Secrets & Sin: A MFM Romance

by Callahan, Kelli

  “I still think it would be cheaper to just get some stuff from the Halloween store. We don’t need anything fancy.” I put the truck in park and looked over at Dante.

  “No, if we want the Overlook Mansion to get the kind of attention we’re looking for, we need something that they don’t see on the shelf. I thought a small town store might have some decent stuff, but clearly they’re just as bad as the box stores.” Dante grumbled and opened the passenger side door.

  That’s what I get for partnering up with an artist. Everything has to be perfect or his ego can’t handle it.

  3

  Dante

  Shane and I made a good team when it came to putting our special touch on flipping houses. He was a visionary and I was an artist. He knew what would sell, and I knew how to bring those visions to life. His vision had been a little cloudy since his divorce though, and he was trying to cut corners. If the Overlook Mansion was going to be our masterpiece, we had to make sure everything was as close to perfect as it could be. Shane always considered my neurotic need for perfection to be driven by my ego, but there was more to it than that. I took pride in everything I did, even something as simple as Halloween decorations for the front yard. Those pictures were going to be on our website until we sold the mansion, and I wanted them to be a good reflection of what we had in mind for the mansion.

  “Man, this is going to cost too much.” Shane looked at the stack of supplies on my flatbed cart.

  “We got the mansion for a hundred grand less than we planned to spend and you already said that money is going in the budget.” I motioned to the supplies with my hand. “This will get buyers salivating over the finished product.”

  “Yeah… I guess so.” Shane exhaled sharply and followed me towards the register.

  If you weren’t so fucking annoyed by the world right now, you would see that too.

  What Shane really needed was a distraction from the hole in his heart that his ex-wife left when she trampled across it in her designer heels. I knew the marriage was a huge mistake, but he wouldn’t listen to me. His ex-wife came from a wealthy family and she was used to being spoiled. Shane’s version of spoiling a woman was taking her out for a cheap steak instead of fast food. They were like oil and vinegar. I had a little hope when I saw him talking to Brianna and Jackie at the Halloween shop. He looked like the guy I remembered from college that would make all the girls swoon when he walked by in a tight t-shirt. Brianna and Jackie were certainly eating out of his hand, but, of course, I had to ruin it.

  It certainly wasn’t my intention, but I saw something in Brianna’s beautiful honey colored eyes that called out to me. There was a flicker—the kind I had seen before when a woman was on her knees and ready to please in every way possible. I had a very commanding presence, one that I had to tone down with some women, but not one like Brianna. She was so naturally submissive that she withered when she saw me. I thought Shane was well on his way to convincing them to come hang out with us on Halloween until I realized that Jackie was getting nervous. I tried to dial things back, but the damage was done. Even my dominant personality couldn’t lure Brianna back in once Jackie brushed us off.

  * * *

  Two days later

  “I’ll admit, you’ve made this place look way better than I imagined it would when we were sitting on a stack of plywood and paint.” Shane put his hands on his hips as he looked at the decorations.

  “I told you that store-bought stuff is shit.” I smiled and put my paintbrush on top of the bucket. “All right, let’s get some lunch. I’m fucking starving.”

  “Eat in or head to town?” Shane turned his head towards me.

  “Let’s go to that diner we ate at the first day. It’s pretty close.” I looked at him and nodded.

  “Sounds good.” Shane dug into his pocket for his keys and started walking towards the truck.

  The Halloween decorations took us away from working on the house for a couple of days, but I still believed the payoff would be worth it. Plus, any excuse to pick up a paint brush was good enough for me. Painting felt more like a hobby than work, even when I was using my talent to paint wooden tombstones and pumpkins. I didn’t get much time to devote to actual artwork anymore. Most of my creativity went into the houses we flipped. It might not have been exactly what I imagined when I wanted to become an artist, but it was certainly better than starving. That was the road I was headed down before Shane convinced me to help him spend one of my summer breaks flipping a house. I had no idea that his vision was a lot different than what we saw on television, and after we realized how much money we could make, we started making plans to do it full time after graduation.

  “All right, so we’ll take some pictures tonight when it’s getting dark, and get them online tomorrow.” Shane nodded as he drove. “I bet we’ll have a few more interested parties before Halloween.”

  “It’s nice not to have the stress we had ten years ago when we flipped our first house.” I chuckled and looked out the window. “I was sure you were going to end up with a dump that you couldn’t do a damn thing with.”

  “I almost did. It was all that crazy stuff you did that sold it. What did they call it? Unique?” He laughed and shook his head.

  Shane and I were college roommates, so we spent a lot of time together, but after that summer we might as well have been brothers. Shane was the blue-collar kid on a scholarship because he got good grades and I was the crazy artist that liked to wear too much black. After that summer, we discovered that we had a few more similar tastes—especially when it came to girls. Our tastes were so similar that we had shared a few girls over the years before he got married. Once he was married and I was forced to pick up girls on my own, I delved further into my hunger for dominance while he played the good husband to a bitch. Shane was just starting to explore his own dark fantasies when he met the girl of his supposed dreams. She was so vanilla that she didn’t even like getting spanked, much less anything else remotely kinky.

  But now we’re both single, and I intend to find a girl that helps him remember who he was before that bitch stifled his soul.

  4

  Brianna

  “What?” I stared at Jackie with a horrified expression on my face. “It’s our last Halloween together! Your boss can’t make you work that night!”

  “It fucking sucks!” Jackie exhaled sharply. “I even tried to bluff. I threatened to quit if he made me work and he said I wouldn’t have to—he would just fire me.”

  “That’s insane! It’s just one night—the most important night. What if you call in sick?” I grabbed Jackie’s hand and gave her my saddest stare.

  “I can’t risk it.” Jackie shook her head back and forth. “I need my job if I’m going to save up money and go to school. You know how hard it is to find work in Bakersfield.”

  “Yeah.” I sighed and nodded. “Okay, well then, let’s celebrate early or something? We don’t have to give away candy at the church, but we could just hang out.”

  “That sounds good, but I’m working all week. Maybe we could get together over the weekend?” Jackie forced a smile, but I saw the heartbreak resonating from her eyes.

  “Okay.” I let go of her hand and nodded. “We’ll watch scary movies like the old days—you could even spend the night!”

  “It has been a while since we’ve done that, hasn’t it?” Her smile got a little wider. “Okay, we’ll do it up like the old days with so much soda and popcorn we nearly pee our pants when something scary comes on!”

  “Lights off—blinds closed. We’ll even jump when we hear the wind!” I felt a little bit of my excitement return.

  We did our best to make something good out of a bad situation, but both of us knew how much it really did suck to miss our last Halloween together. It was another broken tradition, and a sign that our childhood truly was over. We had been talking about Halloween for so long that everything revolved around that night. I felt lost with my plans canceled. I could still go to the church
and hand out candy, but it wouldn’t be the same without Jackie. There were a few other events in town, but nothing that I cared to go to. All of the fun stuff usually involved the two of us. It had been that way since we were kids. That was where my memories were—and that was where they would stay. The weight of leaving Bakersfield suddenly hung around my neck like an albatross. The world was waiting on me, but leaving the past behind was going to hurt.

  * * *

  “Don’t forget you’re supposed to pick up candy on your way home from school today. The good stuff will be gone if you wait until the weekend.” My mother walked to the kitchen door as I packed my bag to leave for my first class.

  “Yeah, I’ll grab some at the supermarket.” I nodded and smiled. “Maybe we should just give out candy in the neighborhood this year instead of going to the church.”

  “Last time we tried that, we only had a few kids come back. Then your father spent the next two months gorging on candy every night.” She chuckled and waved off my suggestion. “No, if we hand out candy at church, we’ll be back home and in bed by nine.”

  “Okay.” I nodded and picked up my bag.

  I left for school and drove in silence, thinking about life—especially what was going to happen when I got to California in January. It was supposed to be the beginning of my dreams, but I was getting cold feet about leaving Bakersfield. Being a writer had been my dream for so long, and I finally had a real opportunity to make the kind of connections that could one day land me a job. If I wanted to chase my dreams, the first step was going to be the hardest. It was easier to plan that sort of thing when it felt like it would never come, but that was no longer the case. I had everything I wanted in front of me if I could get out of my own head. I continued thinking about it as I sat through my classes, and left the radio off on the way home with my head still locked in turmoil. I almost forgot to buy candy, but a Halloween decoration on the corner of Main Street reminded me that I had another stop to make.

  “Are you feeding an army this Halloween, Brianna?” The white haired clerk that had been working the same register since I was a little girl picked up the first bag and scanned it.

  “No, Mr. Smith.” I shook my head and laughed. “We’re volunteering at the church again this year, and we’ll get more kids than normal since it’s Wednesday.”

  “Ah yes. Everyone will be going to church anyway.” He nodded in understanding.

  “What’s the gossip?” I motioned towards three women that had paused their shopping and seemed to be locked in conversation.

  “Oh, you haven’t heard about the Overlook Mansion?” He picked up another bag and scanned it.

  “Uh—oh, yeah. I heard someone bought it.” I nodded and shrugged.

  “Yeah, but that was last week’s gossip. This week everyone is talking about all the Halloween decorations they put up.” He chuckled and grabbed another bag. “You should drive by there and check them out.”

  I hadn’t completely forgotten my brief encounter with Shane and Dante, especially Dante’s mesmerizing eyes. I dismissed their invitation because I was supposed to be spending the holiday with Jackie. It was crazy anyway—me, alone with two guys on Halloween. If they did want something from me, they would be quickly disappointed when they found out I was a virgin. I was curious to see what kind of decorations had caused people to talk about them, so I decided that a quick drive-by wouldn’t hurt. It would at least take my mind off everything else that was nagging me, and I loved it when people went all out for Halloween. I drove to the edge of town, and turned down the street that would take me past the old mansion.

  I wonder why Shane and Dante bought that place to begin with? It can’t be worth very much money and it needs tons of work.

  Overlook Mansion had been empty since before I was born. The family that owned it left Bakersfield, but were never able to find a buyer for such an extravagant mansion in a small town. According to my parents, the family had so much money that they just gave up on trying to sell it once they moved away. The years of neglect had left it looking fairly spooky, and that led to all sorts of scary stories about the place being haunted. My parents said some shady stuff went on there when the family still lived in Bakersfield, and called their wealth blood money. That was long before my time and my parents were just telling second hand stories, so I wasn’t sure how much of it was actually true.

  “Wow, how did they do all this? It looks handmade.” I stared out my window as I got closer.

  Shane and Dante were definitely creative. The front part of the house had a rather authentic looking graveyard. Once I got closer, I could see that they were made of wood, but they were painted in such a way that they looked like stone. They even put a mound of dirt over some of the graves to make them look fresh. There was a pumpkin patch near the house that had scary images painted on all the pumpkins in vibrant colors, along with several scarecrows. It looked phenomenal, especially with the Gothic mansion as a backdrop. What I didn’t see was any sign of the decorations they were looking at in the store, which suggested there might be even more stuff inside. I was curious, but not curious enough to actually go knock on the door. As it turned out, that wasn’t an issue. Before I could put my foot on the accelerator and drive away, the front door opened, and I saw Dante step out onto the porch.

  Oh god, he saw me.

  Dante didn’t hesitate for a moment when he looked in my direction. He started walking towards my car with a purpose and I felt my heart thumping in my chest. There was a part of me that just wanted to press on the gas and drive away, but when I saw his onyx colored eyes, I felt compelled to stay. He was dirtier than when I saw him in the store, with a black sleeveless t-shirt that showed even more of his tattoos and a pair of faded blue jeans. He was a walking wet dream even without his mesmerizing eyes. When he got close to my car, I rolled down the passenger side window, realizing that I had no choice but to engage in conversation.

  “You’re early.” Dante leaned down and looked in my window. “It isn’t Halloween yet.”

  “I already told you—I have plans.” That was a lie at that point, but I wasn’t ready to admit that quite yet. “Your decorations are causing quite a stir in town. I figured I’d come up here and see what the fuss was about.”

  “Well, you’re already here, at least get out of the car and come inside.” He patted the side of my window and motioned with his hand.

  This is a bad idea. No, this is the worst idea. I need Jackie to talk me out of it. Why is my hand already moving towards the door?

  “You made all this stuff?” I stepped out of my car apprehensively.

  “Yep—well, I painted it. Shane did most of the cutting.” Dante walked over to one of the tombstones. “Nothing but wood under the paint.”

  “You guys must really like Halloween.” I walked over and looked at the fake tombstone.

  “No, it’s not quite that.” Dante chuckled and motioned with his hand again. “Come on inside, let me show you the rest of the work we’re doing.”

  Am I really about to walk into this house all by myself? What if these guys really do try to roofie me…

  “I should probably get going.” I shook my head back and forth. “You know this place is supposed to be haunted, right?”

  “That’s nonsense.” Dante laughed. “And if there are any ghosts in there, we’ll make too much noise for them to stick around very long.”

  “What are you doing here, anyway? Why did you buy this place?” I looked up at the Gothic exterior and back to Dante.

  “Shane and I flip houses. We buy old houses nobody wants and turn them into works of art.” Dante put his hands on his hips. “Why else would anyone buy a place like this?”

  “Oh.” I blinked in surprise.

  “Yeah, we’ve been doing this for years. You can Google us if you want.” He chuckled under his breath. “You really don’t want to come inside?”

  Okay, I guess that does make sense. That definitely explains all the tools on the porch.
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br />   “Sure, why not.” I smiled and nodded. “I’ve always wanted to see what this place looks like on the inside.”

  5

  Dante

  “Hey, Shane! Guess who I found wandering around outside looking at the decorations.” I walked into the house and held the door for Brianna.

  “Who?” Shane walked into the main part of the foyer and then his eyes lit up. “Brianna! Hey, good to see you again.”

  “Hey there.” Brianna smiled and waved.

  “Shane, why don’t you pour a few glasses of iced tea, and I’ll give Brianna a quick tour.” I motioned to the living room.

  The first few days Shane and I spent in the mansion was devoted entirely to cleaning up trash left behind by squatters and scrubbing down the first few rooms we would be working in. Luckily, we had a truck full of industrial equipment to make the tasks easier than they would have been if we were trying to do it by hand. The family that lived there before had done very little to maintain the place, so there were broken windows and busted doors that needed a lot of repair. Anything that might have been valuable at some point had been looted, but they didn’t run off with any of the furniture. None of it was in very good shape, but it would do until we were able to figure out an alternative.

  “This place isn’t as scary as I always imagined.” Brianna looked around the house and smiled.

  “Well you haven’t seen the basement yet. That’s where we kill all the beautiful young women we lure into our lair.” I narrowed my eyes and smiled.