Colour Series Box Set (96 page)

I sit myself down on his corpse and light one of his cigarettes and do something that is so unnatural to me that I feel ill, I cry. Sobbing noises are coming from my mouth as my chest heaves and tears flow, snot blocks my nose and I melt into a mess of the one thing I have tried so hard to avoid—emotion. Feeling is awful I never want to do it again. I turn on the water to drown out the sound of myself.

WHAT FEELS LIKE HOURS
later, I’m still sitting in a pool of blood, above a cold body, blood tears and sex stain my naked body and I realise that there is no one to clean up this mess. I reach for Eiran’s phone to call Callum, but I just can’t, I dial my father instead.

It rings for ages before he answers. “This is Rowan.”

“Dad.”

“Avery, who’s phone is this?”

“Dad . . .” my words won’t come out because I have no idea what to say. I sniff back a new wave of tears.

“I’m coming, baby.” He hangs up and I don’t need to explain to him, I know he will understand that I’m broken, shattered and worst of all feeling this kill down to my soul. I turn around and lay on Eiran’s bloodied chest and stare at my ceiling. My tears and his blood mix and I know he has won in death, he made me feel everything and I cannot switch it off he has raped my soul. I’m bleeding, only there’s no blood pouring from me. The exsanguination of my existence happens slowly as I lay in the empty bath tub with my love and consider whether or not to kill myself with his gun? Time stops and nothing exists past the minute I’m in, that time it takes to decide live or die. I have decided it for so many other people over the years it should be second nature, but something in me is clinging to memories of just before Eiran tapped on my car window—Mathew. I’m going to have to kill him too. It is always this way, let someone close enough and you have the worry of getting rid of them after. He set my alarm bells ringing so loud yet I ignored them, I looked for that thrill of danger in him and I got way more than I bargained for. The last twenty-four hours have turned into a shit-storm that I’m not ready to face.

The sound of my front door wakes me. I must have dozed off again and achy exhaustion still drags my body into a groggy numbness stopping my movements. I just lay still and listen. Door closes, footsteps. Bedroom door opens and closes, click of the handle. Footsteps coming closer to the guest suite, closer to me. I wrap my fingers around his gun and point the loaded weapon at the door. My hand shakes. My hands never shake and I steady it quickly. My nose is still stuffy from crying, I remind myself never to do that again it’s horrible. I shake my head searching for my right mind to come back to me, I feel like I have woken up in another person’s head. Like I’ve come back from the dead and I’m not quite the same any more. I see my father and his stare makes me drop the gun. A scream escapes me as a bullet fires and shatters the mirrored wall while dad dives out of the way. Careless mistakes I would never make, what is wrong with me? I feel physically weak, my body is shaking from the cold and something I haven’t felt since I was just a kid. Remorse. I’m sorry for something and nothing. I sit up a little, still on top of Eiran and still very naked. “Dad?”

“Get in the fucking shower, Avery.” He answers still from around the corner. My dad just saw my boobs—this day can’t get worse. My shaky legs lift me from the tub and the ice cold body in it. He no longer looks like a person, just the empty shell of another life I’ve taken. Usually I leave before they look dead. I stare at him for a minute. “SHOWER, Avery.” Another instruction from my father. I don’t want to wash his blood from my body but I pad across the floor to the shower that affords me some privacy from the rest of the room. The water is cold at first, making me shake even more as it slowly begins to warm me up and rinse the desperation from my body. “Want to talk about it?” my dad asks now inside the room I hear the rustle of plastic and other objects being brought in.

“I can’t.” I manage to get the words out before the uncontrollable urge to cry comes over me again.

“Are you okay?” He’s standing close now just behind the wall keeping me out of his sight. “Avery?”

“No, Dad. I’m not okay.” I tell the truth and slide down to the floor of the shower wishing I could just drown.

“Clean yourself up, you are coming with me back to the estate. I’ll go call Callum.” He sounds just as distant as always.

I hear muffled voices and my dad arguing loudly with someone as I step out of the shower, Eiran is wrapped in thick industrial plastic and Dad has started to clean some of the blood. The bloody footprints I left are still clear as day across the floor and the shattered shards of mirror shine like the diamonds I loathe so much. I try not to cut my feet as I leave the room in a fluffy towel with my wet hair dripping down my back. Why did he give me the knife? He knew I was going to kill him. The only thing I ever loved is dead in my bathtub. He gave me the knife. Why did he do that? There are people walking about my space, I know them. Cleaners. But I don’t want them to clean him, I want to bury him. With mom in the quiet. He is mine, I got to keep him so he is mine even now he is dead.

Inside my bedroom, I dry my body, the tattoos I have kept so carefully hidden for so long seen by my dad, the significance of ink on skin to us is different than to others. He knows why I do it, he does it too. When I was about twelve, he explained the numbers in his heart to me. He told me the story of my how my mother coloured away the scars of her abuse. I didn’t know then just what she had lived through, only later in life Callum explained how Renzo had tormented her. Slipping on a pair of jeans and a Motherland band T-shirt, I look at my reflection in the mirror, a twenty-five year old ghost stares back at me. I was never a child, never a teenager, never a young woman I was always this black hole and now it’s consuming even the bits of me I was trying to save from the abyss.

“Crocodile farm.” I hear my dad bark at someone, my home is crawling with them now. I’m going to have to move, I don’t want to but I know I will have to.

“No, Dad!” I yell out from my room.

“Avery, I’m trying to make this go away.” He steps into the room and my heart sinks deeper as the cold empty man stares at me with disappointment. I’m an emotional wreck and that’s not allowed. I’m letting him down. He doesn’t understand me, he doesn’t know me and I am scared to tell him what’s happening inside me.

“Dad, he’s mine please. I want to put him by mom.” I sigh, unable to look him in the eye as I ask. He won’t like what he sees in my eyes today.

“Avery, what’s going on girl?” He walks closer to me. “I have never questioned this strange need to have him around. I never asked why you didn’t kill him in that shack, but now I am worried. You’re falling to pieces, making mistakes, missing work and killing in your home. So you need to tell me so I can understand why he deserves a place near your mother?” His hands are on my shoulders now as he bends to try and look into my eyes.

“He is the only one who ever made me feel. Anything.” His blue eyes search mine for answers I don’t have.
“Daddy I don’t think I can do this anymore, I loved him and it has broken me.” Daddy, oh God Daddy. I’m dying and I need your help I want to beg him to save me but I can’t, he can’t know how weak I am.

“Go get in my car, we’re going home, baby girl.” He is out the door in a blink. I hear him tell them to take Eiran’s body to the farm under the cover of darkness tonight and to bury him there. My fear subsides just a little bit and I slip on a pair of ballet flats and go to wait for my dad in the car.

It’s a man’s own mind, not his enemy or

foe that lures him to evil ways.

SOMETHING IS WRONG.
I feel it, I have this sense for knowing when things aren’t right. I have had her by my side long enough to know when she isn’t okay.

I called her all night and she didn’t answer, neither did Eiran, but he was so drunk he’s probably sleeping it off. My morning coffee tastes like shit and I consider whiskey before nine in the morning again as I glance at my watch for the hundredth time. She’s never this late to the office, she never doesn’t answer my calls. I dial again, only now her phone’s off and my gut sinks as I recall her kidnapping from years before, that’s when Eiran entered our little world and her strange killing spree started. She connected to him but never let him close. He became her pet project she had him find a place where she could taunt him. I never tried to understand them but I know enough to know that they are linked by something far deeper than either will ever admit. He’s going to be an issue where my plans are concerned. I need their bond broken even if I have to have him killed myself.

The pain is unbearable today and I know I’m already on borrowed time, I’m maxed out on pain meds and it’s too early to drink. I buzz the reception desk outside.

“Call my doctor please and have him come in.” I’m suddenly reminded he was with her last night, I’ll be asking him about that. I don’t like their union, albeit a night, there is a plan in place and her liking someone could fuck it all up. Harmon is sitting at my desk trying to absorb all the company information he can in as little time as possible. He is the future, my self-nominated saviour and I have faith in him. Maybe if I keep telling myself that enough times, I’ll believe that they can be the formidable force I want them to be. My desk phone rings. The line that is for stuff that no one on earth should know about. It’s never good when it rings.

“Callum speaking.”

“It’s me.” Rowan’s voice comes back at me and I know instantly something isn’t right.

“Where is she?” I ask Rowan because there would be no other reason to call me on this line.

“With me, Callum, something completely fucked up is happening to her and I’m taking her to the farm. She killed Eiran last night.” It takes me a moment to register what he said. He sounds tired, he sounds like I feel—beaten. He has a daughter he can’t love and he failed her in every way. He has no idea what to do with her, he never did, not when she was born and not now.

“She what?” Oh Eiran you fool I said go home.

“She slept on top of his dead body in her bathtub. Callum, she’s fucked up. She needs a break. She cried, you and I both know that isn’t okay for her.” He tries to explain it to me. None of us will understand her. She is like Shannon there is no understanding them, broken girls are dangerous women.

“I don’t have time for her to have a fucking break, Rowan.” I snap at him because I don’t, time is one luxury I don’t have at all.

“Make a plan, Callum. My daughter is coming home with me.” His intended meaning is clear she is his not mine. I knew something was wrong, but this is perfectly fine by me, with Eiran out of her way my plans will be easier to implement. I just need her to pull herself back together.

“Fix this, Rowan, fast. Now isn’t the time for her to grow a fucking heart.” I snap. I’m in pain and I’m irritated.

“She always had a heart, Callum. We made her hide it away remember.” The line goes dead in my ear. Fuck.

I slam the phone down and look up to see Harmon looking at me with a smug smirk that I am getting used to now. “Want to talk about it?” he asks me. Do I? “Not really.”

“Avery problems? I take it she won’t be in for our special meeting today?” He’s so full of himself. If I had the strength I would smack him.

“No, we will have to reschedule.” I sit down at her desk, what happened to her. She was flawless and now she’s a disaster waiting to happen. Where is that fucking doctor? I’m hurting.

“Can you leave for a while?” I ask Harmon to go so I can drink before the pain consumes me. God, dying is almost as hard as living has been, can nothing just go as it should. I silently curse the woman I loved for this punishment. Images of her bruised broken body flash into my head and I’m reminded why it is I’m dying now. I started a war I couldn’t win with her. I loved her and didn’t kill her before she could kill me. I made a mistake and it has cost me my life. I taught Avery that love would kill her, so did Rowan. I’m a horrible human being, I never claimed to be anything else. A villain was born in my mother’s blood and I will die with the same darkness I have lived with. Madness was born in me, just like murder was born into Avery. Sometimes our inheritance isn’t worth living for anymore. I have money, power and anything I want in the world but I never found love, not even from the child I raised as my own. Love is reserved for the other people in this world, those that are not like us. Razor blades slice through my side as the pain intensifies leaving me slightly breathless another reminder of just how little time I have left. The office door swishes open as Mathew comes inside, his expressions tells me I look about as shitty as I feel today.