Don’t Lie to Me

by Amber Bardan

  My pulse skipped. I opened the text, then frowned at the screen. Had he sent this to the wrong person?

  His response to my twenty-plus messages was an address? No time. No date. Just a place.

  I turned the screen to Rohan. “Do you know what this means?”

  He shook his head. The elevator doors opened to the basement parking lot. My car waited right by the doors.

  My phone dinged again. Hopefully that would be the accompanying context for the cryptic message and not Whoops, that’s the address I’m meeting my date at.

  I opened the message and held my breath.

  My lawyer. Mr. Waldolf has agreed to terms and would like to meet with you immediately.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Emma

  “Have you eaten?” Dean Waldolf asked, leaning off the wall outside my lab.

  My freaking lab.

  “What do you think?” I’d barely eaten in the five days I’d worked here. Five days that began the very instant I received the message.

  “I think you were a good investment.”

  “Well, I try.” I smiled. “Thanks, Dean.”

  And I had a whole lot to be thankful for. My lab was state of the art. The Waldolf team was at my disposal. I’d already had meetings with the two best nanotechnology experts in the country.

  I could practically feel all the ideas I’d kept in my head gaining their own life. More had been achieved in a few days than in months prior.

  The only thing I hadn’t achieved was getting through to Avner, receiving an answer to the questions I’d sent or finding a spare moment to see what that address was all about.

  His gaze flowed over my face. “It’s Friday, have a dinner with me to celebrate your first week.”

  I adjusted my bag. Yes, I had a lot to thank Dean for, and one of those things was becoming something of a friend. He was about the only person I could talk work with who got it. Our “lunch conferences” were starting to feel like the one time I could talk freely about something I cared about. I’d seen Angelina twice this week and both those times I’d kept conversation rightly focused on her.

  And off Avner.

  Avner. Even thinking his name hurt.

  I bit my lip. The lab building was half an hour out of town, Waldolf head office was in the city, and I had the feeling that Dean’s visits were exclusively because of me.

  “Don’t date people I work with, remember?” I gave him a playful eye roll. “Besides, I’m pooped.”

  “You have to eat.” His white, white teeth flashed. “Colleagues can eat together, can’t they?”

  A sliver of discomfort eased down my middle. I hadn’t lied. Nothing good ever came from fooling around in the workplace.

  “Another time.” I backed away, and gave him a wave. “Bye, Dean.”

  He watched after me.

  I let myself out the heavy security doors sealing the labs from the offices and went to my car. Rohan opened the passenger-side door for me.

  I’d given in to letting him drive. Better he drive than having him bristle beside me the entire commute. “Do you really just sit here all day while I’m working?”

  “Yes.” He turned on the engine and put down the handbrake. His knees almost touched my steering wheel. There was a chance I was a cow for not letting him drive me around in the luxury town car that had waited for us at the airport.

  “What do you do while you’re waiting?”

  He stared out the windscreen. “Watch.”

  I snorted. He was only a small step above Emilio. At least he actually answered sometimes. My phone beeped.

  I smiled at the message from Angelina. She’d texted a photo of two matching cribs and asked if it was too early to commit to furniture.

  Get them! I texted back.

  My gaze stuck on the message underneath hers.

  Rohan pulled out of the parking lot. “Home?”

  “No.” I tapped on the message. “There’s somewhere else I’d like to go now.”

  * * *

  The car churned crushed rocks as we made our way down the driveway. We parked in a gravel parking lot framed by camellias. I got out of the car, gaze skimming over the long brick building. The car door thumped behind me. There weren’t any signs but there were at least a dozen cars parked here.

  We went inside. Rohan waited in the entrance. I went up to the front desk.

  “How can I help you?” the receptionist asked.

  How indeed?

  I still had no idea what this place was. “My name is Emma Neeson—”

  “Ah.” She stood. “Sign in the guest book, and I’ll get Sally.”

  She disappeared into the room behind her and came back out with a middle-aged woman in a nurse’s uniform.

  “Welcome, Emma.” Sally took me by the arm. “He said you’d come.”

  What was this? For a moment when I’d seen the clinical reception, I’d almost thought this was Avner’s offering me a lab and trying to get me to work with him again. The nurse’s uniform stumped me.

  She scanned a pass and let me into another area. “This is our lounge.”

  I glanced around. Three women sat around a television. More sat at tables visible through the windows outside. What did he want me to see here?

  “Through here is our therapy room.” She showed me into a room with chairs stacked against the wall. “We provide group therapy and private therapy.”

  “Therapy for what?”

  Sally looked at me. “For the victims.”

  “Victims?”

  “This is a center for recovering female victims of violence.” She led me to the kitchen and dining facilities.

  I followed her blindly. But why was I here?

  “We’ve had phenomenal success with animal therapy...”

  I gazed out the window. Outside the dining room, horses and ponies grazed in a paddock.

  “This looks like a fantastic center, but I’m confused. What does any of this have to do with Avner Malfacini?”

  She froze, blinking at me. “He owns it. This is his center. His free center.”

  Sally finished the tour, ending right back in Reception. I picked up the pen to sign myself out. What fuckery was this?

  Was I supposed to see this place and realize he wasn’t all bad?

  I already knew that.

  I stared at the book, then flipped back the page, scanning names.

  “What are you doing?” the receptionist asked.

  I flipped another page then another. Then found the one I was after. Avner’s name printed neatly next to a swirling signature.

  “Sally—” I called out.

  Sally emerged from the office again. Her gaze fell to where I held the book open.

  “Who does he see?” I dropped the pages. “When he comes here who does he visit?”

  She walked back to the hallway. “Come on.”

  I followed her to the bedroom wing. She opened the door to a room filled with lush gold and wood furnishings.

  A woman reclined in an armchair facing the window. I glanced at the clipboard on the wall.

  Maya Malfacini.

  My heart froze. I grabbed Sally’s arm, holding her still, and looked at the woman who hadn’t yet noticed us come in.

  A long light-brown braid trailed over her shoulder. Her delicate profile stopped my breath. She was beautiful. Tiny, and beautiful.

  “Is she—” I gripped Sally tighter. Words jammed. “Is she his wife?”

  “No.” Sally patted my arm. “This is Maya, Avner’s mother.”

  “Mother?” I shook my head. Not possible. This woman was way too young.

  “I’ll leave you for a moment.” She left the room.

 
I remained in the entrance. Holy fuck. His mother.

  What could I even say to her?

  “Mrs. Malfacini?” I stepped closer, then froze.

  “I want to know why your mother doesn’t speak to you.”

  My heart thrummed in my ears. I licked my lips, and took in Avner’s mother. The fine lines around her eyes had been impossible to see from a distance with her features so passive. Maybe she was older than I’d thought.

  She didn’t respond.

  I walked over and lowered myself into the seat opposite her.

  He looked nothing like his mother. At all. She was miniature. Even sitting, I knew she’d have to be a good ten inches shorter than me. Probably weighed half what I did.

  Not that looks always reflected genetics, as I knew. Sometimes you take after one side and not the other.

  His father would’ve had to be a big dark giant...

  “Mrs. Malfacini?” I reached forward and cautiously touched her knee.

  She blinked slowly, eyelids shuttering over dove gray eyes.

  “My mother doesn’t talk to me.”

  “Mrs. Malfacini...” I whispered, but I already knew the truth.

  “I wish every day that she would.”

  Pressure built in the back of my throat. I’d done some shit I wasn’t proud of in my life... I’d never felt as awful as this.

  “Ask me something else.”

  I’d seen the pain in his eyes and kept pushing. How could I have known that she couldn’t.

  “This is a center for recovering female victims of violence.”

  That something so awful had happened to his own mother, that he couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud.

  I scooted forward, and took her frail hand in mine.

  “I’m Avner’s—” I paused, I could just about leave it there. “I’m his friend.”

  There was no knowing if she could hear me, but I told her everything anyway.

  “I long every second to have been a better man when she was watching.”

  Because she couldn’t be watching, his mother would probably like to know why somebody had fallen in love with her son.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Emma

  I wiped my eyes and said goodbye to Avner’s mother. The dresser stopped me on my way to the door. The wedding photo on top was the only photograph in the room. Something about that made me shiver, as it had at Avner’s. As though history had to be censored.

  I picked up the picture. Maya certainly had aged well. Her younger self wasn’t so different, only slightly more robust, and smiling. Sadness washed over me. She’d had a beautiful smile.

  So did his father.

  My gaze flicked between the bride and groom. Then I turned back to Maya.

  Who the hell is Avner?

  I glanced at the photo then the unmoving woman in the chair. The man she’d married was as handsome as was the man she called her son.

  That’s where similarities ended.

  The groom in the picture was only inches taller than she was. His darkness limited to his light chocolate-colored hair.

  There was no way these two people made Avner.

  Avner was the product of a vastly different genetic pool. Unless her husband wasn’t Avner’s father, Maya was not his mother.

  At least not by birth.

  I put the photograph back where it’d been, and left the room.

  Sally approached me.

  “What happened to her?”

  She shuffled a clipboard. “I can’t answer that.”

  Damned privacy laws. “Of course.”

  “No.” She looked at me. “Mr. Malfacini has given permission to answer any questions you have. I can’t answer because that specific information was never provided when she was transferred here.”

  I stopped walking. What? How could it not be? That is not how treatment centers worked. “Where was she transferred from?”

  “Maya was transferred from a very private facility in India, six months ago.”

  My lips pressed together. More questions seemed to be raised than getting answered. “Do you know how long she has been like this?”

  “Six years.”

  Six years.

  In all that time had he ever been able to talk to anyone about any of it?

  “If you can’t tell me how it happened, can you tell me what happened? Traumatic brain injury—”

  “No.” Sally frowned. “I’m afraid Maya’s injury is entirely psychological.”

  I swallowed. “Oh.”

  My body filled with heaviness. Whatever happened to her was so terrible, her own mind couldn’t take it.

  “Is there anything else you want to know?”

  I returned Sally’s gaze. “Is there anything I should know?”

  “That depends if you should know that Mr. Malfacini has been the most dedicated relative I’ve observed in my long career.” She tucked the clipboard under her arm. “Not only for funding the center. He would call three times a week when he was abroad. When he visits he spends hours to read, to take her outside, to talk to her as you did.”

  My throat went thick. “Thank you.”

  Sally said her goodbyes, returned me to the reception, and Rohan walked with me back to the car.

  “Don’t start the engine just yet.” I leaned back on the seat and held my forehead. My mind swirled. With so many feelings, and memories, and ideas, I felt I could split.

  Rohan sat silently beside me.

  “Answer me and I’ll give you all my trust.”

  He’d answered. I pressed my palms fully over my face.

  I hadn’t exaggerated to Maya, I had fallen for Avner. Nor had I lied to him. He may have demons. He might have dark secrets—dangerous ones that sent him from meetings with blood stains on his clothes—but neither those demons nor those secrets could keep me away.

  His demons wouldn’t keep us apart.

  But mine will.

  It was time to exorcise a few.

  Avner

  Perhaps I was obsessing over her movements. I watched the screen, her path annotated by a pin on the map. I couldn’t claim that I was protecting her then. I wanted to know where she was, what she was doing, who she was with.

  How much she was hurting.

  I couldn’t open or close my eyes without seeing her. Most especially without seeing her face when I’d sent her home the way I had. She possessed me more maliciously than a devil.

  The pin moved down the road.

  My lungs burned seeing where she’d just been. I shouldn’t have done that. My mother’s address should’ve remained a secret.

  Except I owed Emma that much, didn’t I?

  For fighting for her trust, then breaking it.

  A beep cut through my thoughts. I shut my eyes. That beep meant Marcus. He’d returned to Melbourne with me, checked Libby into the center, and I hadn’t spoken to him since.

  Or Haithem.

  Or anyone.

  I took the call. “Yes?”

  “Avner,” he said, and that one word had me bolting upright.

  “You’re injured.” I’d heard it in his breath.

  “I’m on my way, get Emilio.”

  I sent a message from my laptop even as we spoke. “I’ll open the garage.”

  Lucky for us, Haithem no longer required Emilio’s services the way he had previously, and I’d begun to take advantage of his vast skills.

  Emilio arrived before Marcus. We waited in the garage. The black sports car slid into the drive, then jerked to a halt.

  The door opened. I’d already begun running, and caught him around the shoulders before he fell from the driver’s seat. I assisted him through the garage and
to the basement.

  The medical room was fully equipped but completely unused. I hadn’t known when I’d built this place exactly what I’d needed to be prepared for, so I prepared for everything.

  No matter the money you have, there are always questions when you show up in a hospital with a bullet in your body.

  Marcus lay down on the surgical table.

  Emilio inspected the wound.

  “What the fuck happened?”

  “Got stabbed.” He stared up at the ceiling, panting. “What kind of brutal asshole uses a knife and not a gun?”

  I could’ve laughed. His injury didn’t affect his humor. We both knew my weapon of choice would always be a knife.

  Emilio glanced at me, and nodded.

  Marcus would be fine. We wouldn’t be required to bribe a specialist surgeon this time.

  “So you’ve told me.” I snorted. “What happened?”

  Marcus looked at me, then swallowed.

  My chest hardened. “What?”

  “I was right. They moved them internationally. To the UK, United States—” he stared at me, then his eyes shone “—and Australia.”

  My head swarmed.

  “Avner, I’ve found her.”

  The suggestion hummed right there in my mind, but like with all unbelievable things, I grasped for logic. “Who did you find?”

  “Rebecca,” he said, and winced.

  Emilio pushed a needle through his skin and stitched the wound.

  My heart thumped hard, and deep, and so full of hope I would expire from it. “But the ring?”

  His head dropped back. “They must have taken it. She’s alive.”

  With those words, the world changed.

  Emma

  “I must inform you, I am not to allow you to enter this residence unescorted.”

  I undid my seatbelt. At least Rohan had progressed from you are not, to I am not. That I could work with. “You’re not coming in.”

  “Then you are not to go in.”

  So much for improvement. I opened the door. Rohan exited the car. I shut the door, then stared at him over the car roof. “Haven’t I been cooperative, Rohan?”

  He frowned. “Mostly.”