Page 31 of Owned By her Enemy
The next few minutes are a blur, as a doctor arrives, and we’re shooed away. There’s an attempt to get his breathing going, and to jump-start his heart.
And when they announce his time of death, it’s too much for Lotte. I see the gleam of triumph in her eyes and pull her into my arms, hiding her face against my chest as though she were crying and distraught rather than relieved.
“That was foryourparents,” she whispers. “My gift to you.”
My heart constricts. “Thank you.”
But not for the gift she thinks she’s given me. Yes, it’s nice to have revenge against the man who took my family. But I wanted David Tottenham dead for one thing only: hurting my girl.
And my wife’s revenge, the way she wanted it to happen, is the second best present she could give me. The first best?
Our child.
EPILOGUE
NIKOLAI
10 years later
“Who’s Daddy’s good girl?” I ask, and get a big smile in return. My gaze slides past our youngest daughter and to my wife, who smirks and rolls her eyes from where she’s lolling on the sand.
I’m a total sap for my children, but maybe most of all for Svetlana. At only a year old, she’s an absolute darling.
Especially when she’s not eating sand. I catch Svetlana’s hand halfway to her face and wink to Lotte as I mouth, “You’re still my best girl.”
Lotte’s smile turns smug. She knows I adore her. I show her just how much every night and far too many mornings for a busy family.
“Why can’t I be a good girl?” grumbles Ivan, our eldest boy from where he’s patting sand into a bucket for another part of his sandcastle.
“You can be a good girl. Or a good boy,” Lotte replies. “If you don’t tease the waiter at the restaurant tonight.”
We’re going to our restaurant this evening, for our anniversary.
“Or a bad boy,” I add, and Ivan’s eyes light up. “The waiter was fine. I wasn’t going to do anything. It was just a joke.”
Lotte rolls her eyes. “Then you need to be clearer with them, zolotse. Poor guy nearly had a heart attack last time Ivan said he’d get his dad to kill him because they didn’t have any salted caramel ice cream.”
“Noted. No death threats over ice cream, Ivan. Needs to be at least a whole course before we threaten even maiming. Got it?”
“’Spose so.” Ivan is intent on his castle, which is good, because Lotte is half laughing, half exasperated with my joke as she closes her eyes.
I scoop up a spade and offer it to our youngest daughter. “No more sand though, as you’ve got a delicious restaurant dinner coming up this evening.”
The restaurant, deep into Lambeth territory, was surprised when we rebooked to eat there a month after Lotte’s father died. They understandably imagined this place would have negative connotations, aside from being in a rival part of London. But no. There are only good memories, and the London Mafia Syndicate has reduced the animosity between those who have joined.
It’s sentimental, but I like to spend our wedding anniversary eating at the restaurant where we first met. When Ivan was only six months old, we went there for our second wedding anniversary and caused many hidden English looks of surprise at us bringing a baby into an exclusive and outrageously expensive restaurant. They’re used to us now, but that first time I think a waiter had to go out and buy a highchair. It still had a tag on it when it was presented, and sweat was wiped from the waiter’s brow as he walked away.
The Tottenham-Edmonton feud might be over, but our new combined mafia is one that Londoners are wary of.
I am still notoriously murderous. There aren’t many London mafia bosses who have killed as many of the people related to them as I have. The rumours about our involvement in Lotte’s father’s death are firmly denied and silenced.
It won’t do for her music career to have any hint of her true, beautiful, ruthless self in her image of innocence and empowerment. Obviously, she doesn’t need the money, but she loves to sing, and even though she’s busy as a mother and co-leader of the Edmonton and Tottenham mafia, she always finds time to post a video.
Sometimes from this beach, or others, but just as often singing in that sound booth I made for her in our Edmonton house. She can use it on her own now. For many years it induced panic attacks unless I was with her. Never a chore, because I love listening to her sing, but I was proud as fuck when the video she made pinged onto my phone, and I realised what she’d been brave enough to do. In the end, we pushed back all the darkness her father tried to put on her.
Ivan sits back and regards his finished castle.
“Can we make it go boom like the tower?” he asks Lotte.
