Free Colour Series Box Set by Ashleigh Giannoccaro Page A

seems to be a bit of a criminal cesspool if you ask me so we should blend in just fine Callum and me. I also studied their crime stats. What a joke. There are more unsolved murders in a month there than total murders in a year here. Mick says any criminal with a brain and a few cents to rub together could get away with anything there. I just need to get away with murder. I have become cold in the years I’ve worked with Mick. Nothing like watching a life fade away under your hand to make your heart shrink until you don’t have one anymore. Life loses its value and is simply a transaction for me now. People are a currency nothing more.
    I am twenty six this year, I’ve been doing this for nine years now.
    I don’t plan to wait the two weeks. I’ll be packed and ready to fly out tomorrow night. There is no reason to wait. I only have two things to do before I go. This first one is going to suck, not for me but for her. My girlfriend Cassie. Yes girlfriend. We were sweethearts when I became a murderer just teenagers fooling around, Cassie believes she loves me and is about to find that I am leaving her behind. Worst of all after being sweethearts for ten years she will know that I never loved her. I can’t love her because I cannot feel anything and love is a feeling. I know I am going to break her heart into a million tiny shards. I never professed to love her, I never said the words. I knew I didn’t love her, but my cold heart doesn’t mean I don’t like a warm bed when I get home at night. After I break Cassie’s heart I need to go to my parents’ graves and say goodbye I may never come home. In fact I know in my soul that I never will. I’ll live and die in Africa.
    I wait for Cassie to get home from work around six, I have only packed my clothes and the documents I need to travel I have left everything in our little flat as it is she can keep the flat after all it was her home too. Cass sees my bag as soon as she comes in the door. Her eyes immediately give away her feelings she is annoyed and she asks me with a hint of sadness in her voice. “Mick got you going out of town to work again I see, how long this time Rowan?” I turn around and look out the window I don’t want to face her eyes when I tell her this. I don’t want to tell her, I should’veleft a note but I’m not a cowardly man. I could never do that. “I’m going to join Mick, Cass. In Africa. I’m not coming home this time.” Cassie is silent behind me but I know tears streak her face her hushed sniffles give away her heartbreak. “When can I come Rowan?” I knew she would ask in her little world I am going to marry her soon. She’s been waiting ten years, since we were just kids. I’m never going to marry Cassie or any woman for that matter. Murderers don’t get married to good women. “You can’t Cassie, this is goodbye. We have tonight then I am gone. You need to let me go Cassie. You don’t love me you just think you do; no one could truly love me.”
    I turn around as she slams her fist into the table and looks me in the eyes. I see her heart cracking in her chest through those pretty little green eyes her bottom lip trembles with her tears. “I do love you, that’s where you are so wrong Rowan, I do. Even though in my heart I have always known that you don’t love me back. I hoped and prayed you would that you would learn to love me but you won’t.”
    Her words hit home, she knew all along I never loved her but she loved me anyways. “I can’t Cassie. Not I won’t, I can’t. I can’t love anyone, ever.”
    She walks right up to me and stands on her toes to kiss me, I feel like an asshole for kissing her and wanting her right now after I just broke her beautiful heart. When our kiss breaks she whispers to me softly talking into my chest “Good bye Rowan, I will always love you.” I feel her tears wet my shirt as she cries into it before letting go and looking into my eyes with her green ones. I have broken her I