A Beautiful Lie (Unlocked #1)

by Amelia Rowe

  “He wants me to stay there,” I answered, keeping my voice as low as possible.

  “Wasn’t part of the plan.” Chloe was small but her scolding tone made me feel even smaller.

  “I didn’t have a choice,” I defended myself.

  With one final look of disapproval, Chloe handed me the duffel and led the way back to the main room of the apartment. Nikki was distracted by her phone, furiously typing and completely unaware of the subversion taking place right under her nose. A wave of guilt washed over me. Despite the things Luke’s team had said, nobody associated with the Jasper Hotel or my father had given me any reason to distrust them.

  “All set,” I announced, making Nikki look up from her phone.

  “That’s everything?” she questioned, her eyes falling to the single bag I held. A girl like Nikki probably wasn’t used to the idea of limited possessions. I nodded.

  Then, with one last look at Chloe, I led the way back to the front door. “I’ll talk to you soon, Chlo.”

  Chloe met my gaze and replied with a hint of warning, “Stay in touch.”

  19

  Luke

  Alicia was a wreck and so was I. Chloe had alerted us to the events that had taken place that morning. Thankfully, Chloe’s apartment in Astoria had a spare bedroom which we were able to stage as Nina’s. Still, Nina had done the very thing we had instructed her not to do – she’d deviated. The entire plan had gone to shit now. I flipped open my phone to stare at the incoming message from her burner phone again.

  NINA: He’s having me stay at the Jasper.

  The moment Nina had left her apartment with Nikki, Chloe had called to apprise me of this turn of events. I’d texted Nina back for more details and got a simple response.

  NINA: Sorry, can’t talk right now. Will text later.

  Carter called me over to his office. “Check it out, dude.” He turned the monitor so I could see his screen. “I went out last night and watched the activity at the hotel.”

  I saw it clear as day on the screen. Three white vans in the span of an hour came and went. All had different plates.

  “He’s increasing the activity of whatever is going on there,” I said.

  With the plan gone to shit, I went back to my office, and shut the door to think. I couldn’t take Alicia’s nervous breathing down my neck every second. I couldn’t listen to another threat of If the Board finds out about this. I couldn’t take not knowing if Nina was safe. I needed something to do. I needed to make a tangible effort forward.

  My ground game had been weak. I opened up The Corner, the social media app, and started searching. I pulled the names of three current Jasper Hotel employees and began watching their feeds. It amazed the hell out of me how much people were willing to share. Every few minutes one of them was posting one stupid thing or another. I sat and watched for nearly three hours. The information came in slowly. They all posted about how hungry they were for snow cones, a ridiculous statement given that it was the middle of January in New York. Ridiculous unless you’re aware that ‘snow cone’ is another name for a line of coke.

  Eventually one of them checked into the Prophet’s Pub, a small bar located in lower Manhattan. The post was captioned with Happy Hour starts now! Get here people.

  I stopped in Alicia’s office before I left. “I’m leaving to go work from home.”

  “Please tell me you’ve heard something.”

  I wished I had a better answer and hated that I had been the cause of her strife. “You will be the first one I call when I do.” If I do.

  I stopped at home for a quick shower. The last time I’d gone out for an evening was when I took Nina to dinner. Somehow that seemed like ages ago even though it had barely been two weeks. Still, the girl and the scenario had entirely changed. It felt strange doing this without her. It hadn’t occurred to me what a fixture she’d become in my life in such a short amount of time.

  But maybe it had all been a lie.

  I put on a button-up and suit pants, and fished out my nicest pair of shoes from the depths of my closet. With one final look in the mirror, I willed myself to fix this for Adam.

  Prophet’s catered to the young elite crowd. The guys interning on Wall Street and the girls looking to fuck them typically hung around there. I was relieved to find that the group was still there when I arrived. Thanks to the pictures they’d posted, I recognized them immediately, huddled around at the bar. All three girls wore short dresses and push-up bras. It was desperate, but they’d probably get what they wanted.

  “Can I buy you ladies a drink?” I offered, feeling gross even as I said it.

  The blonde girl eyed me up and down, as if my personal appearance mattered to her at all, before accepting a drink from me.

  “I guess.” She flirted with her eyes. “We’ll take four vodka sodas.” I turned, not having noticed the fourth. She was at the far end of the bar, unseen because she was slumped over. In the background, the three girls giggled loudly, making quite the scene. Their friend was barely able to sit up. I laid a few bills on the bar.

  “I’m Elise,” the blonde girl giggled into my ear. “God you’re cute.” Her act was all too familiar to me. I’d done coke enough to recognize the coke energy from a mile away. Looking at her, it was obvious she hadn’t been using too long, but she was using a lot. Her cheeks were puffy even though the rest of her was thin. The other two looked the same.

  I ignored her and moved to the seat next to the catatonic friend. Her brown hair was mussed and it looked like she didn’t know where she was.

  “Hi, I’m Luke,” I said to her. Her reaction to my voice was delayed. She barely offered a nod in reply. She was completely strung out, and not on the cocaine her friends were on. I focused in on her lips, and the slight tint of blue that was invading them. Shit. I knew the signs of an overdose like the back of my hand. A familiar panic returned, one I had never wanted to feel again. I wanted to ask what she had taken and how much.

  “Do you want to take a walk with me?” I asked her. When she didn’t respond, I helped her to her feet. We made our way to the door and when I turned to look back, her terrible friends hadn’t even noticed she was gone. When we emerged into the night, I hailed a cab.

  “New York-Presbyterian ER,” I told the driver.

  The girl slumped over onto my shoulder. She was either passed out or near passing out. It didn’t matter. I took her phone from her and pulled up her profile page on The Corner. She worked front desk at the Jasper. Started there in September of last year, right around the time school got back into session. When we arrived, I pulled her from the cab and dragged her into the ER. A nurse rushed her back and I was left in the waiting room.

  Numb, I realized I still held her phone in my hand. I flipped through the contacts and came across ICE. In case of emergency. At least she’d had some sense to plan for an emergency. The area code was 215. I looked it up and discovered it was for Philadelphia. I pushed the call button and waited while it rang.

  “Dani?” a worried-sounded man’s voice answered.

  “Are you Dani’s father?”

  A moment of silence passed on the other end of the line.

  “Yes, who is this? Where is my daughter?”

  “Sir, I’m really sorry. I found your daughter passed out in a bar tonight. I brought her to the emergency room. St. Luke’s.”

  “Oh my God,” he muttered. A woman’s panicked voice sounded in the background.

  “You need to get here right now,” I told them. “As soon as possible.”

  “We haven’t heard from her in weeks.” Her father choked up. “I knew it. I knew it.”

  I stayed on the phone long enough to make sure he knew where to go. Before I hung up, I heard the noise of car doors shutting and an engine starting. They were leaving immediately. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be a parent and have to make a two-hour drive, knowing your child was in danger.

  After we hung up, I flipped to Dani’s text messages. Patrick
showed up three messages down. I scrolled through their conversation from earlier in the evening.

  DANI: When can I see you?

  PATRICK: Tomorrow. Wear the dress I bought you.

  DANI: K. I’m out of H.

  PATRICK: I’ll send Neiman over.

  DANI: <3

  There were months and months of messages like that. It started with casual flirtation, and turned into extravagant gifts. On her social media page she would post whenever she received something.

  New boots!

  I love my new necklace!

  I can’t with my new scarf.

  It sounded familiar to the details Mindy DeLuca had provided about her sister’s disappearance. I was more sure than ever that Patrick Blake was grooming this girl. A classic Romeo pimp. It was the scuzziest move in the handbook. He made her feel like he would take care of her no matter what. He made her feel important. Like the only girl in the world. And then he punished her when she didn’t do what he expected.

  A nurse emerged. “Sir? Miss Davenport is awake and asking to see you.” I looked up, unaware how long I’d been sitting there. I’d gone through every inch of her phone, every text message, every social media post.

  I approached the room, happy to see that some color had returned to her face.

  “My knight in shining armor.” She smiled weakly. “I don’t know how I can ever tha—”

  “Shh.” I silenced her. “You are done talking. Now you are going to listen to me.” She was taken aback by my tone. I held her cell phone up to her. “Patrick Blake is dangerous. You need to stop seeing him from this point forward.”

  The girl’s face reddened.

  “How dare you go through my personal phone?” Her gratitude faded into defensiveness.

  “Is this what you think living is?” I asked. “Having some asshole older guy support you? Lavish you with gifts? Get you so drugged up you don’t even know where you are?” I scolded her as quietly as possible so passing nurses and patients didn’t become suspicious.

  “Oh my God.” A familiar weak voice sounded behind me.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Davenport, I presume?” They nodded, still shell-shocked. I looked between the parents who were grieving for the daughter they no longer knew, and the daughter who thought she knew more than she did.

  I turned to them, and as sincerely as I could muster, offered the following.

  “Your daughter is in grave danger. She is working for and involved with a man who could harm her. Please, take her home, back to Ohio. Do not let her come back here.”

  Without waiting for a reaction, I left the room and didn’t look back. A few sobs came from either Mrs. Davenport or her daughter.

  I couldn’t save everyone, but at least I’d tried. I could sleep at night knowing that I’d tried.

  I returned home shortly before eleven o’clock that evening. As I walked up, I saw a familiar figure lingering by the front door. Except there was something strange about its form. Where it had once been dark and slumped over, it was now brighter and standing tall.

  She shouldn’t have come.

  “Luke.” Her breathless smile greeted me. By her shivering it looked like she’d been waiting for some time out there. I kept walking, not making eye contact.

  “Follow me inside in two minutes. Make sure nobody is watching.”

  Heart pumping and blood coursing through my veins, I left her there. It was dangerous, a stupid move to come visit me now that she was staying at the hotel full time. If she wanted to blow her cover, this was one way to do it.

  I paced the floor in the foyer until her knock sounded.

  “Luke, we need to talk!” she pronounced, walking in and throwing her coat on one of the benches, oblivious to the danger she’d put us in.

  “What the fuck are you thinking?” I grabbed her and gave a slight shake. Her expression changed from jovial to annoyed. “You have been silent for almost twenty-four hours and you think it’s safe to just show up here like this?”

  “I left through the back door. It’s not like he has people watching my every move.” She wrestled her arm from me, walking into the apartment.

  I followed her, but every step I took compounded my doom. In that moment, before she said another word, I realized that I’d lost her to her father. He’d given her something we couldn’t: family. At this point, who knew if Adam would ever be back. Patrick Blake was her small beacon of hope that had panned out.

  “Luke.” She grabbed my hands, her eyes softening. “This entire thing is a giant misunderstanding.”

  And so it was beginning. I could barely look at her as she continued.

  “He’s the most wonderful person,” she sighed, with a dreamy smile. “I’m one hundred percent Irish. He told me about my roots. And about my mother.”

  “What about your mother?” Up until that point I’d been relieved that Nina had never shown an interest in talking about Rachel. I’d thought I was protecting her from the heartbreak of knowing that her mother wanted nothing to do with her. But now I worried that had been a mistake.

  “The only reason my father hasn’t been in my life is because my mother fled when she got pregnant. She didn’t want me but my father did.” My jaw clenched with the realization that Blake had fed her lie after lie. Her voice was pleading me to understand. To cave. To give in. “He even gave me a job. He wants to bring me into the family business.”

  I wanted to reason with her but there was no use. It would never work.

  “Nina, I spent all night in the hospital.” I wasn’t going to shield her from the truth, no matter how blinded she was at the moment.

  “Are you alright?” Her face became panicked. “What happened?”

  “Not me,” I told her. “With a young woman.”

  She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes in confusion.

  “She’s one of your father’s employees. I tracked her down to a bar where I found her near death from an overdose.”

  “Oh my God. What’s her name? I’ll tell my father, maybe he can…”

  She wasn’t getting it. I pulled up my phone, to which I’d forwarded all of the text messages.

  “Nina, your father put her there. She’s nineteen and they’ve been seeing each other for months.” I walked away as she read the texts.

  I let her sift through the messages, knowing it was hopeless. “Dani…” she murmured to herself, confusion filling her voice.

  “Nina, he’s grooming her for something. And he’s taking advantage of you. I understand you are confused as hell right now, and clinging to the belief that he’s not what we say he is, but—”

  “Shut up, Luke.” She tossed my phone onto the couch. “Ever since you came into my life all you’ve done is reinforce this cloud of doom that I’ve always known. You seem unwilling to just let me be happy.”

  I looked into her eyes and didn’t recognize the woman staring back at me.

  “Well, I guess fooling people runs in the family.” I wanted to regret saying that, but I didn’t.

  “Excuse me?”

  I had lost.

  “You’re always playing a part, Nina. Whether it’s peeling off your clothes in some shit-hole club or letting some jackass artist use you as a canvas for his depravity, then pass you around like an hors d’oeuvre at some bullshit exhibit before kicking you to the curb. Don’t you see the same thing happening all over again? You think that piece of shit father really loves you?”

  I couldn’t help myself. I watched as the daggers I’d thrown at her sank in, lacerating any feeling she ever had for me.

  “You don’t know shit about me or my father.” The way she said those words, my father, closed the door on any relationship that had occurred between us. She held the term close to her and drenched it in protection.

  “You are making a huge mistake,” I said. “And once you go back there and cut off communication with us, I won’t be able to help you, Nina. You will be alone in there, and that terrifies me. Nina, I love you.”

 
; It was the most honest I’d been with her in weeks. Despite how big of a mess she’d made, despite the bad decisions she was about to make, I was endlessly in love with her.

  “Fuck you, Luke.” Her eyes were full of only anger and spite. She didn’t see things the way I did anymore. “If you so much as look at me again, I will blow your cover. I’m out.” She shook her head at me. Any alliance that had existed was over.

  I turned away from her and walked to the window. I stared out hoping the answer would jump out at me, but nothing came. Despite my best efforts, I had failed. “Where the hell are you, Adam?” I asked the empty space in front of me. “Your brother is never going to forgive me for driving you right into his arms.”

  There was silence for a moment behind me. And then I heard her gather her things. First her coat, and then her purse. After another pause, then the door opened and closed. Not with anger, not with spite. It sounded sad. And Nina was gone.

  The bag of heroin I’d confiscated from Dani the night before burned a hole in my coat pocket. Even though I’d never gone that far down the rabbit hole of substance abuse, it was there, tempting my restraint. Every time I looked to make sure it was still there, the bag taunted me.

  Things really are that bad, it called out to me. Don’t you just want to drop out for a while and forget it all?

  And I did. I wanted to find a perfect vein and make it all go away. If I didn’t leave the apartment, I would be as catatonic as I’d found Dani in no time. So I went out and walked.

  I walked until I got to the office. It was still early; most of the building was probably still empty. But I needed somewhere to go, so I went into work. I passed through security, gripping the small bag in my right pocket. I gripped it until I reached the front door of Watchtower.

  I walked in expecting silence, but there was mayhem. The office was full. And when I rounded the corner to the conference rooms, I understood why.

  There, standing in the war room, was a sight for sore eyes – the curly-haired mess of a friend who had been gone for so long.