Sorley opened his eyes slowly. He could feel her, asleep on his chest. He raised a hand and slowly tucked her hair back. He wanted to see her face. Asleep she looked peaceful, awake she never did. She frowned at the touch and the moment was gone. Vivienne scowled and opened her eyes, looked up at the man she was lying naked on top of.
Sorley smiled and said, “Good morning.”
Viv said nothing. She lay where she was, looking down at his chest. There was no happiness in her expression, instead a look of regret. She seemed almost guilty.
“We’ve done nothing wrong,” Sorley said quietly.
“That doesn’t matter,” she told him, and rolled to lie beside him.
They hadn’t planned to be there. They were, technically, competitors. Sorley and his group worked at a much lower level than Viv and hers, but even small scavengers are considered an enemy of the big predators. The Creag gang had long been the biggest in Challaid, and they maintained that position by crushing anyone who tried to make money from criminality in their city. It could be argued that the Creags did more to stop crime in the city than the local police because they stomped on even the smallest possible rivals. It could also be argued the reason the government plans to have a national police force fell through was because the Challaid force refused to be a part of it to protect their own criminality, but that’s not the story I’m telling here.
They had met a couple of years ago, Sorley a rising star in the criminal world. An awkward man, not filled with the same enthusiasm as his contemporaries. He was the son of a cop. He was smart and tough, but they said he had only got into the business to make money for his siblings. Once they were old enough to live for themselves, he was stuck in an industry that traps any it likes. He built his own little group around him, a tough lot, and they worked small scams. Viv was going to destroy them like all the rest.
The Creag gang doesn’t have any one leader. There’s a group at the top and Viv was a part of it. She handled moneylending, which meant she was in control of a lot of cash. Not the biggest earner of the senior group, but it was a good number. Others were jealous, and she knew it. Other people wanted what she had. People in that senior group. People who worked for her. Viv was always on the lookout for trouble, from inside the Creags as well as outside. Sorley Ross was the challenge on the outside, and she wasn’t aware of any trouble inside.
Not until she met Sorley. Viv didn’t believe in going to war unless you had to. War is expensive. First she would try to scare the opposition off the battlefield. She sat in Sigurds pub and watched the young man sit opposite her. He had come alone, as instructed. Sorley smiled across the table at her.
“Nice to finally meet you,” he said. He sounded casual, which she didn’t like.
“You need to retire,” she said. “Get out of the business, go travel, buy a boat, sink it, whatever. You need to stop working in the business and you need to stop living in Challaid.”
He smiled at her. “I’m a little young and a little poor for retirement.”
“There’s more than one way to stop living in a place,” she said, almost bored by her own threat, she had made it so many times. “On your terms or mine, you’re going to stop.”
Sorley smiled and reached into his pocket. Viv tensed and he smiled again, more broadly. “Just my phone,” he said, and took it out of his pocket. He tapped the screen a couple of times and a recording began to play.
“She’s going to come after you,” a local accent said, a muffled voice. “She wants rid of you, I want rid of her. Easy-peasy, we work together. You get her in place and I’ll take care of the rest. Get her to the multistory that fell over, down in the basement, that’s a good spot.”
Viv looked at the phone. She didn’t want to speak because she didn’t like being boxed into a corner.
“You know that was MacPherson,” Sorley told her. “He came to me, I didn’t go to him. He wants you out of the way because he thinks he can take your share, and he wants me to help him. Thing is, the offer he’s put on the table for me to help is not one I like. I don’t trust him. Once he’s done with you I become his next target, I know that. So my question is, what’s your offer?”
“Why would I need to make you an offer? You’ve already told me that MacPherson is working against me, what else can you do?”
“I can get him into the right position for you.”
Someone stopped living in the city, but it wasn’t Sorley. It was the young man who had worked under Viv and hated her and her family. The young man who had been in a fight with her brother and had been blamed for it just because his punch bag was related to someone senior. He watched her get rich from his efforts and he wanted what she had. His plan to kill her hinged on someone else being the lure, and Sorley was the man he wanted for the role. Instead Sorley lured MacPherson into place and the young man disappeared while Viv grew stronger than ever.
They had another meeting, a couple of nights later. She told him that the job had been a success and their deal would be honored. He would be allowed to continue to work, and the Creags would break the habit of a lifetime and avoid stamping on him. There were conditions. He declared his loyalty to the Creags so that he couldn’t declare it to anyone else. Not that there was anyone else, but the Creags were always wary of outsiders coming in and getting help from people like Sorley. He wouldn’t have to kick a cut up to her, though, and she would let them continue to operate so long as he didn’t expand.
“You stay the size you are now and work the places you work now, nothing more,” she told him.
“Deal.”
They drank to it, and they drank some more. It was two in the morning when they left the bar and got into a taxi. Sorley’s memory of it was blurred, but it was his flat they woke up in. Viv naked on top of him, him tucking her hair back to see her peaceful face.
She got out of bed and walked across the room to pick up her clothes. She started to dress, her face hard again. When she was finished she stood at the foot of the bed and looked down at him.
“Remember what I told you. No expansion. If I think you’re building your own little gang, you will have violated our agreement and I will remove you from the city. Remember that.”
She walked out of the flat.