"Lex? Alexis?" I realize it's not her a split-second after the name tumbles out of my mouth. Confusion flickers across the woman's face. "I'm sorry, I—“

This woman is older than Lex would be now. Her eyes aren't the same shade of brown—slightly lighter, almost hazel. She frowns at me. "Do I know you?"

"No, no. Sorry. For a moment I thought you were someone else."

“That's okay. I'm just glad to see another member of the human race. I've been waiting here for hours. No one’ll tell me anything. Can I go see Gary now? He's going to be so mad if he has to miss work. He’s never taken a sick day in his life." She's rambling. The smile makes a lot of sense—she's plastered it on to keep from crying alone in an unfamiliar, strange room. She can act as easy breezy as she wants, though. She knows. Or she at least suspects.

“I'm sorry, Mrs Saunders, could I sit with you for a moment?" Her smile disintegrates. When she slumps back into her seat, she's already entered the first stages of grief: denial.

"No. No, they said he was going to be fine. There must have been a mistake. Please can you go and make sure you're supposed to be here?"

I'm the Grim Reaper. I may as well be the embodiment of death to these people. My face is one they will forever associate with the worst news they are ever likely to receive. "I'm so sorry, Mrs Saunders. I’m sorry but it’s true. I am supposed to be here. Gary…he didn't make it."

Charlie left England back in the eighties but thirty years hasn't dampened his cockney accent. It took me a long time to figure out what the hell he was saying when I first met him but now I understand him perfectly.

"D'you need me to clear out your ears for you, boy? I ‘ate ‘avin’ to repeat myself. My import, export business ain’t none of your concern.”

Sitting behind his imposing monstrosity of a desk, it's easy to see how he scares the crap out of the younger guys. Even the older guys. He looks like a pumped-up Robert De Niro, except his presence is far more intense. He’s in his late sixties but the guy still fucks anything that moves, still snorts anything vaguely white and powdery, and still kills anybody who looks at him sideways. He brought me into this world of violence, though, so it's not in me to be intimidated by him.

It's been three weeks since Frankie. Three weeks since I had a slug tweezered out of my shoulder by some bumbling moron who was too scared to even look me in the eye. Three weeks that I’ve had to recover and do a little snooping.

"I didn't even know you had an import, export business, Charlie. Thought you bought your product from the Russians. Mexicans when you had to?"

He opens the drawer to his desk and pulls out a small wooden box with a fleur-de-lis engraved into the lid. That box is a childhood relic to me. Charlie used to sit me on his knee and teach me how to roll smokes for him; he's always kept his stash in that box. He hasn’t asked me to roll for him since I was ten, though, twenty-three whole years ago.

"I'm sure there's plenty of things about my business you are not privy to, Zeth. That's not your fault, I know. When I took you under my wing, I watched you for years thinking to myself, where will this small boy fit best into my organisation when he sprouts hairs on his balls? I watched and I took note.

"If you’d displayed even the slightest scrap of business sense, I would’a had you involved in that side of things and you'd know all about my side projects. Everything else pertainin’ therein. But that's not what I saw in you, Zeth, is it? I saw that you were a savage little shit wiv a nasty temper and I found other uses for you. Other uses that have funded your escapades for quite some time now."

The message is more than clear—don't bite the hand that feeds you. Charlie’s always liked messages. Don't shit where you eat. Never look a gift horse in the mouth. You get the picture. "I appreciate everything you've done for me, Charlie. You know that's not what this is about."

He finishes rolling his smoke. He pops it into his mouth and then purses his lips, drawing it out and sealing the handmade. When he lights it, I can smell the sickly sweet stink of the Mary Jane he laces his tobacco with. He holds the smoke in his lungs before exhaling, fixing me with razor sharp, ice blue eyes. "Then what exactly is this about?"

"It's about girls. Kidnapping and selling girls, taking them from their homes."

"I never had you pegged as the sentimental type, Zeth.”

"Not sentimental. Just not a monster."

That puts a shit-eating grin on his face. "We both know you are, in fact, a monster."

Maybe that's true, but even I have boundaries. Selling girls for sex is most definitely crossing the line in my book. "Just tell me the truth. Was Frankie for real when he said you had a fucking shipping container of dead girls roll into harbour?"

Charlie plucks a flake of tobacco from his time. Flicks it away. "If you insist on knowing the truth, then yes, okay. Seventeen dead Mexicans. I had to pay off the port authority to make them disappear. Very messy business."

Even though I'd known it was true before he'd confirmed it, a small part of me had hoped otherwise. I explode out of my chair; it kicks back and falls to the floor with a clatter. Charlie watches my reaction with a blank expression.

"You fucking lied to me."

"Am I beholden to you, Zeth?” He asks me so calmly.