The Devil (EBOOK) AVAILABLE FOR (DISCOUNTED) PRE-ORDER ONLY

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Camilla Lee, the world's deadliest honeytrap assassin grew up idolising her father, but in her quest to solve his murder and bring the culprits to justice, she uncovered some horrible truths. The dad she loved and adored had a past so sinister, it defied belief.

Who is Johnny Lee? Can it be true he spent his early years as a Seven Dragons Triad enforcer known and feared across Hong Kong as The Devil?

For the first time, you can now read his remarkable story as, in his own words, he catalogues his deeply personal and dark journey down the path of irredeemable wickedness.

Pre-order The Devil now and save a whopping 75%. You'll be glad you did.

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THE DEVIL

Prologue

Entering Tony’s office in just a short T-shirt, I ignore the guest chair, go around his desk and settle on his lap, because, why not? I like to live up to my slutty honeytrap reputation, but most of all, it is way more fun this way, since I never quite know how he will react. I bury my face in his neck and take in the woody aromatic fragrance of his very British No 89 by Floris of London. His eau de toilette never fails to arouse me, as too, the wool blend tweed fabric of his trousers rubbing against my thighs and bare bottom. We kiss, but only briefly.
After what feels like a long layoff since my last assignment, my anticipation for an exciting new mission brief gives me reason to put my usual playful teasing on hold. Better to save it for after his news when I shall enthusiastically thank him in my favourite way.
‘What have you got for me?’ I ask, my tone eager, smile broad.
‘It’s not what you think, Cam.’ Annoyingly, he still calls me Cam even though my new operative name has evolved from Cameron to Camille and I have asked him to pronounce it as Camil-lè so that the lè sounds like la. But now is not the time to make a fuss, so I button it. Having almost lost my job, I am grateful just to be getting back in the field and (hopefully) get a chance to snuff more child traffickers and paedophiles. Perhaps I will get lucky, and he will authorise me to prune the heads of any deputy Dragon Masters with ideas of taking up the reins from Wu Qiong, the most recent triad boss removed by yours truly.
‘So… don’t keep me in suspense. What is it?’
‘You received a parcel.’
‘Here? From who?’ I am shocked. No one knows how to reach me, not even Tia. And this headquarters building outwardly appears as a deserted, run-down hovel. No one gets mail here.
‘From Edith Chan.’
‘Auntie Edith? You serious?’
‘Indeed.’
‘How the f-f-f heck did she get this address?’
‘She didn’t. She sent it to the Australian Consul General in Hong Kong with a note for it to be passed to you.’
‘Rose Maguire?’
‘No, Paul Browning has replaced Rose.’
‘And he knows I work for you?’
‘He does now. He spoke to Rose and got the story. Nice guy. I look forward to working with him from time to time.’
‘What did Auntie Edith send?’
‘See for yourself. It’s on my desk.’
At first, I see nothing resembling a parcel, then my eyes drop to a 128-page ruled exercise book atop a thick stack of A4 paper. I open the exercise book and see multiple columns of neat, small, Chinese characters that I cannot read. Inside the front cover is a loose A4 page folded in half. I open it and read:
To my crazy niece.
Camilla, you will find a notebook with this letter. The handwriting you see belongs to your father. He put pen to paper in the months following your birth. The typewritten pages are a rather liberal English interpretation specially transcribed for your eyes only. I will explain more later in this letter, but first, I want to say how disappointed and hurt I felt when I saw you on the news in Australia. How could you return home and not find a single minute to come see me?
I lower the note and turn to Tony. ‘Um… boss, do you mind if I read the rest of this in the privacy of my room?’
‘By all means.’
I stand, give his cheek a perfunctory kiss, grab the exercise book and papers, dash back to my room, and continue reading the note.
Anyway, I rang the police hoping to find you, but they were no help. Of course, I am not one easily denied, so I went in person and made myself known. After a bit of a scene and a few terse words, I eventually spoke with a Detective Hardy. Well, my-my! The man seemed both fond and very protective of you. Are you friends?
In confidence, he told me enough about your beach fight and subsequent disappearance to settle my concerns for your safety. After speaking with him, I slept uneasily for a few nights thinking about you and all the troubles in your life. My memory isn’t what it used to be, but on my third sleepless night I suddenly remembered a notebook your father had left with my Benji, may his soul rest in peace, and my husband had promised to keep it for you.
Your father left strict instructions that you were not to receive his journal until your twenty-first birthday and only then, if he was deceased. Since it was my Benji’s business, it completely slipped my mind. After seventeen or eighteen years in storage, it took some finding. Now that I have read it, I am pleased I did. Hopefully, you will appreciate his message, too. I remember you already found a note from your father in the family safe at the gym and dojo, but he wrote that summary some years later as a backup, in case something happened to Benji and me. It did not contain the intimate details he recorded in the notebook now in your hands.
Yes, I have considered your father’s strict instructions that we not hand it to you until your twenty-first, but… the way your life seems to be heading, fighting triad gangsters on the beach (and shamefully exposing yourself for the world to see!!). I fear you might not live to see twenty-one, so… I think your father would not mind me sharing it sooner. After-all, you already know the gist of your father’s history, just not the details.
However, having read it myself, I must warn you about his writing style. His words are blunt, sometimes crude, often disgusting, and much of what he shares may trouble you. You will learn things about his former life within the Seven Dragons triad, which you may regret reading. Once read, you cannot unread. Thus warned, I must also add, your father wrote every word with you in mind. A private letter of sorts between father and daughter.
Since you are not here for me to read it aloud to you, I engaged a young Chinese University Professor named Sung Yen who lectures in English at Bond Uni to convert your father’s Chinese to English. Yen has the skills to transcribe many of your father’s peculiar Chinese expressions into more understandable English expressions. She did the same with much of the dialogue and has correctly pointed out that a direct translation would make little or no sense in English.
Each time we finished a section, Yen printed it out, then stapled and numbered the pages. Yen assures me we also have a backup copy in the cloud, whatever that means.
Anyway, I hope you find her interpretation of your father’s story to your satisfaction. Again, I warn you; many of his confessions will shock you. Your father’s candour is both brave and heartfelt, especially when he writes about his affair with his sister, your Auntie Ai Wen. Her story is part of his and, as is his way, he describes her with an intimacy which often caused Yen and me to blush. Indeed, when you’re done reading, you may well wish you had never started. The father you knew and loved as a stable, monogamous family man is not the man he wrote about. He was the Devil and what comes next is his story.
Auntie signed off with love and a reminder to visit her the next time I returned to Australia.
Lowering her note, my heart laden with guilt and regret for not calling on her, I lift the first of the typewritten pages with trembling fingers and begin to read.


Chapter 1

To my newborn daughter, Camilla.
The notebook you hold in your hand contains the story of my former life. A life which can only be described as utterly reprehensible. My hope is you will never need to read what follows. With luck, when you come of age, I shall tell you about my dark past face to face. However, should I die before you turn twenty-one, which is likely, I have instructed your uncle, Benjamin Chan, to keep this notebook secure and pass it to you on your twenty-first. Not a day earlier.
The men hunting me will stop at nothing to bring me down. In all honesty, I doubt I will survive the coming year, let alone twenty more. And since you are reading this, my fears have proven true. My karma has caught up with me as surely it must.
So… it is with a heavy heart, I put pen to paper and confess my crimes. Please read what follows with an open mind, and if you can, reserve your judgment until the end.
Right now, your mother and I are holed up in Bright, a small town in country Victoria, Australia. We plan to stay here for six months. In effect; hiding from those who hunt us. I have little to do other than exercise, so it is at your mother’s insistence, my free time is put to use detailing the events which led up to our current predicament.
Let me start with a confession which may surprise you. For several years, before I met your mother, there was a time when all of Hong Kong feared me. They called me the Devil. Indeed, infamous for my vicious crimes and heartless demeanour, I warranted the name. As an enforcer for the Seven Dragons triad, my job entailed hurting people and doing things which, I confess, were pure evil. As you read on, I expect the depth of my depravity will shock and dismay you. What follows is the unvarnished truth behind my flawed reasoning and the string of terrible decisions which turned me into a true Devil. You will see how my terrible crimes compounded irrevocably until the weight of my sins drew me deeper and deeper down the slippery path to hell.
My greatest fear is when you reach the end of my tale, you will despise me. And justifiably so. Indeed, I was once a monster of the very worst kind. Your mother, who knows my story, thinks otherwise. Trusting she knows best, and only after much trepidation and prompting, have I agreed to bare my soul and put pen to paper.
Your mother believes I behaved reasonably, considering the tough choices I faced. I disagree. Truly, I could have, nay, should have, made more courageous choices.
In hindsight, I believe my inexcusable lack of moral fortitude was nothing but pure cowardice. When pressed to do what I knew was wrong, I chose the path of least resistance and obeyed. Rather than refuse my father, Dragon Master Wu, head of the most powerful triad in Hong Kong, I wimped out and did his bidding without protest. Worse, when he praised and rewarded me for carrying out his vile orders, some sick and twisted part of me felt pride in a crime well done. What I should have felt, if I had even a smidgen of decency, was remorse and regret. Indeed, my sick and compulsive need for my father’s high opinion ensured my loyalty. And with it, a willingness to continue down the path to purgatory. Rather than refuse to do evil, I chose to wear blinkers and damn the consequences. Unquestionably, I sold my soul to the very devil I later became.
Alas, my past cannot be undone. I promise every word you read is, to the best of my recollection, accurate. Naturally, I cannot remember conversations word for word, but I will do my best to convey the gist.
Before I begin, I must tell you more about my father, your grandfather, Dragon Master Wu Mong Hung. The man is evil incarnate. A virile megalomaniac who, over forty years, sired countless bastard sons and daughters from hundreds of women, including his many daughters and granddaughters. I was one of his more notable bastards, both literally and metaphorically.
Wu thought himself a god. He never married. No woman could be his equal. He was a misogynist of the worst kind. Incredulously, my father believed he could extend his life by bedding a virgin a day. Of course, no girl ever offered her maidenhead willingly, so Wu engaged men like me to source and abduct a steady stream of suitable girls. I found many among the homeless urchins and runaways fighting to survive in the grubby streets lining Hong Kong’s harsh underbelly. Some I sourced from trafficked Vietnamese and Cambodian girls shipped in to work the triad’s many brothels. And when the opportunity arose, I took a man’s daughter as recompense for his delinquent gambling debts. Wu did not care where the girls came from, or how young they were, so long as they met his need.
As fate would have it, I became his right-hand man, his enforcer, and, most shamefully, his foremost supplier of young maidens. Such was my proficiency, he declared me his favourite son. He even hinted that one day, should I stay the course, I would succeed him as Dragon Master of the mighty Seven Dragons triad.
What follows is the story of my rise to power. I pray it does not come across as some vainglorious ‘look at me, look at me,’ posturing. I detest such self-trumpeting. Nor is it an attempt to justify my monstrous deeds.
Okay. With that preamble out of the way, let’s wind back the clock to my earliest memories, then continue in chronological order.

Hold on to your bootstraps.

My dead mother, Chunhua Wen… is but a vague memory. I was just six when Wu stole me from her. I cannot recall her face, but I very much remember the loud sobs of a beautiful young woman in utter misery. No doubt, the very intensity of her sobs is what fixed this event in my mind. How I wish I could remember more, but all I have is this one shard of memory. I recall her heartbreaking distress as she took my hand and led me to Shifu Tao, the master who was there to take me to an exclusive Shaolin Kung Fu school in Guangdong. It would become my home and prison for the next ten years.
Shifu Tao’s wizened face seemed to mirror the crumpled beauty of my mother’s. I was never to see mother again and looking back, I realise, she knew I was lost to her. How cruel of Wu to take me from her! To break her as he broke every woman and girl he touched.
That day, he stood behind her, smiling at me, like a proud father. I remember pulling back my shoulders and standing tall and straight as my mother said I must. She told me to show my gratitude and thank my father. Said she was proud that from his many bastard sons, he chose me to attend this most prestigious school.
I remember a baby crying. Not a howl of hunger, but an empathetic response to my mother’s sobs. The wails came from my newborn baby sister, Ai Wen, also fathered by Wu. Little did I know then what a pivotal role Ai Wen would play in my betrayal of the Dragons some seventeen years later. In the years before my sister and I became reacquainted; I retained only the faintest recollection of having a sibling. If asked, I would state I was an only child, then add, as far as I knew. The memory of my sister faded along with that of my mother, so I was never sure if either of them were real or imagined.
Little did I know, as Shifu Tao led me away by my six-year-old hand, that my life had taken a fortuitous new direction. This was not yet the devil’s path. That would come much later.