Gold Digger

Ollie

“Your girlfriend is a fucking psycho,” Blake slurred as he grabbed onto my arm. I turned to him and blinked.

“What the hell happened to you?” I bit out.

His left eye was swelling, his shirt was untucked and his eyes were red-rimmed.

“That little bitch happened to me,” he snapped. I shook off his hand as panic gripped me, making my chest feel too tight.

“Blake,” I said slowly. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Your girlfriend attacked me.”

I crossed my arms and narrowed my eyes at him. “Lottie is half your size, Blake.”

“Yeah, well, she’s a townie psycho, isn’t she.”

My eyebrows went up. “You’re telling me that Lottie attacked you totally unprovoked? Is that what you’re saying?”

He looked to the side, clearly reaching for the best lie, and then he shrugged. “I told you not to trust her, mate. Some fucking chav foster kid. She doesn’t belong in our world.”

“Careful, Blake,” I warned in a low voice.

“I can’t believe this,” his voice was rising, his words slurring together even more as he swayed on his feet. “You’re siding with that piece of trash? Where’s your family loyalty?”

“Blake? Ollie?” Claire’s voice cut through the tension, and we both turned to her. She attempted to smile, but it was tremulous and totally fake. I studied her face for a long moment, and then a wave of rage hit me so hard I felt winded.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked her in a strangled voice.

“W-what?” Claire said, her fake smile dropping completely as her hand holding her champagne glass shook. I reached up to her face, touching her cheek for a moment before my hand dropped. She had a full face of make-up on, and I would have missed the bruising if I hadn’t studied her so closely. I swallowed past the lump in my throat. My sister was hurt, and I hadn’t been there to protect her.

I just have a really bad feeling about him, Ollie. I’m sorry. I know he’s family, but he’s definitely an alcoholic, and I… I don’t think he’s safe.

Jesus Christ, I was such an idiot. I moved to Claire and pulled her into me, hugging her fiercely as I tried to tamp down my anger.

“Ollie, what the—?” she started to say, but I cut her off.

“I’m sorry you couldn’t tell me, squirt,” I said in a low voice into her hair. She stiffened in my arms.

“What are you?—?”

“Nobody hurts my sister.”

“Ollie, that’s not?—”

I pulled back to look at her face, framing it with my hands. “Nobody hurts you. Understand me?” She shook her head at first, but as she stared up at me, something shifted in her expression. After a moment, her face crumpled, and she fell into me, burying it in my chest, her body heaving with a suppressed sob.

“What’s going on here?” Mum’s voice cut in, and I looked over Claire’s head to see her flanked by Felix and Lucy. Felix was staring at Blake with an absolutely furious expression. I kissed the top of Claire’s head and then gently transferred her to Mum’s arms.

“Claire Bear,” Mum muttered as Claire sobbed on her shoulder. “What on earth?—?”

“Claire, darling,” Blake said, belatedly moving to comfort his wife, but I stepped in his path, stopping him in his tracks. He swayed on his feet as he stared up at me.

“You hurt my sister.”

“What?” his voice rose to an almost squeak, and real panic flooded his expression. “Hurt Claire? That’s ludicrous.”

“There’s a bruise on her cheek, you piece of shit,” I said in a near shout, very close to losing it.

He gave a nervous laugh, taking a few steps back, but Felix had moved to block him, giving him a sharp shove back towards me. That was when I noticed him cradling his hand.

“Did that little townie bitch say something?” Blake snapped, his face transforming from fake concern for his wife to absolute fury. “I told you, she attacked me . Probably attacked your sister as well. I think my goddamn hand is broken, if you care.”

“You should be thankful,” Felix put in. “Before Lottie got in there, I was about to beat the shit out of you, and I promise you wouldn’t be standing there whining about your hand, and you wouldn’t be thinking something was probably broken. You’d know it was, that’s if you were conscious.”

“What happened?” I asked Felix whilst staring at Blake, who was starting to look left and right, clearly looking for an escape.

“He grabbed Lottie and shook her so hard her teeth rattled,” Felix said through gritted teeth. Blake looked really panicked then. “Then he backhanded her. She dodged but I think he might have clipped her.”

“That’s bullshit,” Blake spat.

“It happened really fast,” Felix continued as if Blake hadn’t spoken. “Before I could get to her, she’d kicked him in the nuts and backhanded him like a fucking awesome ninja before disappearing into the crowd – and then you guys were with Vicky.”

“Fucking hell,” I muttered, feeling like I might throw up. Lottie had been assaulted? And she wasn’t even going to tell me that, was she? No, all she wanted was for me to check on my sister. She didn’t think I’d believe her. Or maybe she didn’t think I’d care. I blinked, and then that red mark on Lottie’s ribs on the day she’d fallen into the pool came into my mind, and bile rose in my throat as her words filtered back into my mind:

I didn’t trip. Someone jabbed me, and it knocked me off my feet into the pool.

I moved fast then. Blake’s eyes widened as I grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, giving him a brief shake to get his attention.

“You pushed her into the pool that day, didn’t you?” I said, and when he didn’t answer, my voice rose to a shout as I shook him again. “Didn’t you?”

“For fuck’s sake,” he snapped, still faking outraged fury, but the colour had drained from his face. “Why the fuck would I?—?”

“She saw right through you. She’s always seen right through you. And you hated that.”

Blake’s eyes darted around the group of hostile faces, and his face twisted into an ugly mask of real rage that I’d never seen before. “My elbow slipped, okay? It was an accident.”

“She could have drowned, you sick bastard.”

“How was I to know she couldn’t swim? What grown adult can’t actually swim?”Nôvel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.

“We overheard her telling Ollie that, Blake,” Claire said, her voice shaky but stronger than I’d heard it in a long time.

“Shut up, Claire,” Blake snapped.

“You motherfucker,” I said, advancing on him as he backed away from me. “I can’t believe you?—”

“She’s a fucking cleaner, mate!” he shouted, and the stupid bastard actually took a swing at me. But he was drunk, his reactions were sloppy and he was fighting someone his own size for a change. I easily avoided the punch, kept hold of his shirt with one hand, pulled my other arm back, and then let my fist fly into his face.

“You’ll move out of my sister’s house,” I said in a controlled voice as he groaned at my feet. “I don’t want to see your face ever again.” I crouched down next to him then, grabbing a fistful of his hair so that I could talk into his ear. “You might have forgotten this, but I own this city, literally. Nobody lays a hand on my family. London is done for you, mate. You can slink off and live on the rest of your trust fund because you’ll never work here again.”

I let him go and pushed up to my feet. Two men from the event security team had arrived. I nodded towards Blake, who was struggling to his feet now. “Get rid of him. I want him off the premises and in a taxi. I don’t care where it takes him, but he is not allowed back on the property under any circumstances.” They nodded and grabbed him under his arms to start dragging him towards the exit.

“Ollie, listen. I can explain,” Blake started shouting as they dragged him away. “It was all an accident. Claire! Tell him!”

Claire was still sobbing on Mum’s shoulder.

I knew I needed to check on Claire, but I couldn’t get the image of Lottie’s blank expression out of my mind. So, I moved to my sister, kissed her on the side of her head and muttered, “I’ll be back,” in her ear. As I strode across the room, scanning for Lottie’s caramel hair and gorgeous dress, a sense of dread settled over me.

My family are none of your fucking business.

My words from earlier filled my mind as I searched. What had I done?

Right, we were in the middle of nowhere. She couldn’t have gone far. How hurt was she? I remembered how she flinched when I’d grabbed her elbow, and the nausea started to rise up again. I moved to one of the guys doing the valet parking.

“Hey, listen, I was out here earlier with a woman in a blue dress. Do you know who I mean?”

The man turned to me and gave me a hard stare. “I saw you, mate,” he snapped. Okay then. He was clearly not a fan of how I treated Lottie earlier. That makes two of us, mate . I took a deep breath to tamp down my frustration.

“Okay,” I said through gritted teeth. “Well, did you see where she went? I’ve searched the venue and I can’t find her. She doesn’t have a car here, so she couldn’t have left under her own steam and?—”

“Didn’t see her,” he interrupted, staring straight ahead. My hands went to my hips. This man was bloody well lying to me. I had to admire his balls, but at the moment I just needed to know where my goddamn fiancée was.

“We had a fight, and I’m worried about her, okay?”

He snorted but hid it behind a cough. I narrowed my eyes at him.

“It’s imperative that I find her,” I snapped.

“Oh well, if it’s imperative, then of course I’ll help guv’nor.” This fucking guy was taking the piss. He knew where Lottie went.

“Now see here—” I started, but he cut me off.

“You see here , wanker,” he said, and I blinked in surprise. Nobody ever spoke to me like this. “If your bird wanted to see you, guess what? She would be here seeing you. From what I saw earlier, she won’t be wanting that for a good while.”

“Do you know who I am?”

He snorted again. “Yeah, yeah – Duke of Fuckingham. Doesn’t give you the right to treat women like shit. Feudal rule ended four hundred years ago, about the same time your bullshit titles should have ended. I’m not telling you dick.”