Jacqui Rose - Disobey

The man had even bought her a puppy whom she’d named Timmy, a cute white poodle. Then on her sixteenth birthday he’d given her the best present ever. He’d offered to buy her a boob job, and of course she’d jumped at the chance.

The operation had gone well and she’d gone up to a double EE. At only sixteen, the girls at school had been riddled with jealousy as suddenly overnight Chloe was now the most popular one with the boys. It’d been the happiest time of her life – and then it’d happened. Something she should’ve seen coming.

She’d been asleep when her foster father had woken her up. His hands and his mouth groping at her, pulling at her body and breasts as she tried to push him off. But he’d been too strong for her and after putting up a fight, Chloe finally was overpowered and the man had forced his erect penis into her. That was the night Chloe-Jane Jennings had lost her virginity.

The next day, Chloe had packed her things and gone to sit in the offices of social services, but as she had turned sixteen, no one had wanted to listen to her – she was too old. She’d gone back to her mother’s but had only lasted a further eight months before her mother’s behaviour had become too much for her.

She’d slept on friends’ floors for another eight months before deciding to come up to London and leave Essex behind once and for all. And it was only when she’d arrived in London she’d remembered her Uncle Alfie. Her mother’s half-brother. She’d only ever seen him twice in her life. But both times she remembered vividly because of his kindness. So where better to come and stay but with him? After all, he was family.

‘I hope you don’t mind me turning up like this, it’s just I ain’t got anywhere else to go. But I reckoned you wouldn’t mind me staying with you.’

Alfie stared at her. He hadn’t seen this coming, and even if he had there was just no way it was happening.

‘When you say stay, what exactly do you mean?’

‘Like stay. Crash out at yours. It’d be only for a couple of nights.’

Alfie began to shake his head. ‘I don’t think that’d be a good idea.’

Chloe-Jane looked at Alfie. She had to play this delicately. She glanced at Alfie slyly. Lying came second nature to her, after all, she was her mother’s daughter. Chloe chose her words very carefully.

‘Well that’s what my mum said, but I said you weren’t like that. I said you were the sort of bloke who wouldn’t mind me just turning up out of the blue.’

Alfie silently nodded. It was true. He was a generous, welcoming guy. He listened on as Chloe continued.

‘I don’t know why Emmie thinks you’re ’orrible. She don’t know how lucky she is. If I had a dad like you, I’d …’

Alfie smarted at hearing the name of his daughter. The idea that Emmie thought he was horrible killed him.

‘When did Emmie say that?’

Chloe shrugged her shoulders, knowing it wasn’t true. In fact she hadn’t spoken to her cousin in years. She’d heard her mum speak to Janine – Alfie’s ex and Emmie’s mother – on the phone and retell all the ins and outs of what happened, but besides that she really didn’t know anything about Emmie.

‘Anyhow, I best be getting on, Uncle Alfie. I gotta find meself somewhere else to stay. Sorry for troubling you.’

‘No! Wait! Did your mum really call me a wanker?’

Chloe shook her head and a look of relief passed over Alfie’s face, though it was only short-lived. ‘No, she actually called you a cunt.’

Alfie’s face reddened.

‘Anyway Uncle Alfie, I really got to go.’

‘Maybe … maybe it’d be alright for a couple of nights.’

‘Really?’

It was Alfie’s turn to shrug. ‘I guess … but I mean a couple.’

Chloe squealed with delight as Alfie led her back to his flat. Well what could he do? After all, she was family. And family stuck together, no what matter what. The only problem was, Chloe was trouble. Alfie could smell it a mile away.

The scream echoed through the building and out onto the street as if it were a gush of air, causing the late-night passers-by to stop and wonder what they’d just heard, before hurrying quickly away.

Inside one of the darkened rooms of the six-storey building Chang Lee owned in Gerrard Street, Chinatown, Mr Lee stood behind the two-way mirror. The building’s ground and first floor housed a restaurant run by some of Chang Lee’s men, with the higher floors used for late-night illegal gambling, and the basement where he was now, for moments like this.

Chang watched his second-in-command, Lin, screw the pliers into the cheek of Sarp.

‘Open up. I said, open up!’ Lin shouted loudly, his eyes dancing in excitement as he began to extract the teeth of the man whose face already poured with blood.

Mr Lee looked on calmly, not showing a hint of emotion, watching whilst a patch of urine spread further across the tormented man’s bloodstained underwear. He’d seen enough.

‘Stop!’ The one-word well-spoken order from Lee had Lin immediately breaking off from the pain they were inflicting on the man. Lin exhaled heavily, out of breath from all the physical exertion.

Mr Lee came out from behind the mirror, walking over to the man who lay crumpled on the stone floor like a heap of old sacks.

‘My men are very loyal to me. When I give an order they like to carry it out; it’s a matter of honour, you see. And when they can’t, it upsets them. In Hong Kong we have a code. A code in which we swear an oath to preserve the fellowship at all costs. To do all we can to uphold it. My men will go to any lengths to make sure my orders are carried through.’

Sarp growled out something inaudible as Mr Lee shook his head.

‘Pride can be an honourable trait, but it can also be a foolish one and cause a very nasty fall.’ Mr Lee stood up, towering over the man as he continued to talk, his tone sinister. ‘What I don’t understand is why. Why on earth you wouldn’t just pay. We could’ve protected you. Looked after your business … looked after you. But as such, you’ve lost everything. Everything gone. Burnt to the ground.’

Through the pain, Sarp mumbled his words of defiance.

‘I ain’t paying you lot nothing. Fuck all.’

Mr Lee nodded to Lin, who picked up a discarded piece of wood from the floor and played with it in his hand for a moment as Lee continued to speak.

‘That’s it right there. The pride coming before the fall – and as for you not paying us anything; how wrong you are. You’ve paid a very high price indeed.’ Lee nodded once more to Lin, who effortlessly swung the wood and smashed it into the man’s skull, splitting open his head. Blood and brain mass spilt out as the man started to convulse.

Mr Lee sighed, a note of resignation in his voice. ‘Bag him up.’

It’d just gone three in the morning as Alfie Jennings stood outside Whispers nightclub, which he’d owned for many years. It was something he was proud of, something which was close to his heart. He’d started the club in memory of his mother who’d killed herself when he was only a kid. To this day, the image of finding her covered in blood after she’d stabbed herself in the neck with a pair of garden shears still haunted Alfie.

Although it was only a business, essentially only a building, to him it was a way of keeping his mother’s memory alive and he would do anything in his power to keep it going. In fact, Alfie suspected he’d put a bullet in someone’s head to keep it going.

It was one of the reasons why he had such a problem with Vaughn. Okay, Alfie had made mistakes and got involved with people he shouldn’t have done when he’d got mixed up with a gang of sex traffickers a few years back. But he hadn’t known the full story, hadn’t known all the ins and outs of it, not really, or so he liked to tell himself. What Alfie had known was that it paid well and he had been desperate.