Scandal (A Dirty Money Novel)

by Isabella Starling

  I thought for a second and my eyes grew wide as I realized what she was talking about.

  "You don't think..." I started, letting my words hang in the air as Chloe nodded vigorously. "But she wouldn't..." I kept going.

  "Apparently she would," Chloe said, pointing at the hospital surroundings. "And she fucking did."

  I couldn't even say a word, I just stared at her as she uttered the next sentence.

  "Mercedes tried to kill me."

  Twenty-Four

  Chloe

  Asher stared at me, aghast. “Mercedes? She tried to poison you?”

  I nodded vehemently. “Her family owns Beau Monde, remember? She’s always at their main factory, helping her mom pick new fragrances to make. She has access to everything, including any of the chemicals they use. Like hexyl cinnamaldehyde. And she’s always known about my allergy! I broke out in a rash because of it before one of our school dances. We were even just talking about it a couple of months ago.”

  Asher shook his head slowly. “Chloe….this doesn’t make sense. Mercedes is your best friend. Why the hell would she try to kill you?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But it all makes sense.”

  A lot of things were suddenly dawning on me. The flashbacks I’d been having, Mercedes’ seeming unwillingness to believe me…it all made so much damn sense now.

  “Remember how I said I’d been starting to remember things about the night your mom died?” I asked.

  Asher nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  “And remember who dropped me off at the Fontenot Avenue house that same night?”

  Asher’s eyebrows shot up. “Shit. Yeah. It was Mercedes.”

  “Yep. She always made it sound like she only dropped me off out the front and then left. But what if she actually walked me inside? I was so drunk…surely she would’ve escorted me up to the doorstep, helped me unlock the house, and put me to bed upstairs. Any friend would do the same.”

  “So you think she helped you inside, then saw my mother in the house?”

  I nodded. “Yes. And then she must’ve pushed her down the stairs and stabbed her. After that, she realized she needed to stop me from seeing it when I woke up the next morning, so she woke me up and walked me out of the house—that’s why I have that hazy memory of stepping over your mom’s body—and dropped me off at my usual house. Then she took my phone and sent fake texts from me to her, to make it look like I told her I was getting a cab home. That explains why no cab driver ever came forward to say he picked me up from the murder house that same night. Because they never did. Mercedes took me home in the end.”

  “Shit…”

  “And ever since then, she’s been covering it up. When I finally started to remember bits and pieces of the night, she realized she needed to get rid of me.”

  Asher nodded thoughtfully. “So that night when you were attacked by the masked person…they were tall and blond so we assumed it was Alex. But it was her. She’s what, nearly six feet tall?”

  “Exactly. And that’s why she never spoke when she attacked me—she just shoved that note in my pocket. She wanted us to assume it was a guy attacking me in order to cover her tracks. Because usually an alleyway mugger would be male. No offense.”

  “None taken. You’re right; most violent offenders like that are men. But…”

  His voice trailed off, and I knew he was thinking the same thing as me. “But why?” I said, finishing his sentence for him.

  “Exactly. Why the fuck would she kill my mother? And so horribly, too,” he said through gritted teeth. “She threw a fucking pregnant woman down the stairs, then stabbed her seventeen times. Who the fuck could do such a thing?”

  I shook my head sadly, suddenly feeling awfully tired again. The shock of my discovery was still setting into my system, and I couldn’t fathom how and why my very best friend would do such a thing. How could I know someone for so long and not realize what lurked beneath the surface? Was I really that stupid and naïve? Or was she just that good at covering herself up?

  Now that I thought about it, there were so many things that pointed to her this entire time, and it just hadn’t occurred to me. Maybe I was like one of those ghosts in the Sixth Sense movie, who only ever saw what they wanted to see. I’d never wanted to think my best friend could ever commit such awful crimes, and so I’d glossed over all the things that pointed to her.

  But everything did.

  That night I got attacked in the alleyway near the park—she was literally the last person I’d texted, and I’d even told her that I was right near her house in that very park. That was how she’d found me, when this whole time we’d thought my assailant was someone else stalking me. It had taken her ten minutes to text me back with the lie about not being available—more than enough time to quickly get into a mask and hoodie and run down to the park area to find me.

  And the other day, when I suggested going to a hypnotherapist to try and regain my memories of that night—she’d reacted strangely. She’d been all for me visiting a therapist, but the minute I suggested something that might actually make me remember every single detail, she shut down and told me it was a bad idea. Now I knew why. She didn’t really want me remembering, because then the jig was up for her.

  But the question still remained—why?

  What was her motive for murdering Catalina that night? It was over a year ago, when she was still sixteen. What on earth could possess a girl of that age to savagely murder a woman? As far as I knew, she didn’t even know Catalina before that night.

  “I just don’t get it,” Asher said again. “Why?”

  I didn’t reply this time. He knew about as much as I did, which was nothing. As far as I could see, she had zero motive to kill Asher’s mother that night.

  My hospital door was still standing open from when Dr. O’Halloran had just left, and as I sat there lost in my own thoughts, I heard a doctor shouting just outside. “Take her upstairs now!” she was saying, ostensibly to a nurse or orderly. A wheelchair holding a heavily pregnant woman flashed past the doorway, pushed by the same doctor who was talking. “She’s due to have twins in four weeks, but one of the babies is in distress. We need to operate now!”

  A chill ran down my spine, and I slowly turned to Asher as the final puzzle piece fell into place in my mind. “Holy shit,” I whispered.

  “What?” he asked, reaching out and squeezing my hand.

  “Twins,” I said.

  He furrowed his brows. “What?”

  “Twins,” I repeated. “That’s it! There were twins!”

  Twenty-Five

  Asher

  "What are you talking about?" I stared at Chloe with my eyes wide open.

  I had no idea what she meant by twins, but when they wheeled that woman past the room, it was as if she'd had a fucking epiphany. She looked at me with her eyes fervent and begging me to understand what she was trying to say.

  "Don't you see?" she asked. "There were two babies, Asher."

  "Two babies?" I shook my head and rubbed my temples, trying to understand this maze we'd found ourselves in. "You have to explain Chloe, please."

  She scooted closer on the hospital bed and took my hand in hers, giving me an insistent look.

  "When your mom came home to Briarwood," she started. "You know, all those years ago... She had the baby, right?"

  "Right," I repeated uncertainly.

  "But what if," Chloe went on. "What if there wasn't just one baby? What if there were two?"

  "Twins?" I asked, raising an eyebrow at her. "You mean I have two brothers?"

  "No." Chloe shook her head impatiently. "I mean Alex is your half-brother... And Mercedes is your half-sister."

  She waited for it all to sink in and I just stared at her, completely unable to comprehend what she was saying. This was all so crazy, a jumbled fucking mess in my head where my thoughts should've been. I needed her to go on, and I begged her to continue. She kept talking.

  "Think about it," she sai
d. "They're both super tall. Both have blue eyes and they're both naturally blonde..." She scoffed, shaking her head. "Mercedes even mentioned it once, the hair...and the resemblance between them. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but now it all makes sense. Plus, isn't Alex's birthday on Christmas Day?"

  "Yes, I guess so," I muttered, still not completely convinced.

  "Well, guess when Mercedes' is," she said softly, and I groaned.

  "Christmas," I said, and Chloe nodded right away. "But still, my dad made it so clear that there was only one baby. Why would he hide the fact that there were twins from us?"

  "I don't know," Chloe said, chewing her bottom lip.

  Even in the fucked up situation we were in, she was so fucking beautiful. So vulnerable in that hospital bed as she chewed on her lips and tried to find an answer. My heart swelled with all the feelings I had for her, ones I'd tried to repress hard for the past few weeks.

  "Well, maybe..." Chloe finally started talking again. "Maybe he said there was just one kid to protect the families. You know Mercedes' family is really rich, right?"

  "Yeah," I muttered.

  That wasn't proving much, though. Almost everyone in Claremont Bay was loaded.

  "Well, maybe they didn't want anyone to know the baby—Mercedes—was adopted," Chloe suggested. "Maybe they wanted to protect her as well as their reputation, and pretend she was their kid all along. You know some families do that."

  "Yeah, I guess that makes sense," I admitted, my voice soft. "Maybe my dad was just trying to protect their privacy, so he made it sound like there was only one baby."

  "Probably." Chloe nodded. "Which would mean..."

  She leaned back on the stack of pillows on her bed, sighing deeply and running her hands through her beautiful dark hair. "It would mean we were right all along... it was the baby who killed your mother—all grown up and malicious. But it wasn't Alex. It was his sister. And he probably never even knew about her."

  I slumped back in my chair as I considered this. It was almost impossible to believe this was all real—after all, it sounded like a fucking thriller book with all the twists and turns in the story. But the more I thought about it, the more the whole thing made sense.

  "It wasn't Alex," I replied. "It was the twin..."

  We sat there in silence for a little while, trying to come to terms with what we'd just realized. My head was pounding and I felt squeamish at the thought of it all being true. Knowing that I was possibly related to a killer made me want to be sick. I didn't even know I had a half-brother until a little while ago, but throw a crazy, messed up sister to the mix and you really had a party.

  I groaned inwardly.

  "We only knew half the story," Chloe whispered. "Even when we thought we knew everything...we only knew half of it."

  "I need to call my dad," I said, pulling my phone from my pocket.

  I needed to know if the story was true. I had to know if Chloe's theory was right.

  As I made my way out of the room, her hand gently brushed against mine and I stopped in my tracks. No matter what, Chloe had this effect on me, her touch almost electric when our skin came into contact.

  "Are you okay?" she asked me gently, and I looked down into her worried eyes.

  What the hell was I supposed to tell her? After the theory she'd just concocted, there was no way I'd ever be okay again. But at the same time, I couldn't lie to her either. I had to tell her the truth, as painful as it was.

  "It's a lot to take," I muttered, and she squeezed my hand gently.

  "It'll be okay," she said. "We'll sort through all this together. I promise you, we'll both be fine, and I'll make sure you're okay after all this."

  I believed her. I nodded and brushed a kiss against her cheek.

  It still didn't make what I had to do any easier.

  I stepped outside into the hallway but left the door of Chloe's room ajar. I couldn't risk leaving her alone now—too much was at stake, and I'd already almost lost her once.

  I called my dad and listened to the phone ring one too many times until he finally picked up.

  "How is she?" was his first question, and I grinned at the worry in his voice.

  He really was treating Chloe as part of the family these days.

  My smile faded when I realized that would only make things more difficult for us when we finally decided to come clean about our relationship.

  "She's feeling fine," I told him. "But there's something we need to talk about. I'll explain everything in a little bit once you come back."

  "All right," he said.

  "Dad?" I waited for him to answer, half-expecting to hear the dial tone again.

  "Yeah?"

  "I need to know something else very important," I said. "Something about that time seventeen years ago when Mom had the kid in our attic."

  My father cleared his throat awkwardly, saying, "I don't think this is the best time, Asher."

  "Please," I said. "I need to know now."

  There was a small pause, and then he finally sighed. "Fine. What is it?"

  "I need to know if there was another baby," I said. "I need to know if Mom had twins that night."

  Another sigh before a long pause, then, finally, "Yes. I didn't want to split the babies up, but no one would take both.”

  My heart stopped for a second, but I managed to regain my composure. "Why didn't you tell us?"

  "Out of respect for the family," he admitted. "They wanted to keep it under wraps. Some people are private about adoptions like that. I was sworn to secrecy, and I wanted to respect that. It didn’t seem necessary to tell you all that there were two babies resulting from that time."

  "One last thing," I added, swallowing hard.

  The next question was the hardest, and I was already dreading it.

  "The family that adopted the baby," I began.

  My father's voice was small as he said, "A little girl. It was a little girl."

  It was almost the final nail in the coffin and I leaned against the wall as I asked the last question. "Was it the Belmonts?"

  I heard his sharp intake of breath through the phone, and then, finally, he responded.

  "Asher," he said. "How the hell did you know that?"

  Twenty-Six

  Chloe

  Asher stepped back into my room without another word. His face was ashen.

  “What is it?” I asked. “Were we right?”

  He nodded. “Dad confirmed it. My mom had twins that Christmas, nearly eighteen years ago.”

  My stomach lurched. “I knew it,” I said softly. I didn’t want to be right about this, but deep down, I’d known the truth since the second Dr. O’Halloran told me what I’d been poisoned with. There was just no one else who could’ve done it.

  “When he helped adopt the babies out, he didn’t want to split them up seeing as they were siblings, but no one would take both. So Alex’s family took him, and the Belmonts took Mercedes. They didn’t want anyone to know she wasn’t hers, so they kept it all very hush-hush and asked my father to never mention it to anyone. When he told us about why you found all that old blood up in the attic, he only told us a half truth. Because all he really needed to say to explain it all was that my mother was pregnant back then and that he helped the child out as best he could, and it wasn’t necessary to tell us that she actually had twins. So he didn’t. He was just respecting the Belmont’s wishes for no one to know.”

  “And he couldn’t have known how important it was for us to know the truth. He didn’t know we were hunting for your mother’s real murderer, because as far as he knows, my father did it.”

  “Exactly.”

  “At least we know now,” I said. “And now we have a motive. We know why Mercedes killed your mother. Catalina was her mother too. She must’ve found out she was abandoned as a baby. I don’t know how, but she did. And I guess when she saw your mom at the house that night, she flew into a rage about it.”

  Asher shook his head, eyes darkening.
“I can’t believe it. I don’t just have a secret brother. A secret sister as well. A secret psychopathic sister, no less.”

  I stroked his hand with my index finger. “I’m so sorry, Asher,” I said softly.

  “You don’t need to be sorry,” he said, a hard look in his eyes. “You did nothing wrong.”

  “If I hadn’t been so drunk that night….she would’ve never seen your mother at the house when she took me there. Or maybe I would’ve remembered sooner. It’s my fault my father is in prison, and it’s my fault your mom is gone.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Chloe. If Mercedes was that angry at my mother, she would’ve likely done something sooner or later anyway. You couldn’t have known.”

  “I guess,” I murmured. I still felt awful.

  “You really should’ve told the doctor as soon as he told us what you were poisoned with,” Asher continued. “He said he was going to contact the police about it all. They need to know about this.”

  “I know. I was just in shock. I didn’t want to believe it could really be her.”

  “Well, it is,” he replied. “It has to be.”

  “Maybe you should go and find him and tell him that we have an idea of who it is, and he can call the cops back and tell them that too.”

  He looked uncertain. “That’s a good idea, but I don’t want to leave you alone. We should just call him back in here.”

  “I’ll be okay being alone for five minutes. I promise. And I’m feeling a bit weak, so maybe you could grab me a snack from a vending machine while you’re out there?” I asked.

  He kissed the top of my head. “All right, I’ll head out. I won’t be long. And remember, there’s a call button right there,” he said, pointing to my left. “If anything happens while I’m gone—anything at all—press it, and the nurses will come running. But I shouldn’t be gone more than five minutes.”

  I smiled at him as he ducked out of the room, and then I settled back into my bed and rolled over, mulling over everything as I tried to ignore the pit in my stomach. My heart felt like it was breaking from all the stress and betrayal, and I couldn’t stop seeing Mercedes’ face in my mind’s eye. Her pretty blue eyes had always flashed with mirth and happiness whenever we were together, and there wasn’t a single moment I’d ever suspected she was anything other than my best friend.