Avery's Game Of Revenge
Chapter 40: Grim Reaper.

Chapter 40: Grim Reaper.

"And as I discovered, she has loved you for a very long time now. If you were up when you heard this confession, what would you have done? Reject her or accept her?"

His mind conjured an image of Arthur’s silly face when something totally unexpected happened to him, and he couldn’t hold back the small chuckle that escaped his lips.

"I place my bet on you rejecting her not because you don’t share the same feelings but because you want to set an example for me; an obvious lost cause." He stepped closer to the bed, taking note of how Arthur’s hair were trimmed short, the exact length he used to make it look when he was conscious. "I must say, she’s really does take her job seriously. You think I should increase her pay...or not?"

When he got silence as a reply, he turned around and began walking around the room in slow steps.

"Yeah, wanna know why I came here at first? My new wife asked if I am gay and if you are my partner. Apparently, she asked that cause you only gave that pack of cookies to people you extremely care about. Does she mean I’m not worthy enough to receive your love and care? She has such a small mind, doesn’t she?"

"She finds it hard to trust people these days, Arthur. I am expecting to wake up one of these days to her strangling me and asking my motive for helping her. You can’t imagine how much I would love—"

He had to stop talking when the phone in his pocket pinged twice, a tone he had set for a while now but had never used. Hearing this now spelt one particular word for him— Trouble. Archie hurriedly retrieved the phone and clicked on the notification on the screen, his frown deepening when the footage of his bedroom appeared before his eyes.

The door was being pushed open and... one little woman was stepping in!

"Fuck!" he cursed inwardly. "See you later, Arthur. Got something to take care of."

Holding the glasses carefully in one hand, Avery stepped into the room only after she had knocked thrice and gotten no reply. However, as she did not want to leave any loose ends untied, she decided to call out his name as she walked in.

"Archie? You forgot your glasses so I wanted to help you bring them..." she trailed off as her eyes accustomed to the dim light in the room. And hell...was this room owned by a grim reaper?! The way her room had everything in it in the color white, Archie had his in the color black. Even the bed sheets were black, how could anyone sleep in that?

"Archie, aren’t you in?"

As she ventured further into the room, her brows furrowed with every black appliance and gadgets her eyes touched. Even the doors to the bathroom and closet were black. She was sure if she checked out the bathroom, the tiles, bathtub and sink would be in the color black, not sparing the bath soaps. Fighting against the temptation to check out the bathroom and see if it was there, she called out his name one more time, "Archie?"

Silence greeting her calls, she decided to drop the glasses on his bedside drawer and leave the room. Except that her eyes caught sight of an object of color on the drawer, a family photo, or so it seemed.

There was a man who looked a lot like Archie if one were to exempt his black eyes, and a woman who was leaning into the latter, helping Avery realize that was his wife. And right in front of the couple were two boys, their heights suggesting that the older one was somewhere between twelve and fourteen years of age while the younger one, between age ten and twelve. While the younger one had black eyes, the older one had blue eyes that pierced through the glasses he was wearing.

Avery needed no seer to tell her the older one was Archie, a younger Archibald Donovan. A smile spreading on her face, she extended her hand to pick up the frame when long fingers came from behind her and snatched it up.

"Who is—" she swallowed her question when her eyes met the predatory expression behind her. How did he even get behind her so fast and without her knowledge?

"The hell are you looking for in my room?" he questioned, stressing on his last three words as if he believed she had not intentionally entered this room but had lost her way back to hers.

Avery raised his glasses up, "This. I wanted to give it back to you so I came here and knocked but you weren’t in. Then I decided to place it on the drawers but I saw the family photo. Is that your family?" she asked.

"What does it look like?" Archie returned the question, sweeping his eyes around the room in one second until it stopped on the wall behind the door. Avery was only talking about the glasses and the photo frame so he believed she hadn’t seen that yet. She could not... Not now, and he believed, not in the next few weeks.

"You have a beautiful family. And well...they are all good looking," her soft voice brought his attention back to her pretty face which was blurred in his vision.

"They were," he replied. "You weren’t thinking a man with a face and body like mine came from an ordinary family, were you?"

Avery scoffed at his narcissistic remark even though she could not argue against his words. He really was beautiful and... his kids would be just as beautiful too, she concurred.

"Your mother, she’s beautiful too. Looks like someone that would have been the most popular actress of her time; does she live abroad?" she asked.

"She wasn’t an actress and she’s dead. That there," he tapped the frame and continued, "...was the last I saw of her."

"Shit!" Avery subconsciously muttered out loud, biting her tongue immediately after.