Colour Series Box Set (90 page)

To my street team Ashleigh’s Assassins. You ladies are amazing, we may be a small bunch we are a special one. Thank you ladies for sharing, posting and helping me promote my stories, I appreciate every single post.

My Beta’s, Michelle McGinty, Di Covey and Tracy, thank you, you read the word vomit and listen to my stupid worries, your honesty and time are something I cannot work without. Michelle, a special thank you for reading it in bits as I went, this was something I needed so much.

My editor, beta and book person Karen Mandeville-Steer. What would I do without you? Thank you for being the voice of reason, the kick in the butt and the one I can always rely on. You are a very special lady.

My sister in law Kelly Douglas. Your pictures are art and I am honoured to have one on my cover, thank you for trespassing with me to make my cover vision a reality.

Ciara Giannoccaro, thank you for being so beautiful inside and out, you made the perfect Avery.

Cassy Roop from Pink Ink Designs, you turn my ideas into reality and make my books beautiful. You are the best, I cannot thank you enough every time I work with you, I am blown away.

To the book bloggers, groups and promoters out there thank you. Without you, I would never have been seen and my dreams couldn’t have come true without people like you. I know sometimes it’s a thankless job and I want you to know that I thank you.

Twisted Sisters Blog and Group. What can I say except I feel like we all really are sisters, you are the place where my wicked mind feels at home.

To my readers, this was so bittersweet for me, I have come to love these characters so much and ending their story wasn’t easy. I hope I have given you an ending that will be loved as much as the beginning. I thank every one of you for investing your time in my stories and for loving the characters like I do. Without you I couldn’t do this.

Expectation is the root of all heartache.

I AM A KILLER.
I have been since I was fifteen. My young girl hands curled around the handle of a knife as I filleted a man, his screams are etched into my mind forever. Sticky blood coated my fingers with every slice I made through his flesh. I knew long before that what life had in wait for me, so I never tried to change it. I was born to be a killer. I didn’t choose it, it chose me. I have a black hole heart that beats nothing but the blood of others.

The saying goes—it takes a village to raise a child. My village was not pretty, they are dark dangerous and deadly. My father Rowan is an assassin. My mother was a murderer too. Both were born from murderous fathers. The other people in the village that raised me are just as bad. Callum, my uncle of sorts, is the kingpin of a criminal empire. He sells drugs, diamonds, weapons, people and death. There are others, none of them are anything other than evil. I am the heir to my father’s murder mill, to Callum’s empire and to this black hole heart that is filled with emptiness. My village is fucked up.

As a result, so am I. Nurture versus nature. My nature is screaming out for something else. I was nurtured to be a killing machine, the queen of a villainous empire and a ghost without a heart. I was nurtured into a beautiful monster, the Hummingbird. Now there’s a fracture in my nature and I don’t know what to do with it. I’m feeling things I have no right to feel.

My father sees beauty in death, I don’t. I don’t get the same rush, or the high. I don’t need it like he does. I do it because it’s all I know. I don’t get overcome by a haze or a cycle. I do it because they do it, I do it because it’s easy. I do it simply because I can. I don’t want to know how to sell people, or drugs and guns, but I do. I do it because when Callum dies, it will be my empire to rule and I cannot fail. I do it for them, because of them and in spite of myself. My monster doesn’t need to be fed like theirs, because my monster isn’t real. I’m not a monster, I’m a black hole. I am worse than a monster because a monster can feel. I cannot. I want to feel. I’m nothing, an empty space void of anything other than the rules I was raised to obey. “If you love something kill it. Feelings have no place in our world, if you feel something you can be damn sure you will pay for it in pain and suffering.”

“Stop squealing! It won’t save you now.” The boy whimpers as I press my heel harder into his chest. He’s seen me, I cannot be seen because I simply don’t exist, and so neither can he. His eyes stare down the barrel of the gun I hold in front of his face and a tear escapes down his handsome cheek. I’m done with him. The sweat of our recent sexcapades is still visible on his golden skin. I look one last time into his pretty boy blue eyes and pull the trigger. I prefer a knife, it’s more fun, but I don’t have time today. I have to get to work.

I really should just buy a vibrator, the clean-up would be so much easier.

Not that I clean my own mess, why have a dog and bark yourself? I dial Callum as I step over the body of my latest conquest and leave his ratty flat the way I came in—through the window. “Avery, again really?” He answers knowing exactly why I have called so early in the morning. “Sorry.” I feign emotion and apologise when I’m not even a little sorry. “It has to stop. Avery, people are going to notice all the pretty boys going missing.” I smile at his comment and his concern makes me laugh. I don’t have a pattern so it will never be linked to one person. The men I choose are easily forgotten, unwanted and unloved and easy to manipulate. They just disappear and Callum seems to be the only one who cares. I can tell from his heavy breathing that my silence irritates him. “I will send someone to fix it, text me the fucking address and get yourself to fucking work, now!” he shouts at me before ending the call. It’s like having two dads, only my actual dad could care less that I kill a guy every so often. My father may have taught me how to do many things but care isn’t one of them. He’s dead inside. He cares about nothing other than my beloved dead mother. Nothing. He’s the most broken person you will find in this world. He cared once and the universe made him pay dearly for it. He won’t love me, because loving her killed him. He’s just a living ghost. If he loved me, he would die or chose to live, but he doesn’t love me, so he exists in his limbo where nothing affects him. No one loves me.

I better go to work before Callum has a fucking aneurism.

I slide into my little red Jaguar, my painted nails match the car’s colour, the deep roar of the engine is like injecting myself with pure adrenalin and I cannot wait to floor it. The speed and rebellion of driving a car my father loathes gives me a small rush. I smile as I drive away from the seedy student building and back towards the city. I shouldn’t do this so close to campus and other people, I could easily get caught, but I liked the way he touched me. He was worth the added risk, usually I pick boys who won’t be easily missed. Loners and out of town students, those that fly under the radar or friends and families. There is nothing like sex, murder and a fast car to start the week off right.

Since everything is reflection of our minds,

everything can be changed by our minds.

AFTER SHANNON’S DEATH,
things were out of control. I felt a deep loss yet I was glad she was gone. I can’t forgive her for what she did. I also can’t forgive myself for making her do it. I know in my gut that my actions fuelled hers. She gave me a death sentence. Even though I loved her, she will still manage to kill me.

I have an inability to control the devil that beats within my heart. It felt as if the cement block dragging me to the bottom of the ocean had been cut lose, but I was still drowning. The police questioned me relentlessly for days about the poison they found in the room, why we had returned and where had I been? They pushed all my buttons over and over again until I was at the point where I was either going to murder someone or simply leave again. All of a sudden, the Police Captain came to see me after hours. I was a mess, hungover and trembling from the reality that not only did the woman I loved die, she had killed me too. I had spent days drowning myself in the bottles of whiskey that saved me from actually having to feel the truth. She killed me, she fucking killed me.

“Mr O’Reilly, we have spoken with your sister Amya. I’m terribly sorry not only for your loss, but for what you wife has done to you. I apologise for the pain our investigation has caused, I’m closing the case as a suicide but let me say this Mr O’Reilly, I will however be watching you. I know who you are.” His tone did nothing to hide the veiled threat. He would be a problem for me and I knew it. Amya spoke with them, I thought she’d left. She had, but she took the time to tell them about Shannon, my sister still cared about me.

“Thank you, Captain Swanepoel, but you haven’t a clue who I am. I would like time to grieve my wife in peace now.”

He stood and shook my hand before he left me with one last question.

“You wouldn’t happen to know a Mr. Renzo Baldini, now would you?” I smiled at his audacity and just how close he was skating to the truth, but shook my head.

“No Captain, should I?”

“Oh, I think you already do. Goodbye, Callum.” He walked out of my home and stepped closer to his own end. I couldn’t have the likes of him digging around in my life. I needed to get my shit in order and start living again, yet I felt lost and without purpose. Shannon had consumed my mind and heart for so long and now, twenty years on, I’m still haunted by her. Rowan is just a shadow of what he was before, all that was left was the assassin, the person died with Lauri and my sister left us behind to find her peace. She spoke to the police, but I know she’s gone from my life and she deserves that. Her husband, Robin and her deserve something more than the death that seems to shadow me everywhere I go. All I have left is that little girl with pigtails and devil eyes.

The afternoon I buried the wife I both loved and hated, I set the past four years to rest in the ground alone. She didn’t deserve to be with the ones I loved so I put her cold body in a state cemetery with all the droves of dead bodies no one cared about. Interned between a John Doe and some young child this God forsaken country had claimed too young. My beautiful, deadly, poisonous bride was gone and I was a man broken by love and left to die from her. I knew it was true, I would die because of loving Shannon, I knew it the minute I saw her and again when I knew I loved her, yet I ignored that voice in my head that said stay away.

Now, twenty years after she started killing me, I sit alone here, the dialysis machine whirring next to me as I slowly lose my battle with the death she gave to me out of love. When I’m like this, my broken fucking humanity at the surface, I’m almost always forced into memories of my life, most of them are painful. A little boy lying with his dead mother or holding the gun that would rip his best friends’ life apart. There are just a few that are what I would call good and surprisingly most of those are with Shannon. I loved her. The wrong kind of love, but it didn’t hurt any less than the real love I never found in this life.

Now I sit here looking back on my life and I know I’ve made yet another horrible mistake—Avery. I have had a hand in creating a woman who is possibly worse than Shannon. She’s so emotionally barren that I’m sure she has no heartbeat, but it had to be this way. This way she cannot be hurt like we have, now she can survive this world we have created around us. The mob is dying out and in its place, a new business is growing. One that shrouds the rot of crime we’ve perpetuated for years. I sit at the head of my empire like I always dreamed of and now I wish I had different dreams. Instead of shipping bodies away to their deaths, I wish I had one to lie with me at night. In the place of the drugs we make and sell, I wish I had a cure for my disease and rather than being king of all of this, I would go back to being the prince just to have felt real love, even for a second. I made all the wrong choices and now I lie with them in my bed instead of someone to hold me as I die.

The loud ringing of my phone drags me back to the present, her name is on the screen which means only one thing this early on a Monday morning and I don’t even have to answer it to know what’s happening. Avery has been having fun and now I have to clean up her broken toys again. I’m tired, so very fucking tired of this life and as I watch this stupid machine that stops me from dying. I wish it wouldn’t because I’m ready to give up. I’m ready to stop going to the ends of the earth just to stay alive, this is the last time I am going to sit here and do this.