Silas Read online

  Contents

  Hello from the Author, Disclaimer & Reality Check

  Silas

  Thank Yous, Contact, Begging for Reviews, and What to read next

  Sneak Peek Rowan

  Copyright Tilly Delane, 2020

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Titles by Tilly Delane

  Silas (Brighton Bad Boys I)

  Rowan (Brighton Bad Boys II)

  Diego (Brighton Bad Boys III)

  Hello from the Author, Disclaimer & Reality Check

  Hey there,

  Glad you found us.

  ‘Us’ are me, Tilly Delane (not my real name), and The Brighton Bad Boys. I love these guys so hard, I really wish I could tell you who I really am and plaster my face all over the internet to proclaim to the world how proud I am of this series and how much I fucking love these guys. But there are innocents to protect here.

  So for now, I’m Tilly and proud, and here comes the warning:

  The Brighton Bad Boys Series is intended for mature readers over 18 years of age only.

  I also feel that there are a couple of things that need clarifying before you dig in.

  Firstly, I made the deliberate choice to use US spelling for my American characters’ POVs and UK spelling for my British characters’ POVs. It’s indulging an idiosyncrasy of mine: if I see US spelling, I automatically hear an American accent in my head, if I see UK spelling, I automatically hear a Brit. I hope you can get on board with it.

  Secondly, The Brighton Bad Boys series is set in a slightly alternative version of my city, especially where the elements of corruption within the police force I allude to are concerned. I’ve lived in the real Brighton for most of my life and I have no intention of leaving any time soon, because it is possibly the most tolerant and liberal city in England, and that includes its police force. They’re a good bunch. I’m glad I live here.

  That’s it.

  I hope you enjoy reading about these guys as much as I enjoyed writing their stories. You know the drill: if you like them, leave reviews or ratings all over the show, please. I know it’s always tempting to keep delicious thugs like Silas, Rowan and Diego to yourself, but if you help me out here, I can write more of them!

  Enjoy the trip!

  TD

  Silas

  Grace

  By the time I get to the reception desk of the Palais Hotel in Brighton, it’s nearly midnight and I’m drenched in two parts intercontinental grime steeped in travel sweat and one part torrential rain. Welcome to the south coast of England. What a cliché.

  The blouse I’m wearing underneath my Marlene Dietrich style pantsuit, which looks on me nothing like it used to look on her, largely to do with the fact she was a blonde stick insect and I am what is kindly referred to as a ‘buxom’ bottle red, is sticking to my back and all I want is a shower. Or, even better, a bath. I’m jetlagged and tired from the two-hour bus journey, preceded by an eight-hour flight, preceded by an hour’s cab journey from Friendship Heights to Dulles. Not to mention footsore from traipsing around London Heathrow for ages to find the exit to the coach station. So to say that I am not amused when the night receptionist looks at me apologetically is the understatement of the century.

  “I’m truly sorry, Miss...” Her voice trails off because she has already forgotten my name. Inexcusable. If my mum was still the manager here, that’d be a black mark.

  “Turner,” I prompt.

  “Miss Turner. There is no booking in your name. Did you say you booked through Travelbritisles? They went into administration last month, I’m afraid. Did you not see it on the news? None of their bookings were sent through to us, let alone actually paid for. I’m truly sorry but I just don’t have a room for you. We’re booked solid for the rest of the month.”

  To be fair, she does actually kind of look devastated on my behalf. Classic Brit. Very apologetic but totally unhelpful all the same. I know I’m cranky, but I can’t help it. All I want is to get cleaned up and go to fucking sleep. Sure, I’m disappointed that I won’t get to stay at the Palais, especially considering I worked my ass off all year to finance this trip and staying here was an integral part of the plan. Last time I came here I was eight. Mum (never Mom!) was still Mum and she’d loved showing me around her old stomping ground, as she called it. But, actually, right now, I don’t really care where I sleep tonight. Anything with a roof over it will do.

  “Don’t you have, like, an overflow B&B or something you partner with?” I ask Gaynor, as her name tag informs me, with the sweetest smile I can muster.

  It’s how Mum used to deal with situations like this. She had a whole list of trusted inns she could ring in case people turned up at the Atlantis when it was full. And those inns would bend over backward to accommodate any custom she sent their way. Mutual back scratching 101. Having an in with the manager of the Atlantis could get them things for their guests a lowly innkeeper couldn’t normally get hold of. Tickets to shows that were sold out, tables in restaurants that were booked solid for months, and so on.

  But the concept is clearly lost on Gaynor. She looks at me with her big blue porcelain doll eyes and blinks a few times with her stupidly long fake lashes, clearly wishing I’d disappear in a puff of smoke around about now, so she didn’t have to deal with me any longer.

  “It’s the Brighton Festival,” she finally says, gently as if breaking the bad news to the family of a car crash victim. “I can guarantee you that there isn’t a free bed in town. People rent out their gardens to campers during the festival, it’s that bad.”

  “Great,” I say, still not moving from my spot.

  We have a bit of a silent stare out after that because she’s not volunteering any solutions, and I am too exhausted to even contemplate my next move. While I make a mental note to ring my travel insurance to recoup the money on a room I evidently won’t get to sleep in, I eye up the armchairs grouped around the two coffee tables that furnish the lounge. Two of them pushed together would probably make an okay sleep pod. I’m not overly tall at five feet five and a half. I could manage, in a sitty-uppy fashion. Gaynor watches me size up the furniture and panics visibly. She puts out a hand as if to stop me from doing something stupid and I smile inwardly.

  Ten to one, she’s just had a brainwave in my favor.

  “Hang on,” she practically begs. “I might have an idea. Wait here a moment, please.”

  She leaves her position behind the desk and disappears into the bowels of the hotel for a good ten minutes before she returns with a chamber maid. Though ‘maid’ is a euphemism in this case, if ever there was one. The woman is in her forties or fifties, hard to tell because it’s obvious she’s aged early. There is an ashen, tired look about her, reminiscent of the early days of Mum’s chemo, though once upon a time this woman must have been quite stunning. The remnants of prettiness are still there in her bone structure and she could still be a looker, I decide, if her ash blonde hair was not cut in such a drab, short-and-practical fashion and had a color injection. And if maybe she wore a tiny bit of makeup, along with some pride. The utilitarian hairdo together with the gray maid’s outfit, that is wearing her more than she is wearing it, make her look like the ward matron in a mental institution who is barely managing to stay on the right side of the bars. Yet, there is something steely and resolute beneath her stooped demeanor that makes me want to put one hand between her shoulder blades and another on her breastbone to straighten her out and tell her to stand tall like she was born to, the way Mum used to do to me. For a moment, I wonder if Gaynor has summoned her to help throw me out. But then the woman speaks, her voice seemingly projecting all the tiredness t
hat I feel.

  Weird sensation.

  “Gaynor says you’ve come all the way from the States today, ducky?” she asks and the ‘ducky’ nearly breaks my heart. Nobody has spoken to me like this since Mum died. For a split second, I truly feel like the 25-year-old orphan that I am. I swallow hard but the woman, Sheena her tag informs me, alongside the info that she’s actually head of housekeeping, which explains why she’s still here at this late hour, doesn’t really pause to let me answer anyway.

  “You must be exhausted.” She takes a breath, letting her eyes wander over me. I wonder what she sees, but before I can dwell on it, she carries on talking, cocking her head to the side a little. “Gaynor asked me if I can help you out because I rent my spare room to language students sometimes. I’ve got a Polish girl at the moment. Kalina. Ever so polite. Bit of a recluse. But if you want, you can come and stay with me tonight anyway. You can sleep in my son’s room. He won’t be home yet. He works nights. Doesn’t get back till gone six in the morning. He can take the sofa. I’ll charge you the going rate. Thirty a night, includes breakfast but it won’t be cooked unless you cook it yourself. I was about to wrap up here and go home. Interested?”

  She straightens her neck and I realize it’s a kind of challenge. She thinks the entitled American in the expensive power pantsuit will refuse her offer. She has no way of knowing that the only reason I bought this outfit is because Mum would have expected me to look nice checking into the Palais.

  What she also fails to realize is that at this point in time I’d be happy to sleep in a bathtub. So I answer without even thinking.

  “Hell yeah, I’m interested.”

  Silas

  “Your turn in the shower,” Gareth grins at me as he shrugs out of a dripping club-issue waterproof and hands it to me.

  “Is it still hammering it down?” I ask as I slip my arms into the sleeves of the jacket and push my hands through the soggy knitted cuffs. Always a joy.

  “Cats and dogs,” Gareth informs me, while he scans the packed area around the top bar and the dance floor, running a hand over his damp skull. His buzz cut is so fresh he’s practically a skinhead. Till yesterday, he had spiky dark hair with short back and sides. It was a good look for the ladies, but he’s trying to show he’s ready for the ring. Not that that’s how it works. Or that there is technically a ring. Or octagon. Or any geometrical shape. He’ll find out soon enough. “Shit for us. Good for business,” he carries on by way of making inane conversation.

  He’s right. Normally during the festival, the club’s pretty dead. People go to the shows and afterwards they either keep drinking in the venue they’re in or they go sit on the beach. Regular clubbing goes out of the window. It’s a hard month on the nightclubs that aren’t part of the festival map. And TripleX is definitely not part of the festival map. It’s barely part of the map. Despite the fact we’re right on the seafront, you sort of need to know where the entrance is. And we like to keep it that way.

  But on a night like this, the beach goers all suddenly stream through our doors. Like homing pigeons, they find the staircase that leads down to us as soon as the first torrent of rain comes down, and suddenly we have a whole load of clientele steaming up the place that we wouldn’t normally have and don’t particularly want back either. Fucking middle-class arseholes and university students. Gareth is new and doesn’t get it yet. All he sees is people spending money on the bar. Which you’d think is good. And it is, provided they don’t want to come back during fightnights. People get suspicious if they are let in freely one day but need a golden ticket the next. But on the other hand, the locals get suspicious if only the same select crowd is let in all the time. It’s a fine balance because once the locals get suspicious, Diego, aka George Benson, can lubricate the cops’ pockets all he likes. It’d be the beginning of the end.

  Happened before. Not to Benson, yet, but to others. You gotta find that happy medium where nobody is suspicious of anything, the tax man is happy and there is no cause for the rumour mill to start churning. Constant battle. It’s a small town. It calls itself a city but, really, everybody who is somebody knows fucking everybody who is nobody around here. I should know. I’m a rarity. Brighton born and bred. We’re few and far between. Most folk who live here come to study at one of the universities and then get stuck, like flies on sugar paper. Never could work out where all the other Brightonians disappeared to. It’s like once we got out of school, they dropped off the edge.

  Everyone other than George. Diego. I need to stop calling him George in my head. It’s gonna get me into trouble one day. It’s difficult, though. I’ve known the guy since pre-school and, Spanish mother or not, he is blond for fuck’s sake. How un-Diego can you be?

  Maybe there is a different secret door for the other natives, up the street somewhere, and nobody bothered to let me in on the know. Would figure.

  My crappy mood doesn’t improve as I step out of the door and trot up the outside stairs to stand on the pavement by the railings and vet the punters as they attempt to come down. I flip up the hood on the waterproof a fraction too late and cold rainwater trickles down my neck, into my t-shirt and down between my shoulder blades. Fucking A.

  I nod at Arlo, the other bouncer up here, who is checking out the legs on two barely legal girls as they clamber out of a cab to totter up to the door of The Cockatoo, the cocktail bar above TripleX. He makes out he’s interested, but I’m pretty sure it’s not the way his toast is buttered.

  I watch then, trying to gauge for a moment if they are hookers or just regular slappers and if they are of age. There is a guy on the door of the bar, but he’s new and inexperienced and it’s sometimes hard to tell around here. Especially since Diego rents a few of the apartments in the building above to ladies of pleasure. But these two are too young, and their dresses are way too short and cheap, to be escorts. I swear I can see the butt curve on the brunette peeking out from below the hem.

  I make a sign at the guy on the bar door, Ben I think his name is, to check their ID, and he nods.

  They giggle, nearly tripping over themselves, while they produce their driver’s licences, and one runs her hand suggestively up Ben’s arm.

  Definitely regular slappers.

  As they fall into The Cockatoo and out of sight, I meet Arlo’s eye. He grins and comes over to me, before he goes down to the club to swap with whoever.

  “Might tap that later,” he tells me.

  It’s kind of sad that he thinks he needs to pretend to be straight to be accepted in this part of town, especially since a mile down the road you enter the biggest gay community in England, but I say nothing.

  I say nothing, and he wouldn’t really expect me to.

  The guys all know I keep myself to myself.

  I don’t do hanging around after shutdown to pick up drunk girls from upstairs.

  I don’t do staff drinks.

  I don’t do socials.

  I don’t do going to the gym together.

  I don’t do friendship.

  I don’t do garden parties at the Benson Mansion on Woodland Drive.

  I don’t bet.

  I work, I get paid.

  I fight, I get paid.

  End of involvement.

  For a precious few minutes after Arlo leaves, I’m left alone out here. The weather has swept the street clean of people and there are barely any cars about, so I can hear the ocean above the sound of the now slowing rain. Listening to the waves crash against the groynes soothes me. I can see the lights of the pier in the far distance and the streetlamps and their halos on the opposite side of the road in front of the dark background that is the sea. This is the Brighton I love. The one in front of me. The one at my back? Not so much.

  The peace doesn’t last long as a set of traffic lights somewhere down the road changes and a line of cars starts approaching. I hear Mum’s Ford Capri before I spot it behind some fat arse off-roader that’s never so much as mounted a kerb. It makes me smile that I recognize the
sound of the Capri’s engine. She loves that bloody car. Had it for thirty years. Was a classic even then. Bought it when she was still modelling. It’s a total money pit despite the fact she does most of the work on it herself. Her dad was a mechanic. Wish I’d met him. She knows her way around the basic combustion engine like nobody else I know. It’s her metal baby. But it’s more than that. When she plunged us into debt because of him, she was prepared to lose the house, asked me to sell whatever I had to sell, but she never once even contemplated selling the car.

  My teeth clench and my jaw locks as I think of him. He’s been sniffing around again lately. I haven’t seen him, but I just know. I can feel it in my gut, in the prickle at the back of my neck. He’s back in town. And I bet he’s heard through the grapevine that we’re doing alright. Time to come and fleece us again.

  But not this time. I’ve got better since he left. Maybe not better than him on the whole. But harder and faster.

  I watch the cars zoom by and for a split second my stomach bottoms out. There is a figure sitting in the passenger seat next to Mum, but they’re on the far side of the road, so she or he is obscured by Mum. I can’t make out who it is. It can’t be Kalina because she’s like clockwork. Bed at nine, up at six. Waves at me as I come in and she leaves, off to the language school or her unpaid job in a charity shop. So who the fuck is that in Mum’s car? Fuck. I’m not exactly superstitious but I only just thought of him. And then this happens. Fuck.

  It’s only in the last moment as they pass me by that I see a glimpse of long red hair past my Mum’s profile and I relax. He’s many things but a transvestite he is not. We’re cool. I’m being paranoid. Probably just some colleague who Mum’s giving a lift to. She’s good like that. Heart as big as the fucking planet.

  Grace

  Sheena’s house is actually two towns over, in a place called Shoreham. Not that you’d know it is a different place because the little towns along the coast melt seamlessly from one into the other.