“So, at a guess, he would not tell Damien the truth. He would keep up the lie about us.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“Have you been able to make contact with the Locke twins?”
“No. They went back to Dallas before I could. Damien did say that they would be back here within the following three weeks for the final paperwork. I’ll make sure I catch them then.
Damien walked in just before lunch, his expression inscrutably hard. Ashton approached him.
“This must have been one hell of a shock to you. Did you manage to speak with him?”
“Yes. He picked up a hitch hiker. He was already drunk and they drank some more while driving. He saw an opportunity to get out of his ‘hellish’ life. According to him the man was already dead, so he put his ring on his finger and just escaped from the car when one of the life power cables lit the leaking fuel and the car exploded.”
“What hellish life?
“Jealousy. He did it out of jealousy. He made it clear he did not want to see our parents. Apparently would not be able to stand their crying and joy. He has changed so much. I don’t know him anymore.”
“Did you ever? And me … did you ask him about me …”
His rigid jaw and flashing eyes were answer enough and Amber sighed. Ashton cursed and turned to Damien.
“Baring witness to how low he could sink and kidnap his own brother’s daughter, probably killed another human being … you’re telling me that is the one thing you are sure he did not lie about?”
“Where is Zoey?”
“Taking a nap. She does not seem to be too traumatized.”
“The three that took her are small time crooks. They did not even lock her in a room. They played video games with her the whole time. Paul did not have too much time to scare her. As a matter of fact she ripped into him quite effectively.”
Damien turned and walked upstairs.
“I am going to take a nap myself. Thanks for staying Ash. I appreciate it.”
Ashton left soon after and Amber walked up to their bedroom. Damien was laying on his back, fully dressed. His face was turned in her direction and completely relaxed in his sleep. The lines in his face soft and he appeared at peace. His arm was flung over his head and the other rested on his stomach.
Amber kicked her shoes off and climbed on the bed and lowered her against Damien’s side. He was awake immediately and stiffened as if readying to get up from the bed. Amber wrapped her arm all the way around him and stuck her hand in beneath his far shoulder.
“Please Damien, I need you to hold me … please just hold me!”
For long moments he did not move, then he lowered his arm and pulled her closer to his side and they both fell asleep soon after.
Zoey insisted on going back to school on the Monday morning. Damien assisted the school financially to setup increased and proper security measures at the school. Quite a few of the other parents did the same. Their children’s safety of utmost concern to them all.
They waved her goodbye at the jetty and stood watching until the boat disappeared in the distance. Amber wrung her hands in front of her. She speared a glance at Damien.
“I want to go and see Paul.”
“No!”
“Please Damien. I need to get him to tell you the truth!”
“You are not going to see him, Amber and that is not negotiable!”
“Either you go with me or I ask Ashton to take me.”
“I don’t want you near him, Amber. I nearly killed him the other day. Chances are I might just do that if I see you with him.”
“I only want to talk to him! With you there!”
“You should take her, Damien.”
They swung around and watched Ashton walk closer. Damien’s lips thinned.
“What do you know about what happened?”
“No Ashton.”
“Yes, it has been too long and you’re taking all the pain and punishment for what? So their memory of their dearly departed son remain intact.”
“One of you better start talking!”
“Why don’t we start by going for a visit to your brother, Damien?”
“If you touch him, I’ll kill the both of you!” Damien warned Amber.
“Don’t worry … I would not touch him with a ten foot pole.”
Damien phoned Sheldon first and then they were on their way. Damien brooded the whole way there and did not say a word. He ushered them inside and Sheldon took them to the one interrogation room where Paul was. He paled visibly when Amber and Ashton walked in behind Damien.
Damien noticed it too and his eyes narrowed on his brother. His voice when he spoke was rough and harsh.
So, Paul … are you not going to greet your long lost lover?”
He glowered at Damien and then Ashton, but avoided looking directly at Amber. She walked closer and sat down on the chair in front of him. His hands were fisted where he was handcuffed to the table.
“Why can’t you look me in the eyes, Paul?”
“What do you want?”
“The truth!”
“What truth? You know as well as I do I have been telling the truth.”
“Enlighten me any way.”
“That you seduced me as soon as Damien left and we were a sexually active couple after that and at your Prom spent the whole night with me.”
“That is funny, Paul. I lived at home during that time. Amber did not go out with you once.” Ashton interceded, getting angrier by the minute.
“We always met in secret.”
“Where? In her room?”
“What the hell do you mean?”
“I mean she was so devastated that Damien stopped calling her and literally disappeared that she never left the house. So maybe you should rethink your version of the truth!”
Damien had turned to stone. Paul gave a cruel laugh. He looked at Damien.
“My dear brother knows the truth. You saw the pictures and the video. Who do you think is telling the truth?” He raised his eyebrow at Damien. His expression did not change.
Amber sighed and got up, her shoulders slumped. She turned and walked out of the room. An annoyed Ashton on her heels.
“Why are you giving up? We both know he is lying, Amber!”
“Do we? I can’t remember what happened and for how long I was there! Who knows what he did or didn’t do!”
Damien walked through the door and just kept walking. Amber realized this episode just strengthened Paul’s lies. They followed him and got into his SUV.
“Do you still have those photos and video, Damien?” Ashton asked with a tight voice.
“Yes.”
Amber gasped. Why would he keep those for all these years?
“Will you show them to us?”
“You are welcome to them. They are somewhere in a wooden box in one of the cupboards in my study.”
Damien waited until they both got out of the car.
“I am going to the office. I don’t know what time I will be back.”
Amber stared after the disappearing car, her heart in her shoes. Ashton took her hand and pulled her with him to the study.
“I’ll start here, you start there.”
“I … what is the use, Ashton. What if he took these photos that weekend?”
“Start looking, Amber! We will get to the bottom of this. Come hell or high water!”
They found the box stuffed right at the back of one of the corner cupboards. Ashton handed it to Amber. She sat on the floor and opened the box and gasped.
“Oh my God!”
She flipped through picture after picture. All of them her, naked and in one or the other sexual position with a naked Paul. Some of them were so sickening she nearly vomited.
“No, no, no! I would not have done this! I could not have!”
Ashton grabbed them from her listless fingers and scanned them. The further he went the slower he scanned. Then he started again and the frown between his eyes grew deepe
r.
“What is it Ash? What do you see?”
“Her breasts.”
“Yeah, they are quite difficult to miss!”
“And definitely not yours! Amber I don’t profess to know what you look like naked past the age of four, but you were naked when I found you with Paul. The woman on these photos has small areolas and nipples, and they’re very dark. You have large nipples and much lighter in color.”
She winced at his forwardness, but then what he said sank in and she grabbed the photos from his hands. She paged through them and what he said was true. Her face was on every one of the photos, but the body attached to it, was not hers.
The breasts were the biggest giveaway, they were probably two cup sizes smaller than hers and sagging slightly. Hers to this day were still firm and did not sag.
“The belly button, mine is small and hers is big and pops outward. Her toes are long and thin … I have short toes! And look at this photo!”
Amber pointed to the bottom of the left breast and it was free of any marks.
“Your birthmark! There is nothing! Good God Amber! It is not you on these photos! They doctored the photos!”
“The video. How do you doctor a video?”
“Not sure, but let’s go and watch.”
“Just looking at these photos, I am not so sure I have the stomach for it!”
“We are nearly there, Amber. Don’t back down now!”
They went to the den and he loaded the cd in the video player. Amber turned to stone when it started with her on the bed. This time it was her, the birthmark under her breast clearly visible with the shot that was taken from the foot end of the bed. The shot went all the way over her body. Her one hand was flung over her head and the other rested beside her. Her eyes were half lidded and she looked … sensual.
She whimpered when Paul came into the shot, caressing her legs, and kneaded her breasts. She laid there, not responding and no reaction whatsoever from her.
“I can’t look at this Ash!”
The room went dark for a moment and a few curses could be heard, then the light was back on and this time her arms and legs were entangled with Paul’s. Her face was turned away and only her hair was visible. The shot moved to their legs and the pair switched place and Amber shook her head. No, just not that! She watched in horror when she moved down Paul’s body kissing and caressing him. Her face still hidden as the shot moved to the side to clearly show her taking him into her mouth, licking and sucking his shaft deep. Her hands folded over the base of his shaft and Amber gasped.
“That’s not me! It might have been me right at the beginning, but that is not me! Look at her hands, Ashton! She has big hands, big fingernails. I have small hands and I have never taken this bracelet off since Damien gave it to me. There is no bracelet on her wrist! And her back!”
“You have a ten centimeter puffed and pinkish scar just below your shoulder blade from where you fell on a piece of glass when you were sixteen!”
“I still have it! Oh thank, God! He did lie and he is still lying!”
“Now what? How do we get Damien to believe this? And even if he does this, there is still your prom night and he claimed you stayed the night.”
“Was the Locke twins his only friends? Who was that blonde guy he always hanged out with? If I remember correctly they went everywhere together.”
“James Stuart. He still lives in Miami. He became a doctor and has consulting rooms just a small distance from here. I am going to see if I can find him.”
Zoey was already asleep by the time Damien came home. He abruptly told Amber he already ate and was going to bed. Amber sighed and followed him a short while later. He had just got into bed when she walked in with the wooden box in her hands. He froze and his lips flattened into a straight line.
“How many times have you looked at these?”
“Once … and it was once too many.”
“I need you to look at them again.”
“No.”
“Please Damien!”
“I do not need to look at them to know what I will see! Each and every one of them is ingrained in my memory!”
“Very well.”
Amber placed the box on the bed and removed the photos and spread them out on the bed. Damien ignored them and glowered at her. His fury enough to incinerate her where she stood. She kicked her shoes off and pulled her sundress over her head and flung it to the chair in the corner, leaving on her flimsy lace panties. She turned to face him and nearly ran at the look of murder in his eyes. Her eyes pleaded with him.
“Please, Honey! Look at them and then look at me.”
“What purpose would there be Amber?”
“Please, just do this for me … for us!” His eyes lowered and he glared at the photos, glancing at them briefly.
“No! You have to look at them! Really look at them and then look at me!”
He sighed, closed his eyes and then did as she asked. He picked them up and paged through them. Fast at first, then he glanced at her and continued slowly, looking at the detail on each photo.
“It’s your face, but it is not your body! The breasts … feet and toes. It is not you! Here … no birthmark. They doctored the photos.”
“He knew you would not look at it intensely. Your anger and hate would not let you.”
“The video?” His voice was harsh.
“The beginning of it is me … but then … very well.”
She resignedly loaded the cd in the player in their room and he crumbled the one photo in his hand when he watched Paul caress her body.
“That is most definitely you.”
“Yes … no watch … there! Watch closely, please!”
He did and noticed everything they did and called it out as he noticed it. His eyes dropped to her wrist.
“You’re still wearing the bracelet I gave you for our six month anniversary.”
“I never took it off.”
“How could one person be so evil! My own brother! There is still that one night you spent with him, Amber.”
“No, that is where this video started.” She rewound the tape and went to sit on the bed.
“Look at my face, my eyes, my fingers …”
“You look … drugged. He drugged you?”
“He must have. To this day I cannot remember anything that happened that night. All I know is I woke up and still could not move. Ashton found me like that. Paul was passed out next to me. Ashton had to carry me out and I only recovered my body functions late that night!”
“That’s why you thought Zoey might be his.”
She nodded and switched the recorder off and removed the cd. She gathered all the photos and replaced everything back in the box.
“I still pray that he did not touch me any further than what is on that tape, but I don’t know. I just don’t know!”
Damien swiped a tired hand over his face. He looked at Amber, the most beautiful and perfect woman in his eyes. The only one to ever capture his heart, his soul. That he learnt to hate and loath for eleven years … and for what? His demented brother’s jealousy. Who did not care whom he used and hurt in the process.
On the other hand what did it say about him? He believed everything his brother said even before he showed him the photos and the video. Because he knew about her birthmarks … could describe them in detail! Granted he was young himself, but matured enough to have known better. If only his bruised ego did not take over, he should have challenged the two of them about the supposed betrayal – instead he learnt to hate and ran to Russia to lick his wounds. He shook his head.
“I am so tired, Amber. So goddamned tired of this. I find it very hard to accept that everything I was made to believe was a lie … from beginning to the end.”
“But you just saw …”
“That is not what I meant, Beautiful. It’s the betrayal of my own brother, my own betrayal and ego over you, all the years … lost … just lost …”
He got up from the bed an
d pulled a pair of baggy pants and tee-shirt on with sneakers. He headed to the door. He turned to her, his eyes inscrutable once again.
“I need to get out of here. I need to think.”
He turned and took two steps before he stopped and looked at her over his shoulder.
“I am sorry, Amber. I wish I could undo everything I’ve done over the past few months, but I can’t. Now, everything is in shambles. Nothing will be the same again … ever again.”
“Don’t say that! Damien, come back!”
He closed his mind from her pleading voice and Amber listened to the powerful roar of his Bentley as it screeched down the road. She sank down on the bed, totally devastated, her mind totally blank.
Chapter Seventeen
Four days later Amber was out of her mind with worry. Damien still has not returned and no one knew where he was. She phoned all the police stations, Rory and Ashton also went searching, without any luck.
“Where’s Dad, Mom?”
“Ehm … he had to go to Sitka for a few days.”
“But why has he not even phoned once? Is he … angry with me?”
“What makes you think that?”
“That I got kidnapped?”
“No Honey! Of course not!! Why would you even consider something like that?”
“I should not have stopped when those people talked to me. You have always told me never to speak to strangers. It is my fault they took me and now Daddy is mad at me!”
Amber wrapped her arms around Zoey and stood rocking her. Oh Lord Damien, where are you. We need you, my love!
“Now listen to me, Zoey. None of this was your fault. Even if you did not stop to talk with them, they still would have taken you. I am just so relieved that you were not hurt and that Dad found you so quickly.”
“Why Mommy? Why did Uncle Paul do that? To his own brother? And he is not dead! How is that possible?”
“Honey, let’s not think about all of this so early in the morning. It is Saturday, so what are we going to do today?”
“Nothing … it won’t be the same without Daddy. I’ll just play some X-box or something.”
“Now, how much fun would that be? I thought you said you wanted to learn how to control the yacht?”
“Dad! Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!”
She tore from Amber’s arms and jumped in Damien’s, who stood just inside the arch into the den. She wrapped her arms and legs around him and clutched him, sobs tore through her small body.
His Vengeance, Marriage and a Baby: He hated her for cockolding him with his brother. Now he wanted vengeance. Page 15