. Whatever floats your boat.” Ethan extracts a sheath of brightly coloured papers from the pile. “This is the range of courses. Start by looking at that and see what takes your fancy.”

Frankie regards the form and related notes with all the suspicion he might reserve for a coiled python. “Me? At one of them posh universities? No way.”

“Yes way. You agreed to get trained to be in my organisation. This is your training.”

“I thought you meant guns and drug trafficking and that sort of shit.”

“Horses for courses, Frankie. This is what you’d be good at.”

He shakes his head. “I ain’t got no qualifications. They’d never let me in.”

Do I sense a slight softening of his attitude?

Ethan evidently thinks the same way.

“You need five GCSEs and two A levels, which you’d walk if you put your mind to it. Megan and Magda could tutor you. Casey, too.”

“A levels? Me?” Frankie couldn’t appear more gobsmacked if Ethan had suggested he flap his scrawny arms and fly to the moon.

“Again, you can choose your subjects. Go for stuff that interests you. You probably know most of it already.”

Frankie is speechless. He looks to me as though I might provide the breath of sanity apparently missing from this conversation. And I realise what Ethan meant by being of more use here. Frankie and I get on, he’s not so much in awe of me and he might listen.

“The boss is right,” I chip in. “You’re great at the tech, you’d ace a course in electronics. Do they do A level ballistics?”

“I doubt it,” Ethan replies. “But there’s software development, programming, Artificial Intelligence. And you can do all of it online.”

Frankie gazes from Ethan to me, then back again. “You dudes are actually serious,” he breathes.

We both nod.

“Me? Doing studying and shit?”

“You, doing studying and shit,” Ethan confirms. “You’ll read through all this, then?”

His nose wrinkles, and he prods the stack of papers with his finger. “I suppose I could have a look for nothing.”

Ethan ignores the obvious lack of conviction in his tone. “Good. Choose what you want to do, and we’ll make a plan to get you there, whatever it takes.”

Frankie swallows, hard, and brushes moisture from behind his glasses. “I never… I mean, I always thought… I didn’t expect…”

Ethan rarely cracks a smile, but he manages one for Frankie. “Start expecting, Frankie. You work for me now, and I expect a lot of you.”

Frankie’s voice is thick with emotion when he mutters, “I won’t let you down, boss.”

“I know you won’t.” Ethan leans forward to slap him between the shoulder blades. “And thanks for the phone thing.”

“Anytime, boss.”

Molly reacts to the sight of her clothes in black bags on the bed in her guest room pretty much as I anticipated. She hits the roof.

“What? Why? I never asked you to do this. I told you I wasn’t staying and now I have to cart all this lot back again.”

I draw in a steadying breath. For a beautiful woman, Molly Lowe can be exasperating. Can she not see the danger she’s in? If she doesn’t care about her own safety, what about her children?

“We explained,” I begin patiently. “Borys will—”

---