Delusive

by Courtney Lane

  The sprinklers finally shut off, and the sounds of the neighborhood were heard. The birds, the barking protests of a few dogs, and the distant sound of a fire engine’s sirens filled the minutes of dead air between us.

  Taking a deep breath, Elias crouched down to my level. He ran a palm over his unruly hair before allowing his elbows to settle on his thighs and clasped his hands over the open space between his legs. “You never answered my question.” Pausing, he regulated his breath and cleared his throat to remove the slightly more than normal level of gravel that blanketed his voice. “Why didn’t you take it as far as you intended it to go? Because I expected you to want the marriage, to betray me some more, and lastly, to put me in prison.”

  “Because I fell in love with you, and I only wanted you to marry me because you loved me, too.” My voice sounded like something other than my own with the way it wrapped gently around the words.

  His eyes changed for only a moment. He looked completely disarmed and almost made me think I was wrong; I still had a huge piece of him. “I know that you’re a very good liar. Anything you have to say about us…is going to be ignored. Negating anything from and about our relationship—” Shaking his head, a frustrated, low laugh unleashed through his lips. He rubbed the corner of his mouth as though he were attempting to remove his smile. “Truth is—which was lost on me—there never was a real relationship. Leina, what else do you want? What else can I do for you to make me feel a little less like an asshole for not being here for you when you father passed?”

  “Why weren’t you…here after my father died?”

  “I didn’t want to come because I wanted to avoid what just happened,” he replied. “Had no idea how worthless staying away from you would be. Then again, I was more pissed at you twelve days ago than I am now. It’s a good thing I didn’t come to you. The things I did to you in Portugal would’ve seemed like tame amusement compared to what I could’ve done to you.”

  “Someday, I hope you’ll understand. I hope you will forgive me.”

  He gave me a dark look as his eyes narrowed. “What do you want from me, Leina?”

  You. The second my chin began to tilt, his fist was under my chin, making me stare into his eyes and transforming the entire ordeal into something much harder than it should’ve been. “I…need answers.” I forced myself to state in order to end the silence. “I…need to know the truth about my father. I want to know why he would kill himself, but I don’t think I will—”

  “Are you sure you want to do this so close to his death?”

  I blinked, thrown by his question. “You know the truth—about what really happened when my mother was killed?”

  “I do.”

  “Then, I guess there really isn’t a better time for me to find out, is there?”

  He raised his brows, an indiscernible expression flooded his face. “Come with me.”

  Feeling the dampness of my panties, I grimaced. “Can you give me a few minutes? I’m just going to hit the shower and—”

  “Ten minutes,” he told me with finality and headed toward his car.

  THE MINUTE I stepped across the threshold of Elias’s house, I felt as though I didn’t belong there. It was a gut-wrenching feeling. The house served as a manifestation of what we’d devolved into—distant with one another, unsure of whether we belonged together or apart. The relationship was built on a foundation of lies, but the truths we created—the way we felt about each other—brought us closer than we intended to be.

  I remained on the couch, waiting for Elias as he went in search of what he wanted to show me. He rounded the corner, clutching something in his hands and kept his distance from me. “Did you get the chance to speak with your sister?”

  “I’m not wearing a wire," I replied, "if that’s what you think.”

  “Yet,” he said, exhaling deeply. He touched the small device in his hands, thumbing it for a while. “My father has a vault. A vault he thinks only he and a few people know about containing blackmail material on almost every person who has in the past or currently reports to him.” He searched my expression, delaying his next words. “He had information on your father.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “As I said, the night after you left me the first time, a lot of things were disclosed to me. What I have in my hand—a copy of what was in his vault—is your proof. The answer to why I’ve kept this: I make it my job to know my father’s next move, minutes before he makes it. To do that, I have to know everything he knows and things that he doesn’t.”

  “You make it sound like he’s your opponent instead of your father.” I thought about the discussion he had with Jaco when I was sick. Along with the things he made me see in Portugal, and the exchange between him and Earl, the talk of a new regime—a change in the business—fit perfectly into the puzzle that wasn’t yet finished. “Are you—do you want to take your father down?”

  “He deals in drugs.” He sat next to me and leaned back on the couch, outstretching his arms to rest on the backrest. “I deal in more complicated matters—money. Making sure it’s clean, loaning it to people who need it, making sure it comes back to me with the right amount of interest. Properties and acquisitions. That’s what I deal with. While my methods for controlling and ensuring my businesses continue to thrive may be extreme to you, what I never was, or will ever be, is a drug dealer.

  “I saw what my father went through, and how close he’s coming to losing what he’s built on a more legal means of funding the lifestyle he wanted, by sinking into the dirty side of the drug business. Needless to say, he isn’t handling the new territory very well.

  "My father’s in deep and he’s going to take this town down with him. He was warned by people closest to him, me and my uncle Silvio. Cartels aren’t what they used to be. Not that they were anything remotely honorable before. Silvio and I will make sure he leaves Cari Enterprises before he ruins what we can make better.”

  “Won’t the Cartel come after you if you go after Natanael?”

  “Not if things go as they should.”

  “Meaning?”

  “They want something, and I’m going to give it to them. Don’t question that any further.”

  “Why are you telling me any of this now?” I slowly mulled over the bomb of information he dropped on my lap.

  “I couldn’t trust you as long as you believed in your father. As much as I’d tried to get you away from him, you were stuck in a fantasy about the kind of man he was. I just can’t say that my lack of trust in you has changed.” He placed the memory card on the table directly on top of a laptop. "I'll give you privacy." He stood up and left the room, giving me exactly what he promised.

  I expected a video, but instead was faced with an mp3 audio file. Hitting the play button on the touch screen, I turned up the volume.

  “Are you sure you want this done?” Natanael’s muffled voice rings out, “I thought you loved that woman. Now you want her dead?”

  “She found out the truth about how her husbands died,” my father’s voice answers. “She cut me off financially, and I think she’s going to try to frame me for her last husband’s death.”

  “If I do this for you, you will owe me big for the rest of your life.”

  “I’ll pay whatever,” my father promises. “Once she dies, I’ll get her insurance money. That’s more than enough to clear my debts with you.”

  “There is more to this."

  There is a moment where things are said, but inaudible. “…I don’t know how she figured it all out but she did. She put it all together. We argued. She threatened me and my little girl. I won't go to prison. I want what’s owed to me before she has a chance to change her will and go to the cops.”

  “I thought she left everything to her daughters?”

  “She’s going to punish Leina because she’s a good girl who obeys me. She’s going to cut her out of her will…and I think she’s going to snitch about what I’ve asked Leina to do. Cutting Leina out
is the same thing as cutting me out. I can’t have that happen.”

  “It might be too late.”

  “I don’t believe it is. We need to hurry up. She has a race coming up. You can do something to her then.”

  “Be clear on this. Because if you don’t get the money to pay me, I will take one of your daughters in trade. I have a few associates who would pay what you owe to get their hands on a girl like her. When she is used up, I will take another. Your oldest.”

  “You’re talking about, Earl, aren’t you? Neither you, nor he, will get to touch my daughters,” my father warns him. “The money will be mine free and clear. You’ll get your payment, Nat. Don’t threaten me again.”

  Hearing more than enough, I hit the stop button. I sat back on the couch, wracking my brain to fill in all the holes.

  I worked out the facts in my mind. My father was the reason Frankie’s husbands died. He hoped to cash in on their deaths and Frankie cut him off in the end. I slipped the blue packet out of my pocket, reading Roth’s message over and over again.

  I thumbed the edges of the packet pensively. A deep-seated reaction shot through my body, taking me by surprise. My heart pounded and my body began to tremble. Uncomfortable on the couch, I ejected from my seat and began to pace the room.

  I couldn’t be certain if it was a memory or an educated guess, but I knew what was inside the packets. It wasn’t synthesized sugar, it was full of something deadly.

  Elias returned to the room and remained in the archway.

  “Why would he…” Quickly shoving the packet in the back pocket of my pants, I stopped pacing back and forth and swallowed back the lump forming in my throat. “Why would my father use me to get to you?” It was a redundant question. My father had used me for other things, things that were mentioned on the recording but never detailed. Things I obviously didn’t remember doing.

  “It sounds like he knew Natanael well enough to ask him for a favor,” I surmised. “If he was such good friends with your father, why couldn’t he work something out to clear his debts? More importantly, why send me after you and make me think Natanael acted alone?”

  “Because he needed you to look at him the way you had,” Elias replied. “You thought he was infallible.”

  I looked down at the ground, thinking up the answers to my own questions. I remembered my father on the phone, arguing with the insurance claims department over Frankie’s accident being ruled as negligent; it left him with nothing.

  Did Natanael really betray my father, or was there a third person in the entire scheme?

  And the will? Why hadn’t I heard anything about it? He told me she was penniless, but from the conversation he had with Natanael, it was very unlikely. What happened to the money? Did she give everything she had—minus the Nova—to my sister?

  “Roth?” I asked shyly. “Did you know about him? He’s in—was in a mental hospital because of me and because of my father.”

  From his face, it was clear that he hadn’t the slightest idea what I was talking about. “Who is Roth?”

  “No,” I said hoarsely, hiding my shock. My mind continued to race, thinking back to one of Natanael mistresses, Lula. She talked about an older brother, found not to be Natanael’s. I assumed it was Keith, but what if it wasn’t? What if it was Roth? It made very little sense, his mother was alive and I knew nothing about Roth being adopted. But if Elias hadn’t discovered who he was—meaning Roth wasn’t the one who snitched on me—who else could’ve known about me and told him?

  There seemed to be nothing out of Elias’s reach. If he was unaware of another sibling—who might not have been his real sibling—someone with an equal amount of power had to be protecting Roth. “Who gave you information about me if it wasn’t your father?”

  “Believe it or not, it was my mother.”

  I almost let an “Aha!” slip from my mouth. There it was, the third player in the game. One I hadn’t even thought about. If she had known who I was, what else could she have known, or possibly done? Her timing for disclosing the truth about me to her son had to be self-serving. If she truly cared about her son, she would’ve told him from the beginning. She must’ve had something to gain by telling him after he might’ve developed feelings for me.

  The woman had mysterious and sinister intentions.

  “With what you do know”—I walked toward him, keeping my voice and my posture demure—“you have every reason to hate me…and distrust me. What makes you think I didn’t know some of this—or at least more than I’m letting on—and followed my father anyway? If you knew everything since we broke up the first time, why didn’t you just let our relationship go? Why did you fight so hard to get me back? And why are you helping me now?”

  “I can only answer the last question.” Broadening his back with a glower, he placed his hands in his pockets in a defensive stance, appearing unwelcoming toward my need to touch him and be near him. “My answers to the previous ones are too complex and not something I want to discuss with you right now. I’m helping you, because I see an opportunity.”

  “But if your father goes down, won’t this incriminate you?”

  “It will be an annoyance for a while as they look into Cari Enterprises, but they won’t find anything on me or the businesses I own. My paper trail is clean. My father’s isn’t.”

  I walked backward, visibly backing away from the idea of continuing my plan without my father because the stakes had become higher than anything I was prepared for. “I meant what I said to you in Portugal,” I said, bewildered, “I’m done.”

  “If my mother knows about you, it’s only a matter of time before my father discovers who you are. He won’t wait for you to take him down first. He will get to you, and he won’t just leave it at you. Your sister will get hit in the crossfire, too.”

  “I thought you said you still felt the need to protect me.”

  “I do…but it can easily go away. Help me to help you.”

  I recalled the better times in my life and clung to them for some semblance of comfort. Elias made it clear I’d never get to find my comfort in him again. It pained me more than I wanted to show. “Will things ever be what they were between us? The softer parts of our relationship? The ones that made me…feel? Or did it all go away when you found out the truth? Were you just being the most dedicated and convincing actor ever?”

  “We’ve gone over this.” He dismissed me with a scowl. “At this point, our relationship is strategic.” The only person I had left on my side continued the business-like nature he suddenly chose to adopt when dealing with me.

  “Understood,” I said, putting on a brave face.

  “There is one thing I need you to do for me. I have a good reason for needing it. If anything goes wrong, I need to know you can’t be forcibly compelled to betray me…again.”

  “Does that mean what I think it does? Do you want me to…marry you?”

  “Yes, Leina. Before we go forward, a marriage between us needs to happen.”

  I immediately looked at my naked left hand. It was a knee-jerk reaction and I couldn’t be sure why I had done it. Once, it had come close to having Elias’s ring on the fourth finger. It was everything I had planned for. The reason was different. The purpose was different. I wanted it, but not for the reasons he did. “I’m not going to my sister or the Feds. When I help you, it will be without them. I want to help. Not sure if I can do what you’re asking me to do…with the ring and what comes after it.”

  “You need me,” he intoned, his brows furrowing. “I can’t protect you when you can’t do what I’m asking you to do. Even before things between us changed, this isn’t new information. I’ve repeatedly asked you for things and now you know the reason I needed you to behave a certain way.

  “If you think you can walk away from this, you’re wrong. You only have two options, and I doubt you’ll sit back and let my father punish you. You can’t walk away. It’s no longer an option. I think you know that.”

  I rubbe
d the back of my neck in discomfort. The scope of the truth no longer held Natanael at the center. Kirsten seemed to have something to gain in all of it as well.

  I had to say yes to Elias to gain a foothold in the game now that so many things have changed and I was forced to be a player whether I wanted to be or not.

  “Okay,” I finally agreed.

  THAT NIGHT, ELIAS’S bed couldn’t have dwarfed me more and had never been colder. Being back in a place I no longer fit with didn’t help me sleep. The sudden light, pouring in from the hall into the bedroom, alerted me. I rolled over in bed to see Elias standing in the doorway. In only his boxer-briefs, his hair tussled in a bed-head sort of way, he plodded toward me. Pulling down the sheets, he crawled into bed with me to lay next to me. Facing me, he caressed my face tenderly. “This doesn’t change anything, Leina.”

  I refused to nod and agree, because it changed everything. “You couldn’t sleep, either?”

  He rolled over, giving me a view of his broad and muscular back.

  I snuggled up next to him, looping my arm around the curve in his waist and rested my palm on his tensely flexed torso. My nose pressed against his shoulder to fill my senses with his scent, his heat, the feel of his skin, and the lulling sensation of his breathing pattern.

  “Twelve days,” he said, his voice vibrating through his back.

  “What?” I questioned, confused.

  “I haven’t been able to sleep through a full night in twelve days.” He moved again, slipping out of my hold and away from my reach to settle into bed.

  THIRTY

  THE DAY WAS A headache. If I had any questions about the state of the money in my mother’s will, it was squashed with a few words from the estate lawyer she and my father shared. I never saw a dime of the money my mother left me, because she was able to change her will before my father had her killed. She left almost everything to Holden. The only thing I had left from her was the car my father chose to use to take his own life.