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“Something fishy is going on. Just honour our deal and I’ll leave. We’ll both be glad to say goodbye.”
“There is no deal. Not anymore.”
“What? But you agreed. We shook hands. We—”
“I don’t sell my property, Mr. Slater.” My temper spiked with a snarl. “I had a momentary lapse.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, wrangling the fury in my voice back into its cage and forcing gentile pleasantries instead. “I apologise for the inconvenience and, of course, your extra night on Goddess Isles is complimentary. But your stay has come to an end.”
He blustered and fought for words, finally settling on a pathetic, “But…I love her. I want her as my wife. You can trust me to care for her as my family, Sinclair. I would never harm her.”
Trust?
The most idiotic, dangerous emotion of all.
There is no such thing.
My hand tightened around the phone. Pika sensed my rising rage, fluttering to land on my head and hang upside down so we were eye to eye. He granted me enough rationality to exhale heavily and keep my voice from launching down the phone and stabbing the bastard in the ear. “I apologise for your conviction. You might think you love her…but I promise you, it will pass. You’ve been deceived by a delusion. The affection you feel has been triggered by an experience that cannot be compared. When you return home, the intensity will fade.”
I didn’t know if I lectured him or myself, but either way, this conversation was over. “Be at the helipad in twenty minutes. I will personally escort you from my shores.”
I hung up.
Before thoughts of Eleanor could wriggle their way like a parasite into my brain, I picked up the phone again. This time, I called the recruitment office I used in the States. I delivered on a promise that I should’ve done days ago and ordered a highly qualified vet to support the growing number of creatures on Serigala. And because guilt sat heavily for allowing my own shit to come before the animals who’d endured so much, I requested not one but two practitioners. One experienced in small animals, one in large livestock.
Soon, we’d have a shipment of horses and a couple of donkeys arriving. They hadn’t been tortured in a lab or forced to be unwilling guinea-pigs. Their experiences came from a more sinister nature. A facility that catered to psychopaths who liked to rape animals. A few sheep and a couple of cows were also expected. Poor beasts could be physically rehabilitated but would never trust a human again.
Like me.
Normally, I didn’t take on other abusive cases that didn’t originate from chemical testing…but, I couldn’t say no when the request for help appeared in my inbox. Soon, I might have to expand to another island to cope with the ever-growing population.
Good job I own forty-four of the fucking things.
When I put the phone down for the second time, Pika flew off my head to help himself to the bird table outside, shoving aside a sparrow and nipping at the legs of a macaw as he eyed up a juicy grape. He was a tenacious little spitfire…unlike Skittles who was so sensitive and sweet.
My hands balled, thinking about the shy caique and the fact that she was most likely hanging out with Eleanor.
Goddammit.
Try as I might, my thoughts always returned to her. To wonderings of what she was doing. Of memories of what she’d felt like in my arms.
Fuck!
Rubbing my mouth, I shook my head and stood. Work wasn’t the all-consuming salvation I’d hoped it would be. I needed the sea. I needed to swim to the horizon and get as far away from this goddess-filled hellhole as I could.
“Pika. Let’s go.” I snapped my fingers, but Pika continued to attack the mushed grape and my phone rang shrilly in the serenity.
I deliberated not answering, but with a heavy sigh, I snatched it up, and barked, “What?”
“Do you always answer your phone so rudely?”
Every pain, every weakness, every hint of what I’d been through yesterday faded under a tsunami of black hatred, thick as oil, toxic as a corpse-rotting crypt. “What the fuck are you doing calling me?”
Drake snickered, his voice so similar to mine. We didn’t share much in the sibling gene pool but our voices were almost identical. The only way to tell us apart was his more American drawl from still living on our motherland shores, while I’d lost my accent a little thanks to my adoptive home. Also, the thread of evil he cultivated was obvious whenever he spoke, making him sound like a vile bastard who deserved an excruciating extermination.
“I figured I owed you a thank you…for setting your fucking lapdog on me.”
“That lapdog delivered what you were owed for thinking you could tamper in my company.”
“Our company.”
“Mine,” I snarled. “Or are you forgetting you got the mansions and the holiday homes and all the goddamn cash while I got the very thing that destroyed—”
