Colour Series Box Set (94 page)

She went home with your Doc. Not the lady one either.

He doesn’t respond which tells me he is feeling too sick to care what she does tonight. I just hope he isn’t pissed when she kills his oncologist, corrupted doctors for the criminally wealthy are not always easy to find. Callum has an aversion to doctors in general, I heard his wife was a doctor and that she gave him cancer on purpose, but it could just be rumours, I wouldn’t dare ask him. Almost ten years ago I met him. For the first time I was almost dead, the meat had been sliced off my bones and she asked to keep me. Like a pet. They saved my life, but not my soul. She took me from the rot of street gangs to the organised evil of their lives and made a place for me in her world but not in her life. She never breathed a word to anyone that I raped her. It was ours, something only we shared. It tethered us together and proved that even if she never said to me again, she loved me. I had made Avery feel something and her father and Callum were not happy about me being kept, neither of them had the balls to tell her no; so I lived. Those two men are ruled by one dictator and she knows it. Losing Callum is killing her too. She offered her own kidney to save him and the stubborn old man refused it. The point is, he’s an old man and I believe he’s tired of it all. He’s particularly tired of Avery and all the shit she stirs up around her. I don’t blame him, I grew tired of her games a long time ago.

I’m three sheets to the wind drunk by the time he brings her back for her car, I knew he wouldn’t let her stay the night. He seems to be completely devoid of any attachments I think that’s why Callum tolerates him. He’s a fuck and run kind of guy. She looks like a child that has been sent to time out and it makes me smile, Avery didn’t kill him, she didn’t win this time. The vodka has made me brave and I knock on her window, making her reach for her knife before she even sees me.

“I don’t have to clean up?” I’m almost sorry about it. I don’t like the fact that I know they just fucked like animals I have no doubt he was rough with her. I want to be rough with her, and tender too.

“I liked this one.” She snaps at me and it’s a knife blade straight through my heart, even the others that she kept alive for more than one night never got a
like
form her they were simply good in bed or hard to kill. I breathe in rage and it consumes me.

“You are playing with fire and the devil, Avery. Neither of us should be fucked with.” The booze that soaks my brain leaks from my mouth and I say it before I can think. She shuts the window and drives away; something has changed in her tonight. I can see it, because I see her. That fucker made her feel and I’m jealous and the green rage begins to pump through my veins with each heartbeat. It begins to eat at the fragile sanity that I cling to, I made her feel first,
she is mine. I claimed her.
I fucked her until the tears flowed down her cheeks then she skinned me alive for the way I made her heart sing. “If you even think you might love something, kill it.” She told me over and over as we lay together that her anger was not over the virginity she lost or the fact I had raped her. No, she hated that I had made her aware of the emotions that I know she still hides behind the cold facade the world sees. And now that fucker made her feel it too. I dig my finger nails into my scalp because I have no hair to pull at, it doesn’t grow on scars and patchy hair isn’t very attractive. I want to go to her home and remind her that feelings are only for me, but I’m afraid I wouldn’t live another day, but the vodka is numbing my fear and I start my car and drive. A fearless man is one you should be afraid of. Dying seems like the only answer to this pain.

Do not dwell on the past, do not dream of the future,

concentrate the mind on the present moment.

I’M HAVING A DRINK
with my brother, I haven’t seen him since he was a boy and I sent him away to boarding school. I have two breathing blood relatives left in this world and he’s one of them. Unlike Amya, he
is
in the family business. I paid a shit ton of money for him to become a lawyer and he has proved to be loyal, he has demons as do we all but his seem to be under control and far less noticeable than the rest of ours. Calculating is a word I would use to describe the boy that has become a man. He lived in my house, the ghost house I shared with Shannon and the place that housed my worst nightmares. He kept my affairs at home in order and now I have brought him here to keep Avery from letting everything fall apart with her. Harmon is exceptionally clever, but he isn’t smart. He is socially inept and doesn’t play well with humans. He’s more of a solitary savage. He likes silly women who he can manipulate without having to waste too much energy or time on.

“I don’t understand why I’m here, Callum? Honestly I have no clue why I’m even alive. You killed everyone else.” Harmon is bitter about having to come here, I made him come alone and his little paralegal girlfriend had to stay behind. I would say he is broken hearted but I fear he has no heart like the rest of the family. “Somethings are best left unexplained, Harmon, I need you here because I’m going to die. It will be sooner not later and my plan for the future has failed me.” Well not entirely she was never my whole plan, just a part of a bigger one.

“You mean the infamous Avery Leahy has let you down, your criminal prodigy has fallen apart.” The cackle tells me he thinks she’s a failure. She isn’t, she’s just lost right now. He’s determined to anger me it would seem. As I feel the madness that resides in me take over my mind. I’m reminded that I no longer have the strength to go crazy. I have to let the insanity live inside me with no way out.

“Would you rather be dead? Because I can tell you that unless you adjust your fucking attitude, I will kill you before she gets a chance and believe me, she’s going to try.” I threaten him again and he seems to calm down enough for us to talk about what it is I need from him. The legal team have done their part to ensure that things are securely in place in the event I die quicker than I want to. I get a message alert on my phone from Eiran, I know he’s following her so it’s either a body or she is in a whiskey coma somewhere. It’s nothing he cannot deal with. He is after all, her goddamned shadow. I don’t pretend to understand what they mean to each other, but Avery brought him to the brink of death and then decided she wanted him. He watches her every move but keeps his distance and she genuinely seems to loathe his existence, she will kill him when she is ready. My child is a natural born killer, it’s in her blood and her heart I only wish she could be set free because even I know that somewhere in there, is a little girl that never got to live her life. That fact is my fault, I stole her whole life to ensure my future and I’m not sorry I did.

I ignore the message and look at Harmon, he looks like a younger me. His beard and slick hair are just as mine were after Shannon arrived in my life, he’s a ladies man with impeccable style. The trademark suit that I wear everyday seems to be his disguise of choice, making him seem harmless and attractive to those who don’t now who we are. A wolf in sheep clothing.

“Harmon, you two are both the last of a legacy. There are no more after you two, that’s it. The end of the great mob families. You and her—so suck it up and learn what I need to teach you before I can’t.” He sighs and stretches his body out in the chair, the two of them are like a petrol bomb and a match, the explosion is going to come. I watch him swallow his whiskey slowly, enjoying the burn down his throat. I allowed them to meet once when Avery visited Glasnevin with Rowan, they didn’t hit it off. I know that my death will be hard on her, Harmon doesn’t seem too bothered by the fact that I’m going to die. There’s something missing in him, empathy, he seems totally devoid of it. I may be a killer, a criminal and a bad person but I still feel the hurt of a selected few others, I am selectively empathetic. I wonder if that’s a thing? I shake off my inner thoughts and look him in the eye. “I need you, I have not asked much of you in this life, in fact, I think I have been more than giving with you, Harmon. I need you to take over from me and carry this empire forward to the next generation. You have to ensure there is a next generation.”

“You made me leave my girlfriend behind, asshole. How exactly should I start procreating without a woman?” The idiot doesn’t understand me.

“Not with that whore, fool. With Avery.” His jaw goes slack and I’m sure I can see steam coming out of his ears as he slowly turns a deep red. “We need a power child, three families combined into one legacy.”

“Are you crazy old man? Has the cancer gone into your brain? We are practically related! Her mother was your cousin.”

“Yes, but not yours, we don’t share the same mother, Harmon. Only our father’s filthy bloodline is keeping us related. So it’s a non-issue.” I can see him thinking it over carefully, they are not related in any way. This little idea came to me years ago and it solves a few problems. Avery might be less volatile if she finds a partner that can be her equal and I’m ensured a blood heir to carry on the family line. If I have to fucking inject her with his sperm, I will. I need this to happen, I may have lost my mind, but this is what I want before I die. A fucking legacy and they will give it to me. I wanted a child of my own but Shannon made sure that would never happen and then I decided I would make Avery mine. The thing is, Avery belongs to no one. She’s a free spirit and as much as I raised her to be my heir she doesn’t want it. She’s unstable and the desire needed to fuel a mob boss is missing in her. So now they can make me a real heir. My mother’s blood and my father’s blood in one child two families joined again only this time no one will die. Add to that the dying embers of the Leahy legacy and the child will be an untouchable in the criminal empires a ruler with blood filthier than even the most pure bred monarchs.

“Callum? Do you honestly think that the devil, bitch, murderous whore will even consider a relationship with me one and two she will be the world’s worst mother and that’s only if she doesn’t eat her own young.” I don’t actually care how it is done.

“Harmon, make it fucking work. I’ve drawn up a contract for you.” I slide the envelope across the table to him. “Half of everything is yours if you and Avery have a child together. Should that not happen you won’t get any of it I will give it to Amya, wherever the fuck she’s hiding.”

“You are serious?” He scrunches his brow and frowns at me waiting for me to say no, but I am deathly serious. “Have you had your head checked Callum, for real? This is crazy.”

I don’t appreciate being called crazy, it is my crazy that got me where I am today. I changed the mob from a bunch of thugs to a well-oiled industrial machine that rules the whole damn world. Little shit, he knows nothing about crazy. My eye catches Eiran’s message still on my screen and I have a moment of pure panic, she cannot kill him. I need him to kill me when the time is right, I chose him because he does assisted suicide. Fuck it all to hell today has just been shit from start to end. I growl loudly as I dial his number still glaring at my brother.

“Eiran. She can’t fucking kill him. I need him.” I bark before he can even say hello.

“She didn’t kill him, Callum, she likes him. God knows why but I think he may even have hurt the feelings she doesn’t have,” he slurs back at me.

“Are you drunk?”

“Very. I’m off the clock so it really shouldn’t matter. The good doctor fucked her and dumped her back at her car. Your little nightmare is wounded.”

“Eiran go home and sleep that off, I want to see you tomorrow. You need to meet my brother.” I hang up on him and look up to find Harmon grinning from ear to ear shaking his head.

“Your plan is a shit one, brother. I will try but when it blows up and she kills me and you remember this conversation where I warned you.” The look on his face tells me he is considering it and that’s all I need right now.

“You will understand it eventually. Just don’t let her fucking kill you.”

I’m tired, so very tired of all of this and I want to go to bed. I get up and leave him with the contracts and a bottle of good whiskey.

“Goodnight, Harm, welcome home.”

“Callum, don’t tell her about this. For once just trust me, I think I understand it, but Avery most certainly won’t.” He is a smart man I nod and walk out the door.

“I was never going to tell her.” She doesn’t need to know what I have stolen from her.