Broken: The MISTAKEN Series Complete Second Season

by Peak, Renna

  I restated the same words, my voice flat. “About a hundred dollars.” There was something about the way he was asking that made my stomach hurt again—not the pang of guilt this time, but something else. “Why?”

  “You need to start stashing cash away. Don’t make it obvious. Just whenever you have the opportunity, put it away in a bag in your closet. Keep it where you can grab it if you need it. Put some clothes in there, too.”

  My heart felt like it was going to beat right through my chest. My brow furrowed even more deeply. “Why?”

  He continued to stare straight ahead, still refusing to make any eye contact with me. “Nothing too big. Not a suitcase, just a bag. A gym bag would be good.”

  I wiped my clammy hands on my skirt and turned back to the window. “You’re scaring me, Brandon.”

  “You should be scared. This is serious, Jen. You need to listen to what I’m telling you because I’m probably not going to be around to tell you again before you need this information. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  I turned back to him and he finally met my gaze. “You’re leaving.”

  He shook his head and looked back out the window. “Not leaving. I just may not be … available for a while.”

  “What does that mean?” My heart was racing so fast that my chest was beginning to hurt. Why am I letting him do this to me? Again? “Just tell me what’s going on. Please? I swear to God, Brandon, I can handle it. Just tell me.” I turned back to face him. My lips began to tremble.

  He shook his head. “Cash. Clothes. Makeup—and whatever else you need. Hair stuff.” He set his jaw and glanced over at me before turning his gaze back to the road. “How do you feel about Montana?”

  I frowned, tilting my head to the side. I clenched my hands together in my lap to try to get the shaking to stop. “What about it?” The hairs on the back of my neck were standing on end. What the hell had he gotten himself into that we would need to go to Montana?

  “I have a place there. It’s quiet. A little…” He turned his gaze to mine for only a moment. “…rustic.”

  I smiled despite the fear that was still pulsing through me, a small laugh escaping my lips. “Rustic and I don’t get along very well, Brandon. I’ve been wearing the same underwear for the last two days, and that’s about as rustic as I can tolerate.”

  I thought I saw a smile flash across his face, but it was replaced quickly with a tightening of his jaw. “You’ll tolerate it fine. It’ll be temporary until I can figure something out. If we even have to go.”

  If we even have to go? Why is he telling me all this if there is a chance we won’t have to go? “Can you just tell me? Tell me what the hell is going on? I think I have a right to know…”

  He shook his head again. “I don’t want you to worry about it. I’ll take care of it and we’ll figure it out together. We’ll figure it out.” He reached over and took my hand in his, giving it a squeeze. His eyes softened and I could see he was trying to comfort me. “We’ll figure it out together, okay?”

  “Okay…” I wasn’t sure what else there was to say about it at that point. My heart was beating far too quickly and it still felt like I might cry at any second. He had me scared to death—I have to live in Montana? But what other choice did I have? I wasn’t sure who my friends were anymore. I had no idea who to trust. The only thing I knew for sure was that my father’s guy, Cade, hadn’t been there when I really did need him and that Brandon was. Brandon had been there when Daniel had tried to do whatever the hell it was that he had tried to do to me and Cade wasn’t. Brandon had put me first that time and Cade put me … I didn’t know where Cade put me.

  He squeezed my hand again as we pulled into a parking lot. “Cash, clothes and whatever you can’t live without. Pack the bag as soon as you get home and start stashing that money as soon as you can. Okay?”

  I shrugged, holding back the tears that were stinging at my eyes, and looked at the sign in the parking lot. There was something familiar about this place, and I was almost sure I had been here before.

  My stomach sank to my toes when I remembered why I knew this restaurant. This was a favorite meeting spot for politicians in Sacramento—there was a private room in the back where I was sure many dodgy deals had been made over the years. Too many shady dealings with questionable characters who couldn’t be seen in public with people who had some kind of clout. People like Brandon would come to a place like this to meet only one type of person.

  Someone like my father.

  * * *

  She wasn’t spineless anymore. If she really ever had been—I still wasn’t sure. She wasn’t going to like this meeting. She was going to find out things that I didn’t want her to know about me. It had been a long time coming, and I wasn’t sure if I was ready. After what she had done at that convention, I was pretty convinced that she was ready. If she could stand up to Marian Hennessey—she was definitely ready. She had probably been ready for a long time to hear everything she would hear that night.

  And she wasn’t spineless. I wanted to kick myself for ever having believed that.

  2

  Eight Years Earlier

  We climbed the stairs to the balcony of the concert hall. I wished like hell I could afford better seats, but my business was only just beginning to turn a profit, thanks in large part to my sister, Krystal. She had connections I could only dream of—the fact that she worked for Senator Davis made her that much more valuable to me.

  I stopped in front of the row where our seats were and let my grandmother enter first. The seats might have been in the nose-bleed section, but at least they were in the center. I felt a little bad for making her climb all those stairs—she was spry for someone celebrating her seventy-fifth birthday, but I knew her joints bothered her a lot more than she was willing to admit.

  We sat down and I felt like I was going to have to squint to be able to see anything on the stage. I turned to my grandmother. “I guess this is why they make opera glasses.”

  She smiled and patted my hand. “You won’t care about seeing anything once the music starts.” She gave my hand a squeeze. “And this is the best birthday gift you’ve ever given me, Brandon. You’ve become such a thoughtful young man.”

  Thoughtful. I didn’t see it as thoughtful at all, and I didn’t think I’d be doing anything but sleeping once the music started. She had been dropping hints for months, basically telling me that going to the San Francisco Symphony would be the best birthday gift ever. I still didn’t understand why she’d moved to San Francisco in the first place. She was on a fixed income, and I could think of at least a thousand places where it was cheaper to live than here. And there was just something about this city that made my skin crawl. To say I hated it here would have been an understatement of the worst kind.

  “It’s too bad your aunt couldn’t be here. She loves the symphony, too.”

  I rolled my eyes and hoped that my grandmother wasn’t really losing it. The last thing I needed was to have to come here and take care of her if she was starting to suffer from dementia. Not that this talk was new—she’d been talking about my mythical aunt for years. It was just that no one else had ever seen this woman that my grandmother referred to as my “aunt.” There were no photos of her, no mention of her anywhere but in my grandmother’s stories…

  I had to go and be the good grandson tonight. I had to go and buy her these damned tickets … and now I’m going to be stuck taking care of my demented grandmother.

  My grandmother’s tapping on her program broke me away from the thoughts of how little I wanted to be here tonight. And not just in the concert hall, but in San Francisco at all. “Did you know about this when you bought the tickets?”

  I turned to look at what she was pointing at on the program, shaking my head. “Know about what?”

  She pointed a finger at a picture of a young woman, tapping on the program again. “About this.”

  I shook my head again. I looked down at the program balanced on
her leg and wished that I had picked up one of my own when I saw the photo. Just looking at the photo sent a jolt through me like I’d never felt before. It was almost like I was awake for the first time in my life. Like everything before that moment had been part of a bad dream. Can a photo really do that to a person?

  My grandmother leaned back in her seat. “Do you remember what I’ve always told you? About the best way to bring down a man who seems like he can’t be toppled?”

  I narrowed my gaze, staring again at the photo of the young woman. It was like her blue eyes were piercing me, and I felt that jolt of something course through me again. “Through his daughter.” We’d had this discussion too many times before—the best way to seek vengeance for my father’s death would be through the daughters of the men who were responsible. I guess it was a lucky thing that both Senator Davis and Congressman Edwards had daughters, not that I had really been listening to my grandmother’s ranting all those years. I had my own plans for revenge, and it certainly didn’t involve using women to get it.

  “You were listening.” She smiled and tapped on the photo again. “Do you know who this is?”

  I shook my head, tilting it again to try to read the small print. “National Concerto Competition winner, Jenna Davis.” I read it again, sure I was misreading it. “Jenna Davis,” I repeated, my voice dropping to almost a whisper. My heart felt like I had just started sprinting, it was racing so quickly. This was the woman who was the heir to the Hennessey fortune? Hell, to the Davis and the Hennessey fortunes? The only heir?

  She nodded and tapped the program again. “This woman. She is how you’ll bring down Senator Davis.”

  That was the moment the room darkened for the performance. The curtains opened and the symphony surrounded a piano that was center stage. A young woman—not just a young woman, for Christ’s sake, it was Jenna Davis—took the stage, standing next to the piano and taking a bow. She was wearing a floor-length blue gown, and I could have sworn I could feel her looking right at me. I didn’t just see her blue eyes blazing for me—I could feel them burning into me. It didn’t matter who her father was. Or who her mother was. Or who her grandfather had been. It only mattered that she saw me. I knew she did—I could feel it in my damned bones. It sounded like such a cliché—feel it in my bones. But at that moment, I knew exactly what that phrase meant, because she was all I could feel.

  When the applause stopped, she took a seat behind the piano and began to play. My grandmother was right, I didn’t need to see anything when the music started, because I could feel it. The hairs on my arms stood on end when she started to play and it was like her music took on a life of its own. I didn’t even know what it was she was playing, but it was so beautiful that I could almost see it. I could almost see the music. I could feel her and I could see her music. I didn’t know what this was—this whatever. I just knew I hadn’t felt anything like it before and that I wanted to feel it for the rest of my life.

  I was in a trance. I don’t even know how much time passed—it might have been an hour or it might have been a year—but when the music stopped and she stood up from the piano, I knew she was the one. I knew it. I could kneel at her feet for the rest of my life if she would play the piano for me. I didn’t even care that she was the daughter of Senator Davis—that I could use her to bring him down. That my grandmother obviously wanted me to use her to bring him down. All I could think about was how that music made me feel and how I didn’t think I would ever be able to get enough.

  It was intermission and I stood up, making some excuse about needing to use the restroom, but really, I had to go find her. I had to meet her. I had to see if I felt the same thing up close as I did when I saw her picture or when I heard her play. I had to know.

  I wound my way through the crowd, catching snippets of conversation. “Amazing. Beautiful. Gorgeous. Incredible.” She was all those things, and probably more. But she wasn’t in the lobby and she wasn’t anywhere where I could find her. I frowned, scanning the large lobby one more time.

  She wasn’t there. I stopped for a moment, resting against the wall across from the backstage door and waiting to see if she would come out. A group of men stood next to me, and like everyone else in the concert hall, the only topic of conversation was the senator’s daughter.

  “Can you believe she’s only going to be a junior this year?”

  A junior? A junior in college? There’s no way that woman is in high school. Not the way that music made me feel…

  “I heard she’s going to Julliard.”

  “No, she’ll go to Curtis. Julliard would be a waste with talent like that.”

  “I can’t even imagine what I could have accomplished with her talent at only—what? Sixteen? Seventeen? Can you imagine how incredible she’ll be in ten years?”

  I felt myself sinking into the wall. Seventeen. She is just a girl. Still a child—still underage. After what Daniel had just pulled, there was no way I was going to get myself involved with a girl who was underage. No way.

  A year. It’s only a year. And then she’ll be mine…

  3

  Seven Years Earlier

  “Is Jenna around?”

  The thump-thump-thumping of the far-too-loud music was already giving me a headache and making me wonder why I was trying to weasel my way into a high school party in the first place. Jenna. She was all I had thought about for the past year. Well, all I had thought about between doing favors for this or that politician in exchange for information or a fat payout. She was all I had thought about. Now, though, I was thinking that I must be getting pretty old if a few seconds of loud music was already giving me a headache before I had even had anything to drink.

  “Jenna?” The girl looked at me like I had grown an extra nose in the middle of my face. “Davis?”

  I nodded. Jenna Davis. The woman I would spend the rest of my life with—now that she was a woman. She had turned eighteen over the summer and I could finally allow myself to meet her. To pursue her. A woman like her would almost certainly need pursuing. Something told me it wouldn’t be easy, but I knew I needed to find her. To at least meet her—at least that. I was tired of using women to get what I wanted—using them for information or to bribe them afterward. The business model I had built wasn’t sustainable—I knew that. It hadn’t stopped me from building it anyway, but I knew it wouldn’t last forever. I knew that it would come crashing down around my feet at some point, but hopefully not until after I met her. And if her father came down with me, then it would just be a bonus.

  The girl snickered. “Jenna Davis at a party? Ri-i-ight.” She shook her head, then took another drink from a red tumbler that probably had a liquid in it that was pretty far from legal for someone her age. “You’re cute. Come in.” She swung the door open the rest of the way, stepping aside to let me through the entry.

  I followed her in, feeling heat come to my cheeks. It was stupid to be embarrassed by something a high school girl was saying to me, considering I was used to hearing much more mature things from women who were quite a bit older than this girl standing in front of me. But she was also pretty cute, and if Jenna wasn’t here, I could at least talk to a few of these people. Maybe get a better idea of where she would be on a Saturday night.

  We wedged our way among the huge crowd of people over to a corner of the large room. The girl turned back to me. “Are you in college?”

  “George Mason Law.” Daniel had just graduated and it was the first thing that popped into my head. No need to tell her I hadn’t actually been in college in three years. No need to tell her that I was probably bribing her father or mother, or whoever it was that was the politician in her family. Considering most of the kids at this party went to Jenna’s fancy private school or the prep academy down the road, it was a fair bet that I’d had some interaction with almost all their parents.

  “Ooh, a baby lawyer.” She lifted a brow and I could tell she was doing her best to be seductive. “I’m … Darlene. Darlene Edwards. Y
ou probably know my father.”

  Damn. Not only did I know who her father was, I also knew about most of the stuff he was doing. I think everyone inside and outside the beltway knew most of the stuff he was doing, but no one had had the balls to do anything about it—not yet, anyway. Darlene was the older of the two daughters—I had learned that much some time ago. I’d spent most of my youth learning everything there was to know about the men my grandmother wanted punished for my father’s death, even if there was no way to prove any of them were involved. My grandmother was never kidding—the best way to take down a man was through his daughter. It was what she wanted and expected me to do. The opportunity had just never presented itself to me in quite this manner before. But I wasn’t there that night to take care of the “Congressman Edwards” problem, as I liked to refer to it. That night, I was only there to meet Jenna. Just to meet her. Not to think about how to use her or how to bribe her father when I was able to get what I wanted from her. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I wanted to do either of those things, anyway—to use her or to take down her father. Tonight, I just wanted to see her up close, in her own habitat. Get to know her as a person. God, I had almost been hoping she’d be here playing the piano, but I guess the huge parties that the ultra-rich kids throw are the same kinds of parties that I went to in high school. And it wasn’t as though I hadn’t been a rich-kid type myself. I was a scholarship kid, but I had been around plenty of these types of kids in the past.

  The girl pulled me by the arm and we sat down on a couch in a corner. The music wasn’t quite so loud there and there weren’t as many people, so I didn’t have to shout as loudly when I asked her my questions. “Where’s Jenna tonight?”

  She rolled her eyes and shrugged before taking another gulp from her cup. “Where is she ever? Probably at some concert or at home doing her homework. She’s doing…” She made air quotes with her fingers, almost spilling her drink in the process. “…college courses, you know.”