Illicit Affairs by Holly Dixon

Forty

Ava’s eyeswere wilder than a deer caught in a trap as warm speckles of crimson splattered across her face like poppies peering through a snowy field. Her bluebells stared at Peter with her cheek pressed to the cold hard ground.

She had always marvelled at how his eyes could change from twinkling emerald cities to vast forests of moss-covered trees. However, now staring into his eyes, she saw his gaze was vacant as though those cities had been diminished to ghost towns, and those forests had long been ripped out and burnt down to deadwood.

Some would see the bullet hole in the centre of his forehead, but Ava saw the person around it. The person who jested with her daily, who had the most obnoxious sneeze she had ever heard, who always cradled her after they finished having sex, and the person who had betrayed her the most. The person who was now gone.

Time froze still as she lay on her side feeling her world spin on its axis. Her brain refused the picture her eyes sent it, disbelieving that he was dead even as blood trickled down his nose and cheek. She ignored the echoes of panic happening somewhere in the distance until Sam’s boot jabbed her in the ribs and snapped her back to reality with a winded gasp.

“Oh, thank Christ!” Sam huffed in relief and awkwardly reached forward to help her coughing friend sit upright. Peering down at Peter she gulped and asked, “Is he…?”

Ava sputtered and nodded her head before craning her neck back to stare down the barrel of the gun that saved her life. However, it was not relief that she felt when she saw her saviour but alarm.

“Jenson Forbes?” Ava gasped as her eyes darted between Charlotte and the man dressed in an off-white suit, his blond hair flawlessly gelled away from his steel-blue eyes. She glanced down at Peter and back to the gun Jenson held before rasping, “You…you killed him!”

“Simply tidying up a loose end, my dear,” Charlotte sneered, caring not for the life taken of a man who only moments ago she professed her undying love for. The viperous woman was too preoccupied with her appearance as she casually applied lipstick.

It was at that moment that Ava suddenly realised why that particular shade of orange lipstick had made her stomach drop earlier that day in the work toilets with Charlotte.

The image of Oliver’s lifeless body dangling by his neck was something that would forever be burnt into her memory. Even now, if she were to close her eyes, she could detail the whole scene down to the purple pattern left by the noose around his neck, and especially the orange smear on the lapel of his white silken pyjamas.

“It was you!” Ava gasped up at the Forbes woman and felt chilled to the bone. “But you couldn’t have possibly pulled that off alone…” Even if Charlotte was nearly six foot in height, she couldn’t have possibly mounted Oliver to that gym apparatus herself. She turned to look at Jenson just as his jaw twitched and rasped, “You killed your own brother?!”

“My brother had it coming. He was forever putting his nose where it shouldn’t have been,” Jenson gibed with his nose turning upwards. “I could not very well stand by and watch him destroy Lottie. I would not allow him to ruin everything for us.” He lowered the gun from Ava’s face as he took the hand of his stepmother, his attention dropping down as he intimately entwined their fingers.

“Help ma boab!” Sam’s exclamation suddenly cut through the tension in the air like an airhorn at a funeral. “So your first payout expires and pops their clogs so you move onto the guy’s son?”

“No, you delinquent,” Charlotte hissed down at Sam, her face only softening as it turned to Jenson with her hand tenderly cupping his square face. “It was always Jenson and me right from the start. Holden was simply a means to an end.”

“Wait…you planned all of this?” Ava choked on her disgust for this vile and twisted woman. “You’re telling me you married that poor man, not for love, but for his money?!”

“Why of course, dear,” Charlotte stated as a matter of fact before her jaw clenched as she looked back to Jenson again. “Four torturous years of staring at a wretched clock waiting on that decrepit old fool’s heart to finally give out.”

“But why?” Ava asked.

“It was meant to be simple…” Jenson sighed, pressing a kiss to the back of Charlotte’s hand. “At the time, my father wasn’t meant to have long left, certainly not four years. When he finally died, we were going to take the family fortune and leave peacefully. But no.” He turned his attention down to Ava with scornfully narrowed eyes. “Ollie just had to put a spanner in the works. My entitled little brother had never welcomed Lottie into our home, so of course, he was never going to allow her any part of my father’s legacy. However, we never imagined he sought to destroy and leave her with absolutely nothing.” His nostrils flared as he gripped the handle of the gun and released a heavy sigh. “We had almost managed to strike a deal with the bastard when he bloody walked in on us at the auction and figured everything out. He no longer wanted to simply cast aside Charlotte; he wanted vengeance upon me. I couldn’t let him ruin all of our plans, not after how far we’ve come…”

“So, you went to his apartment that night after the auction and killed him.”

Jenson shook his head at Ava and fretted, “No. We were reasonable. We begged him to reconsider our offer, but he refused. He was as vindictive as my old man once was and wanted to impoverish both of us. So yes, we did get into a heated debate and one thing led to another and…I…I—”

“You did what you had to, my love,” Charlotte soothed, embracing his side, and leaning up to plant a kiss on his lips. “He can no longer meddle in our affairs and we can finally be happy together after all this time.”

“But what about Freya? How is your sister deserving of being framed for this murder?! I have met that girl and she is timider than a mouse!” Ava screeched at the wicked pair.

“I absolutely agree,” Charlotte denounced, letting go of her lover and crouching down to meet Ava’s height. “But love isn’t always easy and sometimes we simply cannot care about the feelings of everyone when trying to chase our own bliss. Dear Freya understands what she must do, and the spotlight is already off of her and onto this unfortunate excuse of a man.” She scrunched up her nose distastefully and stood upright as her stiletto prodded Peter’s side.

“Now, just hold on. Ma heid’smince!” Sam blurted, signalling the two criminals to wait with her tied hands. “You’re telling me that yous orchestrated this whole ruddy mess for all those years,” she awkwardly began listing things off on her fingers as her eyes glanced between them both, “married an old geezer, became your stepmother, started a fake affair with your attorney, got them to embezzle money in the firm handling your lawsuit whilst screwing over little blondie here, made the murder of your brother look like a suicide, framed your wee sister, and now killed your attorney all so you can both have a wee bit of cash behind ye?!”

“Tell me, Ms. Eastley…how far would you go for the one you love?” Jenson retorted.

“Naw far enough to watch ma Mrs shag ma da for four years and then kill ma wee bro because he was quite rightly tryna protect his own and his family’s rear end!”

“I don’t expect someone of your class to be able to grasp that we did what was necessary!” Charlotte barked at her.

“Aye, and I don’t expect a couple of snobby wee eejitsto grasp the length ae time they’ll be locked up behind bars for this pish!” Sam shot back, clumsily raising the mobile phone with her bounded hands. “Wave hiya to yer fans then,” she said with a smug grin before turning the camera around towards herself to see the hundreds of thousands of views her second live-stream on Facebook was racking up. “And they woulda gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for this meddling lass, kids!”

Ava’s jaw dropped as she gasped with a triumphant grin lighting up her face. Just like that, her best friend had single-handedly caught two criminals in their confession. She turned her attention towards the gobsmacked Forbeses, one of which had turned into a living strawberry.

“I have had enough of this bitch!” Charlotte roared as she dived for Jenson’s handgun.

Ava’s eyes burst into small dots as they darted between the gun pointed behind her and to her friend’s grave expression. She watched as Sam dropped the phone and struggled against the rope binding her to the forklift. Acting solely on instinct, Ava scrambled to her feet, sinking her shoulder into Charlotte’s stomach, and causing the woman to splutter as she tumbled back into her lover and sent him onto his rear with a loud umph! Her hands wrapped desperately around the barrel of Charlotte’s gun, grappling for the weapon and pointing it to the corrugated ceiling just in time for an almighty bang to rattle her eardrums and sting her hands. Both women snarled and grunted as they fought over the revolver until a second bang shattered against the four walls of the warehouse and left an eerie silence in its wake.

Ava felt nothing as she plummeted towards the ground.

It was as though her left leg could no longer bear the weight of gravity or as if gravity itself had kicked her leg out from under her. She squawked as her elbow collided with the concrete and stared in confusion as an oddly numb, yet hot and wet sensation sprawled across her thigh. Her fingertips touched the blood saturating her left trouser leg and all she could do was stare at the bullet wound in confusion. Then came the fire—burning, shredding, vivid pain that ripped through her flesh and ached deep inside her splintered bone. Her pain receptors sang a loud operatic song as agony shot up and down one side of her body forcing her to choke on a scream.

“Ava! Ava?!” Sam shrieked both a cry for help and in concern of her friend’s well-being, but with Charlotte recovering from the wrestle, the gun was back to being pointed at her face. Her blood turned to ice as she watched the sneering devil dressed in green hitch her thumb back on the hammer of the gun.

“I am doing the world a great justice by ridding you from it!” Charlotte jeered as her finger pulled on the trigger and another thunderous shot banged through the air.

For the first time, Ava’s friend didn’t have a smart retort. Instead, Sam’s eyes clenched shut upon the bang of the gun as though she was waiting to register the pain of a bullet wound. Whimpering and wailing came from a woman but it was not Sam. It was the bitch who tried to take a shot at her best friend. Charlotte was currently curled up over her lover on the ground.

Ava’s heart was beating so fast that she was sure it could be seen protruding from her chest. Her fingers and arms tingled as Peter’s gun trembled in her hand. She had meant to hit Charlotte, but truthfully, she shot blind due to a mixture of adrenaline and pain fogging her mind.

“You shot him!” Charlotte screeched at Ava before looking down at Jenson. “No…no…no, darling, stay with me!” she whimpered, cradling his limp body in her arms, and palmed his cheek, leaving a red smear behind from the blood pouring freely from the hole in his chest. “Come back!” Charlotte wailed as Jenson’s eyes fluttered and his lips quivered, struggling to say his goodbye as incoherent sounds tumbled from his mouth.

Ava didn’t have time to feel guilt or shock at the heinous act she had just committed. Her body was in survival mode as blood leaked from her leg. Already her vision had blackened like a vignette filter, so she wasted no time as she dropped the gun and feebly dragged herself towards her best friend.

“I know you’re waiting for some wise-arse comment but I…” Sam began to say, her lips failing to make words as she struggled to grasp that her friend literally took a bullet for her.

“You owe me a drink,” Ava croaked through the pain with a faint smirk on her lips as she clumsily undid Sam’s wrists.

“You saved my life! I think I’ll put Scotland into a drought with the amount of drinks I’ll be buying you, doll!” Sam scoffed as she tossed the rope aside and dived in to hug her friend, easing off when Ava hissed and cursed in pain. “Soz…?” she said with a sheepish smile.

“You’ve taken everything for me!” Charlotte screeched like a vengeful witch rising from the pits of hell, her high heels clicking quickly as she charged at Ava with the gun primed and ready to avenge her beloved Jenson.

Adrenaline burnt away the anxiety Ava felt as her mind sharpened to a tack and any pain she felt was numbed down to a subtle ache. She dived towards the gun lying a few feet from her, squawking as Charlotte’s stiletto sent the metal scraping across the ground, kicking away her only hope.

“Charlotte, you don’t want to do this…” Ava warned with her palms raised defensively.

“Oh, but I really do,” Charlotte croaked through the tears streaming down her face. “I should have known from day one that you were a problematic blonde bitch that needed to be eradicated!” With only a small distance between her and Ava, she aimed the gun directly between Ava’s brows and snarled, “Say hello to Peter for me…”

“NO!!” Sam screamed.

If there was one thing that Ava had to be grateful for, it was the loss of blood that now clouded her vision and made her whole body feel like it was filled with fuzz, desensitising her to any further pain. It was the end of the line for her and she wasn’t ready or able to make her peace with that fact. She still had so much left to do in this world, so much left of herself to offer and so many things she wanted to conquer. In that moment between the blink of life and death, there was no reel of her life flashing before her eyes but just the sad realisation that she had barely lived at all. Years were wasted hiding away from love and it took the hardest offer of commitment, made by a married man, and to be held at gunpoint for Ava to finally realise just what her biggest regret was in life—never telling the man of her dreams just how madly in love with him she was.

As the gunfire pierced her ears and splintered her heart, it robbed her of the life she took for granted and should have cherished more.