Delivered (The Monster Trilogy Book 3) (20 page)

Monster (Present Day)

They stopped in
a small town to allow Monster to make a couple of calls. A quick search through the glove compartment located a couple of ten dollar bills, obviously kept there for emergency—though the owner’s as opposed to theirs—so Monster was able to get them something to eat and something else to drink.

“Help won’t be long,” he said, as they sat in a diner, trying to ignore all the curious glances they were getting. He’d found a jacket on the back seat of the truck, and so used it to cover the torn, blood-stained one he’d taken from Sophia’s house, but there was nothing they could do about Lily’s bare feet for the moment. She’d gone to the restroom and washed the worst of the blood and ash from her face and hands. She’d used toilet paper to wrap up her injured fingers, though luckily the cuts were all superficial. It was the best they could do for the moment. They’d parked the truck several blocks away down a side alley, in the hope no one would notice it was a stolen vehicle or that they were the ones responsible for it being stolen.

“Are you sure you can trust this person you called?” she asked, her voice subdued. “I’m still frightened someone is going to turn us in, or send men even worse than Rodriguez after us.”

Monster nodded, and reached out to take her uninjured hand across the table. “Yes, this is what he does as a job. He creates burn packages for situations just like this. I had him lined up as soon as I knew I was coming to the States.”

“How long is he going to be?”

“An hour, maybe less. We’ve just got to sit tight.”

“And what then?”

“Let’s do what you suggested back at the hotel. I should have listened to you then. I should always have listened to you,” he said. “Let’s run. I don’t care where. We can keep moving, if that’s what we need to do. We’ll get new identifications—I still have a few people I can trust—and we’ll leave all this behind us and start up somewhere new.”

“What about your father’s business? What about your house?”

He shook his head. “If these past few weeks have taught me anything, it’s that I don’t owe that man a single thing. I never did. I don’t know why I was so focused on being the man my father raised me to be, when all he wanted was a son hard and cold enough to hand it all down to. It was my father’s business, not mine. After everything I went through at his hands, I should want to see the place burned to the ground.” He ran a hand over his face, as though all of this had exhausted him. “Since we met, all the things he used to do to me have come flooding back. I don’t know if I’ve been suppressing a lot of the memories from my childhood, or if I’m just seeing them all in a new light, but while it was happening I knew I was sad and frightened, but I didn’t know any differently. I thought there was something horribly wrong with me and that I deserved to be treated the way he treated me. Only now you’re in my life I find myself questioning how a man could have done those things to his own son. I understand what love is now, where I never have before, because you came into my life, Lily. How he treated me was never done out of love. I mean, he fucking murdered my mother not long after I was born, and then kept me in the same room where she died. What kind of sick psycho does that to his own child? It was no wonder I had no idea how to treat other people before I met you. Part of me wishes he was still alive so I could get answers, but then I’d only wish him dead again.”

Her hand tightened around his and she looked over at him, her eyes shining with tears. “I’m so sorry, Merrick.”

He gave a sad smile. “But then if I hadn’t been through all of that, I would never have met you.”

“Our paths might have collided a different way,” she suggested gently.

“Perhaps, but would we be the same people? I don’t know. I’d like to go back and take away every bad thing that ever happened to you, but I think I’ve perhaps started to make my peace with who I am now. I’ll never be perfect, but I’m at least getting better.”

“Yes, you are. We both are.”

“So what do you think?” he said hesitantly, as though worried she would reject him. “Shall we leave all of this behind us and start somewhere new?”

“As new people?”

“Yes. There are still too many bad connections out there, and I’d hate to put you in anyone’s line of sight again.”

“So others might still come after us?” Concern filled her eyes.

“It’s a possibility, yes. Rodriguez was an important man, though I’m hoping others will be happy to see him gone rather than be worried about avenging his death. I’m sure if we get new identities, no one will bother us again.”

“I don’t care even if we have to keep moving,” she said. “As long as I’m with you.”

He leaned over the table and kissed her, then bumped his forehead gently to hers. “I’d rather be running every day for the rest of my life with you by my side than spend a single day without you.”

Lily (Six Months Later)

The girl stared
at herself in the small, hand-held mirror. She lifted her hand to touch the treated area across her forehead, but a voice halted her in her tracks.

“Don’t touch,” said Lily softly. “You must let it heal.”

The girl turned to Lily and gave her a wide smile, bright white teeth in her dark face. The girl’s mother stood nearby, and Lily handed over the cream her daughter would need to apply to the rapidly fading birthmark.

“Thank you,” the mother said, in heavily accented English. “You are very kind.”

Lily smiled. “You’re welcome. You have a special girl there. She deserves a beautiful face to match her soul.”

“Thank you,” the girl’s mother said again.

The mother and child held hands as they left Lily’s consulting room.

The clinic was a far cry from the sterile walls and high rise building where she used to work in Los Angeles. Now she worked from a wooden hut in a small Ghanaian village, and only had electricity for three hours each day. It had taken her a month to get used to the heat, especially in her current condition, but gradually she’d started to acclimatize.

Monster appeared in the open doorway, leaning against the frame, his arms folded. The sunlight was bright and fierce at his back, and Lily was thankful for the shade of the hut.

“Are you ready for lunch?” he asked her.

Lily smiled. “Always.”

He walked toward her and pulled her into a kiss, before pulling away and placing his hand over the now prominent swell of her belly. “How about this little guy?”

She laughed. “He’s always ready for lunch, and dinner, and breakfast, and pretty much any meal I can fit in between.”

Monster bent and nuzzled her neck, his hand slipping from her bump and around to her backside, giving it an appreciative squeeze. “I like it when you eat like this. All the more of you to get hold of.”

Lily laughed, again—something she’d been doing a lot of lately. She was definitely a lot rounder than she’d been a few months ago. Pregnancy was suiting her. Despite being ridiculously happy about carrying Merrick’s child, she worried she wasn’t doing the right thing by the way of the baby by being out here in Ghana, and her past experience haunted her dreams at night. They’d agreed they would travel to Europe closer to the baby’s due date to make sure they were in a private hospital when the time came, but for the moment, as long as she took precautions, such as always using the mosquito net at night and watching what she ate, she’d been assured by doctors there was no reason she couldn’t have a perfectly healthy pregnancy here in Ghana. They’d already had the scan at twenty weeks and been told the baby was a boy. The news made them happy. A son for Merrick—who was now known as Jonathan—to try to fix the father-son hole his father had left in his heart, and for her to not feel as though she was replacing her baby daughter. It was so hard, to not think back to that time, to not spend every single second of her pregnancy worrying something was wrong with this baby, too, and she would lose him. It didn’t matter how much the doctors reassured her, she knew the fear would always be there, and probably would be even as he grew into a young man.

Once you knew loss, the fear of it never went away.

As soon as she and Monster had received their burn packages, and been able to leave America under new names, Lily had started to scour the news for what had happened to Jess and Chapman. She’d been terrified she’d discover some of Rodriguez’s men had returned and assassinated them both—knowing she’d blame herself, and in part Monster, too, for their deaths.

She’d been relieved to discover they’d both survived. Chapman had spent several days in a coma, but had gone on to make a full recovery. The story was he’d not only rescued the trafficked girls from the container back at the port, but that he’d also tracked Jess down to the property in the desert. When he’d arrived, he’d heard shooting and the place was on fire. He’d rescued Jess, taking a bullet himself while doing so, and had escaped from the building. Jess had corroborated his story, and Chapman was celebrated as being something of a hero.

She wanted to get back in touch with them, in particular Jess, but Monster had warned doing so could put them all in danger. If there was some chance Jess was still being watched—unlikely, but possible—any contact could alert someone to them still being alive.

As much as she wanted to speak to Jess again, and let her know she was still thinking about her, taking care of Monster and the new life growing inside her needed to take priority. When she’d read about the struggles numerous Ghanaian children were having with getting birthmarks treated, she’d known where they needed to end up. They had plenty of money to set up the small clinic, and she’d been able to put herself to work again. Besides, no one would ever think to look for her and Monster here.

Monster—Merrick—though known as Jonathan now, helped both as physical labor, as well as someone who could communicate with the children they treated on a personal level. With the language he’d learned, he was able to explain to them how his birthmark had been even worse than many of theirs, and that Lily—now known as Rosa—had helped him to heal.

It helped the youngsters to see Merrick, even if he didn’t have the same skin tone as them. To see someone like him living a full life—with a woman and a baby on the way—gave them hope that they wouldn’t always be treated like outcasts. Many other charities wouldn’t touch the affected children. It was much harder treating African skin than it was Caucasian, as the amount of pigmentation in the skin affected the way the laser worked. As the laser focused on the pigmentation, she had to be careful the laser didn’t make things worse rather than better. Black skin often scarred, creating even darker patches, and the scars were raised which made things harder. But Lily’s wealth of experience meant she knew exactly what type of laser to use to minimize scarring. Even though she wouldn’t be able to fully remove all the birthmarks—sometimes they were beyond a laser and needed surgical treatment—she could at least help these poor children feel better about themselves and make them more acceptable to the rest of the villagers.

Lily was doing what she loved, helping others, and Monster was doing what he loved by being with Lily.

He placed his hand back on her belly again, and the small life beneath his palm gave a tiny kick, making them both smile.

“We’ll be okay, won’t we?” she asked, still needing reassurance.

He pulled her close and kissed her deeply. Children’s voices giggled from outside and they broke the kiss to see a small gathering of the village’s children holding their hands over their mouths to stifle their laughter. Monster pulled a face at them, and they all ran off with a squeal of pretend fright.

“Yes,” he said, “I know we will. I’m not saying things will be easy for us—they never have been—but we’ll work at it. Life is hard, and we’re going to find some bumps in the road.” His hand covered her stomach again. “Even this little guy is going to cause us some trouble, and there will be times where we’ll fight and probably resent each other a little, but as long as we stick together, we’ll be just fine.”

She smiled. “You promise?”

He bumped his forehead to hers. “I promise. As crazy as it seems, I believe we were made for this. You and me, together.”

“A Monster and a Flower,” she said.

He kissed her gently. “The perfect combination.”

THE END

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Gabi...

When I was seventeen years old, I was told to stay away from Cole Devonport. Kids like him only ever meant trouble. I should have listened, but I didn’t, and surprise, surprise, I was the one who got hurt. But escaping Cole didn’t mean the end of my pain. Life has a way of screwing me over, and after joining the Army as a way of forgetting him, I suffered a loss I’ll never recover from.

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Cole...

I let everyone down all those years ago. I made mistakes and I’m not proud of them, but I’ve done my time and now I just want to keep my head down and get on with my life. I thought I was doing exactly that until I heard Gabriella Weston was back in town.

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