Delusive

by Courtney Lane

  Maybe I was being unrealistically optimistic. She did, after all, admit to using me to get through to her son.

  Stretching her neck, she looked me over. “What are you? A size twelve?”

  “Ten, actually.”

  She gave me a smirk and smoothed her hands over her size two frame before switching the position of her legs. “It will be tough to find a good wedding dress off the rack for you, but you peg me as someone who might have her dress custom designed. I can give you the name of the dressmaker who designed my wedding dress. I think you’ll be happy with her.”

  Thrown again, I looked down at my lap. “I didn’t come here to discuss wedding plans with you. I know you know who I really am.”

  She quirked a perfectly shaped brow at me. “Oh? What is it you wanted to discuss, Hanley…or do you prefer Leina?”

  “Either works,” I said quickly. “I have a lot of things to say, actually.” I had a lot of time on the ride down to formulate my thoughts. At the moment, the woman I was made to be had fully returned to me, and she was prepared to provoke the woman in front of me. “It must drive you crazy. The way Natanael can’t keep it in his pants. Did he cheat on his first wife with you?”

  Her cold smile turned into a scowl. “Is this going somewhere?”

  “Give me a minute. It is.” Feeling smug, I leaned back in my chair. “I think you’re the type of woman that when you set your sights on something, you will do anything you can to have it. I think maybe your usual way of getting a man’s attention didn’t work, so you got pregnant and made him think it was his so he would marry you.” I waited for a reaction, and although her face remained pleasant, her demeanor told me I hadn’t lost her interest and I had yet to offend her.

  “But,” I continued, “as Elias got older people started to ask questions, you avoided giving the answers until you couldn’t. You delayed until you could use your son to make your lie believable. You found a son, Keith, who hated Natanael. Elias helped to prove the lie by getting in good with Keith. Together, the three of you made Natanael think Elias was his.

  “Because I’m sure Natanael is as psychotic as Elias is, Elias’s behavior made him proud. Proud enough to leave him with everything he had. But see, while Elias thinks he’s going to run the show once he takes down his father, I think you have other plans. You want Natanael gone, so you can run the show. I think it was you who pushed Natanael into the drug business. I’m not sure if you purposely set him up to fail or if you are resetting the scope of the business in preparation for your takeover.

  “You mentioned something about using me, which brings me back to, hmm, let’s say about twelve years. I heard the conversation my father and Natanael had. I can tell they were friends. It makes me wonder why Natanael would betray him and cut him out of the insurance money…doing so would not only hurt his friendship and loyalty ties with my father, but it would hurt his pockets. I think you had something to do with the way my mother’s death was looked at as negligent.”

  She pressed her lips together, the corners of her mouth turned up into a smile to suppress her laughter. “What an imaginative tale. Please, go on. This is the most fascinating thing I’ve heard all day.”

  “Well…assuming you’re a woman who uses sex to get what she wants, maybe you seduced the driver Natanael sponsored. I think you filled his head with empty little promises, coercing him to do you a favor. You told him to make it look like my mother was negligent.”

  “Please, go on.” She nodded excitedly, inviting me to continue. “Tell me why would I have done what you claim?”

  “To get to my father. You knew doing so would put my father at odds with Natanael. Odds so severe my father would seek revenge, dethrone your king and give you exactly what you wanted while keeping you and your son’s hands clean.”

  Her smile tempered and I was smug with the knowledge the pawn had just taken the queen.

  She stood from her desk, standing a little too confidently for me to hold onto my self-congratulations. “What is it you want, Hanley?”

  “I want what you stole from me.”

  “I can’t revive the dead,” she responded with a flippant shrug of her shoulders, “so I suppose you’re talking about money.” Without waiting for an answer, she rounded the desk and continued to speak, “That’s disappointing. I wouldn’t peg you as someone who would set her goals so low. Do you love my son at all?”

  Feeling like she kicked me in the chest, I couldn’t find my steady breaths.

  A warm grin pressed across her plump lips. “Is it love you want after all? Good. You’ve realized it can be a force more powerful than money, haven’t you?”

  My tongue was too tied to give her an answer. The woman had successfully thrown me from my high perch with a few pointed sentences.

  She glanced down at her nails, contemplating them for a moment. “I have an appointment at the spa. I’m sure I can change my appointment and add a guest.” Reaching behind her, she retrieved her phone and began to text someone. “Do you mind indulging your future mother-in-law, Hanley?”

  I blinked at her, stunned. “I-I guess.”

  “Good.” She put her phone down and stood up tall. “Follow me, it’s conveniently on the fourth floor of this building.”

  On the way to the spa, we engaged in small talk, initiated by her wish for me to have a real wedding, which was one of the few things Elias and I hadn’t discussed yet. She seemed ecstatic over the prospect of helping me with wedding preparations.

  We reached the spa on the fourth floor and were greeted by the ambient music filling the room. The earthy color scheme and the use of wood paneling made the spa very inviting. We were separated and taken to changing rooms where lockers were available to store our belongings. I was told to remove everything and visit room number four when I was done.

  Prepped in a black terrycloth robe, I navigated my way down the narrow hall, finding the open door to room number four. The walls were an eggplant shade and decorated with abstract art and several potted plants and flowers. Two black leather massage beds were in the center of the room. Nature sounds played softly in the background through the speakers implanted inside the walls.

  Kirsten was perched on the massage chair, dressed in a white robe similar to mine, with her cell phone in her lap. “Did you remove everything underneath?” she asked, keeping her eye on her cell phone as she texted someone.

  “I did.”

  “And your phone?”

  “It’s in the locker.”

  She slowly leveled her eyes at me. “You’ll excuse me if I need proof.”

  Hesitantly, I closed the door and stepped in front of her. I opened my robe to show her I was naked and turned around with the robe draped down at my thighs, giving her the proof she needed.

  “Perfect,” she intoned. “Have a seat.”

  Closing my robe, I hopped up on the massage table. Crossing one leg over the other, I maintained a straight posture.

  “First,” she started, placing her phone down on the bed, “I recognize the signature on the lies you were told. Like the good habitual liar that she is, Skylar never changes her tune.” Her brow furrowed as she searched my face. “I’m aware you assumed some things on your own from what she has told you, but the lies you’ve been told by Skylar—are just that. Lies.

  “Skylar wants things she doesn’t deserve, nor does she have a claim to them. Her rash actions have firmly placed her at the bottom of the food chain.” She uncrossed and recrossed her legs. Her posture maintained its perfect form as she slid her hands behind her to grip the massage table. “She tried to seduce Elias once, did she tell you that? My son could smell the sour on her from a mile away. All that woman has ever wanted, was to be the woman Elias called his wife. Now that you’ve stolen the title, I can’t imagine what she’ll do to try to break the two of you apart.

  “Luckily, I believe she’s met her match with you and she will be outsmarted, the same way Elias outsmarted her when she did what she did, incorrectly thi
nking it would bring Elias closer. Did she tell you about the man she killed?”

  Swallowing back the barrage of truth about Skylar, I rasped, “She said she didn’t do it.”

  “Oh, come now, Hanley.” She waved me off with a chuckle. “You’ve had to have caught that woman in a few lies by now. She wants out from underneath Elias’s thumb and into his bed, permanently. My son knows—or used to know—how to use mentation over emotion. He didn’t believe her lie about Carter spilling Elias’s secrets—secrets she wouldn’t disclose to Elias—and that she protected Elias from Carter by killing him. Carter was loyal to a fault. He would never be disloyal to the man he grew up with for someone like Skylar. Elias forgave her for murdering his closest friend in cold blood, because he knew he could use her. Unfortunately for her, you came along, and now Skylar is on a different agenda.”

  Uneasy about all that she told me and still unsure of what she wanted, I studied her carefully. “Am I supposed to just believe you?”

  “Doesn’t matter if you do,” she said with a shrug. “She drugged Carter because she couldn’t stab the man that many times when he was sober; he would’ve killed her. The man was shaped like a Roman Gladiator. If you wonder how I know all of this, it’s simple—my husband has quite a few vacation homes and in every single home he has, there are cameras. Skylar didn’t know that. If that isn’t enough, I always keep one man around Elias who is loyal to me. Mateus is that man.”

  I clutched my racing heart as I stared down at the marble floor.

  “The color just drained from your face.” She leaned forward, looking at me with something I wasn’t sure could be labeled as genuine concern. “What I said…does it ring as familiar to you?”

  I slowly nodded. I wanted not to think the things that were inundating my mind with the truth. How underhanded Skylar could be. She’d told me a few white lies in the beginning, but I passed them off as her wanting to impress me. Thinking everything she’d ever said to me was a lie, it was hard to swallow from a woman I called a friend. She showed me bits of who she really was when she took me to Bakersfield, and involved me in the clusterfuck that occurred inside the house on Fletcher. I began to think Elias was right—as usual—and she was responsible for what happened at the club.

  Kirsten’s story couldn’t have been more accurate: Skylar was on her own agenda. While I’m sure she wanted out of the Caris’ clutches, I wasn’t a hundred percent certain she wanted what I had—Elias. The test I gave her in the form of a sugar packet full of poison would definitely tell me one way or the other.

  “She claimed your husband raped her mother,” I began quietly, “but…she’s not Natanael’s daughter, is she?”

  She threw her head back and guffawed. “Simply because she spread her legs for my husband once and called him Daddy when he fucked her”—she could barely say the words through her laughter—“it doesn’t make her his real daughter.”

  I audibly gasped.

  “Oh, that’s right, Hanley. I caught them together, and I put her in the hospital for a few days. Every woman I catch with Natanael meets some semblance of the same fate…or worse.” Shaking her head, she mumbled to herself, “Natanael’s daughter? Please! Oh, God, no.”

  Erasing her smile, her tone returned to its normal weightiness. “My husband would have to lower himself to sleep with a woman who was probably born with a crack pipe in her mouth. Have you seen my husband? Do you really think he would want a woman like Skylar’s mother? My husband is capable of many things, but forcing a woman to have sex with him? The idea is preposterous. He would never sink so low. My husband has a fondness for innocent beauties.

  “I have plenty of issues with the women who throw themselves at him, hoping to get their hands on his cache of money with a pregnancy. Natanael has a lot of children from other women. Many claim to be his when they are not. He had seven children prior to being forced to get a vasectomy, but he only cares about one. The one he has with me. Do you know why that is? I am the only woman that Natanael Cari will ever truly love.”

  I found it hard to believe that when he had issues with keeping his cock to one woman. Maybe he, like his son, wasn’t certain on the definition of love. While in my heart I knew Elias was coming to terms with the true meaning, I couldn’t determine if his father had; especially not after what he had done to Elias the other night.

  “Skylar said Elias wasn’t his biological son,” I mentioned, waiting for her to debunk more of Skylar’s lies.

  “I was a virgin when I met my husband,” she replied, appearing proud of the former title. “The way he prefers them. Stop believing all the lies you’ve been told, especially from the people you thought you could trust. I’m going to do you a favor and open your eyes.”

  She reached into the pocket of her robe and retrieved a piece of paper and handed it to me. “Roth’s location.”

  I slipped off the massage chair and slid it from her hands. “M-my father said he killed him.”

  Her eyes widened in mild surprise. “And he almost did.”

  “You knew about Roth all along and you kept it from your son? When all Elias really wants is a family and siblings he can relate to, why would you do this to him?”

  “I have many reasons,” she replied dismissively. “Elias and Roth would never have gotten along. Elias wouldn’t have had the patience for Roth’s numerous character flaws. And after Lurdes, it was best he stopped his dream of bonding with all of his half-siblings. Keith is perfect for him. Pliable…and nonthreatening. He didn’t impede on the man Elias had to become—or needed to be, nor will he ever try to compete with him.”

  It was the way she said it—not exactly what she said—and the dark shadow in her eyes told me more than she bothered to reveal. “Are you the reason Elias can’t see his sister, Lurdes, anymore? Did you say something to Lula to make her take out a restraining order?”

  “That’s really none of your concern. Now”—she dusted off her lap as if she needed to—“I’ve done the best that I could to help you. I expect gratitude for this when the time comes, Hanley.”

  “Help me?” I questioned, the disbelief was palpable. “How have you helped me? And why bother when there were so many times I could’ve used your help in the past?” I shouldn’t have bothered to ask when the answers were already known to me. Kirsten had shown me the depth of her self-serving nature and the abysmal well of selfishness that ran very deep and very wide.

  “You’re looking at the glass as half empty. Look at what you have now. A gorgeous husband who will dote on you and spoil you rotten. Love. You have love, Hanley.”

  “Why are you doing your messed up version of helping me?”

  “It’s possible I feel obligated. At one time, your mother and I were friends.” Her confidence took a visible hit. Her eyes wandered off into space before sullenly settling back on me. “It’s impossible to expect a friendship to survive when we were both after the same man at the same time. I won him, and your mother was always a sore loser.”

  “Are you…are you saying my mother and Natanael were an item?”

  “Who do you think her first husband was?”

  “Luther, it always was.”

  She chuckled wryly. “It baffles my mind what those parents of yours have done to your pretty little head. Luther wasn’t her first husband. She always claimed Natanael was her very first love; he always was.”

  Gasping, I slipped back to sit on the massage chair. My legs began to feel unsteady and lacked the ability to stand. “That can’t be right. None of this can be right. My father was her first love.”

  “Did she tell you that or did he?”

  Dropping my chin to my chest, I was unable to answer. I always assumed or thought my mother confirmed what my father had always said, but now I couldn’t remember the exact time when—or if—she admitted my father was the love she lost. She stated it generically, and I assumed it was my father.

  “I know you expected me to be the evil queen. I’m sorry, but I’m going to hav
e to disappoint you.” She shook her head. “I’m not a fan of hiding the truth because it will hurt the ones we love. But I will hide the truth if it will negatively affect my plans. I was never a maternal one. I did my son a favor by not pretending to be.”

  It was delusional of her to cast off the title of “evil queen”. While she might not have been the perfect mold of one, I had a feeling she’d turn out to be something much worse if her actions continued to go unchallenged. “I don’t think Elias would agree with you. He practically had to raise himself.”

  “And I think he did a decent job.”

  Elias had serious psychological issues. If he’d had parents who loved him, he would be a well-adjusted adult. She didn’t know him at all if she thought Elias turned out to be the best man he could have been. I loved him, despite all his flaws, but I was realistic about his nature. The man was severely fucked up…and I adored every single edge of his jagged little pieces. They were parts of a whole, and even if parts of him drove me mad, they made up the man he was, and he was my entire world.

  Awestruck, I could barely formulate the question. “Do you…even know who your son is?”

  “I know enough, Hanley. He did everything I thought he would, just as you did everything I hoped you would.” With a warm simper, she looked me over. “I must say, I’m looking forward to having you as a daughter-in-law. The mess between us, keeping us from having a relationship with one another needs to be cleared. I’m not your enemy. I never was. I was never your mother’s enemy, either. It’s unfortunate she didn’t see it that way until close to the end of her life. She knew her days were numbered.”

  With a wistful sigh, she slipped down from the massage chair and walked over to me. Placing her hand underneath my chin, she lifted my head to meet her gaze. “I’m looking forward to retiring and having more than a few grandchildren. This queen is ready to retire her throne to someone else—you.”