Sweet Agony (Sweet Series Book 1)

by Jessie Lane

  What small hold I had on my temper snapped.

  “I love Gin, so I’m giving her what she asked me for in the letter she sent me—time. I’m hoping that, if I give her what she wants, she’ll get over the pain I caused and talk to me when I get home. Now, get over yourself and help your best friend with what she wants to do. This isn’t about you, and it isn’t about me. It’s about what Ginny needs, and apparently, right now she needs to get away from it all. Weren’t you the one who told me not too long ago that she needed space?”

  Olivia was quiet for a moment before she whispered, “You love her?”

  Huffing in resignation, I finally answered, “Yeah … I do. Too bad I screwed it up so badly she doesn’t want anything else to do with me. Since I haven’t been able to tell her that yet, that means you keep your big mouth shut about it. I’ve made mistakes—big ones—and I have to find a way to show her.”

  There was a loaded silence, and then Olivia quietly said, “Okay, Lucas.”

  I let out a small sigh of relief that I was at least able to help my girl in some small way by reining my crazy-ass sister in to help Ginny instead of giving her grief. It wasn’t much, but it was all I could do at the moment.

  Tired and very defeated from the reality of my situation with my angel, I gave my sister one last order before getting off the phone. “Let me know when she leaves and give me her new address when you get it from her.”

  “Okay, Lucas. Take care of yourself over there.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Olivia. I’ll be okay as long as I know Gin is.”

  Little did I know that neither Ginny nor I would be “okay” for a very long time.

  Ginny

  One Week Later …

  “Did the maid help you unpack your belongings, Virginia?”

  Rolling my eyes at my father’s haughty tone, I answered him without turning away from the floor-to-ceiling window, “Her name is Barbara, not ‘maid,’ and yes, Barbara helped me unpack my clothes.”

  I knew being a smartass and emphasizing the maid’s name was probably a bad idea, but I was wound so tightly lately I found myself snapping off at the mouth before my brain had a chance to think about what I was saying. Even as we closed off our life in New York, my father had Mom and my every move and conversation monitored. I had never felt like I was so under a microscope until Richard Wellington found his way back into our lives.

  A tense few seconds passed before movement reflected off the glass as my dear old daddy stopped to stand just behind me. He put his large, well-manicured hands on top of my shoulders, giving them a small, firm squeeze. It was not really painful, but it definitely got my attention.

  He then spoke in a quiet, scary voice. “A lady does not roll her eyes at her elders, especially her parents. Nor does she speak to her parents in such a way. It shows some very bad manners.” He clutched me so the grip turned slightly painful, and I did my best to hold my wince. “Next time you roll your eyes or speak to me that way, there will be consequences, Virginia, understood?”

  What little bravado I had been holding onto fled with the first sign of pain in my shoulders. It took everything I had to keep my voice from wavering when I answered, “Yes, sir”.

  He released his grip, and then he leaned down to kiss the side of my head. “Good girl. Now, go and join your mother in her suite for a cup of tea. I have some work to see to.”

  I flinched at his command, knowing the order to see my mother was more than just a way for him to get me out of his hair. It was a reminder of what he was capable of—death.

  Threatening it.

  If those threats were to be believed, he was also capable of causing it.

  Apparently, he was a pro at faking a death, too.

  Within forty-eight hours of plucking Mom and me off the street, he had turned her car into a flaming mess, wrapped around one of the biggest trees I had ever seen. I still didn’t want to think about the body found in her car or how he had gotten the coroner to “match” her dental records.

  To the rest of the world, Mrs. DuBois was no more. In less than two days, the man had proved quite sufficiently that he was capable of doing almost anything. Therefore, it would probably be a good idea not to piss him off.

  He turned on his heel, walked back to the oversized cherry desk in his office, and picked up a piece of paper, scanning its contents.

  Just like that, I had been dismissed.

  Steeling my spine, I walked out of my father’s office at a measured pace, ignoring the bodyguard who gave me a nasty smirk on my way out. Everywhere I turned, I was surrounded by my father’s wealth, power, and the men who were both his protectors and my jailors.

  My life had changed forever a little over five weeks ago when the past my mom and I had been running from finally caught up to us, and the present was a hell of a lot scarier than the past had ever been. At least, according to my mother, it was.

  Before my father had carted her off to Chicago, leaving me behind with no less than six of his men watching me, Mom had pulled me aside to detail the gravity of our situation.

  We were caught. My father might love us, but he was clearly unstable, and if she had to guess, he had only grown more so while we had been gone. She urged me to go along with his plans until she could figure out how to get us out of this mess.

  Consequently, I had stayed behind in New York, mourned her “passing,” and packed up our house, telling my best friend I’d taken a job in Chicago. All the while, I had been hoping my mom had some grand plan for escape by the time I rejoined her.

  Those hopes were dashed my first night under my father’s roof. In the time we had been separated, my mother had learned a few new things about my father.

  First, she had easily gathered he didn’t merely own the penthouse she had been staying in; he owned the entire building. The security looked to be top notch, and during the little bit my father had let her travel of the building, she had seen he had multiple men on every floor, in addition to the men guarding her.

  Secondly, Mom had employed one of the most valuable lessons my grandmother had taught her growing up in the upper crust of society: If you kept your mouth shut and your ears open, you could learn a lot. She had been listening to the men talk when they didn’t think she could hear them. Mother had heard quite a few interesting things, such as the fact that my father’s men often referred to him as the kingpin of Chicago, and nobody crossed the king without consequences.

  Apparently, he had his fingers in so many pies here he owned a good portion of the city. He had legal businesses to funnel the money from his illegal businesses and enough politicians and policemen on his payroll that there wasn’t a soul in Chicago who could come after him.

  Mom still wasn’t sure what he was into illegally yet, but she was pretty sure he was involved in drugs.

  How ironic was it that, growing up, I’d had my head in the clouds, dreaming about dragons, white knights, and fairy tales, while my father had built himself a kingdom and crowned himself? Overnight, fantasy had become semi-reality, and I had become the princess of a seedy underworld I had never wanted to know.

  What would Lucas say about my fairy tales now if he knew the truth?

  Waiting for me next to the elevator that would take me one floor up to our new “home” was another of my father’s men who trailed me constantly.

  Dear old Daddy didn’t trust my mother and me not to run off again.

  He was right not to.

  If I thought I could sneak us out from under his thumb, I would do it so fast his head would spin. There was no way I could, though. My father had made it very clear to me what was at stake if one of us tried to leave him again—everything I held dear.

  In less than forty-eight hours, the man had torn our lives apart to a microscopic level. He’d had his men take our driver’s licenses and use them to pull up any and all information he could on us. From there, he had ordered them to sneak into the little house we had called home—our safe haven from him—and th
ey had gone through it to figure out our lives, which was exactly what they had accomplished.

  We didn’t have much, and we didn’t talk to many people, but we did have one thing my mom and I both held very dear—the Young family. They were our friends, and one of them once was the love of my life.

  They hadn’t pulled any information from my mother’s room that could be used against her. Everything they needed was found in mine: pictures of Mom and me at cookouts in the Young’s backyard and even more pictures of Olivia and me throughout the years. Then the most damning information of all was discovered—my feelings for Lucas—all of which my father’s men had pulled from my diary.

  My poor mother had protected and hidden us from my father for sixteen years, and in less than a day, my father had not only found us, but had figured out how to keep us in his gilded cage, too scared to try to take flight again.

  All of it was my fault.

  I was the one who had insisted we go into the city for a day trip. Could I have possibly known my dad would also be there on business? No. Regardless, if I had stayed at home and gone to the movies with Olivia, then none of this would have happened. And if I hadn’t chronicled all of my thoughts and feelings, either through words in my diary or through the images I had drawn, then my father wouldn’t be threatening to end the lives of the only people we cared for.

  Who knew the images and scribblings of a teenager could be so lethal?

  Since I had screwed it all up for us, I was going to do what I had to in order to fix it. That meant ignoring the giant behemoths who followed me around wherever I went, like the one currently walking behind me down the hall. It also meant not showing the behemoth named Dexter that I was terrified of him just because he was visibly armed with two handguns in a shoulder holster and a face that probably scared his own mother.

  It was my responsibility to do what I had to in order to keep the ones I loved safe. That meant moving to Chicago for an alleged job just weeks after my mother’s supposed memorial service and cutting contact with the Young family, even my best friend.

  I had to watch every little step I made and follow every mandate my father laid down. All of our lives depended on it.

  Everything about Ginny DuBois’s life was gone, even Ginny DuBois herself.

  The long lost Virginia Wellington had returned home.

  It was a good thing my love for Lucas Young was gone, too.

  Well, that was what I kept telling my broken heart.

  Chapter

  14

  Ginny

  Twenty-Seven Years Old …

  Two Days Before Leaving For Miami

  Sitting in the velvet wingback chair facing the wall of windows overlooking the city, I held a delicate crystal glass in my hand and swirled the liquid inside slowly as I pondered my trip to Miami. I was leaving soon, but I certainly was not traveling alone. Richard Wellington would never let me out and about unattended. No, if he couldn’t keep his ever watchful eyes on me, then there would be bodyguards to make sure his precious “Virginia” didn’t try to run away.

  My father ought to know damn well I wouldn’t run. Couldn’t. That would mean leaving my mother behind in his clutches, and I would never do that, not in a million years. For a man who “loved” his family, he sure did have an atrocious way of showing it. Richard Wellington was the most obsessive man I had ever met, and his sole obsession was my mother.

  No, that wasn’t true. He had one other obsession in his life—power.

  In the past five years, he had taught me that power meant money, and money meant you could have whatever you wanted or, in his case, anyone.

  Anyone was my mother, the woman he treated like a queen … and a prisoner. There was no doubt in my mind that my father loved her, but it was a twisted, unhealthy love. On his part, at least. In her own way, my mother still loved my father, but it was more about loving who he used to be—the boy across the street. The boy she loved from childhood into manhood. The boy who had captured her heart and would never let it go, no matter how badly she tried to get it back.

  She still had a hard time coping with the fact that the boy she had loved had turned into a man whose single-minded purpose had become to own the street, the city, and everything inside of it that he could possible buy, steal, or take with brute force.

  When I had first moved to Chicago, I silently scoffed at what people had nicknamed my father—the kingpin of Chicago. One man couldn’t possibly have that much power, could they?

  It didn’t take me very long to learn that, yes, one could.

  The street gangs were afraid of him. They either gave him a wide berth or paid him dues to avoid getting kicked out of the city.

  The mafia respected him. I didn’t know exactly what their arrangement was, but I had figured out through eavesdropping on meetings that they had some sort of mutually beneficial business arrangement that my father had come up with. Because of that arrangement, the mafia let dear old Daddy have his corner of Chicago, free reign to run his many businesses—legal and illegal—and they never bothered him from their corner.

  As for the police? The thought of them made me want to laugh. My father probably had at least half of them on his payroll.

  In other words, there was absolutely no one who could help me permanently escape my father’s clutches. Therefore, I had learned to live in the gilded cage he had put me in.

  The only consolation I had over my predicament was that, evidently, Richard Wellington had been scared sober when my mother had left him and didn’t drink anymore. This, my mother informed me, was a good thing, because he had only hit us when he’d been drinking. Now, he wouldn’t touch a drop of alcohol, unwilling to take the chance of losing his precious family again.

  Funny how Mom tried her best to convince me that we could make the best of our situation. She would continuously try to persuade me to stay quiet and play along by pointing out that he hadn’t hurt either one of us so far.

  To give my psycho father credit, I had believed him when he’d said he was sober now. I had not seen him drink nor smelled alcohol of any sort on him since moving here. That didn’t mean I was ready to jump on my mother’s bandwagon of denial. The reason for that was simple.

  Six months after I had moved to Chicago, I’d had the absolute crap scared out of me. One evening, I had gone snooping around in my father’s office when I had known he was out on business. I had been looking for any tangible information I could find on just how dangerous my father really was to prove to my mother we needed to run again. A man who kidnapped women off the street with his hired henchmen had to have some sort of dirt in his workspace, right?

  A frantic search of his desk had turned up nothing. Desk drawers had been locked, his computer security encoded, and there hadn’t been a file cabinet in sight. I had resorted to looking behind the artwork hanging on his walls for some sort of super spy hidden safe when a loud thunk from the office’s connecting hallway had made me abandon my search.

  Running to his office closet, I had hidden in order to avoid being caught snooping.

  Instead of the physical evidence I had been looking for, I received a visual lesson I would never forget.

  From a crack in the doorway, I had watched as my father’s men had dragged in a bound but struggling mid-thirties man with a gag in his mouth. They’d shoved him to his knees in front of my father’s desk and physically held him there so he couldn’t escape.

  My father had then disappeared out of sight for a moment, but I’d heard the sound of a desk drawer opening then closing. When my father had come back into view, he’d had a pistol in his hand, one I hadn’t even known he had in the office.

  It had dawned on me that the gun must have been in one of the locked drawers. All of my revelations had seemed trivial seconds later, though, as I’d watched him say something to the kneeling man who had been openly sobbing, press the gun to his head, and then, with no hesitation at all, pull the trigger.

  The crack of sound hadn’t been as
loud as I had thought a gunshot would be, but that wasn’t the sound that would haunt me for the rest of my life. No, the sound that was going to more than likely give me new nightmares was the harsh thud of dead weight hitting the floor.

  I imagined I had come close to death myself that night due to the strangled scream that left my throat and escaped past the hand I had already secured over my mouth. A higher power must have been watching out for me, because the best I could figure it out, between the heavy wooden door blocking me from view and the thump of the man’s body falling to the floor, the noise had somehow been muffled.

  Later, as I had lain in my bed, shaking in fear, it had occurred to me that my father could have known I was there in that closet the entire time and simply hadn’t cared. Why would he? He had the upper hand, and he damn well knew it.

  When I had finished my story and explained to my mother that Daddy didn’t need a drop of alcohol in his system to put a bullet into another man’s brain, she had slapped her hand over my mouth as if she could stop me from saying the words. It didn’t work.

  I had pried her hand from my lips and furiously whispered that, if he were willing to do that totally sober, then we couldn’t guarantee our safety, either.

  Mother had simply shaken her head violently in denial at what I had been trying to tell her. Her trembling hands had grabbed my own, and she’d squeezed tightly in warning. Looking around nervously, she then had softly told me I must have been mistaken.

  Although my words had been spoken as faintly as my mother’s, the implications rang as loudly as that gunshot between us. My mother’s beautiful blue eyes had flared with terror, and it was then I had realized my mother wasn’t in denial about my father and how dangerous he was. It was completely the opposite. She was doing what she believed she had to in order to keep us alive in a desperate situation.

  My mother and I were stuck where we were, and she had figured that out long before I had. The man had warned us both with an ominous promise my first night in Chicago during dinner that he would hunt my mother and me down to the ends of the earth if we tried to leave him. I now knew he was crazy enough to do it.