Devious Lies: A Cruel Crown Novel

by Huntington, Parker S.

  Virginia carried herself with an authority she’d never been granted. I would have admired her for it, except she’d raised me to be as cutthroat as herself. That, and I reeled from the revelations, struggling to take them all in.

  I needed that moment where everything clicked. It didn’t come, and trying to make sense of their fight reminded me of trying to catch rain with my fingertips. Pointless.

  Bottom line—I’d been lied to.

  It stabbed me in a place I thought had scabbed over. The last big lie in my life spiraled out of control. I barely recovered from the Winthrop Scandal. How many more lies did I have to endure?

  “Oh, Emery, honey.” That smile looked demented on Virginia’s face. “Let’s get this dinner started. Why don’t you go hug your father?”

  My eyes burned with the effort it took not to glance at Nash. I scrunched my nose. “God, Virginia, don’t call him that.”

  “Why not?” So smug, her face reminded me of Basil’s after she’d left our A.P. Spanish exam, having cheated.

  “Virginia,” Nash warned.

  His tone brought chills to my body, so much venom, it should have killed her on the spot. I stared at him, eyes slanted, trying to figure everything out.

  And here was the crux of it all. I loved listening to Nash fight for me, but I was capable of fighting for myself. Especially when he kept secrets everyone but me seemed to know. Who lied to someone they cared about? If he could lie so easily to me, what else had he lied about?

  “Why wouldn’t I call him your father?” She downed her champagne, leaving a blood-colored lipstick stain around the glass’s rim. “He is, after all, your biological father.”

  She’d shocked me into silence, but it wasn’t her words or their cold delivery that pained me. It was the lack of surprise in Nash’s eyes.

  He’d known, and he'd kept it from me.

  The satisfied sneer Virginia flashed me before she left wouldn’t haunt me tonight.

  Nash’s lies, on the other hand, crippled me.

  They wouldn't haunt me tonight either. They'd haunt me forever.

  “Explain,” I demanded, barely able to form the word through my hurt and fury.

  “Balthazar Van Doren is your dad.”

  I sidestepped him when he approached. “Yeah, I got that.” Dragging my toe across an imaginary line, I said, “This is my half of the room. That’s yours. Don’t cross it, and I won’t knee you in the balls. Now, continue. The truth, please.”

  His jaw ticked. Actually, his everything ticked. “Sir Balty was your mom’s secret high school sweetheart. Her health teacher. She got pregnant and freaked out, because the affair started before she turned sixteen—the age of consent in North Carolina.

  “Your dad visited her town over vacation, and she targeted him for his money. They slept together, she told him she was pregnant, and they had a shotgun wedding.” The words rushed out, like he thought I'd leave any second.

  If I looked flighty, it was because I was. “How do you know all this?”

  “Gideon told me.”

  In the hall, two drunk socialites ambled past, stumbling over their heels and giggling with each other. As if my world hadn’t tilted on its axis. I’d never felt more aware of my insignificance.

  The world moves on, Emery, and you will, too.

  I shook my head, unable to fit these puzzle pieces together, even as he spoon-fed them to me. “Why would da—Gideon let Balthazar into our lives?”

  So many questions, but I trembled too hard to ask them all. I needed to take a step back, have this conversation tomorrow when the alcohol and adrenaline fled my system, but I feared he’d be less candid.

  No, it needed to happen now.

  “He didn’t find out about Balthazar until you turned six. Balty showed up, looking for some cash. He threatened to claim his parental rights over you. Gideon struck a deal, allowing him to be a partner in Winthrop Textiles in exchange for his silence.”

  “Why would Dad—” I swallowed, digging my nails into my palms. My pulse gripped my throat, erratic and unrelenting. “Why would Gideon tell you this?”

  “Because he’s not guilty.”

  Another lie, maybe?

  I tugged at the corset of this ridiculous dress, struggling to breathe. “But the F.B.I. and S.E.C. announced an investigation against him. The whole town calls him a cheat.”

  “I—” He cursed and yanked his collar hard, causing a button to pop off. Neither of us were made for these clothes, though he wore his easier than I wore mine. “None of this is my secret to tell. At least, not before you talk to your dad.”

  My lower lip wobbled. “Except he's not my dad.”

  I wanted to scream, and yell, and claw at Nash. I wanted the same for him. An uncontrollable reaction.

  This didn’t feel like us. A civilized argument, no magic in the air, no flames we couldn’t douse, no fucking fight.

  Our age gap never felt more prominent than it did now.

  Twenty-three and fatherless.

  Thirty-two and fatherless.

  We carried it so differently. Him, with barriers erected higher than any skyscraper mankind could build. Me, with tiny thorns that pricked but didn’t possess the strength to draw blood. Unbreakable stone versus a fractured heart. I knew which would win, and it wasn’t the heart.

  “He is,” Nash insisted. “In every way that matters, Gideon Winthrop is your father. Even when you never returned his postcards and ignored him after he tried to visit you, he didn’t give up hope that you’d return to him.”

  I remembered the visit. Three years ago, I spotted him waiting for me outside the diner I worked at. I called the cops and told them some creep stalked me there.

  Disbelief clung to me, it’s hold nearly choking my neck. “I told you yesterday that I miss my dad.”

  “I know, and I—”

  “You saw me near tears, and instead of telling me the truth, you fucked me.”

  “That's not why I—”

  “I don’t care why you screwed me, Nash. I care that you did, knowing how I felt about my dad in that moment.”

  “Shit.” He palmed his face. “That wasn’t fucking. Don’t tell me you didn’t feel anything last night. What happened to redamancy?”

  I did feel it, but I didn't answer. Maybe tomorrow, but not tonight. Everything hurt too much. Felt too raw. Because I promised myself after the Winthrop Scandal, I’d never let another liar into my life.

  No matter how good he tasted. No matter how good he made my body feel. No matter how good he made my heart feel.

  My foot inched past the doorframe.

  “Emery.” He matched my steps.

  “I thought I built walls after the scandal. I thought something like this would never happen again. I feel so stupid for not seeing the difference between a truth and a lie.”

  “Don't blame yourself.”

  “I don’t. Not entirely. My heart was hungry, so you fed it lies. Everyone in this world lies, and I should have realized that.”

  “Maybe everyone lies, okay? Is that what you want to hear?”

  “If it’s the truth, yes. And you know what happens after the first lie? Every truth becomes questionable. How am I supposed to believe anything you say now?”

  He didn’t answer.

  I answered for him, “A liar once told me, life is a Sisyphean task. You put out one fire, and another one starts. It’s easier to accept it burns. We live in a world consumed by fire, but at least it’s the truth. You’re not lured to sleep with a false blanket of security, telling yourself you exist in a part untouched by the flames. There’s death, and betrayal, and revenge, and guilt everywhere you turn. It’s healthier to live it, breathe it, and participate in it than to pretend it doesn’t exist.”

  I edged closer to him, cupping his face and hating myself for it. “Do you remember what you said when I asked what happens after you’re burnt everywhere?”

  He dropped his eyes, and it was so unlike Nash, it startled me for a mo
ment.

  Even the language of your body is a lie.

  My palm whipped away from his skin, and I gave him the biggest truth he’d ever told me, “Don’t succumb to the fire. Be the bigger flame.”

  fi-ni-‘fU-gal

  (adjective) hating endings; of someone who tries to avoid or prolong the final moments of a story, relationship, or some other journey

  Finifugal originates from the Latin word fuga, for flight. It shows us that endings are fleeting. We may hate them. We may fear them. We may avoid them. But we don’t need to.

  Like sunsets, endings can be beautiful. The next morning, the sun always rises again, because there is no such thing as an ending, just a new beginning.

  “Why is it that two people never realize how much they love each other until one of them says goodbye?”

  Silence.

  No one answered me. Not even crickets. Made sense, considering I laid on my shitty quilt in the unfamiliar twenty-fourth-floor closet, picturing the ceiling as the starless night. Outside, so many stars twinkled, it nauseated me.

  “I had a nightmare last night. In it, I never met Nash. I died in a parasailing accident, and a blue man in a pink suit took me to a white room and showed me Nash Prescott—defending me against Able, feeding me all my life, sending me notes, being the Ben to my Durga, giving me his new first kiss, all the filthy things juxtaposed beside the clean, the baltering, the late nights as ‘roommates’, making love in the rain, the way he loves the same people I love and sees me better than anyone else.”

  Ceiling: Stop talking to me, woman.

  “I watched it all, thinking it was the most epic love story I’d ever seen. Then, Blue Man shut it off, and I nearly killed him for it. He gave me two options for the afterlife. Door One saves me the heartbreak, but I live a life without ever meeting Nash. Door Two takes me back to day one, where I meet Nash Prescott, eventually fall in love, and experience a pain like I’ve never experienced. Do you want to know which I chose?”

  Ceiling: I’m fluent in silence. Please, learn the language, too.

  “I chose Door Two. Blue Man patted my shoulder and told me I made the right choice. Apparently, Door One is the bad place and Door Two is the good place. Am I being ridiculous, Ceiling?”

  Ceiling: Considering you're talking to an inanimate object and imagining its replies, we’ve sailed past ridiculous and entered involuntary psychiatric hold territory.

  “It’s just… everyone in my life lies to me, and I promised I'd never put myself in this situation again. Not if I can help it. Dad—I mean Gideon—lied to me most of my life.”

  Ceiling: You mean the man who raised you as his own?

  I ignored the buzzkill above me. “Virginia lied to me all my life. Same for Balthazar, but who the hell cares about him?”

  Ceiling: Wow. The mom you hate and a guy you considered to be nothing more than a creep until last night lied to you. You seem so torn up about it. Here’s a tissue.

  “Fuck you, Ceiling. Such a damn buzzkill.” I made snow angels in the blanket, imagining the comforters in Nash’s penthouse. The quilt ripped when my fingers caught in a hole. “Hank lied to me about his illness. So did Betty and Nash.”

  Ceiling: It's almost as if they care enough about you to save you from the pain of watching him die.

  “It would be painful, yes, but what’s worse is not being given the option to love him like every moment could be his last. There’s so much I would have done differently.”

  Ceiling: If this moment was Nash's or your last moment, would you be here, annoying the hell out of me?

  “Did you say something? I couldn’t hear you. Ran out of Q-Tips this morning.” I patted the hole in the quilt as if my touch would heal it. “Do you know what hiraeth is?”

  Ceiling: No, but I'm sure you’ll tell me. I'd rather you didn't.

  “Hiraeth is a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was. It is the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past. I’ve always thought of it as the saddest entry in the dictionary.”

  Ceiling: This conversation deserves a name. Then, it’d be the most pathetic entry in the dictionary.

  “And on the long list of lies, I can’t even wrap my head around the whole thing about the Winthrop Scandal. I mean, if you think about it, the only person in my life who hasn’t blatantly lied to me is Reed.”

  Ceiling: The kid you once thought you were in love with? Hypocritical, since you never told him… and Nash never told you something. I'm sensing a theme. Why do humans leave so much to be desired?

  I ignored the last half of Ceiling’s insults. “Stupid that I once considered Reed a recipient of my love. He didn’t compare to Nash. With Nash… It’s a vicious love, the kind that beats me down and robs me of all my possessions until I feel bloodied, worn, and bruised, stolen of everything that makes me… me.”

  Ceiling: Sounds healthy. Who needs carrots when you have Nash Prescott?

  “I wonder if this is how any of my father’s victims felt. Except… If Nash is to be believed, they’re not my father’s victims.”

  Ceiling: You should probably talk to Gideon… and not me.

  “You’re right. Tomorrow.” I wrapped myself in the quilt like a burrito. One of those sad and skinny ones from Chipotle, that happens when the customer doesn’t know how to order. “Hey, Ceiling? Avoiding Nash sucks.”

  Ceiling: Awwwwww, did the bad boy break your heart?

  “Don’t be silly. He didn’t break my heart. He cracked it open.”

  Knock!

  Knock!

  I swung the closet door open, bedhead for days. My heartbeats tripped over themselves, racing at the sight of Nash. He wore a navy three-piece suit, tailored to hug every delicious inch of him.

  My hair stuck up in several places. The clinomania shirt I wore boasted drool stains on the shoulder. I’d stayed up all night, talking to Ceiling, and the night before that—the night of Virginia’s dinner—I hadn’t slept at all.

  Delirium had set in twelve or so hours ago.

  I didn’t know how to act around Nash, so I went with pretending his lies hadn’t gutted me. “How did you know I’m here?”

  After we’d returned from the dinner, I’d begged Delilah to grab my boxes and high-tailed to a random floor.

  He went along with my ruse, “Full disclosure?”

  No. Lie to me again.

  “Obviously.”

  Nash eyed my shirt, my hair, the quilt behind me, everything. “I checked every room from the ground up. You had to pick the twenty-fourth floor?”

  “Had I known, I would have picked the fifty-third.”

  I examined him, head to toe, telling myself I did it to confirm the truth and not because I already missed him less than forty hours into our fight. Beneath the Kiton suit, his chest rose and fell a little faster. A thin sheen of sweat misted his forehead. His cheeks flushed the softest shade of pink from the exertion.

  Jesus.

  He really had inspected every floor. Even he looked like he couldn't believe it. Furrowed brows and jaw a bit slack. His fingers combed through his hair. Once.

  I clutched onto the door frame, trying and failing to delete the question from my brain. “Why do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Run your hands through your hair. Three times if you hate where you are. Two times if you think someone or something is idiotic. One time if…” I tipped a shoulder up, playing it off as if it meant nothing. “… you’re around me.”

  I sucked at this fight thing.

  Ceiling: Perhaps you shouldn’t do it. It’ll sure as shit make my life easier.

  Me: For the record, I am not crazy. As we speak, he is literally holding a secret back from me. A lie of omission is still a lie! Why doesn't anyone get that?

  “Full disclosure?” Nash asked.

  “Yes.” I wanted to laugh, because he genuinely meant it each time he said it. “Jeez.”

  “I don’t know.”
He drove me insane.

  “That’s it?”

  “I never realized I did it.”

  “If you had to guess?”

  He stared at both sides of his palms as if noticing them for the first time. “If I had to guess, it’s because I need something to do with my hands. Whenever you're around, they always want to touch you.”

  Me: That was cute. I’m still allowed to hear him and fall for his charm, right?

  Ceiling: BRB. Googling how to hide a body.

  I toyed with a strand of lint on my jeans. “I’m not ready to have this conversation.” Yet. “There are so many unanswered questions… and I haven't seen my dad.”

  I’d missed the bus to Dad’s yesterday, and ‘Hey, Dad, I figured out I’m not a product of your sperm’ didn’t seem like an appropriate text or email exchange. Especially since I had to frame it in my mind as a joke just to think about it.

  “I know.”

  My brows pulled together. “How do you know?”

  “Full disclosure?” Again, he looked so serious, like he wanted to make sure I understood he meant everything that passed his lips.

  “Oh, my God.” I rolled my eyes. “Yes.”

  “You don't have a car, and I paid some kid a thousand bucks to keep an eye out at the nearest bus stop.”

  Ceiling: I’ve changed my mind. You psychos are both made for each other.

  My jaw slackened a bit before I recovered. “You realize that’s borderline psychotic, right?”

  His neck corded, muscles so tight, they seemed fake. “You realize Billings and Dickens are on the bus route to Blithe Beach. Murder capital of North Carolina ring any bells?”