Beyond The Darkness – Prologue

Lexi

April 21 came and went and nobody noticed. I never expected my mother to drop everything, especially Daryl, and call, but I was hoping for better from my dad. Since Cassie left, he’s taken to drinking. In fourteen years and eleven months I never saw my father take a single drink. I know he did have the occasional whiskey, my mother made sure I knew that, but I never saw him with a drink in his hand. Post-Cassie, I’ve seldom seen him without one. But I still thought he would remember my birthday, especially since we were having a father/daughter recovery time in England.

I sometimes feel sorry for my dad. He got trapped into marrying my mother and, unfortunately for all of us, I was the result. Fourteen years they were together, and they had sex twice, both after they were married. My mother made sure I knew that, too. That they only screwed twice. I learned from my uncle that they didn’t do it before they were married. My dad thought that he was duty-bound to marry my mother because he had touched her breast a couple of times. Actually, she was the one who pushed his hand inside her shirt. My uncle was an encyclopedia of information about my parents. Twice in fourteen years before my mother bolted for the door dragging me along behind her. It was her justification for shacking up with her English Daryl, as big a prick as I’ve ever met. No, I take that back, my mother would earn that title. Daryl gets the consolation prize. My dad deserves a Presidential award for being able to get it up even twice with a selfish bitch like my mother. Even if she was unbelievably beautiful.

Cassie Monroe was the best thing that has happened to me. And the worst. I imagine my dad feels the same. Cassie and I are kindred spirits, which is one hell of a confession on my part considering she is on the run for multiple murders. I learned that from her best friend, Darcie O’Sullivan. Dad knows, of course, but he has never said anything to me about it. That’s why he drinks, trying to fog up his memory until he’s not sure he’s got it correct anymore. Being so morally pure, well, honest anyway, he can’t handle the person he really loves being a criminal, as he sees it.

I see it differently. When she was the only thing between my dad and his future on the wrong side of the grass, I’m inclined to cut her some slack. In fact, I think she should get a medal for services to the community, doing away with a murdering bastard like Diamond Diego Ortega and a couple of his dirty deeds boys. There is also some suggestion that she had more than a bit part in ridding the world of a couple more of Diamond’s muscle men, but no one has yet found their bodies. I think my dad knows something about that as well, but he’s keeping his mouth shut on that one, too.

I know a little bit about Diamond’s thugs. He sent two of them down to Auckland a few months back to kidnap me from my mother’s protective care. Part of a plan to flush Trumper out. He’s my father. Everyone calls him Trumper. It’s a name my mother stuck on him, trying to mock him as another Serpico. The name stuck, but the mocking didn’t work. Diamond’s plan didn’t work either, because my mother didn’t give enough of a shit about me to even know I was missing, for three days, can you believe, and my dad outsmarted Diamond’s men and rescued me. He had more than a little assistance from Rex, one of the kidnappers, the nice one, who’d had enough of Diamond’s slaughter-for-money business dealings and lost his life taking down the turd who had the knife and was always trying to carve his initials in my flesh, as well as stick something else of his into one specific part of my body. Rex always stopped him. He was nice, Rex. Really nice. A bit old for me, and married, possibly with a daughter of his own, but down in that shack outside Auckland I could easily have forgotten I was a virgin on more than one occasion. When you’re waiting to be killed you grasp at any straws.

I have been living with Colonel Blakestone since my dad brought me back from New Zealand. He’s no blood relative but I call him Uncle James because my dad would never let me call a man of his vintage by his first name, and I didn’t want to be calling him Colonel Blakestone and he didn’t want me to call him Mr. Blakestone. So, I had to come up with a compromise. Uncle James works for all of us. The old guy practically purrs whenever I call him that. He’s in love with me. It’s written in his eyes. He would never dream of doing anything inappropriate, but I catch him every so often staring at me with puppy dog eyes when he thinks I’m not watching him. He’s a really nice old man and he has this beautiful house at Perris Beach, on the lake near San Bernardino. It’s really peaceful and he doesn’t bother me if I just want to lounge in the sun. I can tell he watches me from the house, sometimes for most of the morning, except when I go topless. Then he finds some reason to go on an errand. I hear the car leaving and I smile to myself.

His wife has been dead for just under two years and he’s lonely as hell and I’m sure he’d like to hang around and see more of me but he’s too proper to ogle a naked girl, so he makes himself scarce. It’s probably a bit mean of me to do this, but whenever I want to clear space for myself, off comes the top of my bikini, and two minutes later, off goes the Colonel.

His daughter and her family moved to Detroit and he misses them, but I know, if he’d had to make the choice, he would have traded them for what he has with me. He hinted once that he was thinking of leaving the house at Perris Beach to me, since I love it here so much. I imagine that would get the family lawyers busy when the will was read if he went through with it. As it is, he gives me a more than generous allowance each month, on top of what my dad sends me, and he never lets me pay for anything. And I mean, anything. He even pays for my tampons, although he pretends not to notice what they are.

I love the old guy and I make damn sure he’s as happy as any widower could be without embarrassing him. It’s working out really well for now, but I don’t see much of a future for me here. Uncle James gets all protective if a boy so much as smiles at me. I’m going to have to get myself one of those battery-operated devices soon if I can lose the Colonel for a few minutes. He would die if he ever found me entertaining even the thought of allowing anything but a bath towel between my legs. He and my dad have that much in common. So I imagine he would balk at paying for a vibrator.

But I’m getting off track here. I just wanted to let you know how things got to this stage. You should be able to follow the story from here.