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RECTIFY: A REDEMPTION NOVEL by Valentine, Marley (1)

Prologue

JAY

Dropping the pen onto the pad of paper, I sink back into the rickety, wooden chair that accompanies the lone fold out table. The house is empty. Every surface scrubbed clean, the old, stale smell of alcohol and cigarettes is now masked by a pungent overdose of bleach and fresh paint.

While everything in my childhood home looks and feels different, the new sterile and lifeless walls aren’t able to erase the dark memories that still dance around like shadows taunting me.

It’s been years since I’ve had any reason to be here, and for a while, I convinced myself there wouldn’t be anything that could bring me back.

At twenty-five leaving this place was the easiest thing I’d ever done. Walking away from the cycle of failures that was my life, I became focused on the new possibilities. My future was a blank canvas. I made plans to fill the empty road ahead of me with experiences so different, it would be unrecognisable.

Here, at home, I was the guy everyone loathed. The guy everyone feared, and I loved it. When people said keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer, I was the enemy they were talking about. Loyalty came at a price, and lucky for me, everyone was willing to pay.

I thought there was nothing more important than being at the top of the food chain. I was drenched in hate and vengeance, convinced I was the only person who had the right to own those feelings. The only person who had earned the right to flaunt them. They were my signature. My armour. My motivation.

In these four walls insults hung over me like a black cloud, and out on the streets, I expelled them on to everyone I came in contact with. I projected whenever I could. Lying, teasing, and seducing, everything was a game; until I met someone who didn't want to play.

Life fooled me into thinking I was the king of my world, and whatever I laid my eyes on was mine. I was invincible. Untouchable. Unbreakable.

Until I wasn't.

With translucent skin and hair as black as night, she was the painful dose of truth that dusted my life of lies. With her, it wasn’t about how pretty she was, or how hard I fell. It wasn’t that she was an angel, and everything about me would taint her. It wasn’t even the fact that if I pushed hard enough, I could’ve had her. Lured her into hell and enjoyed it. It was the realisation that everything I’d done before her, was for nothing.

I wasn’t happy.

I wasn’t loved.

I wasn’t anyone that would ever be worth remembering.

Footsteps sound from the hallway, and the plethora of mispronounced words out of a child's mouth follow. I rise and watch the woman walking toward me. Her hand holding on to the centre of my universe, her face looking down at her in wonder. Meeting them in the middle of the hollowed out space, I crouch and open my arms. She looks up and leaps toward me. She’s all bouncing curls, and loud giggles, as she shouts, “New home. New home.”

I catch her and hold on tight. My lungs expand with the scent of innocence and love, while my eyes find those of the woman who lured me back to hell, and whisper into her hair. “I hope not, baby. I hope not.”

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