Page 43 of The Redemption of Alex Cade
I was trapped, inside my own home with a man who hated me. A dangerous man who hated me, a man who’d described me as no more than a spanner in the works. Alex’s words came back to me. Kelvin had beaten Travis to a pulp, he’d cut him with a Stanley knife, a knife he’d carried for years. Did he still carry it? I didn’t want to find out. So I sat there, in a drenched coat across a little table in a defiled house that no longer felt like my home and I knew, after this night was over, never would again.
“To really understand Alex you need to know what happened after we left the foster home, and before we took control of Euphoria,” Kelvin said, carrying on as though we were having a friendly chat, that he hadn’t broken in and was holding me prisoner. His mouth turned down. “It was a dark time. But we got through it, together. Just like we get through everything together. What you have to remember, Kitten, was that we were just a couple of teenagers on the streets. No money, no jobs, no home?—”
“He told me all about the squats and the cash in hand jobs.”
“Allabout it? No, Kitten. He didn’t,” Kelvin said quietly. “He really didn’t.”
My blood turned to ice. There had been gaps, I wasn’t stupid, but what in god’s name had Alexnottold me?
“You should have seen Alex then. He was pure jail bait. He had an innocence about him his experience of care andthat fucker Travis hadn’t managed to kill. It’s hard to imagine that now, isn’t it? But it was a valuable commodity, on the streets.”
Oh, god… Oh, fucking hell…
“Beginning to see where this is going, now, Kitten?”
My house was never silent, not really. A scooter screeching past, the heavy bass beat from a car sound system, my neighbour’s yappy little dog. But it was silent then, only broken by the uneven thud of my heart.
“You both did what you had to do,” I whispered. I’d not condemn Alex for surviving any way he could.
“Both?” Kelvin’s brows arched in surprise. “Not me. I’ve never been innocent. Nobody wanted to pay for me. Or not unless they wanted a bit of… well, never mind, because this isn’t about me. I became Alex’s manager.”
“Manager?” I burst out. “You were his pimp. Christ, what kind of man are you?”
“The best of friends and so much more, and something you’ll never come close to understanding. I said earlier that without me he’d be dead, and he would be.”
I felt sick to my stomach. I too had done what I needed to get through, but for me the streets had never, ever been an option. My heart twisted. Why hadn’t he told me? Did he think I wouldn’t understand? I’d confessed my own experience, experience which had left a mark, just as Alex’s had done on him.
“I’d look out for him. Screen the punters. Step in if needed. He hated it?—”
“Of course he hated it,” I snapped. “Nobody does that out of choice.”
Kelvin tilted his head, his scrutiny back. Was he seeing through me again? Was he seeing my story I was always atpains to keep hidden in the deep and dark place? I didn’t care, and I stared back at him determined not to look away.
“Like you say, we had no choice. He’d cry and I’d hold him like a baby, rocking him to sleep as I told him it’d be all right, that I’d keep him safe, keepussafe from all the shit.”
“But you weren’t doing that, were you? You—you were facilitating it.You. Were. Pimping. Him. Out.” I stabbed each word in his face, my voice getting louder. Kelvin only looked at me, his expression impenetrable and when he spoke it was as if my words had never been.
“What we were doing, it was a means to an end, a temporary measure, because it soon became clear that back street blow jobs wasn’t where the money or the safety was because, believe me Kitten, there are a lot of nasty, nasty people out there. So we took the next step in building that wall, of putting another brick in place.”
“What do you mean?” Kelvin’s words crawled over my skin, as I groped towards an understanding I didn’t want to acknowledge.
“We stopped running ourselves, and started running some of the other lads. We became employers.” A wide grin split Kelvin’s face and he extended his arms. He looked so damn pleased with himself but all I could feel was a rising sickness.
“But you were working in clubs and bars for cash.” My voice sounded distant and muffled, like I was hearing it underwater.
“That’s true. Cash in hand bar work, cleaning. All the crappy jobs, earning hardly enough to feed a mouse. It’s what we started off doing, for a time, but we soon dumped the slave wage jobs because self employment was so much more lucrative.” He frowned as he bent forward over the table, as I took an instinctive lean backwards. “When we took the decision to become employers it was a lot harder than we thoughtit would be. We were accused of trespassing on others’ turf. That’s a both a big no-no, and dangerous. I was open to coming to some kind of arrangement but my suggestions didn’t go down a bundle. Or not until I had to go and have a quiet word.”
A quiet word… Jesus, what kind of monster sat in my kitchen?
“Alex went along with…”Running a gang of street prostitutes.Bile coated my throat.
“Yes. Because he understood why we were doing what we were doing. It was always about keeping us safe, about keeping that buffer between chaos and control. It’s always been that.”
“What happened next.” I hated myself for asking, but I had to know. I had to know how Alex and Kelvin had diversified, how what they had done had financed a top end apartment in Hampstead, a villa in Spain, bespoke tailoring that cost more than many people earned in a year.
“Oh, we got a very lucky break. We discovered Euphoria, and it changed everything for us.
“The boys were making us good money, but constantly going up against our competitors was getting too much, and like I said, it was dangerous. And we were only small fry, and I couldn’t see how we could expand in that particular line. Which meant we were ready to take the next step, in a new direction.
