Chapter 34
A nna-Rose Wilkins had learned a lot in her forty-eight-year life. Especially that the grass is definitely never greener on the other side.
But also that karma always takes its debts back. The longer it waits to call, the bigger the debt is to pay.
Holding her phone in her hand, the monotonous tone of a dead line penetrating her eardrums, Anna-Rose Wilkins went over and over the words her mother had just said to her before cutting the line.
“I had a visit from Kyla today,” Lily had said. “And she told me the truth, Anna. In fact, when I touched that ring, I felt every little thing you put her through.”
Anna had no words. She had never dreamed her parents would discover the truth. As she struggled to grasp a hold of any coherent words, her mother continued.
“Kyla is an elemental, Anna. Malcolm hasn’t seen power like this since Alice and Amelia. She will come for you.”
With that, the line had gone dead, and she knew she was on her own. Her mother had all of her power, as did her father, but she knew without even asking where she now stood with them.
With her heart pounding against her rib cage like a mad man trying to beat his way out of a padded cell, a cold sweat trickling down her back, and every cell within her trembling with fright, Anna-Rose Wilkins knew that her karma bailiff was about to call.
In less than a minute, her life had been turned upside down, shaken, stirred, and pulled inside out. The most difficult thing to swallow was the fact that there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.
Throwing her phone down on the coffee table, she walked over to the fireplace and stared at the photo of her and Tony on their wedding day. For the first time, her wonderings if she had done the right thing came forth fully forged without doubt that she had not done the right thing, that she had monumentally fucked up by fathoms no one could gauge.
Her time with Tony had been great in the beginning. She’d felt truly treasured and like she was ‘the one’ for him. What it took her time to realise was that Anthony William Cecil Wilkins had all the charisma any man could ever wish for. If he set his sights on a particular specimen of the opposite sex, that poor woman was already doomed before she even laid eyes on the lanky streak of piss.
He wasn’t good-looking in the general sense of the term. He didn’t have a six-pack, high cheekbones, dark skin, or even the rough look of a ‘bad boy,’ but what he did have was a brain—one that functioned independently of his penis. Tony knew that all women wanted was to be listened to, to be made to feel like they mattered, like they were the sole affection of their partners world and would never have any cause to suspect anything untoward—even the smallest of things like lying about liking their wife’s cooking.
Marrying an older woman gave appeal to his supporters. To then start a family with that woman, after she already had a child, just painted him in an even better light. Anyone who knew of his and Kyla’s relationship had been paid off and wrapped up so tight in NDA’s, they dare not even mutter Tony’s name, let alone anything else.
Anna-Rose had fought against her better instincts all along. She’d ignored her daughter, cut her out of her life like the cancer Tony had said she was, and blindly followed her lust as he led her into the unknown.
For a thirty-six-year-old woman, who had been duped to the extent she had and left alone with a demon-born daughter, it was nothing but a dream come true when a man suddenly paid her attention. He made promises that he kept, he gave her orgasms she’d never experienced, and he put her on a pedestal she’d never been privy to.
The fact he’d discarded her daughter like rubbish to then bless Anna’s life with such rich fruits was a means to an end. Cruel, yes, but that was the way of the world and very nature itself.
But as time went by, Anna-Rose couldn’t shake her uneasy gut feeling. So when she discovered Tony’s frequent visits to paid-for services offered by certain women, she struggled to keep it together.
But she did.
Just.
Now starved of the ecstasy ridden orgasms her husband had once blessed her with, Anna-Rose was nothing but a bored, frustrated housewife expected to play happy families. For the sake of her two young daughters, aged ten and eight, she did. But not without contempt, nor making the slimy bastard aware she knew of his ‘activities’.
Whilst she thought this was the biggest blow she’d have to face in the wrath of karma and her past sins, Anna-Rose had never dreamed in her wildest of dreams that her mother would call her one day, saying the words she said in that call—letting her know that her debt to karma was far from paid.
But now, as the doorbell rang and her heart galloped to new speeds, Anna-Rose regretted all of her life. She knew who stood the other side of that white door. She knew what was about to happen—she could feel it in her gut.
But as a tiny piece of karma to her bastard husband, she kept her mouth shut.