FaCade (Deception #1)
Page 18
When I called the police the next morning, telling them I got up to find my dad had an accident, they didn’t question my story that he was a drunk, and no one cared enough to argue foul play. The reports said accidental death. Our father was well known for liking the bottle.
Ryan and I moved in with our waste-of-life mother, and if it wouldn’t have been suspicious for both our parents to have accidents in such a small time frame, I would have killed her too. Instead, I gave her money to disappear for days at a time until I turned twenty-two, finished my degree in criminal justice, joined the police force and got custody of Ryan. Then I paid her to disappear to distant relatives.
I took martial arts classes and shooting lessons after that night. I wanted to be able to protect my brother from any threat. I earned extra money through my computer skills to buy Ryan anything he needed and to support our mother’s habit. Ever since I was little I knew computers. I can hack pretty much any network, and I used that skill to earn petty cash from students wanting grades changed, or finding information on people that was kept in confidential files. I worked solely through my computer; I couldn’t risk my identity being compromised. To contact me you had to already know about me through word of mouth, then email one of my many accounts that would go into spam file I never opened, so if someone stumbled across that email account, it looked inactive on my part.
This system also worked for me when I became a contract killer. I can see the sender’s email address without having to open the email. Just having that small piece of information, I can get into their emails, send viruses that clone their hard drives, giving me access to everything they do, which in turn gives me passwords to their accounts, including their online banking. I can find out every single thing about them and their life with one simple address, and if I find them trustworthy and wealthy enough to afford me, I bring up a chat box, scaring the shit out of them. I have two more chats with them before completing the job they want me for. Then I never speak to them again.
I have only a few rules:
One: Never do more than one job per client. Once they see how easy it is to get away with murder they tend to become a little kill happy. They would have me killing the neighbor for playing music too loud if they could.
Two: Never take a job close to home. When people use the term ‘don’t shit where you eat’ well, I don’t kill where I live. It just makes sense.
Three: No one knows who I am, my name, age, what I look like or if I’m even male; which is why everything is done through an untraceable computer.
I make a shit load for my services. I have to be clever not to flash my cash, swapping my funds into offshore accounts and getting a normal job so I look like everyone else. That’s why I joined the police force; who better to teach you how to kill and how to avoid being caught than the police?
My life course was chosen that night when I was eighteen, when I took a life and didn’t feel remorse. When I overheard some rich college kid telling his friend he would pay a million for someone to kill his overbearing father, I knew he was talking hypothetically but I also knew there were people who would pay for someone to kill for them and right then, in that moment, my career path was chosen. It took me six months in the academy, training, three months field training, two years cut loose on patrol and I made detective at the tender age of twenty-five. I’m the youngest detective to ever be sworn in at our department but I’m good at my job. Just like they train me to be a better killer, who better to find criminals then a master criminal?
It’s the night of my sixteenth birthday, sweet sixteen. Everyone’s sixteenth should be memorable. Mine will be, just not for the right reasons.
Sammy’s hands are touching my skin, his breath on my neck, and his words in my ear. He’s my brother’s best friend, and our next door neighbour. He’s the same age as my brother, two years older than me, and he has always been my first and only crush. I’ve felt things for him since the first day I laid eyes on his dark, unruly hair and soul-warming blue eyes. His smile is sweet; his laugh gives me goose bumps. His eyes light up whenever I enter a room and I know he feels the same way about me. He used to call me Twinkle Toes because I’m a dancer, and as I got older, Twinkle Toes became just Twink. He’s who I feel inside me, taking my virginity. He’s loving me, caressing my skin, giving me that special first time all girls should have. He looks into my eyes, tells me how beautiful I am, how much he loves me. He is who I feel sliding his length in and out of my sacred place.
“I love you so much, you know that right? You owe me this, River.”
His words break through my daydream, Sammy’s image fades, and Danny’s takes its place. His tears drip into my neck, itching my skin; his fingers slightly pinching the skin on my cheek as he holds my face to one side. His heavy body weights me down, pinning me to my small childhood twin bed. A burning sensation and a sharp stabbing pain assaults me as he thrusts inside me. I hold back my screams, swallow them down, burying them, but I’m worried if I hold the tears in they will flow inside me, drowning me, and so I let them flow from my eyes. My pillow soaks them into its soft plump fibre; the pillow that usually offers me comfort at night will now forever hold the tears from my stolen innocence. He thrusts harder and grunts before his body relaxes and I feel more of his weight press against my small frame, making it hard for me to breath. He’s still muddy from the garden; it’s dirtied my sheets and nighty. He grips my chin and forces me to look into his dark brown eyes. “You belong to me. What I did for you and your brother, I’ll never tell anyone if you admit you belong to me and that you wanted this.”
I force down the lump in my throat and ask him why he’s crying. His eyes narrow. “Because I love you and you just gave me something beautiful, now say you belong to me.” He growls the last words, his grip tightening on my chin. “I…I...belong …to...y…you,” I stutter.
He grins and lifts from my body. There’s a burning ache between my thighs. I wait for my door to close behind him as he leaves before I pull my knees up to my chest and roll into the fetus position. I cry, broken. I cry for my brother, I cry for my father, I cry for my stolen innocence, and I cry for Sammy. I was meant for him.
Out now!
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Other titles by Ker Dukey
The Broken
The Broken Parts Of Us
My Soul Keeper
The Beats In Rift
Empathy
Out Now
The Devil visited me three times in my life; albeit, my short life. Not in the physical sense, you must understand, but very much literally.
He was persistent, resolute and tenacious. His ruthless greed to annihilate me was utterly disturbing. I am sure if he had hierarchy, the man at the top would have dragged his arse into Hell’s prison for his unscrupulous methods.
I was just fifteen when I first became aware of what he was capable of. This initial taste of him set the playing field for how my life was to be lived – for want of a better word.
He mocked me, showed me mercilessly how he played the game and how he liked to cheat at said game. He ridiculed and taunted me until, six months later, he won and took something of so much importance from me that I would never be the same again.
His second visit was, in my eyes, so much more cruel and heartless. I know we’re talking about the Devil here, and yes, you have a right to say he had no heart but even then, even when I was so utterly broken, I begged to differ and hoped – no, prayed – that somewhere deep in the caverns of his black, tortured soul there was something that beat and confused his emotions once in a while.
The third visit was somewhat different than the oth
er two. He tried, and at first succeeded to bring me to my knees once and for all, but then something happened. God finally intervened and altered Satan’s intention; he sent hope and morphed the Devil’s minion into an Angel, hoping to break and shatter the anguish and suffering. He gave the ability for me to feel pleasure in pain, order in the chaos and light in the darkness.
But in giving me a reprieve, he also gave me something that would finally and ultimately obliterate me. He gave me the capability to love, therefore giving me the ability to be destroyed.
And Satan made sure that I was destroyed. Cruelly, viciously and sadistically.
I am Mae Swift, and this is the story of my decimation.
Olivia Thomas is in love, pure, simple soul consuming love. Nathan Carter is her other half, her light, her passion.
After three years of being together at university; three years of being joined, of a love so intense, passionate and spirited they thought their future was safe and endless but life always finds a cruel way to interfere and they soon find their relationship can’t withstand destiny’s intrusions and obstacles.
Two decades later destiny apologises and brings them back together by sheer chance, re-igniting their intense passion, connection and love but they soon find that twenty years of life, secrets and lies creates difficulties and struggles even their bond might struggle to endure.
When an evil from Olivia’s past returns to haunt them and rip apart everything they have managed to build back up, can the lovers survive with their love and souls still intact…or their lives?
Website: http://dhsidebottom.co.uk
FB page: https://www.facebook.com/DHSidebottom
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Okay, here comes the soppy bit!
We always start with the word ‘Thanks’ at this bit – such a simple word, but never used enough. Yet sometimes, it isn’t enough either.
‘Thanks’ doesn’t seem the appropriate word for my gratitude to my children and my Mum. ‘Thanks’ isn’t appreciation enough for their relentless support, belief and encouragement. ‘Thanks’ is nowhere near adequate for the days when they feed me when I forget to eat, tackle the huge ironing pile I overlook, or when they shop to sustain my caffeine addiction when I am too engrossed in a book to visit the store. Or even the way they each take care of me, as well as each other on the days when the words swallow me.
There isn’t a word, or even a phrase, out there that can define what I want to say to them, apart from, I love you, because as simple as it is, it says everything.
And yet again, here comes that inadequate word; Thanks. But this time it is to the five special friends in my life. Vickie, Michelle, Debbie, Kelly and Nikki. When the darkness threatens to devour me, you are each there, flicking on the light that chases the shadows away. You make me laugh when I cry, you give me hope through all the impossibility and you hold me up when all I want to do is fall, but more than that, you protect me from my own demons – you keep me breathing! I love each one of you.
And finally, to a very special woman. Miss Ker Dukey. I know you will cringe and hate me for saying this, but you’re my guardian Angel, my best friend, my soul sister, and my sanity. Not a day goes by when you don’t make me smile.
This career can bring the most gruelling stress, the utmost heartache and the greatest agony, but for all those difficulties, there are infinite valuable rewards. And the most treasured of those is that it brought us together, not just as writers but as friends.
But above all, I want to thank you for having enough faith in me to allow me to write alongside your amazing talent.
And one day, when we are rich enough to retire to the Bahamas with our families, I will kiss your sweaty, but damn sexy, feet.
Luv ya’ babe ♡
As always thank you to my family… who lose me every time a character demands their story be written. I love you and appreciate all you do.
Thank you to Dawn for entertaining me when I asked, “you want to write this book with me? A woman wakes up with no memory and…” ← And that was it, she cut me off and said, “Hell yes!” Boom! A couple of funny phone calls to outline the story, a couple of months of back forth and endless messages of ideas and FaCade was born.
Dawn you have been so easy and a pleasure to work with, your talent is endless. You are the twist in my spiral, the dark in my black, the crazy in my insanity and the kink in my depravity. I freaking love you.
Thanks to our amazing Kittens and hardcore fans who pimp us all the time! You get us out there and we love you. My girl Crystal who loves me. My girls Kiki and Judi who are not only my publicists but friends who I adore even when Judi’s sexy hubby makes me blush ;)
To all the blogs who review, pimp and promo us. Thank you!!
A special thanks to Kirsty Moseley for guest reading beta ARC. You rock lady!
Thank you to the people who make it all happen.
Authors- D.H Sidebottom & Ker Dukey
Beta’s – Vickie Leaf, Vikki Ryan, Kelly Graham, Jillian Crouson–Toth, Terrie Arasin, Katie Theobald, Michelle McGinty.
Editor – Kyra Lennon
http://www.kyralennon.com/
Proof read – Jillian Crouson
Cover model - Justin Marcoccio
https://www.facebook.com/Justin.Marcoccio.info
Photographer – Christopher John
https://www.facebook.com/CJCPhotography
Promo - Concierge Literary Promotions
Website – http://www.clpromotionsky.net/#!about/c24vq
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Formatting – Champagne Formats