by Dixon
“You know I work damn hard to earn my place in this world!” Ava seethed through her teeth, her face a picture of offence as the muscles corded tightly in her neck. She took a deep breath and sat back in her seat. “We may have walked different paths to reach the same point in our lives but I am a firm believer that it is not the environment in which we grow but the people in our lives that shape us into who we become. And right now, you have kidnapped someone that helped me become the woman I am today, the one person that I cherish more than any worthless piece of material or asset. And I can promise you…” Ava leaned forward with her hands balled in fury as her eyes sliced into the back of his skull. “If any harm comes to my Samantha…no amount of money will ever be able to fix the carnage I will unleash on your life. I swear to you if you hurt her, I will destroy you, Peter.”
Although she could not see his face, she heard how her lethal promise had affected him in the way of him gulping down his nerves. She bit back her smile knowing that if Sam had heard her, she would have likely cracked a Liam Neeson joke at this point. However, even Sam knew that there was one thing that mattered to Ava above all the rest and that was family.
He would learn the hard way to never come between two sisters, not joined by blood but by spirit.
Eventually, the car pulled up onto a set of docks east of London. Shipping containers were stacked high above them like badly packed Tetris blocks, cranes towering over them like giant watchmen. Seagulls squawked, circling around Ava’s head like vultures as she stepped out of the car and peered up at the warehouse sat upon the sea bank, the water stormy against two white beams from the headlights.
“Move,” Peter ordered, carrying the money and leading Ava by gunpoint towards the two sliding doors left ajar in the warehouse.
Inside, aisle after aisle was stacked the height of the large building with pallets and containers. Ava struggled to orientate herself with where they were, her only clues coming from the salty air that was tainted by the odd sting of alcohol and the seagulls’ song that echoed around the corrugated building.
She felt like a lamb being led to slaughter as they walked down one of the aisles, her eyes desperately trying to pick some information from the storage boxes until they turned a corner and her legs seized as though the cement they walked on had spread up into her limbs.
Between several stacked pallets, Sam sat on the ground in front of a forklift, her hands bound in rope and a dirty rag gagging her. The moment she noticed Ava, her eyes lit up with hope as muffled squeals left her lips.
“Sam!” Ava sprinted towards her, skidding to a stop as she peered down and saw the state of her friend. The whites of her eyes were red, her pale cheeks glistening from fresh tears, and dried brown blood sat crustily upon her temple. “What did he do to you?!” she shrilled, dropping to her knees in front of Sam and pulling down the gag from between her teeth.
“You!” Sam seethed, tugging against her restraints as she looked to the side of Ava, her finger pointed at Peter. “You ginger-headed cunt! I shoulda maxed out that fucking credit card when I had the cha—”
“Oh, shut your fat gob,” he blustered, suddenly appearing behind Ava with the revolver clicking harshly by her ear. “Envelope. Hand it over.”
“Take it then.” Ava held out the envelope and waited until he bent forward to retrieve it before spitting up into his face with a spiteful scowl on her face.
“Hah! Classic, Archer!” guffawed Sam. Ava would have cracked a smug smile if not for the cool steel colliding with the side of her head and knocking her face-first to the ground. “You fucking dick! I’m gonna rip yer balls to yer gullet, you twisted sick son of a—”
“Can someone please gag that loud-mouthed Scotswoman already!”
Everyone stopped and turned to the latest arrival to the shitshow. Mrs. Charlotte Forbes emerged out of the darkness like an emerald dressed in dollar bills.
With her cheek pressed to the ground, Ava gawked up at the woman who had shown her only kindness that day and squinted at her in bewilderment as she sauntered towards Peter, her arms wrapping around his neck before her coral lips met his.
“What is going on?” Ava looked at Sam as she sat up.
“Nae clue, hen.” Sam shrugged and pointed to Charlotte. “Her twatty driver knobbed me on the side of the head and the next thing I knew I was in this shithole!”
“You are lucky that that was all that Henry did, dear,” Charlotte remarked as she pushed Peter’s auburn curls away from his eyes which were staring at her like a brainwashed and lovesick zombie.
“Oh, wait! I had it here a second ago…” Sam stated, gathering everyone’s attention as she awkwardly searched her jacket pockets with her wrists still bound. “Aye, here it is!” She pulled out nothing from her pocket apart from her middle finger primed and flipping off Charlotte, much to the Forbes woman’s non-amusement.
Ava’s mind was reeling as she tried to piece together the puzzle. It was no secret that Charlotte reeked of the title gold digger, but what didn’t make sense was why she was having relations with Peter if it was money that she was after. Women like her utilised the men in their life, usually for power and money, so why did she need her defence attorney?
That was when it hit her like a bag of gold to the head.
“You’re using him,” Ava gasped, staring up at two sets of squinting eyes.
“I beg your pardon,” Charlotte said with her nose turned up.
“That explains why you were trying to seduce Nate that day in the meeting room. You needed someone high up with enough clearance to release Oliver’s inheritance from his escrow account!” However, then it dawned on her that Charlotte had seduced Nate prior to Oliver’s death which meant… “Oliver didn’t kill himself, did he, Charlotte?”
Peter’s attention snapped to Charlotte, his thick brows creased together as Ava’s theory began to make sense.
“I have no idea what you are talking about but for you to accuse me of such things is indeed an offence! It is bad enough that they detained poor Freya for it!” Charlotte hissed before composing herself and turning to Peter, her paw cupping his cheek as she scratched the underside of his beard. “I thought I knew what love was with my Holden, but I realise now that I was just a young pretty thing for him to admire, just another collectable on his shelf. Peter is the love of my life and we are going to have our happily ever after, isn’t that right, my love?”
Peter squinted at Charlotte for a moment as if weighing up both stories but eventually his shoulders relaxed as he nodded and turned his cheek into her touch, causing Ava’s stomach to plummet.
“You can’t possibly believe her, Peter!” Ava bleated.
“Guy’s a fud, thinking with his dick like every other yin oot there.”
“Why would you do this?” Ava croaked, her eyes pleading with Peter to see sense.
“Why?!” he barked incredulously as his arm looped around Charlotte’s waist. “Why would I choose a woman that wants more than just a quick fuck to fill the lonely, sad, and pathetic void in her life? Come on, Ava.”
His words struck Ava like a knife straight to the gut as her eyes dropped to the ground. Trust a man to play on a woman’s insecurities. That was when an idea came to mind as her chin tilted up defiantly and she decided to play with his ego.
“So, you’re just going to run away into the sunset together and avoid the law. That’s your master plan?”
Ava knew it would warrant a rant from Peter, but truthfully, she wasn’t listening, especially as the corrupted pair professed their undying love for one another. Sitting in front of Sam, she discreetly passed the mobile phone back to her, praying that her Hail Mary would save them both.
“My love, I do have to confess one thing…” Charlotte sighed, her lips pouting as she stared down at Ava. “Seeing her, your prior lover…it does irk me.”
“Darling, she means nothing to me. She is nothing but collateral damage with a pretty face.”
Ava felt her throat tighten,
her eyes sting with the threat of tears, but she balled her fists refusing to let this disgusting couple get the better of her.
“Regardless, her existence bothers me.” Charlotte moved to stand behind Peter, her chin resting upon his shoulder as she whispered in his ear, “Get rid of her.”
“What?” Peter and Sam gasped in unison.
“Prove your loyalty and love to me—kill her.”
“You said no one would get hurt…” Peter challenged over his shoulder.
“Yes, but a woman with a pretty face and a sharp mind is a dangerous thing. I don’t want her ruining everything for us…” She planted her lips at the spot behind his ear, the spot that Ava knew he adored to be kissed. “You love me, do you not?”
“Of course I do!”
“Then…” She raised his hand that held the gun and pointed it towards Ava’s paling face.
“Peter…” Ava’s eyes were full of regret and fear, her head shaking as her lips trembled to make words. “D-don’t do this…p-please.”
“Aye, listen to her, man! You’re naw seeing sense! This is Ava!” Sam roared, tugging at her rope as she pulled at Ava’s shoulders to desperately try to draw her into safety.
“I’m…I’m sorry…ol’ girl,” he croaked, the gun rattling as it pointed to the spot between her brows.
Ava stared down the dark tunnel leading her to death, waiting for the images of her life flashing before her eyes, but no such thing happened. She couldn’t fight nor flee, a caged bird that was frozen in a state of blind panic. Her brain had stalled and all she could think about in that moment wasn’t that she was going to die, it was that she was meant to meet Nate tonight and now would never get a chance to say goodbye.
It was odd that when faced with death, how your brain went from blind denial of your fatal reality to accepting your fate in a matter of seconds.
Ava didn’t close her eyes, bravely staring up into the eyes of her killer and wanting him to be haunted by the colour blue for the rest of his undeserving days. “Do it,” she sneered with a dry mouth. “Do it, you goddamn foul ma—”
Bang!
Sam’s screams tore through the air above the gunshot that reverberated around the warehouse. Her wrists were raw as she fought against the rope, trying and failing to catch Ava as her friend went tumbling down to her side like a dead tree and lay in a pool of crimson.
Thirty-Nine
Earlier that night…
Nate was glad to have finished up the gruelling process of handing over his workload to Tom Archer. The experience was up there with getting teeth pulled at the dentist. His business partner was keen to ship him back to the States as soon as possible and was in an ass of a mood all afternoon—not that Nate could blame him. Not after what he did to the guy’s daughter on his office sofa…coffee table…desk.
Yeah, okay—dick move.
“Nathaniel, you’re not in love with her,” Tom had said as Nate was leaving the office. “You have not known her long enough to profess such feelings and I won’t have you make a homewrecker out of my little girl.”
“Perhaps I’ve not.” Nate smiled at the floor before looking up at Tom. “But I know that what I feel for Ava is that deep-in-your-gut feeling that is both familiar as it is uncharted. She is the first woman to know every piece of me and accept everything that I am, everything that I have done, and everything I will one day do. What I feel for her is unapologetically chaotic and if that ain’t love then…I don’t want to know what the damn thing is.” He chuffed through his nose before heading out of the office knowing that he would never have that man’s blessing until the day he made things right by his daughter and filed for a messy divorce.
However, none of that seemed to matter now that he was bounding down the sidewalk with pep in his stride. The molten-silver sky grumbled with the promise of rain, but Nate couldn’t care less as he swung his briefcase by his side. It was funny how with everything blown to shrapnel he saw order within the disarray and that the problems he had feared from the start were actually the solution to everything.
He was going to make this right.
They were going to find a way to make this work, and for the first time, his happiness wouldn’t be the front cover of the brand that the people in his life created for him.
Nate skipped his way up the stairs leading to Ava’s apartment block, his finger pressing down on the silver call button. After a few moments without answer, his brows knitted together as he tried again before finally trying her on her cell phone.
Straight to voicemail.
“She wouldn’t have forgotten…would she?” he uttered to himself before retreating down the steps and staring up at the building to see that her lights were the only ones out. With a heavy sigh, he found himself sat down on the bottom step seeing no other option than to wait on her return.
And wait he did.
After an hour of sitting in the evening chill, in nothing but his suit, he finally heard the door open behind him and snapped upright like a dog waiting on their owner’s return before slumping as an elderly woman trotted towards him.
“You alright, love?” she asked with a frail Welsh accent, frowning down at Nate. “Locked yourself out?”
“No, I’m actually waiting on a lady—tall, blonde, incredibly beautiful…her name’s Ava?”
“Oh, Ms. Archer!” The woman beamed fondly of his girl and he couldn’t help but beam a hopeful smile at her. “She left a little over an hour ago with a gentleman.”
“A gentleman?” Nate’s smile fell flat as he slowly rose to his feet.
“Yes, the redheaded gent—he’s often round at the weekends. Terrible racket they make,” she chuckled, pulling her rain bonnet up over her head.
Nate had only been punched a few times in his life, but none of those times compared to the sucker punch given by this old lady. Ava knew they had only tonight to sort things out and that he was leaving for New York in the morning. Why would she leave with Peter?
The sinking feeling in his chest answered that question; she wanted to give him a message and what better way to tell him there was no room for him in her life than this?
“Thank you,” Nate said with a bittersweet smile as he looked down at the scuff marks on his polished Italian shoes.
“Are you alright, m’love?”
He looked up at the woman’s pale teal eyes and with a feigned smile said, “Nope. Not even a little bit.”
The lady opened her mouth to speak but before she could, Nate had already turned away from her, briefcase in hand as he began walking down the crescent-shaped street that was shaded by crimson trees.
With slouched shoulders, his body felt heavy, legs like lead pins, and with each step, he felt the warmth evaporate from him. Every memory with her was a burning Polaroid being held up to his face. The time spent with her lit up his life. She set his soul on fire with words that breathed oxygen into him and with a touch that brought heat to the gasoline in his veins. But now his soul felt like a dying ember.
The reality sunk deep inside him until the heartache left him feeling frozen as though concrete were drying in his chest.
I’m not enough for her.
His feet came to a stop as he turned around and stared down the street he had just walked. Nate hardly ever thought with his heart, but as his mind made up a million reasons why Ava would have left with Peter and not him, he couldn’t help but wonder if it was his brain or his heart trying to find excuses for her actions.
As he lifted his foot to retreat to her apartment, a flash of light shredded the sky before an almighty clap boomed from one side of London to the next. He peered up at the dark clouds as pellets of water stung his face and made his stormy eyes blink.
Nate wasn’t a superstitious man by any means, but as the rain saturated his hair and suit, he knew this was the universe trying to give him a sign. It was the one thing that Ava had been trying to tell him all along. Not all romances are love stories.
“Another.” Nate raised
his empty glass to some barmaid inside some crappy bar that sold crappy booze with crappy clientele—himself included in that remit.
“You sure about that, mate?” she replied, frowning down at the several empty glasses in front of him, grimacing at the way his brows lowered and his nostrils flared. “Another coming right up!” Her palms rose defensively as she cleared the empty glasses and poured him a fresh scotch.
Nate huffed his thanks to her, running a hand through his wet hair before rubbing at red bleary eyes. His suit jacket hung in a drenched heap over the back of his barstool, his pants clung uncomfortably to his legs, and his damp white shirt was rolled up at the sleeves. People were giving him concerned looks but he couldn’t give a damn and instead sneered at them with a nod of his glass like the drunken idiot he was.
Everything about his situation sucked: having to go home to the States, having to return to a life-sucking succubus, having to go back to his mundane job with his mundane assistant that wasn’t her.
How the hell was he meant to go back to the strict structure of the real world when she had come into his life like a goddamn hurricane and disrupted everything about it like the most chaotic and perfect storm?
One last shot, he thought to himself as he pulled out his cell and tried calling her for the hundredth time in the past hour. As expected, her voicemail greeted him, his fist almost managing to bend the metal pressed to his ear as he imagined her arm around that redhead instead of him. He slammed his phone down on the bar before knocking back the burn of alcohol along with the sting of rejection.
He knew Ava was afraid of commitment and terrified of abandonment—any guy with half a brain could figure that one out. But did he really mean so little to her that he wasn’t worth an explanation or even a goodbye? Just phase him out of her life because it didn’t matter anyway since he would be out of her hair soon enough, was that it?
The worst part was being ghosted by someone who already haunted your every waking and sleeping thought.