Colour Series Box Set (73 page)

I don’t answer the giant man threatening me I just stare into his eyes, he’s dangerously loyal to Callum. The truths revealed have made me understand what makes Callum tick a little more, he is a little boy who just wants to be loved.

The moment is shattered by the sound of the front door banging open and the police storming into my home.

What have you done now Callum? Where are you, don’t you know that I need you?

ALTHOUGH EARLY, THE PLAN flowed exactly as it should, the police came to our home looking for me, afraid for my safety that I may be dead by the hand of my brother’s killer. I am officially a missing person presumed dead. Shannon and Art were there, afraid of what was happening. No one would ever suspect me, ever. The scapegoat would arrive in the UK in the next few hours and I just needed to stay put until then. I am not the only person who hated their father. Sahib’s father would be taking the fall for it all and he and I would continue a very profitable working relationship without the old men holding us back. It all came down to this, so why does it feel like a hollow victory? I am waiting for the other shoe to drop –and drop it will. Something about this feels decidely wrong and my evil gut says that I am in a world of trouble. I should feel better than this, they are all dead!

I wanted to go back and tell her what was happening, but I couldn’t walk up those steps and into that house with my demons so close to the surface.I wouldn’t be able to control what I did to her if I were to be faced with any more of it. I don’t want the memories to come. I don’t want to kill the love of my life.

I wait at the warehouse for Sahib to come and set things up for the final part of the plan. His father will be here soon and the police will be tipped off to his activities over the last few months and that he might be holding the heir to the O’Reilly, family hostage. His international crimes have been exposed to the press and authorities and he will fall. Hard. I may have moved the pieces early, but they will fall into place perfectly. We have been putting this into motion for six years now. A flawless plan, but I feel like I have missed a piece of it. Something is decidedly off.

“You just couldn’t fucking wait could you Callum?” Sahib sighs at me irritated at the fact that we now have to rush a little. “I am sorry Sahib, he knew things he shouldn’t and the other players were put at risk.” His eyes bore holes into mine. We need my South African family to continue this business and losing even one of them could fuck it all up. We need Rowan’s skills to eliminate the few people who may still get in our way. There will always be enemies out there, we are criminals and criminals all have enemies. I need my sisters’ clean name to launder money and grow the wealth of the business and I need Lauri to have that baby so that I have an heir to leave this all too when I die. I will die, we all have an expiry date and those who live in the shadows of this world tend to reach theirs earlier than most. I need them, I miss them. I would die to save them.

Sahib shakes his head, it is not only me who has had to kill their family and purge themselves of the demons beneath the surface. We dealt with his family first you see, we needed to create a believable feud. He has buried brothers, sisters and a mother in the name of this plan. It has to work.

I will still be in this shitty city for a long while yet. There needs to be no way this ever comes back to us. Leaving right away would be suspicious, not very suspicious since most people are aware of how much I fucking loathe this place, but I will be expected to take care of business and bury my brother properly. Even when my gut tells me to leave and go home, I know that I must stay and I must stay away from them more than ever. If Neil knew then someone else knew too, he was too stupid to do his own digging. He found them, he was never supposed to find them.

There are a few people in this world, I will not lose in this fight, Rowan, Amya, Lauri and Shannon, are on that very short list.

Sahib closes me in the small room where he proceeds to hit me, I don’t hit back I don’t even try I need it to look like I was forced to go with them. The copper taste of blood fills my mouth a little more with every single punch he lands. The damp smell of the old building no longer fills my nose I can smell my own blood being spilled. I simply relax into his assault and he holds nothing back. Like me, Sahib keeps his body ready to fight his accurate strikes connect all my weak spots making sure they leave marks behind. Every attack frees me a little more, every burst of pain burning through the shell my demons had created. His fists split my lip open and my tongue licks the copper freedom as it drips down to my chin. Two monsters in a cage and we are finally free of the people who put us in the cage of their madness. I will always be a villain, I will never be good, I am criminal. Today I am burying my monster I won’t need to free my demons that way any longer. I am free of them. My family has stolen my life for a very long time and now it is done. Maybe that’s why Rowan was so free to love Lauri, he was never vengeful. He never held his life against anyone. Not even against me, even after I killed his father. I forgive them now that they are all dead, but I will never forget.
I cannot forget how I was made.

Sahib stops and I breathe in feeling every broken rib, every boot mark and punch throb with the end of my nightmare and the
beginning of me.

I wipe the blood from my mouth and smile at the only person I know who could possibly understand the chains that have just been snapped lose. Sahib found his peace awhile ago and I know he can see that I have taken mine from his beating. His sly smile matches mine and he nods at me that he is done.

“Finally Callum, it is done.” He doesn’t have many words he never does, but those few say it all. He gives me his hand and pulls me to my feet. Then he turns his back and walks out the door locking me in solitude. I don’t know how long I will wait in here, but I
need
this time so I will wait.

I slide down the wall that holds my broken body up and collapse into a heap on the damp, dirty floor, the space seems to close in on my solitude. My mind plays my whole life back to me in a string of pictures and my heart sinks at how many of them are sad or violent. There are so few where the little bit of light in my soul can be seen. I missed so much in my quest for control to free myself of my father’s iron hold on me, but finally, the account is settled and I can live. My mind floats back in time past Cassie and I know what I felt was real and that it was her light that made me want her even more her light could bring just a small bit of mine out. Then I see Shannon, the ghost of love lost. There is no light in my Princess I know that there never will be, but I cannot let go of the of glimmer of Cassie that shines through her and I know I never will. I find a small shiny piece of hope and I cling to it with everything in me.

Shannon is poison, but the bittersweet kind that you can never get enough of until it kills you. I allow my mind to wander over the images of her naked and bound to my bed, I won’t break her body anymore I plan to worship it. I love her and now I am free to do it.

I slip into the depths of unconsciousness with the images of her red hair tumbling over her naked back, only there are no marks left on it by my monster. She is perfect and unbroken. Her beauty lies in her danger and I admire every inch of her.

I don’t know how long I am gone for, but in that time my past is erased and my heart can beat again. Connor O’Reilly has no hold on me anymore. By body, feels the blows of another beating but my brain won’t wake for it. Pain bursts through my head searing, burning and crushing my skull I can hear the bones crunching. I am dying. I am going to die without her. I want her, I want to be with her now.

IT TAKES TOO LONG, the noise is too loud, the light is too bright and it is all too real. The policeman tries to heave my body up, talking to me loudly shattering the silence of mind. “Mr. O’Reilly are you alright? We are getting you out of here just hold on for me.”

I am not ready, something went wrong. The pain severs the cord to reality and I am fee falling into the darkness. I am dead. I am stuck. I am alone

I am not loved. I never was.

DREAD, EVERY SECOND THAT ticks by with no news fills the pit of my stomach with more dread. I shouldn’t feel this for a man I am busy killing, but I am not ready to be alone again, not yet. Where the fuck is he and why are the police treating me like there is the biggest target on my back? No one is going to kill me now. Art has not let me out of sight for three days. Callum has been gone for that long and I have had to act like the concerned scared for my life fiancé with his watchdog’s eyes on me making sure I don’t let on who the wolf in sheep’s clothing is. The concern in my stomach is far worse than that, what if Callum has abandoned me and left me behind? Art keeps telling me he will return, but even his words lost the conviction they had when he arrived here. I don’t want to say it, not even to myself, but I miss him. I miss him so badly. He is gone.

The ghost house seems to come alive with the foreboding I carry with me. I begin to doubt everything, I doubt Callum. I am sure he knows I don’t love him and he has left me here alone again.
No one will ever love you Shannon, you shouldn’t have believed it to start with. My mother’s words after my first heartbreak ring in my ears.
The whole place seems different and I can feel the beginning of a cycle building in me, the grey is blurring the edges of my sanity and I swallow the fucking truth.