Colour Series Box Set (83 page)

The twisted smile that is on his face has been on mine so many times, it is like looking in the mirror and seeing what I will become. He manipulated her and hurt her and killed her because he had a monster and that monster was created when Mick killed his mother. We all come from somewhere the men in my circles are all forged from some dark evil that is ingrained in their souls so deep it is all they can be.

“Hello Callum.” He slurs a little his voice a bit thick with the effects of the half bottle of whiskey that is missing. He knows that we won’t both live to the end of the night. People like us know these things. His gun is on the table in front of him, the bullets are emptied from the chamber and are next to it. He isn’t going to fight.

“Hello Lorenzo, you were expecting me?” I slide out a chair and sit at his table.

“I have been expecting you for a long time, I thought you were dead when you never came before.” He shakes his head at my absence. “You were gone for ages, people were saying you that
were
dead.” He fills a glass for me and slides it across the glass table top. “I was almost dead, but it’s very hard to kill people like us. You should know.”
Ghosts, monsters and demons never truly die.

He laughs at my comment and slugs back his whole glass of whiskey before he answers me again. “You have come to kill me Callum because I killed her. I had to kill her like you had to kill them.”
How could he know?

“Oh, I know where you were and what you did. Just because I am from the Italian mob doesn’t mean your family are not on our radar. You have done some very impressive things since you left.” His sinister chuckle has my hackles up. I don’t like this man, I relate to him, but I don’t like him.

“I am not like you Renzo.” I snap at him now.
You are, don’t fucking lie, you know you are!

He stands and walks away from the table a little ways, he is a big man when he stands up I see just how big. “Oh, Callum I am sure your wife would beg to differ when you beat her senseless. It feels good to let the devil in you dance. You like to hurt her. I liked to beat Ellia. I was made to destroy her. I was always going to kill her. She had to die so I could live. You will see, your wife is destined for the same fate. You and me - we can’t be fixed. Mick murdered my mother unleashing the beast that was my father on me for the years that followed. Until he created a monster that would end him.”

We are exactly the same.

He fills his glass again and sits. “Callum, how long can you stop yourself from being like me? How long before you strangle her or hit her? Don’t lie to yourself. You’re no fool, the little coup you pulled off proves that you are a
master
at this game. You will kill her. Or she will kill you, you certainly know how to pick the right ones at least Ellia was meek and mild she had no fight in her, she took everything I gave her.”

His words fuel my rage and I want to end him, but he speaks the truth too. A truth that wounds me.

“Shannon is different, I am different. I can stop. I have stopped. I don’t need it anymore.” I say, but it’s myself I’m trying to reassure. His laughs again this time right from his gut. “Callum you are exactly like me. You are the devil in a designer suit. Candy on the outside and demon on the inside.” He empties his glass and bangs it down on the table between us. “But you came here to kill me, Rowan didn’t, I always thought I would die the very next day but he never came. He is not as fucked up as we are. He should be, but he isn’t she fixed him.
Why couldn’t she fix me?”
He seems a little sad when he says that, like she was supposed to be his redemption. Is Shannon my redemption? Men like me cannot be redeemed.

“I did come to kill you because he promised her that he wouldn’t. I think she planned to kill you herself. She always believed your time would come. She didn’t want your death to be paid for by her child. I think she forgave you though, she understood why you did it, and I do too. It doesn’t mean you won’t pay. Just like all of us you have to pay for who we are Renzo. We all pay in the end, I am simply here to collect.” I know it’s true someone will collect me one day. We are all going to pay for the things we do. For the world, we live in.

“I always thought it would be Rowan who walked in here. You don’t come as a surprise though, you owe him for killing his father. Is this your apology to him Callum? Will killing me make that, right for you? I am ready to die. I have been dying since her fucking father murdered my mother.” He is agitated and his emotions are raw now. I can see the shimmer of tears glaze over his eyes and he begins to unbutton his shirt. He stands up at the table and slides his dress shirt off. I am met with the exact image I saw years ago when Rowan showed me Lauri’s scars. His whole body is brutally marred by marks. He made Lauri like him, she had to pay scar for scar for what had happened to him. An eye for an eye, a soul for a soul, life for a life. I am here to claim his. Seeing his broken body and the reflection of myself in who he is, makes it harder. But I will still do it.

“You see Callum, I was made into this.” He points at his scarred chest. “So were you. I thought killing her would set me free, but it hasn’t. I still live in the prison of who I am. I am so sorry I took her from you. I am ready to die.” He walks up to where I sit and bends to look me straight in the eye. “Kill me slowly Callum, I want to feel my soul leaving this body. I want to suffer from my death. I don’t want it to come quickly or easily I want to feel it. I have felt nothing for so long at least let me feel my death.” He is so broken that he wishes to die painfully slowly. I should kill him quickly just to spite him, but his need to suffer whispers to my monster waking it from its slumber and I cannot wait to watch him cry under my torture. He will feel it all.
I will feel it, I need to feel it.

He places a knife on the table in front of me the long sharp blade shines in the dim light of the room. I swallow back the last drop of scotch in my glass before I stand up. We are the same height I look him in the eyes and I know he is dead already he was just waiting for the end to come get him. There is nothing there at all, an empty shell.

I almost wish I had brought Shannon with me, she would have made him suffer the most agonizing death imaginable.

No! This is my chance to set my world right, my moment to
be
all the darkness in me and I am going to take it. I will set my friend free, and do what he cannot.
I was born to be a villain and I am going to die a villain it is time to embrace it and enjoy what I am.

The Highveld, here inland where he lives, is so different from the coast and the electric storm brews outside. The thunder is so loud it rattles the windows and the lighting illuminates the room so I can see even more of his brutalized body. The dark rumble of the storm vibrates through me and feeds the demons fighting to get free. His calmness in the face of his pending death is unnerving and I wonder if this is a trap, and his men will come in and kill me the moment I touch the knife.

Renzo walks slowly to the cabinet behind him and pulls out two large envelopes and a camera. He puts them with the knife.

“The incorporating documents of my company have been changed to her daughter’s name. It is all for her now, it’s all I can give her for taking her mother and leaving her with a monster. The camera is so you can show him what you have done. I want it all to end today Callum. All of it. Let that little girl be free if you can.” He sounds almost sorry for what he did, my gut says he is, but I know that people like us don’t feel sorry. We can live with what we do that’s the worst part of it. The indifference to what should be feelings is worse than any feelings could be.

I nod and reach for the knife, the blade is sharp and long it will flay his skin easily and when I sink it into his flesh it will tear through his organs with ease. I run my thumb down the cold blade and a drop of blood appears. It makes me smile. I imagine his blood as it spills and I feel the roar of my blood pumping faster through me. “You won’t even fight me will you Renzo? You want to die tonight”. I ask him just to try understand how he has no fight in him. The monster that hurt Lauri is gone and I don’t get it. I don’t understand how he can just not want to live when I have fought all my life to stay alive.

“I have nothing left to fight for Callum, I don’t want anything anymore. I wanted to kill her so much it consumed me and became all I was. When I finally put the bullet between her eyes, it killed us both because I no longer had a purpose. You don’t feel like you have nothing left now that your little mission is done?” Do I have anything left? Yes, I have a family, I have Shannon and I have a little girl to raise. “I have other things now.”

“Hmmm, good for you Callum. Can we get on with it? Just kill me already I am done with it all. Make me
pay.
”

He stands in front of me, his naked scarred chest rises and falls with calm breaths and he stares into my soul with his dark dead eyes. He truly was the fucking devil in disguise. But in the end Lauri won, she broke him. She fucking won, she killed him. Not me I am just here to fetch his body.

I run the blade slowly from his throat down to the button of his pants, he doesn’t even flinch. Not even a hiss of air escapes him and I wonder if he feels anything through all the scars? His blood trickles slowly from the line. He stares, but not at me, his eyes focus on the wall behind us where her wedding picture hangs on the wall, her lovely smile haunting the room. Her perfect, unmarked, uncoloured skin on display. He fucking destroyed that. I sink my blade into the flesh of his thigh hard slicing through the muscle until I hit the bone. He again doesn’t move, nothing. There is nothing there. His lack of response ignites anger in me, he should be feeling this for her.
He already has Callum.
He needs to fucking bleed and suffer.
He already has Callum.
He has nothing left not even his bleak soul.

I lose my control, I lose my need to make him suffer and it is buried under the need to kill him. I want him to be dead, gone and I stab him over and over until he sinks to his knees and looks me in the eyes. A single tear runs down his cheek, proving he can feel after all. I force the long blade between his ribs and slice through his heart before I take a picture and leave him to bleed out on the floor. I am a fucking monster there is no cure for us, we cannot be fixed and I know that I just saw a mirror image of who I am dying on that floor.

I no longer have an internal battle, I no longer want to keep it inside I want to set myself free of it all and fucking live this fucked up life I have been given. I never want to wish for death I want to live and I will fight
anything
that stands in my way.

I slip the Polaroid pictures of his dying body into the envelope along with the knife and his company papers. They are now smeared with his blood. And I leave. My men will be here to clean up and dispose of him soon.

The rain beats down on me as I walk to my car washing away the delusions I had of being anything, but the monster I was born to be. I want to go to Shannon, but I don’t instead I go to a brothel where I know the girls can take what I will dish out tonight. I will go home when it’s out of my system.

If I even have a home to go to.

I AM LEFT WITH STRANGERS in a strange country as Callum leaves in a rage like I have never seen before. The heat of his anger burned my lips as he kissed me goodbye and commanded I stay. Like a pet, just “Stay Shannon.” I am unsettled and I feel the unease of leaving home for this place heavily on me. I worry I have made a horrendous error in coming here. I feel the shadow of evil things biting at my heels. This city is a festering with darkness.

Amya and Robin take a long time to get over the story they told Callum. I just sit there. I don’t have these kinds of feelings I cannot cry or be sad for a person I don’t know and Rowan elicits other feelings from me. Anger and rage and distrust and the heart-breaking curse of my sister’s death. I don’t like him, but Callum loves him so I will remain silent about how I feel. I will pay for my fucking stupid mistakes by supporting him no matter how it hurts me.