Colour Series Box Set (113 page)

“Go to my room, I’m coming, Harmon.” I send him away so I can find what I need in the office. “I just want to drink my coffee and put the dog out so I don’t have to listen to him barking at your naked ass.” My dog hates him, always trust your dog they have great sense about these things.

Harmon sulks off down the passage and I open the kitchen door for Jameson on the way to the office, as much I want to slice the flesh from his bones and make him suffer I don’t have the time, he will know the second he sees me that I’m going to kill him, I won’t be able to hide my intentions for long. The familiar feeling that claws its way up my spine as I anticipate the moment I put an end to all of this mayhem, the second I kill him, I’ll crave the rush this time. This time I want to kill so badly it hurts me, I imagine my knife slicing into his flesh, staining that perfect skin with his blood. Tearing his beautiful, deceitful muscles from his bones, running my blade from his sternum to crotch. Killing him slowly would be so satisfying, instead I will have to settle for a single bullet from the gun next to my bed. Quick and relatively painless which is so much more than he deserves, running my finger along the blade of my favourite knife. The razor sharp stainless steel taunts me with possibilities. I pick it up and grab some cable ties with it, I might be able to have some fun with this yet. I lose the ability to control this desire for blood and death.

“Are you coming, Avery? We have to get to the office at some point too,” he yells at me from the room down the passage. I grind my teeth and close the door behind me as I imagine what comes next. The good part and the part where I have to get close to him. I swallow the rising bile in my throat as I step into the doorway he is already half undressed. If I didn’t know who or what he was I would look at his bare chest and bite my bottom lip, instead, I struggle to contain my gag reflex and rage. He watches me as I look at him, he thinks I’m admiring the view, his cocky smile is taunting my demons to play. I’m looking but I’m not admiring in the way he thinks. I’m imagining the way my knife will carve through those abdominal muscles. Crimson blood pouring from him and pooling around his lifeless, waste of a body. The pictures in my head are vile, I shouldn’t want to kill someone so badly, I have killed many before but this desire hasn’t accompanied those kills. I lust for his death.

“Take off your pants and lie down Harmon. I want to have some fun today. This baby making shit is getting tedious,” I say, side stepping so he cannot see me lay my knife on the dresser. He shoves his pants down and folds them, this man’s control issues are off the charts. I watch him settle himself on my bed, his hands behind his head and the arrogance bleeding from him. It’s almost too perfect, too easy as I straddle him with the cable ties held in my teeth, he looks at me with greedy lust on those stupid eyes. Sliding my hands under his head, I bind his hands together right where they are. His eyes get big and he lets out a growl from his throat as I lean down and kiss him, a kiss of death. Sliding down the length of his naked body I slip off the end of the bed and stand there. I look over every inch of my enemy and I feel the betrayal of his brother, the man I admired. The person whose approval I sought every day for most of my life. I offered him my kidney, I would have died to save him and it was all a lie. A carefully crafted plan to get me to give him what he wanted most and couldn’t buy. The violent malice of his forward planning have set the killer in me completely free, there is no consequence for this action. Anyone who feels sorry, sad or hurt by this murder deserves to feel the torment.

I slide out of my clothes, it’s easier to clean myself up afterwards that way. Harmon licks his lips and rakes over me with eyes, he is partially restrained but I will still have to move quickly so he can’t hurt me or get away. I grab his tie and bind one leg to my bedpost, he thinks I’m being kinky. It’s turning him on and his hard cock is on display in the bright morning light. The sun catches the ridges of his perfectly sculpted and manicured body, I wonder how much he spends on waxing? I turn my back, draw in a cleansing breath and grab my knife off the dresser, it fits perfectly in my fist allowing me to wield it with power and finesse.

“Let’s play a game, Harmon.” I turn around and bring the blade to my mouth, biting down on the sharp end strolling back to him I see his eyes grow wide. He doesn’t know if I’m actually playing a game or not. Picking up my undies off the floor I crumple them into a ball and as I clamber back over his naked body avoiding his dick. I shove them in his mouth that was gaping open with shock. Silenced, bound and vulnerable, I see the fear creeping over him, his cock turns flaccid. He squirms beneath me but I have him pinned with my whole body weight.

“Do you want a baby, Harmon?” I whisper in his ear. “I don’t want babies, they would end up like us. Fucked up monsters with nothing to lose.” I sit and watch his eyes as he closes them and opens again in the hope he is dreaming this. “You see, Harmon, if you don’t feel anything, if you are not attached to anything you cannot suffer. You can’t lose anything you don’t have. A child would be an attachment. Something I could lose. Something that could hurt me. Because I would love it. Love is the most excruciatingly painful thing in this world. So we are not having any babies. In fact
we
no longer exist. I’m taking back my life, your brother fucking stole my childhood, every action has a consequence this is the consequence of his.” My knife plummets into his chest with force, the sound of it hitting bone and tearing flesh is cathartic, a high like no other surges through me as I pull it free and watch his tears flow. His head shakes violently from side to side begging me through the gag in his mouth. I cannot stop, I’m setting myself free and nothing will stop me now. His blood stains my hands and sticks to my body as I mutilate the flesh and blood of my childhood tormentor. I never considered how Callum had tormented me into being the little girl he needed and not the girl I was born to be. This is me! The killer not the queen of his depraved empire, I’m not meant to sell people or diamonds. I never wanted to trade in human spare parts or ammunitions to start wars. He stole me from who I am and now his stupid brother is paying the price for it.

Wiping my hair out of my face and smearing what’s left of him on my skin, I stand up on the bed ready to step off, the carnage is beautiful as I see the blood pool on my bed. I smile and for the very first time I know exactly who I am. When I look up out the window my attention drawn to Jameson barking, I see Mathew standing at the gate watching me. I can see his heart breaking from here as my demons have shown their true colours. Naked, covered in blood and completely exposed, I cannot hide any part of myself from him like this. If he can love me through this then his love is real and if he leaves me now, I know my monsters are bigger than the angel in him. He may be an angel of death but to me he was a saviour, a guardian angel. To me, he was love.

I close my eyes to stop the tears that threaten to fall and when I open them, he’s gone, the gate is open and him and my dog are gone. I’m alone again. I’m always alone.

Grief is the price of love.

ONCE MY MIND HAS
reconciled the fact that while she was with Harmon physically, she never gave him her heart, she didn’t let him in and for her the physical was meaningless. She had given me her heart, bruised, battered and bloody but it was still beating for me, I can’t ignore what she does to me or how I’m drawn to her, even the darkness in her pulls me closer. I drown my irrational jealousy in a bottle of liquor, it isn’t even good booze it just numbs out the pain and quiets the screaming voices telling me to leave and never look back. I saved her, at least I did everything I could to save her. If she doesn’t want to be saved that is not on me. By the time the sun and my phone wake me from my self-inflicted coma, it’s mid-morning. My head is pounding like a snare drum and my mouth is dry with the vile after effects of my wallowing. Showering the hangover away as much as I can and drown the rest in black coffee strong enough to fuel a car. One thing is still there in my thumping head. Her.

I know I said I had to think and that she had to decide but that was my ego talking and I need to go back there and tell her that I understand. I need to help her choose right. I want her to choose me even if I am not sure that I have chosen her. I’m selfish. But I know that being with her will hurt me, ruin me and change me forever and I am not ready to change.

I drive the long commute to her as fast as I can, not wanting the haze of my hangover to dissipate and allow me to think clearly. I don’t have the code to get in the residential gates so I park at the farm entrance and walk through the vineyard past the cemetery and up the hill to house. I can feel the sweat of last night’s drinking and the sun beating down on me as it coats my skin and makes my clothing stick to me. I’m not dressed for hiking in the heat of the mid-morning sun and I shove my sleeves up as high as the will go. Jameson finds me half way up the hill his wagging tail as he runs in circles around me whips against my legs and I try to pet him but he is moving too fast. “Come on boy. Calm down I want to get up there.” I talk to the silly dog in an attempt to get him from under my feet.

As I reach the threshold where I was assaulted by her betrayal yesterday, I’m again met with an image I cannot ever wipe from my mind. I watch, frozen as she cuts him up, ripping his flesh apart with a knife. Her naked body painted in blood red murder, I knew he had to die. God I have killed people, but this is savage. My eyes won’t look away, the angel I love is replaced by a monster that I never dreamed existed in her. I must be a fool, I knew there were over eighty men missing, dead and disposed of by her hand. I was cocky enough to believe that I was different, that I could tame the beast inside her. A part of me is dying with him, the hope I had clung to all my life is being brutally slaughtered with every stab of her blade into his flesh. Avery was without a doubt born to be a killer, she murders him with grace and carnal beauty and takes me right along with him. I can almost feel the physical pain of every puncture and slice as it carves through the flesh of my love for her. I don’t love this savage villain that I see now. Who could love that?

My affections are turned to stone and dust as she stands behind the glass and our eyes meet, those viciously contrasted eyes bore into my soul and pull my heart out. I want to hold her and heal this gaping wound in me but I know that this is not an illusion this is her truth. I cannot save her because she isn’t real. The calm part of me wants to walk away and not glance back instead the anger makes me go inside. I need the closure of seeing all of her up close, stripped bare and right in front of my eyes, my blindness needs to be cured. I had wanted to kill him, my way would have had the same end result but it would have been clinical, detached and peaceful. I see death as an end to suffering, she made him suffer, pulled the pain from his body with each slash. Dragging his torture out so that she could feast on his agony. She was enjoying it, I have seen that look in her eyes. The same pleasure she expressed as I made love to her. I was fucking a monster all this time only now I see her clearly.

My legs carry me down the passage to the bed where we slept and he died, the place where my heart felt full and I had found home. To her, and the shattered remains of my love. Her back is to me and she’s still staring out of the window to where I was watching, the knife dangles at her side in a lose grip while it drips blood to a small pool on the floor. Even in that state she is a sight to behold, even in her depraved honest darkness she is stunning.

“What have you done, Avery?” I whisper as my eyes are met with the carnage on the bed. Blood and body parts are blended into a red blur there is very little left of him at all.

“What I was born to do.” She hangs her head and answers me with little conviction. I believe her.

“Why, my angel? Why?” I try to take in the scene inside the room but my mind doesn’t want to accept it.

“Just go, Mathew. I already know you are going to leave, you told me from the very beginning that you were not in my life to stay. No one is meant to stay in my life, I can only lose what I cling to right. Well I’m letting you go so I can’t lose you. Just fucking go, Mathew! I need to get this cleaned.” When she turns to face me and I see her red teary eyes I want to go to her, but I stand still frozen by the truth. “Leave!” she screams now, moving towards me, she is tightening her grip on that knife and without thinking I run.

Fight or flight. I flew. I flew away from the black hole before I was gone forever. I am honouring my promise to Baldini and treating his son, but I want nothing else from these people or the parallel universe in which they exist. I want to forget I ever answered Callum’s emails and that I hadn’t been brought to them at all. I don’t regret loving Avery but I want to forget the pain that it caused me. I was warned, more than once that she would kill me, while my heart still beats and my lungs still fill with air she succeeded. I’m dead inside.