Second Lies (The Second Life Series) (2 page)

Nick held me in his arms as hot, salty tears poured from my eyes.  Every last bit of energy had left my body.  There wasn’t a damn thing left in me.  Dennis knew.  He fucking knew, and soon, my mom would, too.  Word would get out.  My dad would see the picture.  All the respect anyone ever had for me would be long, fucking gone.

And then there was Nick…

He consoled me, kissing my hair, holding me tight.  He didn’t have a clue as to why I was hysterical in his arms, but he did the part.  Just like I predicted back in Philly, Nick wouldn’t let anything stand in the way of being my big brother.  That’s exactly what I needed right now, and that’s exactly what he was.

“Talk to me,” he whispered into my ear.  The last tear finally escaped my burning eyes.  Now, I was limp in his arms, gasping for air with uneven breaths. “You have to tell me what happened.”

“No,” it was the first word I managed to speak in over an hour.  My throat felt raw from the cries. “You’ll hate me.  I can’t tell you.”

“I could never hate you.  You’re my sister,” he pulled away and smiled.  It was genuine and heartfelt.  For a split second, he actually had me convinced everything was going to be okay, but that’s only because he didn’t know the truth.  For months, I had been dancing naked in a club.  I was dirty.
  I was used.  I was disgusting, and if I wasn’t, then I wouldn’t have felt the need to wear that damn mask all those nights to protect my identity. “Talk to me, please.  I can’t watch you like this.”

This was it.  I wanted Nick to find out from me, rather than the picture that would no doubt go public.  Dennis was going to show everyone.  He hated me.  This was the perfect bit of ammo he needed to ruin my life.  Of course, this would happen just as I was deciding to change it for the better.

Before I could speak, my phone started ringing.  It was an unknown number.  Normally, I would ignore such a call, but now, I was looking for any excuse to escape.  I picked up the phone, motioning to Nick that I’d be just a minute, and ran to the bathroom.  Once I locked myself in, I turned on the faucet, so Nick wouldn’t be able to hear me talking.

“Hello.”

“Adriana!” His old, raspy voice called into my phone.  Fear struck my heart. “This is Dennis.  How are you doing, sweetie?”

“Cut the bullshit,” I seethed.  He was about to ruin my life, and he was pretending to be oblivious.  I wanted to kill him.  I didn’t know that was possible, but if he was here right now, I’d do whatever it took to take his last breath. “You have some fucking nerve calling me.”

“This is a happy phone call,” Dennis’s voice changed.  It was business now, the way he talked to colleagues. “I bought that picture.  I bought it, and I intend on keeping the matter private.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I have a campaign to think about, and there’s no way I’m letting my wife’s whore of a daughter compromise the reputation I spent a lifetime building.  You should know by now that I have my ways of figuring things out.  I’m very good at hiding what needs to be forgotten, so you should be grateful.  I expect you to return the favor.  I don’t show anyone that picture, including Isabel, and you follow my every demand.”

I clenched my fists together, hatred boiling in my blood.  Nick started pounding on the door, shaking the doorknob violently.  He screamed, “Enough of the fucking games.  Get the hell out of the bathroom.  I’m not leaving you alone in there.”

“Just one more minute,” I called to Nick.  I turned my attention back to Dennis who was laughing on the other end. “We talk about this tomorrow.  Now isn’t a good time.”

“Of course, my beautiful s
tepdaughter, I’m a patient man.  Goodbye,” he clicked off the phone, still laughing wildly.

It took several seconds to calm myself down enough to speak with Nick.  I unlocked the door and opened it.  He was standing on the other side, red with fury.  He ran a hand through his hair.  He growled, “What the fuck is going on?  I know you were talking to Darth.” I nodded my head, unable to deny the truth. “Did he do this to you?” He motioned to my frail, sickly-looking form.
  None of the anger left his eyes. “Talk to me.  I can’t take the fucking secrets….not when it comes to him.”

“He has something on me,” even though the truth wasn’t out, it already felt like half the weight was off my shoulders. “It’s big, but he’s willing to keep it secret….with some compromising.”

Nick frowned and fought to control his temper.  Maybe Boston
was
good for him.  If this was a year ago, he’d take the first flight back to Philly, find Dennis, and beat the shit out of him.  He began, “What does he have on you?  Making a deal with Dennis is like making a deal with the devil.  There’s no compromising with him.  It’s just what he wants, plain and simple.” 
Deal with the devil?  Yeah, because I haven’t done that in the past.

There was a sudden knock at the door.  We both ignored it for a while, but it only got louder.  Someone shouted “security” from the other end
.
  Shit, I forgot to tell him to let security know I was allowed up here.  Nick rolled his eyes and went for the door.

“Yeah?”
I heard Nick call.  He opened the door.

“Mr. Ward, my name is David Weber, Head of Security.  The front desk has been trying to call your room.  Is Adriana Ward with you?”

“Sorry, the house phone’s always on mute.  Yes, Adriana is my sister.”

“So we do have your permission for her to be in your room?”

“Yeah, she’s on the list,” he groaned.

“Okay, s
ir, just making sure everything was alright.  You two can stop down at the front desk whenever you’d like to pick up a spare card key.”

“Thank you,” the door shut, and Nick stomped back into the bathroom where I remained
, hoping that he’d somehow forget the recent events.  As I stared into his eyes, I knew that wasn’t going to happen. “Are you going to talk to me?”

“I already told you.  He has something on me, but I think I’m okay.  He just started campaigning
for an election.  He wouldn’t let anything get out about me,” I shrugged. “I guess there should be some sort of perk to him marrying my mother.”

“It’s not that simple,” Nick threw his hands into the air, repulsed by how calm I was.  I couldn’t help it though.  If there was one thing I knew, it was that Dennis would help others if it meant helping himself.  His stepdaughter couldn’t be a stripper.  He’d do anything to keep that from getting out, especially with the campaign on the line. “He’s not going to back down.  You’re going to become his dog.  He’ll own you.  When he says bark, you’ll bark.  When he wants to take you outside to take a piss, you’ll go on his terms.  This won’t end, Adriana.  Compromise means nothing to that asshole.”

The emotions he wore on his face brought a moment of enlightenment to me.  He was speaking from experience.  With large, curious eyes, I asked, “What does he have on
you
?” Nick froze, his muscles visibly tensed.  His dark, menacing eyes burned through me. “That’s why you haven’t been seeing me or Dad.  That’s why you won’t talk to us.  That’s why you won’t step foot in Jersey.  He’s blackmailing you.” He still didn’t say anything. “Am I right?  Nick, what the fuck does he have on you?”

Nick dropped his head to his chest, letting it hang there in misery.  He pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned.  We both stood in silence until finally he answered
my question, “We both have dark secrets that we won’t tell each other.  Maybe, we should leave it that way.”

“So what does that mean?” He didn’t answer.  I wrapped my arms around him and started crying again.  I had literally just gotten Nick back.  He was my brother, and the look in his eyes meant he was going to turn his back on me.  I couldn’t go through that again.  I needed him.  No one else got what I lived through besides the one other person who lived it with me. “Please don’t go.  Please don’t stop talking to me again.”

Nick pulled himself out of my grasp.  He nodded his head and led me to the living room where we both took a seat.  As he stared out the window, facing the Boston streets, he began, “Do you remember Mom’s accident?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “Well, I was with her that night.  We had started talking again about a year before.  It wasn’t much communication.  Usually, we’d just email each other or send a text, but then I decided to visit her in secret.  I never told you or Dad because it was complicated.  I was still figuring out if I wanted her in my life after she fucked up my childhood.  I didn’t want your opinions to affect my own.”

I nodded slow and steady.  I knew that feeling.  My dad never said anything about my budding relationship with my mother, but he didn’t have to. 
The disapproval was in his eyes.  Nick continued, “Well, it was right before Christmas when I came down.  We went to some restaurant, and well, you know Mom.  She drank everything in sight, even got me to take a few shots with her.  Eventually, she told me how sorry she was.  She said mothering just wasn’t something she ever picked up, like that one important part of her brain never developed properly.  She said even though she wasn’t good at it she wanted to try again.  It’d be easier now that we were adults and able to function on our own.  She said she was proud of us...”

“So Dennis found out you and Mom
were talking again?” That didn’t sound bad at all.  I guess it was possible for Dennis to be threatened by Nick and his short fuse.

Nick laughed and shook his head, “He found out more than that…Mom was drunk off her ass as usual.  There was no way she could drive herself, so I offered.  The only problem was that I wasn’t much better.”  He slammed his hand down on the table and rose to his feet.  He cursed as the memories came back to him. “It had been a long time since I was in Jersey.  I couldn’t remember the way back home.  I was lost and nobody was around.  I started driving faster.
  I wasn’t in a good neighborhood.  I tried to find some familiar territory, and I guess I wasn’t paying attention to the road in front of me.” Nick turned around and faced me.  His eyes were swollen and red.  Tears fell down his cheeks.  I had never seen him cry before.  The sight of it all set me back. “I hit some guy, lost control, ended up flipping the car.” He ran a hand nervously through his dark hair. “It’s true what they say about drunk drivers.  It’s the passenger that always gets hurt.  The driver is usually spared, so he has to live with the guilt for the rest of his life.”

“What happened after that?” My jaw trembled.  I was amazed I could even speak after what he told me.
  Vivid memories of my mother broken and bruised plagued me.  She was never admitted to a hospital.  Dennis hired private, in-home nurses to care for her and paid tons of money to have some of his distinguished doctor friends come to their Haddonfield home.  During the time, I thought it was almost sweet to let her recover in the comfort of her own home.  Now, I was quickly understanding that there was an ulterior motive.  Really, I shouldn’t be surprised.  There were always two reasons for every one action in this world that I lived in.

“I climbed out of the car and pulled Mom out.  There was blood everywhere.  I thought she was dead,” he choked out.  He cursed again and wiped his face with
the back of his hand. “I called Dennis and told him what happened.  I was too scared to check on the guy I hit, so I just left him there.  He wasn’t moving.  Dennis told me to stay put, not to do a fucking thing.  He showed up with a couple of guys maybe twenty minutes later.  He had GPS on the car, so he knew exactly where to find us.  He asked me if anyone saw, and I shook my head no.  All the row homes on this street were abandoned.  We were alone out there.”

Nick couldn’t even look at me
anymore when he was talking.  He uttered, “Dennis said he’d take care of everything, that all I had to do was keep my mouth shut unless he said otherwise.  He took me back to their house, and he made me responsible for convincing Mom that she drove herself home that night.” I stopped breathing.  It never occurred to me to ask about the details of the accident.  The important thing was being there for her when she needed me.  I always figured an accident was just an accident.  Now, I learned there was so much more. “I told her she was drunk and insisted she drove herself home that night.  I said that she must have totaled the car and forgot everything.  She thought she was going crazy, but then Dennis had the nurses pump her with some shit that got her high.  It made her forget.  It made her unsure, but it made us leave this shit in the past where it all belonged.”

“Jesus, Nick,” I clutched at the collar of my shirt, crinkling it between my fingers.
  It was too hot in here.  It was hard to breathe.  Nothing he said could be real, right?  Finally, another important question came to mind. “What the hell happened to that guy you hit?”

He shrugged, “I don’t know.  I’ll never know.  Dennis took care of everything and hasn’t spoken to me about it since last
year when it happened.” He gulped, tearing his eyes away from mine. “We made an agreement.  I had to stay away from Mom, speak to her very sparingly, only when necessary.  If I ever wanted to see her on my own, I had to clear it with him first, and he had to be there with us.  In return, he’d make sure I was taken care of financially, and that none of this mess had to crawl back into our lives.  He’d ruin everything for me if I ever tested him.  I just need to forget about all of this.  Trust me.  It’s for the better.” I shook my head in disbelief.  No, this couldn’t be real.  This was Nick.  He could never do this. “He never told me to stay away from you or Dad.  I just couldn’t bear speaking to either of you again after that night.  You don’t deserve to be caught up with someone like me.”