Shan R.K

This book is a work of fiction. All characters are fictional.
Any religious references made was done solely for the purpose of
Bringing the story to reality and making it believable to the readers.
No dis-respect to religious beliefs was intended.

I stare at him, watching his chest expand.
How is it that someone so strong, so powerful, so dangerous to find become so small when faced with an adversary? The adversary being me.
I see him, knees on the cold tiled floor, his eyes fixated on me in equal parts disbelief. I disconnect my vision from his small form, looking briefly at what I'm wearing.
This morning when I woke up, the sun was shining, snow melting on my front lawn. My kids were sleeping, my husband gone, as usual, working, making money.
Everything was normal except when I woke up this morning, I received a message. This message contained a lot of things I've been waiting to hear but one part, in particular, stood out and made today different. This person on his knees in front of me was the big difference in my day. So when I woke up this morning and decided what I was going to wear I decided I would not wear black because black represented the sign of mourning. I wasn't going to wear white. After all, white represented a sign of new beginnings and not blue.
Blue, well blue was a sign of trust and green with a side of healing so when I woke up this morning I decided I would wear beige, it was an indifferent color something that matched any mood any desire any belief it doesn't necessarily represent anything but nor did it negate anything.
'You know what is so satisfying about killing you?"
'What?" He inquires with that tilt of his mouth and thin lips I have seen a time or two. Many women found this man handsome. sexy even. I was not different, but I knew more than many of them what made him, his colors, the layers that fell away leaving only the middle left and when you looked at it with naked eyes you'd see it was rotten.
I laugh.
'I became a player in this cat and rat game much later. I find it comical that I am the one who gets to catch you, considering there are many people who started in the beginning. What is even funnier is I am the one who would get to kill you."
'You didn't catch me Mrs. Catelli."He says my surname with a pinched face as though he can't bear the sound of it coming from his lips.
'Then what do you oppose I did?"
He smiles, but it is not a nice one. It is filled with the ugliness which has corrupted him over the years.
Copyright © 2022 Shan R.K
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction from the Author's imagination.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations for reviews or fan-made articles.
Any names resembling any living person are purely coincidental.
First Edition.
April, 19th 2022
Written by Shan R.K
Dedication
I dedicate this book to you the reader. Please enjoy it and look out for the anthology on my website coming soon for free.

This book has been rewritten and is dedicated to my Grandmother, Marie Valerie Perrett. Her flesh and bones now lay as ash, while her spirit glows within the ones fortunate to have breathed her air, as memories, and moments from the past become those that define our future. In my life some of those are memories and lessons that she has taught me, not just by words, but by actions.
She gave me the tools to be a strong woman, and at times I admit I struggled to stand, but my grandmother held me by both hands at those times and lifted me up. Then she let me go, because she knew, she knew all along that one day I would need the strength to stand on my own. To lift my own daughter by her hands and learn to let her grow so she can become stronger.
Who you were or the way you felt, my Grandmother loved without judgement.
When she looked at me, spoke to me I never doubted her love, it was always an invisible beam between us. When I was younger we used to lay on her bed and she used to read to me stories from the bible while I used her arm as a pillow. I remember when I got a bit older and she read to me then I asked her, "Gran why does a story always start with Once Upon A Time?" She said because now it is a fairytale but once upon a time it was true. It was then I imagined life, I convinced myself that aliens were real. That I could be anything I want.
There is never a moment that is perfect to let the one you love go and she was one of the very few who I have loved and still do. I took my books off the pre-order today and I am glad I did. Because I get to share her memory with you guys. And dedicate this book that she waited so long to read but barely started. On Tuesday, December 4th 2018, I read the first chapter to her.
I wish I knew that it was the last day, but we never really know when death comes naturally, do we.

note from Kylie Bray
In order to understand the reason why I've made the choices I have, when I became the person I am today, you would have to understand why. To do that, I would need to start from the very beginning.
But before I do, understand that this is not a sappy happy romance, this is my life, this is the story of where happy endings come from. This is the path I led. So while many people would always start and end with their true love, I would start with my first. Because isn't a first love the most life altering one.

Today was the first day back at school. While most of the asshats who attended Liston High Private School actually went in for the first day, I was stuck scrubbing the toilets of the Hallow mansion.
And regardless of what my brother says I look like, I am not a scholarship kid. I'm Dainy Hallow and the guy with the Goku hair wiping puke off the pebbled bathroom floor is my older brother Aiden.
Last night as is customary to do the night before school starts, we had a huge ass party.
Our initial plan was to go to school, skip last period, get home and clear out the evidence before our parents arrived back the following day.
Let's just say that plan went to shit fast when Aiden called mom. He asked her to pick up the suit he ordered from G&G for the cancer benefit we were hosting next month. A simple question followed by an unexpected answer.
Apparently, my brother and I were misinformed with regards to my parents return. My parents were actually arriving today in less than three hours.
Two hours and four injuries later, the beer bottles are gone. The bathrooms now sanitized, and beds clothed in fresh unused linen.
The rest of the house is tidy but not clean. My brother and I aren't dumb, we've been doing this for five years.
Unlike most siblings, Aiden and I don't bicker all the time.

This book is dedicated to you. We don't always have a perfect romance, but sometimes it is our reasons that keep us moving forward.
I have tried to write the story as best as I could, and each time I started I ended up deleting it. So I wanted to write a different kind of story and maybe I really messed it up or maybe I did a great job, either way, this is how it all went down. Thank you so much for reading my work and for your support, not just in buying the books but sending me those emails and encouraging me to continue writing. You are the hero in my stories.

Leonardo da Vinci once wrote, Black is like a broken vessel, which is deprived of the capacity to contain anything. I wonder what he thought of the color white. Did he think it was a sign of purity? Or did he too look upon whiteness as a false brightness, a lie?
2-years-ago if I stood on this very podium, with this man across from me, I would have smiled similar to the way I am now. The white dress hugging my body then a promise of honesty and trust as I glowed with a warmth knotting my stomach walls.
Only then, my smile would've been comfortable, wrapped in genuine joy, because then I loved him. At that stage in my life, he was my world and I would have laid myself on the floor where he walked with his blood-stained soles. And I would have done it naked, ready to bare myself to this one man with a smile on my face.
A smile that wasn't bold, or soaked with the whisper of revenge. My heart would have beat with love, and not in the threat that now lurks outside these Church walls, waiting with finite patience that would soon be over. This marriage is no fairy-tale.

Once upon a time I met a girl, I loved her with everything in me.
My love was something that happened so sudden, like a real fairy tale.
She was my beauty and I, her beast.
When she stared in my eyes I was lost in her black soulless depths, forgetting the soul I didn't see.
When Beauty looked into my HEART I saw the future in her cold hard stare.
Her body was my glory, I ignored the weapon it showed me.
I was obsessed in the slope of her curves, the movement of her hips as she put one foot in front of the other.
Her touch blinded me.
When Beauty touched me she awoke the beast, called to the killer and hummed to the sniper, until she was where my heaven began and my demons ended.
I remember the day when just a glimpse of her gutted me in the chest.
Beauty was where my madness sang and in less than a month I was hers.
My pops once told me that every man has his falling point.
Every brother has a day to mourn.

"When I was younger, I was a beggar by circumstance,
When I got older, I remained a beggar by choice."

"Sometimes love comes in like a breath of fresh air,
it finds you and consumes every piece of your existence."
Capo Dei Capi