Within ten minutes of Reggie arriving, she was finally led through to the back of the police station to see her sons. Reggie had arranged a brief for them and was already working on damage limitation. Suddenly she felt like she could breathe again. What the fuck were they thinking of? But that was the trouble with her sons – they didn’t think. They thought the name Scott and the tutelage of Ray Donovan was enough to keep them out of prison. They were a law unto themselves, and now their young lives could be over for the foreseeable future. For that, she would always blame Ray. She’d had such high hopes for them once, but she had gone along with Ray, as she had always gone along with Lenny before him. She knew deep down that the person she should be blaming was herself. She should have stopped the boys becoming too involved with Ray and the Life, but they had been determined to follow in both their fathers’ footsteps. Lenny and Ray had been the reason they were now sitting here waiting to go to court and, as a best case, get bail. She hoped that they would get special concessions, but she also knew they would not get a walk.

Reggie was already talking about trying to get the charge reduced to manslaughter for self-defence and people would be paid handsomely to keep that fiction going. Her boys had wanted to do what they had done – they were both impetuous and they were both arrogant.

Her phone rang and she answered it quickly. It was Jack Johnson telling her that he had already started things moving and he would use his vast contacts to try and resolve the situation for her. She began to cry; she was so grateful to him. She knew that she could count on Jack Johnson to come up trumps for her; he had always had her best interests at heart. She rang off, feeling much better about the situation now Jack was on board. Then she looked at her sons, and her anger flared. They were not in the least bit contrite and seemed to think that this was nothing more than a formality. That is when her heart finally sank and she knew that the best thing for these sons of hers would be a short, sharp shock. If they didn’t take this seriously, what fucking hope was there for them in the future? She had lost them; she had lost them a long time ago. And the knowledge broke her already fragile heart.

Chapter One Hundred and Seventy-One