Copyright © 2014 by A.Giannoccaro.
Cover Photography by Mike Brits www.mikebrits.com
Cover Models Rebecca Redmond and Simon Mora
ISBN: Softcover 978-1-4828-0377-8
eBook 978-1-4828-0376-1
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either products of the authors imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
The Author acknowledges the copyrighted or trademarked status and trademark owners of the following word-marks and references mentioned and quoted in this work of fiction:
Poetry and quotes by: Christopher Poindexter, Tyler Knott- Gregson, Charles Bukowski, Norman Cousins, Jack Krouac, Shakieb Orgunwall, Mia Hollow, Lord Byron, Michelle Delio, Mooji, J.R. Tolkien, Sam Ewing, Robert Brault, leaveyouapen, Johnny Depp, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Sappho and Raine Cooper
Music Lyrics from: Hollywood Undead, A Knife Called Lust and Of Mice & Men, Bones Exposed
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
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CONTENTS
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Playlist
About The Author
Ellia
Rowan
Ellia
Rowan
Ellia
Rowan
Ellia
Rowan
Ellia
Rowan
Ellia
Rowan
Ellia
Rowan
Ellia
Rowan
Lauri
Callum
Lauri
Rowan
Lauri
Rowan
Lauri
Rowan
Lauri
Rowan
Lauri
Rowan
Lauri
Rowan
Lauri
Rowan
Lauri
Rowan
Lauri
Rowan
Lauri
Rowan
Lauri
Rowan
Callum
Rowan
Lauri
Renzo
Rowan
Lauri
Rowan
Lauri
Rowan
Rowan
Lauri
Epilogue Callum
DEDICATION
To my Husband Rick, who works hard every day so I can do crazy things like write a book.
I wrote this because you love me.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Ricky -For loving me enough to always let me be and do what I want to. For living through six months of my writing madness
My Mom & Dad - For teaching me to believe in myself always. Mom this book contains, swear words, sex and a murderer.
Kathi - For the laughs on days when there was nothing to do but laugh. Your messages pushed me through some of the hardest parts of this story.
Tracy & Cadi - For being my cheerleaders all the way, for reading when it was nothing but word vomit on the pages. For falling in love with and for hating my characters as much as I did.
Winnie- For being the best nanny in the world to my girls while I poured my soul into this book. You are a special part of our family.
Aleatha Romig- If I never picked up your books I would never have written mine down. Thank you for simply being my inspiration.
Christopher Poindexter – Because every word you wrote and I read felt like you wrote it just for these characters.
To the Readers- Thank you for taking some of your precious time to invest in reading my story. Without you none of this is possible.
Mike Brits – Thank you for the stunning cover image and all the effort to help me make it just perfect. If you would like to show Mike some love and check out his amazing talent please stop past his website www.mikebrits.com
Rebecca Redmond and Simon Mora – My amazing cover models thank you for making the cover of my story just perfect. You can follow Rebecca on her facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Bexcision
PLAYLIST
The soundtrack that played in my mind, on my IPod and everywhere I went as I wrote this book.
Hedley – I can (do anything) This was my anthem when I sat down and started this book I played it every time I wanted to give up.
One Republic – Something I Need
Imagine Dragons – Demons
Gangs of Ballet – Don’t Let Me Go**
Parlotones – Sleepwalker**
American Authors – Best Day of My Life
Bastille - Things We Lost in the Fire
Lorde- Team
Linkin Park- What I’ve Done
Fall Out Boy- My Songs Know What You Did In the Dark
Robbie Williams – Feel
Green Day – Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Smashing Pumpkins- Disarm
Maroon 5 – She Will Be loved
Kodaline – All I Want
Michael Lowman- Boy Saves Girl
Phillip Phillips – Gone Gone Gone
Jason Mraz – I’m Yours
One Republic – Love Runs Out
The Fray – You Found Me
Chilli Peppers – C’Mon Girl
Foo Fighters – Best of You
Mumford and Sons – I Will Wait
Freshly Ground – I’d Like **
Jeremy Loops- Down South**
Shortstraw – Couch Potato**
George Ezra – Budapest
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ashleigh can be found near Johannesburg in South Africa where she lives with her husband and two daughters. She loves to read and is never without her kindle; she loves a good dark romance but will read almost anything with pages. Colour My Ugly is her first book, but there are others in the works and clawing to get out of her mind.
Catch up with her on her Facebook page https://m.facebook.com/Colourmyugly
ELLIA
“I am not going to blend in; I’ve never been one for mixing well. I don’t know how to watercolour fade into the colours around me; I always feel like spilled ink, the accident on top of the purposeful paint below.”
~Tyler Knott Gregson
My dad was a bad man. He was an amazing father and he loved me with all his heart and would protect me at any cost but he was a very bad man. He was a monster, not always but sometimes. I loved him dearly and I always will, but I never loved or even liked what he did and he kept it from me until he thought I was old enough to form my own judgements about it. He gave me a childhood free of bad things, in fact I can only remember amazing times
filled with love and laughter. My mother however ran for the hills the second she found out exactly who he was. She wanted nothing to do with a child that might be evil like him she said. “Monsters are born not made.” I was two years old so I have almost no recollection of her at all nor do I really wish too. She abandoned me so easily; I have often wondered if I will be bad like my father. My dad was not evil as she had called him he was just a bad man. Evil and bad are very different things. I married an evil man. I believe that I married the devil himself.
My dad sold murder. He was a murderer. It’s that simple and yet it’s not. We live in South Africa the perfect place for even the most careless criminal to live. The useless police services, high crime rate and dim-witted government are simply accepted by the masses and murder, rape, assault and almost all violent crimes were the norm in everyday life they didn’t even make the news. So no one noticed dads carefully planned and executed “accidents” or a few extra dead bodies that no one cared less about to start with. Our newspapers read like comic strips to the rest of the world and were full of headlines that anywhere else would cause a huge outcry for justice. Here there was very little justice and very few criminals were even caught. Anyone with a bit of careful planning, half a brain and some money could and did get away with murder here.
My dad was murder for hire. He killed people in well-organized accidents that went right under the radar of our never efficient local law enforcement. He was also a hired hit man, he simply went out and killed whoever the person wanted dead. The other plus of living here was that it was so easy for his “employers” to get their targets here cheaply and there was so much to offer a tourist that the holiday murders as I call them were just so very simple. A safari for the wife or husband that needed to be eliminated would end in a tragic car wreck or game drive gone awry. A sunny beach holiday in the famous Cape Town could easily end in a fatal car hi-jacking. A stay in a quiet hotel along the beautiful Golden Mile in Durban could end in a terrible armed robbery. Dad had enough contacts to make almost any accident happen that was how he made his living. We lived a normal life to those who looked in from outside but the truth lurked below. I was blissfully unaware of this truth for many years. I was a normal little girl except I had no mom only my Dad, sometimes the kids at school would point this fact out in the cruellest ways but I never let it bother me, my mother never loved me not even a little bit.
When I was fifteen my Gran passed away and Dad and I needed to travel to his family home in Glasnevin, Ireland for the funeral. I had visited Gran many times over the years and loved her. She was loud and rude and full of life I was devastated that she was gone I would miss her weekly phone calls and remember fondly those holidays we got to spend together. Dad and I never ever travelled on the same flight and rarely stayed in the same place when travelling due to his paranoia about accidents. The irony of it. In fact, I cannot remember one holiday where he was actually with me; I always went away on my own.
I was collected at the airport by his associate Rowan. Rowan was tall and his young manly body had muscles in all the right spots, he spoke with a sexier than all hell Irish accent that would have any girl or woman drooling after hearing just one word. I remember thinking as a fifteen year old hormone crazed teen that Rowan was so HOT and as I waited with him for Dad to arrive I tried so hard to be cool and start conversation. Rowan was not very chatty and seemed quite annoyed by my presence and his baby sitting duties. All I gleaned from it was he was twenty six years old and my dad was his mentor. He didn’t look like a wine farmer, and did they even make wine here? Isn’t Ireland famous for whiskey? I didn’t know what dad really did yet. In my mind we ran a boutique wine estate in the Cape. We lived in the Franschoek valley and made wine. Good cover dad. Rowan tried to ignore me for the hours we waited while I drooled over his blue eyes and dark hair, committing every bulging muscle to my memory and his smell, oh good Lord his smell. I was such a girl. I can still remember his cocky smile and the exact clothes he wore that day. His casual linen pants that fitted just right and his v neck faded T-shirt that was snug over his chest and bulging arm muscles. Rowan’s face would haunt my teenage dreams for years to come. No movie star would ever feature in my sexy day dreams only Rowan.
My dad arrived a few hours after me. Rowan left and he only reappeared in my inappropriate dreams as my boyfriend.
It was on our return from that trip that my I noticed a shift in my father and he obviously decided I needed to know the whole ugly truth of who we were. With Gran gone if anything happened to him I was all alone. Not a good place to be in the criminal underworld of life.
Past~ Franschoek, W.Cape, South Africa 1997
We have just unpacked our luggage from our trip to bury Gran. I am still feeling the sadness of the whole journey in my heart and it all feels very heavy. My dad is different today and I feel so sad his Mom had died. His mom had loved him and I so much, she was the only mother figure in my life. Sometimes that was a cruel reminder of how my mother had dismissed us from her life so easily. Dad said he wants to talk to me and after I’ve unpacked to come to his office. I am so scared I don’t think I have done anything wrong but he seemed so harsh when he asked me to hurry that I must be in trouble. His office faces the vineyards on the hill, I always feel intimidated by the large dark wood desk he sits behind and the overpowering smell of leather from the new sofa he has in there. I throw the last of my unpacked clothing into the washing basket for the maid to collect. I calm my nerves by taking deep breath and head towards his office. I keep telling myself I can’t possibly be in trouble we haven’t been here to anything wrong? Maybe Rowan ratted on me for flirting with him? God Dad will freak! Boys are a big fat no for him. I may not date for another two years according to him. Not that I have found any boys worth dating since I am holed up at a stuck uppity all-girls school.
I knocked on his office door while I pushed it open, oh that smell. Why he didn’t buy a fabric sofa? It stinks. He is sitting at his desk with his head in his hands and when he looks up the expression I see on his face is one I don’t recognize he is not angry or even irritated. I sense he is more worried than mad. He asks me to sit on his stinky sofa and he gets up to join me. “Lauri I need to tell you truth.” The words that changed my world forever spilled from his mouth.
That afternoon my Dad told me of all his sins, the lives he had taken and the ones he had arranged to be taken. He told me he was a bad man and while he committed these crimes it was not who he was simply his job, the means to provide for us. He explained to me how he was born into an Irish mob family and that he had fled to South Africa to keep me safe and because it was easy to operate such a business here. I was fifteen, too young to even begin to fully understand the burden he had just placed onto me. He asked me that day if I hated him and if I wanted to leave he would make arrangements for me to return to his Aunt in Ireland.
I did not hate him.
I loved my dad more than anything in this world I would keep his secret and love him in spite of it. I told him I hated what he did but that I loved him and I was not going to live with any crazy Aunt I had never met across the globe.
With this revelation he also imparted a few things to me.
One, trust no one ever. The other was the escape plan for if it all went to shit one day, more like for when it went to shit.
The plan was if anything happened to dad there were two trust funds set up in different names with the corresponding identity documents for me. His very slimy lawyer would handle my disappearance. I was not under any circumstances to leave South Africa but I was to leave the Cape and move to one of the other large cities immediately. There was property registered in my name in both Johannesburg and Durban. He told me that an associate would look after me from afar until he was sure that I was in no danger that I was happy and I could take care of myself.This person would not meddle unless I was in danger. Dad insisted I study, fall in love and have a family. He said that fami
ly was the only thing in this world that was worth breathing for. That was the end of the plan that I hoped I would never need. What we want and what we get are very very different things.
Three years and four months later my dad died. Ironically in an accident. I know that there are no accidents in his world so someone wanted him dead that’s how it worked, I just never knew why. I followed the plan and moved. I chose Johannesburg because the sea reminded me of dad and that made me sad. I was alone. All alone. When faced with the monumental decision of what to actually do with my life, I decided to follow my passion and my heart. The one thing in this world that can get my heart beating fast is food. My dad had always loved the food I cooked for him. I took a giant leap and enrolled myself into culinary school. When my dad died and I became this me, Ellia the culinary student who had no one. Not even a single friend. Although I’m not sure I’m even Ellia anymore. I excelled at my studies and love what I do. Cooking is my happy place and there is nothing quite like a good meal created from scratch with fresh ingredients and love.
One week after my 21st birthday I graduated from culinary school and started working in fine restaurants all over the city. It was in one of these that I met my husband a very charming customer that wanted to “kiss the cook”. I have been unhappily married for eight years now.
Yesterday I turned 31 and then I had an accident. There are no accidents I keep telling myself. Now I’m here. I know exactly where I am but I cannot fathom why? But I am secretly so very glad that I was snatched from my seemingly perfect life. Oh God can it really be over? Have I escaped that my evil husband?
ROWAN
“You have to die a few times before you can really live.”
~ Charles Bukowski
My Dad was a bad man. Then he died and I went from being a boy to being a bad man too. His best friend became my mentor from across the globe and I learned all about being murder for hire at tender age of fifteen. I killed my first target when I was just seventeen that day my heart turned to stone and I learned that being a bad man means you don’t get to feel anything. Ever.
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