| 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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I sold Vincent's painting for a whopping nine grand, which meant the discarded art would sell for more than the buying price. The male gallerist mentioned the painter's name during the exchange, not that I took note. I am not an art-lover. Even if he is a wheeler-dealer, the sale, in my eyes, was a huge success.
My next stop was the hairdressers for the stylist to fix my tawdry image. I lost the hacked, peroxide hair and embraced the youthful pixie cut with strawberry blonde layers and highlights.
I missed the waist-length blue hair, but an extreme transformation was necessary to stay off Vincent's radar. I jumped feet first into the River Thames the night his men chased me down, and I will never understand how I survived the ice-cold water and frigid temperatures for two hours. The guardian angel on my shoulder, whoever it may be, talked tirelessly in my ear as I dragged myself onto the muddy embankment, which is where I passed out until dawn.
I omitted transportation and busy streets in fear of exposure, walking the longest route back to the bed-and-breakfast to reclaim the canvas. I resembled a drowned homeless person for the first half of the morning, but my clothes had dried by the time I uncovered the charity shop to buy three outfits, fabrics and white daps that I'd typically avoid. I dumped the knee-high boots, the ruined clothes on my back, changed into floral textiles and checked into a hostel.
The hostel is filthy, the walls smoke-stained and furniture outdated. I heard the couple next door bickering every morning and scuttling rodents beneath the floorboards at night.
Presently, I am consuming coffee in an American style diner. I ingested loaded potato skins earlier, smothered in thawed, melted cheese and crispy flakes of bacon, dipped in moreish sour cream, so I am not starving, not by a long shot, but the man chomping condiment besmeared hotdogs at the end of the high gloss red bar beguiled the gluttonous binge eater within. I ordered the steakhouse burger, another coffee and cola refill.
Hell, I had nothing better to do. I am still jobless but not penniless. I can afford to overindulge until I collapse into a sluggish food coma.
I wore red, non-prescribed, oversized glasses—I bet Sally Jessy Raphael would be very impressed—to alter appearance; nowadays, I rarely recognise myself.
"I changed my mind." The distressed woman with the lightest shade of red shoulder-length hair in the leather booth behind me is on the phone, and I am bored enough to eavesdrop. "What do you think?"
I dunked two fries into the cardboard ketchup pot.
"He is not here," she hissed, and I felt sorry for the person on the receiving end of her belligerence. "It's a sign. Yes, it is. I should not be here—because it's not worth it."
Licking ketchup off my lips, I bite into the flavoursome burger, the caramelised fried onions and soggy lettuce caked in mayonnaise sequencing through the seeded bun.
