Off Limits, Brother's Best Friend Chapter 137

Chapter 137: Beauty Fades 

Brianna

Again, another decision that altered the course of my life is when Versace started photographing me all the time. For fun sometimes but then it turned into more. I posed for the Versace brand and when I told her I still wanted to focus on design, her response was something I didn't think about.

“Design is forever, beauty fades. Model now and the rest will come.” And I believe her.

It has been seven months since Callan walked out of my apartment. I remember the pain in my chest when I kept trying to call and text him. When I realized he was done with me, I cried many nights at the thought of what almost dangled right in front of me, he broke my heart for doing that to me. I had no choice but to tough it out while working extremely long hard hours to make this dream happen. For seven months, I have poured myself into my work, trying not to think about that handsome, sinful man who occupied way too much of my mind in the beginning.

After the first three months with Jane still around, it was very hard for me. Her eyes would remind me of her brother and sometimes she would slip and mention his name. That sting so fierce it sears you would shoot through me each time. When I would have a dream with him in it, I would wake up fluttering. After Jane moved back home, it was still hard but I stopped crying about it. After five months of thinking maybe he would give into his urges to finally talk to me, I had to let that go, I had to let him go. When I started working for Versace, I met another male photographer and we got along well as friends. He is handsome, like not in the sexy as sin way but downright handsome in a good looking way if that makes any sense at all. His beard is close shaven and lined up like the rest of his hair, the top has short textured curls that fade down the side in his line up. He has perfect teeth, he is a smooth guy. He has light toffee skin without any tattoos but with abs. He likes sports and plays them when he isn't too busy with work. And I noticed a little thing about him that I haven't done to a man since Callan. Like how he favors gray suits and they look good on but he isn't always in a suit like Callan Harold. I have to stop comparing the two.

Andrew became very flirtatious in the beginning and I decided to be honest and tell him about Callan, about how I wasn't in the place for a relationship or anything. After six months of total silence from Callan, I finally decided to give into my sexual needs and I did start hooking up with Andrew casually. We were more so friends and anything else but I won't deny his good looks and our attraction. It isn't a drowning, suffocating and almost scary attraction like I have felt in the past, this was easy fun. It took me six whole months to wash the stain of Callan’s dangerous inked hands off me, another man having sex with me completely opposite to him.

And yet, my internship with Janet is over this week and that means I am returning to Port Harcourt in a few days. It means I will be entering his domain again, I will run the risk of seeing him and I know as much as I tell myself that I am done being upset over him that I am actually truly terrified of going back home. Seven months of silence, of disappearing without a trace. Even when I went back to Port Harcourt between the time I ended my internship with Elizabeth and started up with Janet, right before the holidays. I still spent Christmas and New Year with my brother still, Callan was like a ghost. Almost like a figment of my imagination, if he didn't taint me so deeply the stain of him wasn't still felt as proof. Even when Bryce came to visit me in London, I heard nothing about that man and was too afraid to ask Bryce about it directly.

After all this change in my life, I feel as though I am coming back as a new person. I am coming back to Port Harcourt and it was so terrifying.

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Callan POV 

I still have the tint of pink flesh across my knuckles for how raw they had gotten during that altercation a few weeks ago. There was a street gang group who started messing with an establishment owned by my crime family. It had been low level shit until they joined forces with the enemy. Word got out that we had problems with the Blank Knight clan after the son wanted to marry into the Vortex Cartel crime family. I put a stop to it after he disrespected me and that happened a year ago and somehow since then, they have only become more of a nuisance to me. 

When the two groups joined forces, they started a small war with me that has been nothing but violence and bullshit. I had to secure my gun running operation becqid they wanted to take it, they wanted my distributors and buyers but I have loyal allies who haven't given them what they wanted. What they wanted was to be the leading organized crime group to run guns on all of the East Coast. It spite some lines down the middle of a lot of territories when it becomes known who was loyal to who. The Velvet Vipers have always been neutral with both crime families, they caused no problems for me but when the Blank Knight called upon them to become akkoea of this mafia, war turned ugly they didn't favour the group which means they are now my enemy. Trust me when I tell you, you don't want to be the enemy of Callan Harold.

I am not the kind of mafia Don that only sits behind a desk or in his mansion somewhere. I get my hands dirty often, that altercation the other week may have truly become the start of an all out war.  Nobody's made a move since then but I have my warehouse and trucks heavily guarded. We have warned everyone within the syndicate to stay alert and well loaded. Anything can pop up suddenly, I know how to run my damn business. If they think they can fúck those up without being caught, they will have a tough lesson to learn soon. I have soldiers, capos and goons everywhere and I have very high officials in my pocket that can make anything go away or appear should I need something. I myself am a military trained special force, I know snipers, spies and war heros. I know even more criminals and crooks.

My knuckles are still tinted pink because I beat a man to death the other week and I didn't lose a fucking second of sleep over it. People call Callan Harold vicious, dangerous and insane too, they whisper about, good, the more afraid they are, the more powerful I get. Nobody wants to ally against the man they think Iid fucking nuts. They want to be on that man's good side. Shadow Vanguard, they are smart and run all their business through me. The amount of guns that go to them is a disgrace for its people but fantastic business for myself. When I am angry, I channel my rage into violence, work and sex and I have had so much sex for the past seven months that I don't even remember who is who anymore. I called them all dollface because I don't want the names mixed up.

When it comes to London and I left there seven months ago, I don't speak about it. The thing with someone like me is I have a switch, maybe it was installed in me when I grew up within the most powerful crime family, witnessing a lot of fucked up shit during my prime growing years. Maybe it is the military training that makes me a machine more than a person. I have this switch and when I click it off I become numb to just about anything. My best friend Bryce once accused me of being emotionless, he told me I didn't care about anyone and I am loyal to no one but myself. Maybe he is right, I know I made an oath with him. A man who I fought in combat with, who saved my life as often as I have saved his.

The thing is that I didn't keep it. He gave me one request, to stay away from his baby sister and what did I do? I fucked her, I threw that oath away and lied to him for months. I fist fought him twice just to fly out to London in the first place. I asked Brianna to come home with me and she said no, and the switch is off.