| BOOK FIVE | THE LONDON CRIME KING | A DARK MAFIA ROMANCE NOVEL |
This book contains adult language and subject matter, including graphic violence, drugs and explicit sex that may be disturbing to some readers.
This series is NOT a typical romance...
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How is this year for you? Mine is far from perfect. Memorable but not perfect. I have grieved mostly, for the best friend I had lost, for the sister I would never see again, for the irreplaceable man I love with all my heart and soul.
Chloe Stone. I remember the first time I met the girl who would later become my best friend as if it were yesterday. High school was not fun for someone like me. I avoided the halls during break and only ate in the cafeteria ten minutes before afternoon registration to circumvent public shame and humiliation because teenagers were unapologetically and, sadly, unsympathetically cruel. I became the cynosure of unwanted attention, vitriolic torment and inconceivable conversation.
It was a normal day to have spiteful notes hurled at my head, to hear people whisper behind my back, and see the repulsion in their eyes as I passed on by. I was not one of the missing Haines sisters, deserving of pity and sorrow. I was the gawky, awkward freak, the uneducated, illiterate misfit, the chubby weirdo with secret fetishes for older men, the oddity of our generation, as they believed, for a host of reasons, that I secretly loved the life of captivity, that humans should be used and abused at the disposal of barbaric, sadistic, licentious men.
The rumours were false and slanderous. I never enjoyed captivity, starvation, punishment, violence and assault. I never fetishised paedophiles or became irrationally devoted to the person responsible for childhood trauma. I was not uneducated, illiterate or simple-minded. I travelled the world through books to escape reality, befriended the shadows to be less lonely and used my imagination to create ever-lasting memories.
I often wonder if those bullies reflect on how they treated me. I wonder if they look at their innocent children and pray that karma, the decider of fate and future existences, is understanding and forgiving.
Chloe appeared from nowhere. I do not recall her before we became acquainted, just that she burst into sight one afternoon and ended incessant bullying. I was mesmerised by her boldness and fierceness. I was stunned by her selfless actions and her unwavering commitment to shine light into someone else's darkness. Like a true defender, she threw herself in the firing line and put bullies in their place. She stuck up for me, the friendless girl, and treated me like a human being rather than belittle me with cruelty and lies.
I found someone special.
Irreplaceable.
My life seemed less depressing.
The world seemed less scary.
And it was all thanks to her, Chloe.
I never thought, not in a million years, that she, the girl I loved like a sister, the person I trusted more than anyone, was capable of subterfuge. I reached out and begged for forgiveness, a second chance at proving that I was still worthy of her friendship and, in the process, I hurt you, even unknowingly, by falling for the craftiest of trickery, as naiveté blinkered wisdom. I trusted her and, subsequently, disappointed the most important person in my life.
