| BOOK SIX | THE LONDON CRIME KING | A DARK MAFIA ROMANCE NOVEL |
This book contains adult language and subject matter, including graphic violence, drugs and explicit sex that may be disturbing to some readers.
This series is NOT a typical romance...
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It is hard to re-establish relationships with friends and family when I haven't spoken to them in months. I had to acknowledge my absence, validate their feelings and let them know that I still think of them, of the sweet, irreplaceable memories shared and the future instances that have yet to come. Yet, I cannot bring myself to rectify the breakdown in our once unbreakable family.
I am helpless to self-isolation and long-standing reservedness and unable to function in social situations. Like the guy at the hotdog stand yesterday. He only asked if I wanted ketchup on my order, and my tongue tripped. I forgot how to speak, how to use manners and how to pay for purchases. I found myself considering other customers with inane anxiousness. I bet procrastination frustrated them, bothered them and irritated them. That's what I told myself whilst searching for my voice. That's all I could hear in my head in the eyes of judgement, evaluation and scrutinisation because, for an illogical reason, the opinions of others suddenly mattered.
My life is none of their business.
But it is part of human nature to care about what other people think.
I cared if the couple by the bus stop glanced at me for a second too long.
I cared if the woman in the store stared right through me whilst purchasing weekly groceries.
I cared if the people I loved bore bitterness and resentment for all of the selfish decisions I had made.
My unapproachable behaviour alienated loved ones and possibly caused accidental damage. I owed them explanations, Benjamin and Quinn, Ethan and Wyatt. They did not deserve silence or the insensitiveness on my part. Yes, I lost my son, my little human, my favourite person in the whole world, and I am allowed to hurt and cry and plead with a higher power to bring him back to me, but they lost an important person that day, too. My friends had to grieve the disappearance of their chosen nephew. My brother had to live without his shadow and sidekick. He had to exist in a world where the boy he raised, like a son, no longer held his hand to get him through dark days. There are no more early morning breakfast fiascos in the kitchen: pancakes, waffles, fruit, smiles and laughter. Or late-night gaming sessions: pizza, popcorn, duvets, Zelda and Gohma. We have an empty void in replacement, where the echoing cries of our reality condemn us to a life of physiological torture.
Explanations might be perceived as implausible excuses. Thinking about knocking on their front door or picking up the phone to call them rattled me with nerves. I feared their anger and rejection, namely Benjamin, whose incessant text messages and voicemails ceased as an automatic result of ignorance.
If you exclude Hugo's uncanniness to materialise out of thin air and coerce attention with the neediest of smiles and Sade's resoluteness in entertaining miserable co-workers, Quinn is the only patient one left, the last one to yell through the letterbox and sit on the cold floor in the foyer, drinking drive-through coffee and telling engaging stories. And I sat on the other side of that door, happy to hear her voice, sad to watch her leave, mentally talkative yet physically untalkative.
