Delarossa Read online

  Delarossa

  R M TAYLOR

  FIRST BOOK IN THE HADLEY CARO SERIES

  THIS BOOK IS INTENDED FOR ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY AND CONTAINS ADULT TOPICS AND LANGUAGE UNSUITABLE FOR UNDER 18’S

  Delarossa- First Book of The Hadley Caro Series

  Copyright © 2017 R M Taylor

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the publisher or author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover design © 2017 R M Taylor

  Cover art © LuminaStock © 2018 iStockphoto LP

  Published by Dandr Publishing in the UK

  Chapter 1

  Some people should not be in a relationship with each other, ever. Some people have hidden depths, and not the good kind, and unfortunately, they all hide it until their other half is invested in the relationship. How much does a person put up with in the name of love? Unfortunately, hindsight is understanding after the fact, which is no bloody help at all when you’re in it.

  So, when things go tits up and the shit hits the fan what do you do? If you are named Lucrezia Delarossa the go to position is to hang in there for as long as you can like an idiot and eventually snap, suck up enough strength and courage, then leave months after she should have done. She was that much of a badass. The heroines in the stories always leave at the perfect time before they lose face or get hurt further. It’s not so easy to pinpoint the ideal time in real life. You only know you should have gone earlier, afterwards. People call them toxic relationships. Mutually emotionally damaging some call it, others may describe it as turbulent or tempestuous. Lucy called it a clusterfuck of calamities all wrapped up in a bundle of pain and stress and labelled a relationship. Just like some paints do not blend to produce a pleasing colour, some people should never be together. The results are just as unpleasant to witness.

  So, here she was driving towards Mathis City where she knew only a handful of people, in her 10-year-old car, to start again with a clean slate. Her mental and emotional energy were tapped out, and she just couldn’t function properly anymore. Loving Connor had drained her of everything and she was weary, just plain tired. The only thing that kept them together was their co-dependence and her fear of change. Changing was scary and took effort, and it had taken a year to gather her strength and make the break. Connor may sink, over time she became more of a mother to him than a girlfriend. She handled all the finances, she earned a higher wage, she had ambition.

  Connor was strong in the beginning, he had a job as an electrician, a house, a car, aspirations for the future, he knew his own mind and took the lead. Over time one by one those things just paled in importance and all that was left was both coexisting in a rented house, both looking forward to work as it was a break from each other. Their hobbies and social life had dwindled, and what was left was very far from domestic bliss. Lucy didn’t think they were even friends in the end. Sounds like a familiar story that resonates with many relationships, but theirs was a bit different, and far more supernatural. Fairy tales and legends aside, some myths did reflect real life.

  Lucy was a dragon shifter, one of only a few hundred left in the world. Dragon shifters were endangered, as were all shifters really. The most common were land shifters, bears, wolves, big cats, etc. Not that she was that indistinguishable from a regular human, she couldn’t remember the last time she let her animal out to fly, it had been snowing, that she could remember. There had been too much shit going on she had seriously neglected her dragon. Connor was a wolf shifter, from a decent family, and he was a total hottie, as all shifters seemed to be. But for some reason being with her was a bad match, it brought the worst out of him, and her likewise, and Lucy did not know why it happened that way when they were both decent enough people separately.

  They had been good friends to begin with, they had fun, it was comfortable. Shifters mostly had relationships with other shifters simply because supernaturals understood each other. The species was not important really, any offspring would either take after the parents or grandparents animal. It was fairly straightforward, offspring usually favoured the parents. If you have a fox and a wolf, the children would usually be either a fox or a wolf. It was simple, occasionally you saw a throwback, maybe a child that took after a great grandparent maybe, but that was very rare. Any child born of shifters were considered full blood shifter regardless of their animal type. Halfling or half breed children were only possible by crossing species. That was only really possible with humans, you add human DNA into the mix and you could have halfling vampires, shifters, changelings or fae. Humans could reproduce with any supernatural, but it was extremely rare to see any crosses between vampires and changelings, or shifters for example. The pregnancies just didn’t take, it was apparently possible, but Lucy had no idea if that was actually true.

  She had hoped that with Connor it would go that way one day, that they would have kids, but after being together for three years and finally getting courage to cut ties, she was relieved they never had any children. It’s amazing how many relationships are kept together by the fact that there are kids on the scene. Fear, that’s what it was, fear of change, of hurting the kids, of making a mistake. What people don’t realise is that staying together is a bigger mistake if the relationship has weak and rotting foundations. Kids are intuitive, they know when something is wrong and react swiftly to tension. Parents protect their kids in the short term but end up hurting them in the long term by delaying the inevitable break. Not that she had any room to judge, it took her over a year to see the light and cut ties.

  Lots of people need one defining moment or action that finally brings things to a head. Lucy just had a slow realisation that began subconsciously and grew until it was screaming in her head how wrong everything was. The urge to flee built over time, and eventually she had to just go. She wasn’t winning any awards for bravery, and in fact she was quite ashamed it had taken her so long to call it quits with someone who was just plain bad for her.

  The grief at giving up was heavy in her chest for so long, she was a naturally loyal person and had never been the one to break up with a boyfriend. Dragons were usually like that, when a person became familiar to them it took a huge amount to break off that relationship. She just kept hanging in there, despite everything. That last month was awful, making plans to leave whilst still functioning and acting like everything was normal, looking Connor in the eye and talking to him like all was fine just to avoid the awful post break up awkwardness of living together while looking for somewhere else to live. She stopped saying she loved him a long time ago, when she realised that she said it out of habit, as a flyaway comment, not something she felt.

  The last day together was awful, the lengthy conversation about why she was leaving, why they were over. She was pleasant, and their communications were amicable, but there was no love anymore, no desire, no spark. No reason to stay together, they were more like roommates than lovers. He didn’t even fight it, there was no objections, just resignation. Lucy suspected he wanted out as much as she did, the relief seemed palpable. He wasn’t winning any bravery awards either.

  So here she was, driving towards her future. It was always on the cards, she had already been squirreling away money for months before she inherited money from her grandmother last year, she didn’t tell Connor, she just deposited it into a savings account and kept quiet. Guilt should have weighed in her stomach, but it didn’t. She had no reason to feel guilty, and she needed a clean break with Connor, this wouldn’t be a relationship
where they were friends afterwards. A lot of people’s issues were because they took ownership of problems that were not theirs to solve. Connor was a big boy and could take care of himself. He had before she was on the scene, so he could remember how to now. He was an ok guy really, and he had never hurt her physically, they just brought the worst out in each other. Time for a fresh start, for them both.

  It was safer to stay near shifters, so she needed to see which communities lived in the city. Hopefully they would be friendly, she didn’t need to be in a community per se, just near one or within their territory if she had permission. Some shifters were nervous around dragons, she couldn’t blame them really, her dragon was massive. Dragon was beautiful though, her scales all iridescent reds with a streak of purple down her spine, darkening to red that looked almost black at the very tips of her wings and spikes. Still intimidating and scary as hell to other people, but she was an even-tempered creature, slow to anger, but once she got there you better run as she was all or nothing, a pissed off dragon was a lethal dragon. Bright and vibrant and fierce, unique and rare, her colours alone were highly unusual. Most dragons were one colour, or variations of one colour, never mind several colours. She didn’t know of any dragons with that kind of colouring.

  She wasn’t totally separate from her dragon, it was more like two parts of her personality, which humans could not relate to. She was both human and dragon, but she could tell clearly if dragon didn’t agree with her human, and occasionally heard thoughts that seemed like comments from her, usually the sarcastic smart kind. The ornery bitch would make her opinion known. At the same time as being the same as her dragon, she was also separate, it was a paradox. Occasionally they differed massively in opinion. Connor was one of those, her dragon had been restless for a long time, she knew he was an ill fit and was impatient and intolerant of his shortcomings. Dragon practically did a little dance in her mind’s eye when she had decided to call it quits.

  Chapter 2

  Proximity to other shifters should be important to her, ignorant hate groups were less likely to attack if they thought there was others backing her up, so if she no longer had Connor then she would be wise to have loose contact with a local pack or crew. Humans just assumed all shifters knew each other, which helped as it deterred any extremist groups that targeted shifters for one stupid reason or another. So ideally, she should be close to others, but she was reserved usually, her circle was small, a handful of friends that she talked to daily via messenger or text but met face to face every week or so. She needed distance, it was in her nature to like a certain level of isolation from others, so she was in no hurry to find other shifters despite needing to. Big animal shifters needed a lot of physical space, and this was true for emotional space too.

  Dragons were naturally predisposed to smaller family numbers, huge shifters found it difficult to coexist in one area. One family group would typically be the parents and two children. Now that Connor was out of her life she would be open to have a social life again, maybe meet some people and plant some roots. A little family might be possible for her now. Not that she was a social butterfly, but a night out every once in a while, would be nice. In the past their nights out were tense and awkward, as each of them braced for a disagreement or cause for a snide remark. The tension was palpable and heavy. It made socialising uncomfortable for their friends so invites slowly dwindled as time went on. Nights out where everyone walked through a minefield was just too stressful for their friends. She totally understood, she would have done the same.

  She had rented a high-end house on the west side of the city, not far from commuter stations and bus lines and plenty of facilities nearby. She hadn’t actually seen it, just chose it by pictures found online and by confirming details over the phone. She had other places she could stay, after all she owned other properties from the inheritance. They just didn’t feel like hers yet, they felt like someone else’s and she doubted she could feel at home there. The home she had chosen to rent looked her style, it was somewhere that looked comfortable and suited her. By the looks of the shifter register, there was no shifters in a quarter mile radius, which was unusual. The house was furnished and would be fully stocked, she was paying a pretty penny for the convenience of a serviced place, with a maid and gardener etc. She was sick of denying herself luxuries and being careful with money all the time. Her inheritance would last the rest of her life, the interest on her money alone would pay for all living expenses.

  She even had property in New York, London, Paris, Rome and more, but those properties she would never sell since some had been in her family for generations. It was a huge shock to find out she was the sole beneficiary of her grandmother’s legacy, she had no idea that such wealth was in her family. There was a whole chunk of her history that had been denied to her, she knew very little about her ancestry. The information given from her grandmother’s lawyer, David Edmondson, had been the most she had ever received, along with a heavy book filled with goodness knows what as it was written in Italian, and a list of the inventories of the homes she now owned.

  It was mind boggling. Thank goodness, the lawyer hooked her up with someone in this country to manage her estates and assets, as she needed time to get her head around everything. Connor wouldn’t find out about her inheritance, only her best friend Althea knew basic information. If he ever found out and felt cheated that she gave him nothing, then tough. They weren’t married, she owed him nothing. Plus, knowledge was a dangerous thing, Althea had no idea exactly how much she had inherited, Lucy had just described it as an inheritance from her estranged grandmother, she deliberately played it down and remained vague about the amount. It was typical of Lucy to keep that stuff to herself, so her friends were used to it. It was ingrained in her to be so secretive, she did not share details, mainly due to her job, but also because her aunt and uncle who raised her from a teenager would always use them in some way to manipulate her, so she kept quiet by default.

  She parked on her new drive at just after 5pm. As the towering gates closed behind her car, she admired the beautiful design of the wrought iron. Looking up at the stylish three-storey house, she admired the facade and the intricate details and was glad she chose this one. The brickwork was creamy coloured with red wood panelling on one side of the building stretching from top to bottom. Art deco influences shone through the edging and large impressive windows. It reminded her of the buildings she saw on a school trip to Miami. It had a good feel to it, despite looking modern and sleek with the contemporary feel, it seemed homey somehow. The attention to detail was stunning, it showed careful planning and artistic design, it was built by craftsmen and great lengths were taken to make the house a home.

  Looking down the street, she saw over her high fence a wall of tall trees at the end of the road and more opulent houses of varying modern styles lining both sides of the road. Each house was different, like unique works of art in their own right. It was quiet despite being an urban area, on the map there was a large famous wooded area called Mathis and Mather Park, a landmark named after the city founder, Henry Mathis, and his business partner, Maxwell Mather. It had grassed areas and a lake behind the wall of trees, so she expected bird noise at least, but so far it was almost silent. Her new house had a fenced perimeter, the same type and style of the gates, surrounding the opulent garden that wrapped around the house. Neatly sculpted plants and large bushes followed the perimeter line and the drive and path was elegantly paved. The large living room window displayed flowers of all kinds bursting out of a heavy looking large vase that looked like it could cost a month’s salary. The smell in the garden was glorious, and she could imagine sitting out here and enjoying a glass of wine with her friends.

  Between the garden and the drive on the right the path led to several steps up to a secure double red door. The house number showed on an illuminated sign to the left, and the mailbox and intercom system to the right. Above the door there was a discreet CCTV camera, and she knew from the brochure the
house came with a high spec security system. The building was new, and she chose this one because of the luxurious interior and the extra security in place. She didn’t know the area and despite being a dragon shifter, or perhaps because of it, she liked privacy and security.

  Dragons were a secretive bunch, preferring solitude or at least distance from others to hide their “treasure” Treasure could be many things though, people, homes, land, anything really. Dragons became attached to something that held value to them, so this was very specific to the person. One person may be attached to an area, like an ancestral home or place. Someone else may covet and treasure items such as antiques or items of unique heritage. Another dragon could hold their family and mate as most important and, so they were their treasure. It really was a dragon thing, treasure was highly personal. If their treasure was taken or destroyed, it was a given that said dragon would lose their shit and things would burn.

  The object of the dragon’s obsession was irrelevant. It rarely said much about the person, it was usually the same things any person would value, family, home, wealth. The treasure could change throughout their lives. Comfort and opulence was very popular with dragons, the finer things were sought after. Which was ironic since their ancestors used to live in caves and mountains. Not exactly the Ritz, although if legend was correct, they hoarded gold to sleep on. So, she guessed that was their version of comfort and opulence. Being naturally suspicious and defensive was also normal allegedly. All these details and rumours she had discovered online, rather than from other dragons, it was tragic that the crucial details that should have been passed from parent to child were lost with her. She simply had no-one to shepherd her to adulthood.

  The inheritance from her grandmother was a lifeline, and without it she would have had a much harder time leaving. It’s not that she was used to poverty, but she had always had the ordinary things in life, so she decided to be committed to the new life she was going to lead and start as she meant to go on. She had no treasure yet, to have a lot of money means nothing, your dragon had to covet it, be fiercely defensive of it, to love it. Hers neither loved nor coveted anything. So, for now, a pretty new home, new car and new job, her dragon would discover her treasure in time. Lucy assumed that her treasure would be her mate and children, since material stuff didn’t hold massive sway over her. All dragons loved luxury, she knew this to be true, but her dragon was quite laid back and wouldn’t pitch a fit if she stayed in a 2-star hotel for one night. A week however, and she would bitch about it a little bit.