Charged: A Stepbrother Romance Novel (With FREE Bonus Novel Heated!)

by Stephanie Brother

  It was all happening too fast for Gracey to think properly. One minute everything was fine, the next her stepfather was dead, his long lost son had come back to claim his inheritance, and Gracey had fallen in love with him. She tasted the word on her lips just to see if it made sense. It didn’t make sense. All it did was make her stomach do somersaults.

  Who was this man that had come out of the middle of nowhere to steal a heart he had no right to steal? It wasn’t fair that the only man she had ever felt this strongly about happened to be the one man she wasn’t allowed to be in love with. Well, something had to change. Gracey knew she had to make a decision, and she knew she had to make it sooner rather than later. She hoped that it wasn’t too late already.

  ***

  Alexis had called a family meeting. It was the first one of such since Philip’s death. When Gracey got to the living room, everyone else was already there waiting for her. She took a seat quietly on a three seater couch where her two sisters were already sat, and waited for her mother to begin. Family meetings were a mainstay of her mother’s methods of bringing up her children, to the point where they featured heavily in Gracey’s memories of her childhood. They were always between only the four of them, and always involved a dictatorship style of delegation. They were used as a means of communicating information in two directions. Alexis asked her children questions, and told them what she wanted them to do. There was no negotiation, and punishment would be metered out for insolence and disagreement. Historically, Pandora was always the one who got punished the most, but conversely always the one most ready to please her mother.

  The ice in Alexis’s glass of whisky cracked. Isabella blew her nose on a handkerchief and Pandora clicked her tongue against her teeth, obviously bored.

  “So who did it then?” Alexis asked the three of them.

  Pandora and Gracey looked at each other, while Isabella looked at the floor.

  “I don’t care that he’s dead, I want to know how likely it is you’re going to get caught.”

  Silence.

  “Pandora?” Alexis said, her eyes going to her eldest daughter first.

  “Fuck, no”, Pandora said, quick to defend herself. “I wouldn’t know where to start. Ask Gracey. She probably planned it with Leighton all along.”

  “Yeah, right”, Gracey said. “And why would I do that?”

  “So you can fuck and make babies.”

  “Isabella”, Alexis said, ignoring her other two daughters. “What do you know about this?”

  “Nothing”, Isabella said. “It wasn’t me.”

  Alexis’s eyes narrowed. “Hmmm”, she grunted, angrily.

  “As soon as the police find out who it was, or when they find out that Leighton had nothing to do with it, whichever is quicker, and if Pandora continues at her failed attempts to seduce him, we are quite clearly fucked.”

  “How do we know it wasn’t him?” Pandora said. “I mean, he had more motive than any of us.”

  “No-one knew what was in the fucking will. My dear husband abandoned Leighton when he was a baby. You don’t know how many times he told me that god-awful story, pushed into it by that psycho of an ex partner he had to put up with.”

  “Exactly”, Isabella piped up, suddenly pulling herself out of a thoughtful moment. “That’s a perfect reason to kill him.”

  “Leighton wasn’t here to kill him”, Alexis spat out angrily, “The police already know that. What they haven’t established yet is whether he had a connection with anyone here who did-”

  Alexis raised her hand to point at her children. “-or anyone else who managed to get past security and into the house to murder him.”

  “Anyone could have done it”, Pandora said, an emery board running across her nails.

  “Whoever did it is running on borrowed time. Leighton Tempest is a billionaire, I checked him out. He had even more money already than Philip did. There would have been no reason for Leighton to kill him. No reason at all.”

  “There would have been a reason if he hated him enough”, Isabella said, and it made Alexis narrow her eyes again.

  “He didn’t do it”, Alexis said, “and I don’t reckon it’ll take his lawyers long to prove to the courts that the injunction they have in place to stop him receiving what is rightfully his is unlawful. When that happens we are fully submerged in shit creek without a goddamn paddle. Gracey pour me some more whiskey.”

  Alexis shook her glass violently and Gracey reluctantly pulled herself off the couch to retrieve the bottle and fill her mother’s glass back up.

  “Only if he sells the house”, Pandora said.

  “Or kicks us out of it”, Isabella added.

  “I’ve seen he’s sweet on you”, Alexis said, grabbing her daughter’s arm suddenly and making Gracey gasp. “You’ve got your mother’s complexion. Pale and virginal.”

  Pandora smirked.

  “That’s enough. I gave you one simple task and you fucked it up. I could have done a better job myself.”

  “I haven’t finished yet”, Pandora whined

  “Yes you have, I’m giving the job to Gracey.”

  Alexis smiled up at her daughter, her thumb making Gracey’s wrist red where it refused to let go.

  “Gracey?” Pandora complained.

  “I don’t want it”, Gracey said, finally pulling her hand away from her mother’s grip.

  “That wasn’t a question”, she said fiercely. “If you don’t let Leighton into your precious little panties, this family will be finished.”

  “Then maybe that’s for the best”, Gracey said.

  Alexis rose from her seat. Even at full stretch she was almost a good foot off the height of her youngest daughter. “What did you just say?”

  Gracey could see the veins come to the surface of her mother’s neck, whiskey shining on her lips. “Nothing”, she said eventually, and turned away.

  “I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with you. The first time a man shows any interest in you and you act like a nun. Getting laid will do you good. It’ll do everyone good. I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”

  Isabella couldn’t help but chuckle, while Gracey felt as though she’d been stabbed in the heart.

  “If you don’t want him to sell the house and kick you out, why don’t you just ask him?” Gracey said.

  “You think that’s going to work?” Alexis scoffed. “Leighton is a businessman. The business part of that means he doesn’t care about anything but making money and the man part of that means he doesn’t care about anything but pussy. And in this case, it looks like that pussy happens to be yours. That means you have a responsibility to give him what he wants so we can get what we want.”

  “You think if I fuck him, he’ll let us keep the house?”

  “I think if you let him fuck you, he’ll do anything that you ask him. I thought I’d taught you all well enough, but it seems like Pandora is the only one who’s been clever enough to get it. That fucking hole in between your legs isn’t for pissing out of. It’s the most powerful thing on this planet and it’s for women everywhere to show everyone else they can and will take control. How the fuck do you think I got what I did from your stepfather? It wasn’t by telling him I loved him and rubbing his back when the rain came down. Fuck, no. It was by opening my legs and letting him fuck me. Use it for Christ sake. Use the power that I’ve given you. Christ knows you won’t get another opportunity looking like that.”

  There was a moment of silence in the room, broken only by the clatter of ice in Alexis’s glass.

  “Fuck you”, Gracey said, before she burst into tears and ran out of the room.

  “Fuck”, Alexis barked, spittle flying everywhere.

  “I can make him mine”, Pandora said, cutting through the awkward silence Gracey’s dramatic exit had left. “I just need a bit more time.”

  Alexis sipped her whiskey and lit a cigarette, coughing smoke out into the room. “Make her fuck him”, she said. “That’s your task now. Do whatever i
t takes, but make her fuck him. I refuse to lose this house. Fuck.”

  Alexis knocked back her whiskey.

  “And you two, if I find out either of you are lying to me about Philip, I’m going to kill you before the police get a chance to drag you in, do you hear me?”

  “Yes, Mom”, Pandora and Isabella responded in unison.

  Chapter 12

  Detective Foster was thinking about Alexis when the report came in. There was something about the leather skinned trollop that stuck with him. He found himself imagining her in all manner of pulse quickening positions he once practiced with assiduity with his now ex-wife and as much as it disgusted him, he couldn’t help himself. It was problematic, not only because he suspected her of wrongdoing, but because the thoughts left him both horny, and with chills down his spine. It was a confusing matter he’d much rather do without.

  “You’re going to want to see this.”

  Foster eyeballed Benjamin Pope and then eyeballed the report that he’d slid across his desk like a bribe. The words he picked out were digitalin, traces, massive quantities, Gracey and beyond reasonable doubt.

  “Gracey”, he said. “The butter wouldn’t melt.”

  Benjamin nodded gravely. He was a square jawed man from a family of square jawed men, with square jaws that went hundreds of years back into his heritage. He was the kind of man who made love in one positioned only, considered penne arrabiata pushing the boat out a little too far and always looked better with glasses on, even with his eyes closed.

  “Traces of it all over her room”, he said, pushing his glasses back up his nose. “She didn’t try and hide it well at all. Or she tried to hide it and didn’t do it well at all. We need to wait for another report to tell us that.”

  “And the rest of the house? The mother, Alexis? Pandora?”

  “The rest was clean.”

  Detective Foster looked stern. The report seemed to suggest an open and shut case, it seemed to suggest that Gracey, the one person who sat by her stepfather while he tried to hold desperately onto his quickly fading life was responsible for putting him there, but something didn’t sit right with him. It was never this open and shut. There was still no motive. Yes she might have felt guilty which was why she was there at the hospital in the first place, but why do it? Why kill him at all? Foster knew what he needed to do. He needed to get Gracey back in, there was no doubt about that, but more than that, he needed to know exactly what kind of relationship Gracey had with Leighton Tempest. As far as he could tell, Leighton Tempest was as clean as a kidney dish. He had a soft spot for beautiful women, but didn’t any man? What was he still doing here anyway? Why was he still hanging around when the inheritance had been granted already, alright restricted due to the temporary injunction Foster had managed to get in place, which wasn’t really anything but a delay for the inevitable anyway, but granted all the same? They both knew that as soon as Tempest’s crack team of lawyers managed to get it seen to in court, the money would be back on its way, and that was probably in the process of happening already. There was something else keeping him here, and Foster wanted to know what it was. He was hoping Gracey would be the one to tell him.

  “Digitalis”, Detective Foster said, testing the words on his tongue.

  “It’s a brutal poison”, Benjamin said, a flicker of excitement chasing across his lips. He enjoyed his job, and there was something about the use of digitalis in this particular case that fascinated him. He’d first heard about the poison from an Agatha Christie novel and hadn’t encountered it at work until now. When he’d been given the case to work on, he’d had a bit of a geekgasm.

  “How would she know how to use it?”

  “Well to be honest”, Benjamin said, taking a seat that hadn’t been offered to him, and standing up again almost immediately when Detective Foster gave him an inhospitable look. “I don’t think she did. If she had, he wouldn’t have spent a week in the hospital in a considerable amount of pain. Unless that’s exactly what she wanted. We’d have to wait for the psych evaluation for that.”

  “Or a confession”, Detective Foster added.

  “That would work too”, Benjamin said, a man of facts and figures.

  “Is there any way that this could have been planted in her bedroom?”

  “There were fingerprints on the container that matched Gracey’s. It’s possible of course, but at the moment it doesn’t look good for her. You’d have to interview her to make absolutely sure. You know without video cameras or eye witnesses we wouldn’t be able to be one hundred percent-”

  “Thank you, Benjamin.” Detective Foster said, cutting him off mid sentence.

  “Is there anything else you’d like me to do, sir?”

  Foster’s steely gaze told the lab technician everything he needed to know. As far as the tests were concerned, the fat finger of guilt pointed directly at Gracey Logan, now all the Detective needed to do was find out why.

  Chapter 13

  All Gracey had ever wanted was to go to University and get out of her shithole town and backwards, fucked-up life. It didn’t even matter to her what she studied. She was interested in a wide range of different subjects and would have been equally happy studying French as she would have been psychology. It didn’t matter. What she did, mattered less than the fact that she was doing it. No one else in her family had ever been to University, and neither had they been interested in it. Pandora found happiness in her ability to manipulate other people, much like her mother, and as long as Isabella had enough time to daydream, she was the happiest person on the planet.

  She had never felt close to her sisters, not even when they were growing up. Pandora had long been a role model until Gracey developed her own identity and realised the things Pandora wanted were shallow and superficial, and she’d just never been able to communicate to Isabella in the ways she’d always hoped. Isabella never really paid her younger sister that much attention, deciding to fall in step with Pandora and side herself with the more popular girl of the two, so they never really developed much of a connection together.

  Isabella was a typical middle child. A daydreamer with little ambition and even less motivation. Gracey couldn’t even say what it was that Isabella wanted from life, and that bothered her. She wasn’t completely stupid, but she wasn’t intelligent either. It was like she just didn’t get it, or didn’t see the point in trying. She could see Pandora manipulating her but Isabella didn’t look like she felt manipulated. Philip absolutely hated her as well. Of all three girls, Isabella was definitely his least favorite. He was horrible to all three of them, but to Isabella, he was intentionally cruel. He would attack her personally and say the meanest most upsetting things to her as though somehow he had been personally disappointed by her progress in life. In typical fashion, Isabella just shook it off.

  University was a long distance off now. So much for the promise her stepfather had made to send her off to the school of her choice in the summer, all expenses paid. At her current rate of three shifts a week, it would take her until graduation age just to pay for the first year. She’d managed to save up a bit of money, but she needed to pay for travel and accommodation, before even starting up at school. There was always the possibility of finding more bar work, but to hold down a job and study, when all she wanted to concentrate on was getting through school, it sucked, no matter how she looked at it.

  She hadn’t noticed Leighton come in. She hadn’t noticed she’d been cleaning the same glass for five minutes either, desperately trying to get rid of a watermark that showed no intentions of moving.

  “Busy?” Leighton said.

  She recognised the voice and it sent shivers up and down her spine. How could he do that? How could one man get to her so efficiently? She guessed that the answer lay in the fact that Leighton Tempest was no ordinary man. Gracey put down the glass and composed herself.

  “It’s been kind of quiet”, she said, looking out to the near empty bar area. “I thought you’d left town already.�
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  “I’ve still got business here”, Leighton said, without feeling the need to clarify exactly what that business might be.

  Gracey could hardly look at him. Every time she did she felt like she was going to melt. Would it be that bad to say yes to him, if the offer was still there? It might help her family. Hell, it might get her to college. But then if she let herself, and he left her, what would happen then? He had that look, and besides which, she’d done her research too. Leighton Tempest, the man who never just sticks to just one girl. Gracey wasn’t sure if her heart could take it, but then she wasn’t sure how much longer she could resist either.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to see you”, Leighton confessed. “The injunction on the inheritance was lifted permanently. It was unlawfully placed to begin with.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Gracey had been anxiously cleaning the bar top when Leighton took her hand in his. He waited until they looked at each other, and waited again until he was sure. The feeling wasn’t going away. The longer he left it, the stronger it got.

  “You’re leaving.” she said, a statement rather than a question.

  “I’m not leaving until I get what I’ve come for.”

  “What if what you’ve come for isn’t available?”

  “I believe that’s just a matter of time.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Let’s just say it’s a gut feeling.”

  Gracey smiled sheepishly.

  “Will you sell the house?” she asked.

  “If I did, I wouldn’t know where to find you.”