My princess must feel my attention because she tunes out the conversation she’s having with several other people, her chin lifting, her gaze sweeping wide and then catching mine. I don’t even think about looking away. I don’t care that she knows that I’m watching her. I don’t care if she knows that I’m thinking about fucking her. I’m the bastard in these parts. From the time I was thrust into this place right before my senior year of high school, I do what I do and everyone whispers about it. I’m not going to change that now. Let them whisper about what I want, and this woman, whoever the fuck she is, is worth the whispers.
The man next to her touches her elbow, his gaze shooting in my direction, his jaw setting hard with anger. Priceless and so typical of my father’s class of people. He’s pissed at me for getting his woman’s attention. He should have fucked her better. My cellphone buzzes with a text message and I cut my stare, downing my champagne and then reaching for my phone to find a message from Grayson Bennett, a close friend from my first go at Harvard right before I left and went into the Navy. He’s not a bastard, but rather the true heir to the Bennett empire.
Call me, his message says, which is typical Grayson. He wants something, he asks, and usually with actual words. And since we have unfinished business I don’t want overheard, I walk toward the house where I know I can find that whiskey. I’ll likely find the rightful heir to the throne, right along with our father as well, but at least I’ll make my showing and get the hell out of here.
“There he is. My brother.”
My jaw clenches at the sound of Isaac’s voice even before he steps into my path, and as if for the first time ever he knows what I want, and cares, he offers me one of the two whiskey glasses in hand. “The good stuff. The kind we drink around these parts.”
He doesn’t mean we, as in me and him, he means we as in the Kingston family, which I've never been a part of. Our eyes lock and hold, the drama of the past, the hatred between us, and I have no doubt the crackle of energy around us is the attention of the room. We are after all the heir and would-be heir who hate each other. Him the prince, with thick, dark hair and green eyes, while I’m simply the bastard, with wavy brown hair, blue eyes, and a good four inches on Isaac at my height of six-foot-two. I don’t look like I’m his blood. I damn sure don’t feel like his blood, but my mother made sure I can’t be denied. She took the damn DNA test that changed my life and not for the better in my opinion.
I accept the glass and his gaze goes to the ink peeking from beneath my white shirt, and lingers on the Rolex on my wrist, before lifting. “Looks like someone got all inked up.”
“The bastard brother might as well look the role, right?”
“You’re never going to let me live down calling you that, now are you?”
“You don’t need to live it down, Isaac, but you will have to face me every day if I decide to join the company, and we both know that didn’t go well for you at Harvard.”
His eyes spark with a familiar anger I don’t have to intentionally stir. He hates me for being the bastard child of his father’s mistress, the brother thrust on him only months after his mother died. An ironic turn of events considering my mother’s cancer. He steps closer, toe to toe, all up close and friendly. “If you think that because you’re some sort of SEAL Team Six hero or something, that I won’t buckle you right at the knees, you’re wrong. You will not take what is mine.”
“I see you two got right back into the brotherly love.”
At the sound of my father’s voice, Isaac grimaces and my lips quirk. “Seems we have,” I say, as Isaac rotates and we both face my father, who looks fit and younger than his fifty-four years in his tuxedo with his dark hair. “I have someone I want you to meet,” he says, and The Princess steps to his side, her crystal blue eyes meeting mine as my father says, “Eric. Meet your stepsister, Harper.”
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A PERFECT LIE
A brand-new psychological thriller coming May 14, 2019!
They say that you are not a product of the environment that you’ve grown up in, that you create your own story, tell it your way. That you get to pick your own future. They lied. If you’re honest with yourself, you believed that lie, too, like I used to, because I wanted to, and even needed to believe that I had some semblance of control over my own self. The truth is that control is part of the lie. The ability to become a person of our own making is the perfect lie. I concede that it might appear that some people control their destiny, but I assure you, if you gave me fifteen minutes, I could pull apart that façade. We are born into a destiny that we never have the chance to escape. That’s why I must tell my story. For those of you out there like me who were told that you have choices, when you never had one single choice that was your own. For those of you out there who were, who are, judged for decisions you’ve made that were directed by your destiny, not by the façade of choices. The irony of the story within this story is how one person’s predisposed destiny can impact, influence, and even change the lives of those around him or her. How one destiny ties to another destiny.
I am Hailey Anne Monroe. I’m twenty-eight years old. An artist, who found her muse on the canvas because I wasn’t allowed to have friends or even keep a journal. And yes, if you haven’t guessed by now, I’m that Hailey Anne Monroe, daughter to Thomas Frank Monroe, the man who was a half-percentage point from becoming President of the United States. If you were able to ask him, he’d probably tell you that I was the half point. But you can’t ask him, and he can’t tell you. He’s dead. They’re all dead and now I can speak.
Chapter One OF
A PERFECT LIE
Hailey Anne Monroe
You already know that I’m one of those perfect lies we’ve discussed, a façade of choices that were never my own. But that one perfect lie is too simplistic to describe who, and what, I am. I am perhaps a dozen perfect lies, the creation of at least one of those lies beginning the day I was born. That’s when the clock started ticking. That’s when decisions started being made for me. That’s when every step that could be taken was to ensure I was “perfect.” My mother, a brilliant doctor, ensured I was one hundred percent healthy, in all ways a test, pin prick, and inspection could ensure. I was, of course, vaccinated on a strict schedule, because in my household we must be so squeaky clean that we cannot possibly give anything to anyone.
Meanwhile, my father, the consummate politician, began planning my college years while my diapers were still being changed. I would be an attorney. I would go to an Ivy League college. I would be a part of the elite. Therefore, I was with tutors before I could spell. I was in dance at five years old. Of course, there was also piano, and French, Spanish, and Chinese language classes. The one joy I found was in an art class, which my mother suggested when I was twelve. It became my obsession, my one salvation, my one escape. Outside of her. She was not like my father. She was my friend, not my dictator. She was the bridge between us. The one we both adored. She listened to me. She listened to him. She tried to find compromise between us. She gave me choices, within the limits I was allowed. She tried to make me happy. She did make me as happy as anyone who was a puppet to a political machine could be, but the bigger the machine, the more developed, the harder that became. And still she fought for me.
I loved my mother with all of my heart and soul.
That’s why it’s hard to tell this part of my story. If there was one moment, beyond my birth, that established my destiny, and my influence on the destiny of those around me, it would be one evening during my senior year in high school, the night I killed my mother.
***
The past—twelve years ago…
The steps leading to the Michaels’ home seem to stretch eternally, but then so do most on this particular strip of houses in McLean, Virginia, where the rich, and sometimes famous, reside. Music radiates from the walls of the massive white mansion that is our destination, the stretch of land own
ed by the family wide enough that the nearest neighbor sees nothing and hears nothing. They most certainly don’t know that while the Michaels are out of town, their son, Jesse, is throwing a party.
“I can’t believe we’re at Jesse’s house,” Danielle says, linking her arm through mine, something she’s been doing for the past six years, since we met in private school at age eleven. Only then I was the tall one, and now I’m five-foot-four to her five-foot-eight, and that’s when I’m wearing heels and she’s not.
“Considering his father bloodies my father on his news program nightly, I can’t either,” I say. “I shouldn’t be here, Danielle.”
She stops walking and turns to me, her beautiful chestnut hair, which goes with her beautiful, perfect face and body, blowing right smack into my average face. She shoves said beautiful hair behind her ears, and glowers at me. “Hailey—”
“Don’t start,” I say, folding my arms in front of my chest, which is at least respectable, considering my dirty blonde hair and blue eyes are what I call average and others call cute. Like I’m not smart enough to know that means average. “I’m here. You already got me here.”
“Jesse doesn’t care about your father’s run for President,” she argues. “Or that his father doesn’t support your father.”
“Why did you just say that?” I demand.
“Say what?”
“Now you’ve just reminded me that I’m at the house of a man who doesn’t support my father, whom I happen to love. I need to leave.” I start down the stairs.
Danielle hops in front of me. “Wait. Please. I think I might be in love with Jesse. You can’t just leave.”
“My God, woman, you’re a drama queen. You have never even kissed him. And I have to study for the SAT and so do you.”
“Please. His father isn’t here. His father will never know about the party or us.”
“Danielle, if my father finds out—”
“He’s out of town, too. How is he going to find out?”
“What about your father? He’s an advisor to my father. You can’t date Jesse.”
She draws in a deep breath, her expression tightening before she gushes out, “Hailey,” making my name a plea. “I’m trying so hard to be normal. I know that you deal with things by studying. I do, but I need this. I need to feel normal.”
Normal.
That word punches me with a fist of emotions I reject every time I hear it and feel them. “We will never be normal again and you know it. We weren’t normal to start with. Not when—”
“After that night,” she says. “We were normal enough until then. But since—after what happened, after we—”
“Stop,” I hiss. “We don’t talk about it. We don’t talk about it ever.”
“Ouch,” she says, grabbing my hand that is on her arm, my grip anything but gentle. “You’re hurting me.”
I have to count to three and force myself to breathe again before my fingers ease from her arm. “We agreed that ‘the incident’ was buried.”
“Right,” she says, and now she’s hugging herself. “Because we’re so good at burying things.”
“We have to be,” I bite out, trying to soften my tone and failing. “I know you know that.”
She gives me several choppy nods. “Yes.” Her voice is tiny. “I know.” She turns pragmatic, her tone lifting. “I just need more to clutter up my mind than the SAT exam. That will come and go.”
“And then there will be more work ahead.”
“I need more,” she insists. “I need to be normal.”
“You will never—”
“I can pretend, okay? I need to feel normal even if I’m not. And even if you don’t admit it, so do you.”
My fingers curl, my nails cutting into my palms, perhaps because she’s right. Some part of me cared when I put on my best black jeans and a V-neck black sweater that shows my assets. Some part of me wanted to look as good as she does in her pink lacy off-the-shoulder blouse and faded jeans. Some part of me forgot that the “normal” ship sailed for me the day I was born to a father who aspired to be President, but still, I don’t disagree with her. I need to get her head on straight and maybe kissing Jesse is exactly the distraction that she needs do the trick. I link my arm with hers once more. “Let’s go see Jesse.”
She gives me one of her big smiles and I know that I’ve made the right decision, because when she’s smiling like that no one sees anything but beauty which is exactly how it needs to stay. And so, I make that walk with her up those steps, climbing toward what I hope is not a bad decision, when I swore I was done with those. Nevertheless, in a matter of two minutes, we’re on the giant concrete porch, a Selena Gomez song radiating from the walls and rattling my teeth.
The door flies open, and several kids I’ve seen around, but don’t know, stagger outside while Danielle pulls me into the gaudy glamour of the Michaels’ home, which is as far opposite of my conservative father as the talk show host’s politics. The floors are white and gray marble. The furniture is boxy and flat, with red and orange accents, with the added flair of newly added bottles, bags, cups, and people. There are lots of people everywhere, including on top of the grand piano. It’s like my high school class, inclusive of the football team and cheerleaders, has been dropped inside a bad Vegas hotel room. Or so I’ve heard and seen in movies. I’ve not actually been to Vegas; that would be far too scandalous for a future first daughter, or so says my father.
“Where now?” I ask, leaning into Danielle.
“He said the backyard,” she replies, scanning. “This way!” she adds, and suddenly she’s dragging me through several groups of about a half-dozen bodies.
Our destination is apparently the outdoor patio, where a fire is burning in a stone pit, and despite it being April, and in the sixties, surrounded by a cluster of ottoman-like seating and lanterns on steel poles. Plus, more people are here, and now instead of Selena Gomez rattling my teeth, it’s Rihanna.
“Danielle!” The shout comes from Jesse, who is sitting in a cluster of people to our far left. Of course, Danielle starts dragging me forward again, which has me feeling like her cute dog that doesn’t want to be walked. Correction: Her forgotten dog that doesn’t want to be walked, considering she lets go of me and runs to Jesse, giving him a big hug. I’m left with one open seat, smack between two football players: David Nelson and Ramon Miller. Both are hot. Both have dark hair, though Ramon’s is curly and excessive, and David’s is buzzed, understandably since I think I heard his dad is military. Okay, I know his dad is military because I’ve been crushing on him since he showed up at school six months ago.
I sit awkwardly between them, and stare desperately at Danielle, who just stuck her tongue down Jesse’s throat in a familiar way that says it’s not the first time. I need to leave, I think. I’ll just get up and leave, but then, what if she panics? What if she forgets that Jesse can’t be in on ‘the incident’? We can never tell anyone what happened. Why did I think this night was a good distraction?
“Hey there,” David says, piercing me with his blue eyes.
“Hi,” I say.
“You look like you want to crawl under a rock,” he comments.
“Do you know where I can find one?”
He laughs. He has a good laugh. A genuine laugh and since I don’t know many people who do anything genuinely, I feel that hard spot in my belly begin to soften. “I’ll help you find one if you take me with you.”
“You don’t belong under a rock,” I say.
He arches a brow. “And you do?”
“Belong,” I say. “No. But happier there right now, yes.”
“That hurts my feelings,” he says, holding his hand to his chest as if wounded.
“Oh. No. Sorry. I just meant…I don’t do parties.”
“Because your dad is a politician,” he assumes.
“He doesn’t exactly approve of events like this.”
He laughs again. “Events. Right.” His hand settles on my leg and
there is this funny sensation in my belly. “I’ll make sure nothing goes wrong. Okay?”
“No. No, I’ll make sure nothing goes wrong.”
He leans in and presses his cheek to mine, his lips by my ear. “Then I’ll give you extra protection.” I inhale, and he pulls back, suddenly no longer touching me.
My gaze lifts and I find Danielle looking at me with a big grin on her face. David hands me a shot glass and Jesse hands Danielle one. She nods, and I don’t know why, but I just do it. I down the liquid in what is my first drink ever. The next thing I know, David’s tongue is down my throat and when I blink, I’m not even sitting on the back patio anymore. I’m lying on a bed and he’s pulling his shirt off. And I don’t know how I got here. I don’t know what is happening. Panic rises with a sense of being out of control. I stand up and David reaches for me, but I shove at him.
“No!”
I dart around him and I must be drunk but I think my feet are too steady to be drunk. I run from the room and keep running down a hallway and to the stairs. I grab the railing, flashes of images in my mind. David offering me another drink. Me refusing. David kissing me and offering me yet another drink. I had refused. So why was I just on a bed and unaware of how I got there?
“Hailey!”
At the sound of David’s voice, I take off down the steps, not even sure where I’m going, but I don’t stop. I push through bodies and I’m on the porch in what feels like slow motion. I’m running down the stairs. I’m leaving. I have to get out of here.
***
I blink awake, cold, with a hard surface at my back. Gasping with the shock of disorientation, I sit up, the first orange and red of a new day in the darkness of the sky. I’m outside. I’m…I look around and realize that I’m on the bench of a picnic table. I’m in a park. I stand up and start to pace. I’m dressed in black jeans and a black sweater. The party. I went to the party. I dig my heels in. Did I get drunk? Wouldn’t I feel sick? I’m not sick. I’m not unsteady. My tiny purse I carry with me often is at my hip. I unzip it and pull out my phone. Ten calls from my mother. No messages from Danielle.
Her Submission Page 18