AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Twenty-Two
Malakai
Connie’s wrong.
No, that’s a lie. I’m full of shit. She’s so fucking right. Ihaven’tgot the guts.
Before today, I never considered myself a coward. Connie just proved that I am. She laid down the gauntlet and I balked. Connie carved me up with all her anger, each word a slice against my skin, opening old wounds and making a plethora of new ones, and I’m left standing here behind Grant’s dusty boat shop bleeding onto the weathered board beneath my feet.
Yet, I’m so fucking proud of her grit, her determination to make a stand. No one has ever stood up to me like that before. No one would dare.
A man like me is capable of terrible things, violent things, but for her I’d crack open my chest and let her see what she does to my heart. If I was brave enough, I’d let her hold my battered and bleeding organ in her hands and give her the choice to breathe life back into it or crush it within her grasp. I’d give her that power.
But I’m not brave enough, and it isn’t just because I fear for her safety.
A long time ago I lost hope of ever loving another human soul again. When Annabelle chose Blake over me my heart was crushed. I would’ve survived that, eventually, but when my father murdered my mother my heart broke entirely. I was a kid who lost three people he loved dearly in a space of a few months. Two to each other through love and one to my father through violence. Painstakingly slowly, I rebuilt myself into a hard, hollow, husk of a man and became the criminal my mother tried so hard to prevent me from becoming.
The Punisher.
That’s what they called me. I was the one the King sent out to do his bidding. I hurt people for someone I despised, first for my uncle and then for my cousin when he passed away. I broke people, I took life without any thought or care. Ma Silva was right to protect Connie from me. That kid she’d once known, he’s gone. I’m not a good man, but for Connie, forher, I want to be. Only I’ve just fucked that up.
She was so angry. She had every right to be, but beneath that I swear I felt something infinitely more powerful than hate. I felt it that night I left, and I ran from it, from her. I felt it in all the messages she sent me over the past year and whilst they kept me sane, they also kept me far, far away from her. Until that last damn one. Until she made peace with herself, with me, and said goodbye.
Like the sick, masochistic bastard that I am, I couldn’t let her do that.
I want her. I want her so much that I can’t fucking think straight.
But I can’t have her.
I fucking can’t.
The Kingwillkill her.
So I do what I always do. I shut down. I become hard, cold, thoughtless. I just played with Connie’s emotions when all I really wanted to do was hold her, make her mine, and fucking love her like a normal human being.
But I’m incapable.
Forcing myself to breathe, to calm my tattered thoughts and the battered pounding of my heart, I steel myself for what’s to come. First, I need to figure out who this little prick Peter really is, then I need to decide what to do. Most of all I need to keep Connie safe. Once she is, I’m going to leave this island and I won’t ever come back. No matter what.
Piecing myself back together, I head back out into the harbour and towards Princess, an inanimate object that’s become the only home I’ve ever really known.
* * *
By the timeI hear the sound of merriment coming from Lola’s Shack it’s well past ten pm. After returning to Princess, I forced myself to eat and then sat at my laptop for hours trawling the web for information on Peter Jones. It wasn’t hard to find out his surname, a few of the fishermen were more than happy to answer my questions about the mysterious little wanker in exchange for a couple of notes to spend on alcohol later.
According to the men, he’s a good kid who can hold a drink.Harmless.
Yeah, right.
All kids these days have some kind of social media footprint even if they’re grown-up enough to not want to use it so religiously. I’ve never understood the attraction. These days kids don’t take a shit without telling the world about it. Idiots.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tik-fucking-Tok. I know all about these sites available to the masses, and I know plenty about the ones that can only be found on the dark web. Believe me, there are many ways to find people without putting in much effort at all.
After a quick search, and just like I suspected, this Peter Jones has no social media accounts, no online presence whatsoever. That in itself raises alarm bells. What twenty-year-old kid who travels around the world doesn’t want to share his escapades with a hoard full of strangers? Apparently not this kid. Not thatPeter Jonesis the name he was born with.
As far as I can tell he doesn’t even exist, and whilst his name is pretty common worldwide and I haven’t had enough time to prove his innocence, my gut tells me he’s dangerous.
My gut is never wrong.
