Colour Series Box Set (2 page)

MY DAD WAS A
bad man. He was an amazing father. He loved me with all his heart and would protect me at any cost but he was a very bad man. He was a monster, not always but sometimes. I loved him dearly and I always will, but I never loved or even liked what he did and he kept it from me until he thought I was old enough to form my own judgements about it. He gave me a childhood free of bad things. In fact, I can only remember amazing times filled with love and laughter. My mother however, ran for the hills the second she found out exactly who he was. She told him she wanted nothing to do with a child that might be evil like him. “Monsters are born not made.” I was two years old so I have almost no recollection of her and nor do I really wish too. She abandoned me so easily; I have often wondered if I will be bad like my father. My dad was not evil as she had called him, he was just a bad man. Evil and bad are very different things. I married an evil man. I believe that I married the devil himself.

My dad sold murder. He was a murderer. It’s that simple and yet it’s not. We live in South Africa which is the perfect place for even the most careless criminal to live. The useless police services, high crime rate and dim-witted government were simply accepted by the masses while murder, rape, assault and all violent crimes were the norm in everyday life. They didn’t even make the news. So no one noticed dads carefully planned and executed ‘accidents’ or a few extra dead bodies that no one cared less about to start with. To the rest of the world, our newspapers
read like comic strips full of headlines that anywhere else would cause a huge outcry for justice. Here, there’s very little justice and very few criminals were even caught. Anyone with a bit of careful planning, half a brain and some money could and did get away with murder here.

My dad was murder for hire. He killed people in well-organized ‘accidents' that went right under the radar of our never efficient local law enforcement. He was a hired hit man, he simply went out and killed whoever the person wanted dead. No questions. He wasn’t the judge or the jury, just the executor. The other plus of living here, is it’s so easy for his employers to get their targets here cheaply. There was so much to offer a tourist that the holiday murders, as I call them, were just so very simple. A safari for the wife or husband that needed to be eliminated would end in a tragic car wreck or game drive gone awry. A sunny beach holiday in the famous Cape Town, could easily end in a fatal car hijacking. A stay in a quiet hotel along the beautiful Golden Mile in Durban could end in a terrible armed robbery. I was blissfully unaware of this truth for many years. I was a normal little girl except I had no mum only my Dad. Sometimes the kids at school would point this fact out in the cruellest ways but I never let it bother me, my mother never loved me not even a little bit.

When I was fifteen, my Gran passed away so Dad and I needed to travel to his family home in Glasnevin, Ireland for the funeral. I had visited Gran many times over the years and loved her. She was loud, rude and full of life. I was devastated that she was gone and I would miss her weekly phone calls and remember fondly those holidays we got to spend together. Dad and I never ever travelled on the same flight and rarely stayed in the same place when travelling due to his paranoia about accidents. The irony of it. In fact, I cannot remember one holiday where he was actually with me; I always went away on my own.

I was collected at the airport by his associate, Rowan. Rowan was tall and his young manly body had muscles in all the right spots to make it hard not to look. He spoke with a sexier than all hell Irish accent that would have any girl or woman drooling after hearing just one word. I remember thinking as a fifteen year old hormone crazed teen that Rowan was so hot and as I waited with him for Dad to arrive, I tried so hard to be cool and start conversation. Rowan wasn’t very chatty and seemed annoyed by my presence and his babysitting duties. All I gleaned from him was that he was twenty six years old and my dad was his mentor. He didn’t look like a wine farmer, and did they even make wine here? Isn’t Ireland famous for whiskey? I didn’t know what Dad really did yet. In my mind we ran a boutique wine estate in the Cape. We lived in the Franschoek Valley and made wine. Good cover Dad. Rowan tried to ignore me for the hours we waited for dad’s plane to arrive while I drooled over his blue eyes and dark hair, committing every bulging muscle to my memory and his smell. Oh good lord his smell. I was such a girl. I can still remember his cocky smile and the exact clothes he wore that day. His casual linen pants that fitted just right and his V-neck faded T-shirt that was snug over his chest and bulging arm muscles. Rowan’s face would haunt my teenage dreams for years to come. No movie star would ever feature in my sexy daydreams only Rowan.

My dad arrived at that airport a few hours after me. Rowan left and he only reappeared in my inappropriate dreams as my boyfriend.

It was on our return from that trip that my I noticed a shift in my father and he obviously decided I needed to know the whole ugly truth of who we were. With Gran gone, if anything happened to him I was all alone. Not a good place to be in the criminal underworld of life.

Past~ Franschoek, W.Cape, South Africa 1997

WE HAVE JUST
unpacked our luggage from our trip to bury Gran. I am still feeling the sadness of the whole journey in my heart and it all feels very heavy. My dad is different today and I feel so sad his mom had died. His mom had loved him and I so much, she was the only mother figure in my life. Sometimes that was a cruel reminder of how my mother had dismissed us from her life so easily. Dad tells me he wants to talk to me in his officer after I’ve unpacked. I am so scared I don’t think I have done anything wrong but he seemed so harsh when he asked me to hurry that I must be in trouble. His office faces the vineyards on the hill, I always feel intimidated by the large dark wood desk he sits behind and the overpowering smell of leather from the new sofa he has in there. I throw the last of my unpacked clothes into the washing basket for the maid to collect. I calm my nerves by taking deep breath and head towards his office. I keep telling myself I can’t possibly be in trouble we haven’t been here to anything wrong? Maybe Rowan ratted on me for flirting with him? God Dad will freak! Boys are a big fat no for him. I may not date for another two years according to him. Not that I have found any boys worth dating since I am holed up at a stuck uppity all-girl school.

I knocked on his office door while I pushed it open, oh that smell. It stinks. Why he didn’t buy a fabric sofa? He’s sitting at his desk with his head in his hands and when he looks up the expression I see on his face is one I don’t recognize he is not angry or even irritated. I sense he is more worried than mad. He asks me to sit on his stinky sofa and he gets up to join me. “Lauri I need to tell you truth.” The words that spilled from his mouth, changed my world forever.

That afternoon my Dad told me of all his sins, the lives he had taken and the ones he had arranged to be taken. He told me he was a bad man and while he committed these crimes it was not
who
he was simply his job, the means to provide for us. He explained to me how he was born into an Irish mob family and that he had fled to South Africa to keep me safe and because it was easy to operate such a business here. I was fifteen, too young to even begin to fully understand the burden he’d just placed on me. He asked me that day if I hated him and if I wanted to leave. He said if I wanted to leave he would make arrangements for me to return to his Aunt in Ireland.

I didn’t hate him.

I loved my dad more than anything in this world, I would keep his secret and love him in spite of it. I told him I hated what he did but that I loved him and going to live with any crazy aunt who I’d never met was not an option.

With this revelation he also imparted a few things to me.

One, trust no one ever. The other was the escape plan for if it all went to shit one day. More like for when it went to shit.

The plan was if anything happened to Dad, there were two trust funds set up in different names with the corresponding identity documents for me. His very slimy lawyer would handle my disappearance. I was not, under any circumstances, to leave South Africa but I was to leave the Cape and move to one of the other large cities immediately. There was property registered in my name in both Johannesburg and Durban. He told me that an associate would look after me from afar until he was sure that I was in no danger that I was happy and I could take care of myself. This person would not meddle unless I was in danger. Dad insisted I study, fall in love and have a family. He said that family was the only thing in this world that was worth breathing for. That was the end of the plan that I hoped I would never need. What we want and what we get are very, very different things.

My dad died three years and four months later.. Ironically, in an accident. I know that there are no accidents in his world so someone wanted him dead that’s how it worked, I just never knew why. I followed the plan and moved. I chose Johannesburg because the sea reminded me of Dad and that made me sad. I was alone. All alone. When faced with the monumental decision of what to actually do with my life, I decided to follow my passion and my heart. The one thing in this world that can get my heart beating fast, is food. My dad had always loved the food I cooked for him. I took a giant leap and enrolled myself into culinary school. When Dad died and I became this version of me, Ellia the culinary student who had no one. Not even a single friend. Although I’m not sure I’m even Ellia anymore. I excelled at my studies and love what I do. Cooking is my happy place and there is nothing quite like a good meal created from scratch with fresh ingredients and love.

One week after my twenty first birthday, I graduated from culinary school and started working in a fine dining restaurant in the city. It was in one of these that I met my husband a very charming customer that wanted to ‘kiss the cook’. I’ve been unhappily married for eight years now.

Yesterday I turned thirty one and I had an accident. There are no accidents I keep telling myself. Now I’m here. I know exactly where I am but I can’t fathom why? But I’m secretly so very glad that I was snatched from my seemingly perfect life. Oh God can it really be over? Have I escaped that my evil husband?

MY DAD WAS A
bad man. Then he died and I went from being a boy to being a bad man too. His best friend became my mentor from across the globe and I learned all about being murder for hire at tender age of fifteen. I killed my first target when I was just seventeen. That was the day my heart turned to stone and I learned that being a bad man means you don’t get to feel anything. Ever.

Sixteen years ago, Mick came to Ireland to bury his mother, a lady whom I had loved since I was a boy. It was on this trip I met his fifteen year old daughter Lauri. She was stunning. She had his hazel eyes and her mother’s beauty, I couldn’t help but notice her perfect fair skin and dark hair; she made me think very bad things. I mentally scolded myself. She is Mick’s girl and she is, just a girl. I had to sit and endure her teenage flirting for a few hours while we waited for Mick to arrive, he was too paranoid to fly with her. I am sure babysitting is below my pay grade but I can’t tell my boss that spending hours with a teenage girl is not my idea of a job, he would just shoot me. So I just sit here, tapping my foot trying to ignore her staring and the annoying childish questions that flow like a waterfall out of her pretty mouth. Mick has very concrete plans that should anything ever happen to him I was to watch her until I was sure she was safe, happy and could care for herself.

I stopped watching eight years ago when she got married. I’d watched her grow from pretty girl to beautiful woman. I’d watched her study and reach her dream of becoming a chef. She was a brilliant one and could have her pick of jobs I knew she would go far. She had her perfect little life, she had married a wealthy business man and was provided for well. I really needed to work more. Having a real job, a fake job and a person to stalk isn’t easy at all. I also couldn’t watch her be with another man. It may sound stupid since I‘d fuck anything that walked my way but I watched her so long it felt like she as mine. She never would be, Mick would come back from the grave and trust me it would be no accident when I died. He didn’t want our world for his baby. She was meant to be happy.