“The girl is no longer in my sights, I will hold her to our agreement to merge companies so that she may return what my brother wrongfully gave to her. You are a very wise young man you know?” He wipes his brow with a hanky and pulls a cigar out of his pocket.
“Wisdom can be a burden sometimes. Mr. Baldini, you really shouldn’t smoke those.” Then he smiles and puts it back in his pocket. “Let us set up Luca Junior’s treatment schedule, when can you fly him in?”
By the end of the meeting with Baldini, I’d arranged for his son to be treated, for Avery to be set free of his threats and for Harmon to meet an untimely end. I wanted to let her know I was coming for her, that this time I would save her and not just from herself but from all of this. I let some of her voicemails play in the car as I drive out to the estate, she sounded so broken her voice quivered with tears that I couldn’t see, but I felt every single one. I was going to fix this, all of it. I thought I could let go, move on and forget, but the heart will never forget its first love. Eiran was hers, she will always have the shadow of that love cast over her and that shadow only makes me love her more. I park my car at the visitors centre of the wine farm where tourists come to taste the wines made here and walk through the vineyards up to her home. After passing the small cemetery, I stop for a minute near a burnt out tree to contemplate just how much she’s lost and how little she had to lose. These are all the people she had, there’s no one left to love her. I want to succeed where they failed. I want to love her more than anything in the world. My feet crunch on the small stones in the pathway that winds up the hill and comes up behind the house right near the window to her room. The memories of us in that bed make my heart beat faster, the image of her half-painted half-pure body tied up for my pleasure has me already salivating. The leaves on the vines are rustling in the wind that is blowing down the hill, the sound is almost a roar as so many leaves move all at once. Pushing past the low branches of the last vines beside the house, I’m stopped dead by the vision in front of me, she’s there on her bed, the curtains are wide open. The afternoon sun is highlighting her inked flesh as she moves. It’s not the living work of art that has me stopped, but the sight of her moving that way with him. She rides him with flowing movements as he just lays there taking what she has to give. The way her breasts bounce and her nails dig into his chest, I want to run away but I can’t stop watching. The jealousy is soon replaced by the sadness of loss and I leave them. I can’t watch her being with him, he is the one I’m supposed to save her from. I close my eyes and walk back down the path, nothing could hurt me like what I have just seen. There’s a reason I never stayed anywhere, why I didn’t allow myself to love, I was protecting myself from the agony of loss. When I reach the graves, I walk to the far edge where the fallen stump of the burnt tree lies. I sit on it and my eyes catch the chains that must have held up a swing, a swing that she would have used. She watched her father mourn for years, now I sit here in the same spot and I mourn the loss of a love I never had the chance to live. I chastise myself for being so stupid to think that I had truly changed her, that the murderer could be a lover. Of all people in this world, I should have known better than this. I let my heart guide me and it steered me off a cliff and into a fire pit. Burying my head in my hands, I let my broken heart escape in tears. I purge the pain, not even the slice of her beloved blade could cut this deep into my soul. I almost wish she had just killed me that first night, then I knew I was courting the devil, now I know she is so much more than death.
I sit there among the dead, haunted by so many things. Callum’s buried right there. I helped him die, I listened to his crazy stories including his warped dream of her and Harmon being together and creating this invincible crime family. I wish I had told him it was time before Harmon arrived, that I had told her what was going on. The threats to my life and my mercy mission filled me with fear that overrode my desire for her, my logic muffled the screams in my heart and I left. I ran. I abandoned her to the wolves that were there only to eat her.
The sun is sinking in the sky and in the milky pre-dusk light the noise of the leaves is replaced with an eerie silence as the wind dies down. I watch the shadows of the graves move with the fading light when my silent refection is slashed by the loud barks of a dog I know too well, before I get the chance to look around Jameson has pounced on me, licking and pawing and making sounds that resemble more cat than dog. He whines and wags his silly tail that fast he might put his back out.
“Shh, hey boy, I missed you too.” I pet him and rub his ears and even embrace the dog I hadn’t realised I missed so much. “Jameson, down boy.” I try to calm him before he alerts the whole farm to my presence. He calms down to a mild panic and sits next to me his whole body still vibrates with his tail wagging and his butt doesn’t actually touch the floor. I smile at the joy the canine brings wherever he goes. When I helped his owner leave the world behind I had no idea I would make a friend like him. Distracted by the fur ball and his affections my sadness was momentarily forgotten, but it collided with me full force when I heard her voice.
“Jameson what are you . . . it’s you. Mathew?” A smile lights her face and she throws her arms around me as if she was not just with another man. “God I have missed you.” Tears from her eyes wet my shirt as she cries. I don’t hold her yet she claws onto me as if I am the only thing keeping her alive. “You can stop lying, Avery. I saw you.” I push her away from me, feeling her is not helping me forget what I witnessed earlier. She looks down at the floor her lip trembles and tears stain her face. “You broke all the rules.” I step back a little forcing space between us.
“You left,” she stammers, stepping closer again.
“I had to leave, but you know that. I came back, I fixed things so that you could be free of it all, free of that world and I walk in to find you in the bed that we shared, with him. Of all people, the one I warned you about, he’s the one you chose to replace me with.” I’m yelling at her and she cowers away from me, her mind still trained to expect punishment for breaking rules. “I fucking loved you enough to come back!” I turn and walk away leaving her and our damn dog standing with the dead bodies that seem to surround her, I should have torn my heart out and buried it there with them. Jameson the traitor sits beside her where I can see the sobs shaking her body, as I glance back she crumples to the floor beside him and he looks at me like I stole his ball. My steps slow down, but I’m still walking away.
“Stop! Stop! You can’t leave me again.” I hear her yell and I freeze, I can’t look back again, I just stand there frozen on the spot. The thud of indecision pounds with my heartbeat, my brain says just go, leave it all behind and go far away from here. My heart is aching to hold her in my arms again, but her betrayal has wounded me and the fear of more pain halts me. Her footsteps on the gravel path crunch and grind as she gets closer. “You think you know what you saw, you think I broke the rules, but you have no idea the hell I’m living right now. I broke the rules because you said I would know when to fight and for now this is the only way to fight him.” She slaps me hard on my back it stings me even through my shirt. “Look at me dammit, I phoned, I left messages. I told you I needed you and you never came so I had no choice.” Slap another stinging blow. “Look at me, you didn’t even bother to tell me your name. How can you be angry I don’t even know who you are?” I catch her wrist before the next blow lands, rage is coursing through me and I want to hurt her the way she has hurt me. “You know me more than anyone else ever has, Avery. My name is inconsequential, it’s just a name. I suggest you start explaining to me how fucking Harmon is fighting, because I am seconds away from leaving the carnage that is your life for good. Some people are just not worth saving.” She sucks in a startled sob as my words cut like her knife, I get a strange satisfaction out of that split second of pain. I point to the graves behind us. “Every person that gets near to you or your family dies, I’m the angel of death. I know what it is like to carry death wherever I go, I don’t need to
come home to it. I watch people in excruciating pain all day, I don’t want to come home and feel the agony of hurt caused by the person I love. I don’t want this life, Avery and if you do then I can’t have you.” My voice sounds deeper as it soaks with anger and honest truth. I don’t want this world, I want no part of this place or the life she has here. If she cannot leave every last bit of it behind her then she can’t be in my future.
“I needed him to think I was willing to have his kid, the one his brother had concocted as a plan to tie us together. I had a plan I just needed him to think I was trying until his time runs out. I didn’t want Amya to be pulled into this, to be forced into bloodying her hands in this company. I am trying to find a better way.” The tears roll down her cheeks and fall to the dusty floor at her feet. She sniffs and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. “I was trying so hard to be selfless.” She collapses on the floor next to Jameson, as broken as the day I first saw her yet healed in so many ways.
“Get up, Avery.” I reach out my hand to her and Jameson snarls and snaps at me, like he is protecting her from me, as if I would hurt her right now. I couldn’t even if I tried, she’s so defeated in her own turmoil nothing I did would even be felt. “Is he still up there?” I ask her as she stumbles to her feet without taking my hand. She shakes her head looking at the floor between us. “Let’s go and have a talk.” I put my arm around her and it instantly feel like I have found home again, like I belong right in that small space beside her. “I cannot believe you actually came back,” she whispers the words as our dog darts between our legs running circles around us and barking like a fool.
The house has not changed at all, the door at the end of the passage to her father’s room is still closed and nothing has been added or taken away bar the picture she had of Callum and her on the mantle. Everyone else is still there but his image is conspicuously missing from the line. We both just stand in the space between the lounge and the kitchen, I’m looking at her and maybe seeing clearly for the first time and her odd eyes are looking at me with emotion that’s been missing for so long from her. I hand her my phone. “You need to call Amya, we all need to sit down and have a very honest talk. Because, Avery this plan is stupid. He’s going to get desperate as the time starts to run out and I do not trust that he won’t do something that could put you and your life in danger. The man is not all there.”
She pulls her phone out and searches for the number, I know he will have her phone calls watched that’s why I said she should use mine.
“Amya? It’s me, are you in the city?” Her eyes find mine as she speaks to the one person in all of this who seems to have escaped the insanity and carnage.
“Please can you come to the farm, I need to talk to you.” She can’t stand still and shifts from one leg to the other. “Yes, now if you can.”
When she ends the call I take her hand and we sit down in the lounge, I sit next to her needing that feeling that I get when she’s near to me. “I can fix this whole thing for you, I have spoken with Bladini. He will compromise on some things if we can get Amya to help us you and I can walk away leave this place and start over.” She looks at me as if I am the superhero that flew in with a cape and rescued her from some monster.
AMYA HAS AN AIR of peace about her, she’s different, there is still a definite darkness in her, but she is a beautiful woman that doesn’t exude the same evil that everyone else in this family did. Avery seems intimidated by her, the dynamics between women are always somewhat strange to me, a room full of men is so much easier than two women. Robin is with her, I haven’t met either of them before only through Callum’s stories and what I saw at his funeral. She looks like a pin-up girl, almost animated she is so perfect and he is huge hulking man that towers over, even me. I recognise the tell-tale gang tattoo on his face, this man is from the toughest streets in the city and has lived to walk away from them.
Avery embraces her and silent tears start to fall again, Amya wipes them away like a mother would and kisses her forehead. “This is, umm, this is Mathew.” She steps aside and introduces us I shake hands with them both, Robin grips my hand very tightly a silent threat. They are both older than us, but not as old as Callum and Rowan were I put her in her fifties. “Hi, Mathew.” Amya greets softly as we walk inside to the lounge area, she passes us and opens the patio doors wide. “Let’s sit outside, Avery.”
The sun has set and the night air is cooler, we all settle around the large wooden table. Robin goes back in and returns with two bottles of wine and glasses from the kitchen, as if he has lived here before. I feel like the outsider in this situation. I wonder if I will ever be a part of her life, I want to be in all aspects of her life. I blink my eyes closed and pinch the bridge of my nose as my mind is filled with the images of her and Harmon from earlier and I fight the need to puke. Forgiving her is not going to be easy and I am not sure I want to, I don’t think us is an option any longer. I can’t see her leaving all of this behind, even if she does it will follow her, it’s in her blood. She was born to be the queen of this kingdom, and as much as it pains me I almost see rational in Callum’s sick plan. They would make the most formidable criminal team in history, maybe I shouldn’t have stepped in, maybe he did know what was best.
Shaking off the insane thoughts that are permeating my brain, I look up to see her looking at me, begging me with her eyes to just give her an answer. I don’t have one to give, my heart is undecided about her now. I shake my head and look away.
“What’s going on, Avery?” Amya urges her to start talking. She looks concerned.
“I tried. I did. I just can’t.” Avery stammers back, her eyes on me as she tries to tell them that she is going to essentially throw them under the bus to get out of this mess.
“You can’t what?” I detect some annoyance in Amya’s voice. “This is not my mess, Avery. I walked away from my family twenty-odd years ago for a reason. I’m not a part of anything my stupid brothers concocted. I have helped you where I can.” She is scolding her like a child and it gets my hackles up.
“Amya, if I may. I have met with Baldini, I’m helping him so to say. He’s willing to take O’Reilly International off of you directly. This would allow Avery to get rid of Harmon and be free of all this, just like you are.” She looks at me considering what I have said, but I see the darkness and anger bubbling up inside her.
“You want me to give the family business to the brother of the man that destroyed our lives, then you want me to be okay with her killing my only living relative so she can be free of something that was born into her.” She reaches out to Avery’s shirt and exposes the huge black heart on her chest and then shows the same thing on hers, “Mathew, you know how I know she will never be free. You know who told here about black hole children when she was an infant with no mother? There is no freedom for us.” She just reiterates what I had feared, this cycle cannot be broken.
“So, in short no. I helped her put together a plan that secures the company for the Italian without it ever having to be mine at all. As for killing my brother, Avery killed every other person she took to bed directly or indirectly so I don’t see how he, or you will escape her demons alive.” The bitterness in this woman now almost has me speechless. She will never help, I was wrong to think she was on Avery’s side and that she cared. She cannot care because just like Rowan, Callum and everyone else in this family she has no feelings.
I watch as Avery tries to keep her crying quiet in the corner, I look at her and I wish I had the same hope I saw before. I don’t think it’s worth saving her, this is her, she’s like them.
She turns to Avery, her eyes are filled with anger and bitter rage. “I told you young lady, this is not my problem and I refuse to be the solution. I helped you. Suck it up and deal with Harmon. It’s another nine months, it won’t fucking kill you.” She pushes her chair back and stands up, shooting Robin a glare, I have never met such a silent man. Not a word comes out of his mouth. As she walks away from the table, he lo
oks at Avery where she sits defeated and falling to pieces and he shakes his head, he is sorry for her. Not sorry enough to say anything though. As Amya stomps off to the front door Robin rounds the table and bends down to where my love is broken, he puts an arm around her shoulder and leans against her, like he loved her once. “Kill the bastard. I will deal with the wrath of Amya. You go be free, you deserve it and I know your mother would not have wanted this for you. I helped her forget her pain and I’m telling you, let go of yours and forget about my wife. She is bitter, angry and life was cruel to her.” He kisses the top of her head, stands and reaches over to shake my hand offering me a nod before he follows his wife out of the house.
I love Avery but I am not sure the love of one person can save someone who has no other love in their life, I worry that loving her will destroy me and that there will be nothing left of either of us. I should never have come back to this place the day of that funeral. I made a terrible mistake loving her.
Some do not understand that we must die,
but those who realise this settle their quarrels.
CHOICES. SOMETHING I NEVER considered before in my life. I made them without considering consequence. I did whatever I wanted and never looked back, I never allowed myself to feel the pain of the things I did. Then he came and made me understand that my actions affected everyone and while I could switch the feelings off the other people that my knife sliced through were not spared the agony. Now I need saving from the pain, I need to be considered and Amya just walked away and left me with the choice, if I do what I need to save myself then I will hurt her. Her actions have shown me that in this world no one cares about my feelings they simply expect me not to have any. My heart is shredded and I feel that even though he left, Mathew was mine until today, when he saw me with Harmon I broke the thread that tied us together. Now I need to choose, if I choose him and kill Harmon, I leave everything that ties me to my family behind and there’s a chance that he will still be gone because I hurt him. If I set him free, then I choose Harmon. Then I need to embrace the idea that Callum had in his sick mind that this family needed to be joined and an heir to carry on the future of our madness was the way. I need to stop dreaming of killing the idiot and try to feel something other than loathing for him, I would have to seek out the connection that he has already created in his sick mind. Maybe monsters belong with monsters and I should just tell Mathew to stay away before I destroy him too, I will kill him slowly or swiftly being near me is a death sentence.
My Black Hole Heart (Colour #3) Page 16
