Zoë Archer - Sweet Revenge

To Zack, for his unwavering strength and love

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I’d like to thank my unbelievably awesome editor, Holly Blanck, who loves the world of Nemesis, Unlimited, as much as I do. Thanks also to my agent, Kevan Lyon, for her continued kickassery. I’d also like to thank Danielle Fiorella for giving me such a gorgeous, pitch-perfect cover, and Elizabeth Wildman for her excellent copy. And last, but most assuredly not least, I want to thank the women of The Loop That Shall Not Be Named, because, in addition to being incredibly smart, funny, and filthy, they have been a source of sanity and fellowship in times when I have desperately needed both.

CHAPTER ONE

Yorkshire, England, 1886

Most prison escapes took months, sometimes years, of planning. Jack Dalton had one day.

He stood in the rock-breaking yard of Dunmoor Prison, hammer in hand, waiting for the warder to secure a shackle around his ankle, chaining him to the other convicts. Unrelenting afternoon sun beat down on him and the two dozen men. Squinting, Jack stared up at the sky.

Bloody perfect. The only sodding day it’s clear on the moors, and it’s the day I have to break out of this shithole.

It didn’t matter if ten thousand suns shone in the sky. He had to get out today.

Lynch, the warder, moved from convict to convict, fastening iron bands around each man’s ankle, and the band attached to a chain that stretched between the prisoners, who stood in two parallel rows. The chain rattled whenever someone moved. A scar encircled Jack’s ankle, a thick ridge of skin he had developed after five years of hard labor. The first few months had been rough. The shackle had dug into his requisition striped worsted stockings, gouging into the flesh beneath until he’d bled. The wound had gone putrid, a fever had burned through him, and he had almost lost not just the leg but his life. Yet Jack was a tough bastard. Always had been. Hatred kept a bloke tough. He lived, kept the leg, and got stronger.

Today he would need all of his strength. Impatience stung like hornets beneath his skin. Lynch was almost done with the first row of convicts. In another minute, the warder would start moving down Jack’s line, and then the window of opportunity would slam shut. Already, Jack’s gaze moved through the yard, looking toward the thirty-foot-high wall that kept the convicts of Dunmoor from the miles of rolling country, and the freedom that lay beyond.

“D.3.7., eyes straight ahead!”

Jack’s gaze snapped back to a blank stare, retreating behind the false front of apathy. No one had called him by his name in over five years. Sometimes he forgot he had a name, just a letter and a number. Once, he’d been Diamond Dalton—not because he favored diamonds. Hell, he had never owned a single diamond, and had seen a real one only a handful of times. No, they called him Diamond because he’d been formed by crushing pressure into the hardest thing to walk the streets of London.

Only Edith had called him Jack. Sometimes, when she was feeling nostalgic for their childhood, she had called him Jackie.

“Jackie,” she had whispered, reaching up to him with a blood-spattered hand. “Jackie, take me home.” And then she had died.

Even after all this time, the memory scoured Jack. The burn of rage pulsed through him. He knew it better than his own heartbeat. It was more important than the beat of his heart, for anger remained the only thing that kept him alive. Anger, and the need for vengeance. He would have his revenge soon.

Lynch reached Jack’s row. It had to be now.

“Oi,” Jack whispered to the convict standing next to him. “Stokes!”

The thick-jawed man flicked his gaze toward Jack, then straight ahead. “Shut it, idiot!” The punishment for talking could be the lash, or if the governor was feeling particularly brutal, time in the dark cell, deprived of light and all human interaction. Sometimes for weeks. Men went mad in the dark cell. God knows Jack almost did.

He didn’t fear punishment now. The only thing that scared him was not making his escape in time.

“You hear Mullens is getting out next week?”

“So what? I ain’t gettin’ out for eight months.”

Jack’s sentence had been much longer, thanks to the manipulation of the justice system. If he didn’t try this breakout, he would be stuck in Dunmoor for thirty-seven more years. Making him seventy-three years old by the time he tottered out the front gate—if he survived that long.

He would likely die today. So long as he took care of his business beforehand, he didn’t much care about dying afterward. It wasn’t as though his life merited clinging to.

“I heard…” Jack glanced quickly at Mullens, who stood in the row in front of them, and then at Lynch, moving closer. “When he gets out, he’s going straight to your mollisher.”

Stokes frowned at the mention of his woman. “Lizzie? But he ain’t even met her.”

Jack shrugged. “Maybe he heard you talking about her so nice, he had to see for himself. Said he’d give it to her right good. And she’d want it, too, not having a man around all this time.” He clapped his mouth shut as Lynch approached.

The warder glowered at Jack. “Better not be talking, D.3.7. The governor got a new flogging pillory, and he’s keen to try it.” Lynch’s eyes gleamed with eagerness.

“No, sir.”

“What’s that?” Lynch leaned closer. “Sounded like talking.”

Jack shook his head, hating the bastard. Some of the warders were decent enough, just trying to do a job for rubbish pay, but other screws, like Lynch, enjoyed their power and spent their time thinking up new ways to bully and harass the prisoners. Lynch particularly liked making up perceived infractions.

With a smirk, Lynch bent down and secured the shackle around Jack’s ankle. Damn it. He’d been hoping to goad Stokes enough before the shackle was clapped on, but Lynch had put an end to that plan.

It took everything Jack had not to smash his sledgehammer down onto Lynch’s head, knocking off the warder’s blue shako hat and spilling his brains all over the rock-breaking yard.

Stay fixed on your goal, Dalton. Killing Lynch might be satisfying, but it also meant he’d be taken down by the other warders, locked in the dark cell for months, and then dragged out only to be hanged.

So he let Lynch finish fastening the shackle and move on, keeping the bastard warder’s brains inside his skull.

“Next week,” Jack hissed at Stokes. “Mullens goes for Lizzie.”

Stokes wasn’t known for having a long fuse. He exploded like a burning arsenal at the smallest hint of provocation.

“I’ll beat your damned face in,” Stokes snarled. The convict broke rank, lunging for Mullens. Everyone in the row stumbled forward, pulled by the connecting chain.

Startled, Mullens barely had time to turn around before Stokes tackled him. Convicts fell, shouting out in anger and confusion. Others cheered Stokes on as he rained punches down on Mullens. More yelling filled the yard as warders came running. Chaos filled the enclosure, a blur of the dark blue warders’ uniforms and the pale, coarse uniforms of the convicts. Fists were thrown. Some of the warders had clubs, beating down the prisoners whether they fought or no. Jack grunted when he caught the back of a club across his shoulder, but he didn’t fall.

Bedlam, everywhere.

Now.

Hefting his hammer, Jack brought it down hard onto the chain binding him to the other convicts. The thick links shuddered, but stayed intact. He slammed the hammer down again, and again. The vibrations carried all the way up into his leg, jarring him until his teeth rattled. The weight of the hammer felt like nothing. He’d been swinging it for five years. When he had been tried and convicted of attempted murder, he’d already been strong. Now, years of hard labor had transformed him, and the heavy hammer felt like a bird’s hollow bone.