Because if I didn’t treat the world as if it was my enemy, it wasn’t me who would get hurt.
It was Olive Oyl.
It’s almost over, little spinach.
I promise.
I stopped the car.
The engine idled as I stared into the dense blackness of Lickey Hills Country Park. Rugged and wild, the trees silent and savage. He’d brought me to this forest when he’d first taken her. It’d been the only information he’d given me—taunting me with her safety every day of my godforsaken life since she’d been stolen.
And it was all my fucking fault.
I should have stayed true to my rules.
I should never have trusted him.
The past seven years, everything I’d done was for my daughter.
I’d learned how to paint with every medium to give me the best chance at employment. I’d accepted small commissions and badly paid work to get noticed. I’d slowly gone from penniless to middle-class, earning enough to keep Olive warm and fed.
And then what had I done?
I’d failed her.
In the worst possible way a father could fail his child.
My scratchy eyes landed on my hands strangling the steering wheel. They still held colour-splatters from painting O while she’d lain unconscious in my warehouse.
I wanted to cut out my heart for drugging her.
I’d rather give up my life instead of hers.
Who knows...you might.
He’d told me to paint her with the shadows of bracken: greys and greens, blacks and browns. The perfect camouflage to make her disappear in a woodland, leaving her to die alone and unprotected.
I’d disobeyed.
Instead of nondescript concealment, I’d painted every inch of beautiful skin in a personal punishment.
Punishment for me.
I’d used the colour palette he’d requested...but the symbolism airbrushed into her skin reminded me that tonight...it all ended.
One way or another.
Turning to study O, a suffocating wave of guilt wrapped around my chest. She lay sprawled and sleeping in the back seat, her eyes closed, lips slack, her beauty even more radiant thanks to the earthy colours she wore.
She looked as if she was the queen of an olive grove. Crowned with a wreath of silvery leaves, her arms and legs entwined with the supple branches of an olive tree. Thousands of olives. Black and green, brown and purple hung heavy on the interlocking, protecting foliage that crisscrossed and hugged her chest and stomach.
It’d been the worst commission of my life.
Painting a lifeless lover with the emblem of my daughter’s name, all because if I didn’t have the blatant reminder of who I was doing this for...I wouldn’t have the guts to go through with it.
My daughter came first.
That was how it should be.
But O...fuck.
The urge to vomit rose again.
The back of my throat was raw. The taste in my mouth disgusting. I hadn’t eaten properly in days and couldn’t keep anything down.
I was fighting for both of them...but there was a chance this might not work.
I might lose my daughter or my soul-mate.
I might lose both.
I would rather lose my own life than allow that to happen.
You’re late.
Turning off the engine, I climbed achy and beaten from the shitty hatchback I’d bought after selling my expensive 4WD when the bribes kept coming and I no longer had disposal cash to pay them. I opened the back door and bent to untie the ropes around her wrists and ankles so they were looser.
Rubbing away the redness my knots had caused her, I swallowed down another avalanche of guilt as I re-tied them, looser and not nearly as imprisoning.
Hopefully, she’d be able to wriggle out of them and run if this all went to shit.
I’m sorry.
Gritting my teeth, I slipped my arms under her legs and back, pulling her from the car and into my embrace.
She remained unconscious. Her paint had dried enough not to smudge. The weight of her in my arms made me suffocate and stumble in horror.
Fuck!
I couldn’t do this.
I have to do this.
Hoisting her higher into my arms, I carried her paint-naked body from the small glade I’d parked in and entered the midnight wilderness.
My boots—that had been witness to my many crimes—once again squelched through mud and forest debris. The number of hours I’d trekked through woods trying to find Olive couldn’t be calculated. Days at a time, midnight to dawn...always coming home empty, drowning my sorrows in liquor—the medicinal vodka burning my throat with hypocrisy.
I’d walked the entire length of England and back, searching, searching, always searching. Hoping I could find her before the next ransom came in. Before the next murder. Before the next threat.
O stirred in my arms.
Her eyelids fluttered upward, fuzzy and hazed pupils meeting mine as I carried her through the dark.
“Gil...” She swallowed. Her face scrunched up, fighting the nitrazepam the doctor had given me for my insomnia.
Ever since Olive had been taken, I’d turned into a total insomniac. The only sleep I snatched was filled with nightmares of chasing after Olive, promising her I’d find her, protect her, save her, only to slam me back into loneliness.
I’d crushed a few into O’s sandwich, knowing the punch they delivered when they kicked in.
“Shush. I got you.” Tears scalded my eyes as Olin shivered.
“I’m c-cold.”
“Go back to sleep. It’s warmer in your dreams.”
She shook her head, sluggish and slow. “I don’t wan—” Her eyelids drooped closed again, sucking her back into false hibernation.
“I’m so sorry, O,” I murmured while silhouettes of trees swayed around us, spectators at a funeral.
Her funeral.
My funeral.
His funeral.
Anyone’s but Olive’s.
I had a long walk in front of me, off the marked trail and hidden from hiker’s knowledge. My heart ached with grief that I couldn’t stop this. My body trembled with every step. And the rotten bastard inside me couldn’t just let Olin rest peacefully in my arms.
I treated her as my confessional. A priestess who had the power to absolve me.
Looking down at her lovely face, I whispered, “I have no excuse for what I’m doing, but...I was broken when I left you, O. Damaged beyond repair. If it hadn’t been for Olive—” I slipped on a wet section of decomposing leaves. “I’ve been such a traitor to you. The worst kind of monster. You trusted me. You tried to help me. And this is how I repay you.”
She murmured sleepily; her slumbering, gentle face ripped my heart out. Lax and young, innocent and pure. Her dancing dreams had been stolen. Now, thanks to me, the rest of her life might be too.
Nausea swarmed, prickling sweat under my shirt and making sourness coat my tongue. “I won’t let him have you. I promise this will all work out.” I raised my arms, bringing her close enough to kiss her cheek—the softness of her painted olive grove skin. “Once you’re safe and Olive is safe...I’m going to kill him. And once he’s dead, I’m going to confess everything to the police. I can’t live with this anymore. I deserve to be punished for what I’ve done.” I laughed hollowly. “After all, I’ve always been destined to go to prison. I’ve avoided it longer than I expected. I was born to a pimp, whore to a teacher, and now, I’m a collector for a murderer. The first two crimes weren’t my fault. But the third...I’m guilty.”