FaCade (Deception #1)

by D H Sidebottom

  He stood waiting for me when I came back out, wringing his hands together nervously. He took one look at my ashen face, the tears that fell, and opened his arms to me.

  “Ssh,” he whispered when I fell into him and sobbed. “It will be okay, Faye. I promise.”

  I gasped, pulling much needed air into my lungs as a shudder shot through me. That had been the most confusing memory of them all. My thoughts at wondering how the results would affect him.

  I shook my head, pushing them away, knowing I would go crazy if I dwelled on them. Taking another deep breath, I pulled the test from the box and nodded to myself sternly.

  I was surprised to see Malik staring at me when I slowly opened the bathroom door and walked back into the bedroom, my legs trembling as my heart beat too fast.

  “Well?”

  I shook my head rapidly, sweat from the despair flowing through me flicking off my forehead. I knew what it would say, but the proof was too much. A long high pitched wail left me as my life changed so very swiftly with the appearance of one pale blue cross.

  “Star,” Malik whispered, his expression one of utter desolation. “Star.” He took a step towards me but I stepped back and hissed.

  “Tell me what’s going on!”

  His face crumbled. “I can’t.” His pained whisper was enough to tell me I was on my own. “Please, Star,” he urged desperately when a sob echoed from me.

  I couldn’t breathe, the room closed in on me as my ears started whooshing. Malik took another step towards me. I flew for him, anger at everything coming to a head as I smashed fist after fist into him. He stood and tolerated it, allowed me vent it all on him. His body was my punching bag as I pummeled him, my tears and snot as furious as my hits.

  I knew Malik cared for me, but his loyalty and love for Dante was much greater.

  “No!” I screamed when his arms came around me. I pushed him off and slapped his face, the final piece of anger forcing itself out.

  His palm lifted to his face as the sting shot through him.

  “Faye! My name is Faye! Fuck you!” I spat out. “FUCK YOU ALL!! I’m done!”

  I fled through the house. Whatever the outcome, I was leaving, whether I had to fucking swim to land, whether I drowned in the water’s depths, I didn’t care anymore. I couldn’t bear another second in this house, never mind the rest of my life. Whether my memory came back or not was irrelevant, I wanted to be free of the oppressive bastard who had done this to me.

  The walls rushed past me as my legs carried me faster and faster. My heart beat too fast and I lifted my hand, pressing it to my chest to try and alleviate the pain burning my heart.

  The door slammed back into its frame when I burst through it. The grass under my bare feet was almost sensual, its softness calming and encouraging me to run faster and faster.

  Yet the world shifted when I finally made it to the small dock and I skidded on the damp ground when flashes and shouts blinded me.

  I WAS SO TENSE. I knew what she had asked Malik to get for her on land. She thought she had an ally in him and in some ways she did. But he knew the hand that fed him was also the one that wouldn’t hesitate to break his neck if he crossed me. He respected her and held affection he tried to suppress but didn’t ... couldn’t. She was infectious; once she was in your blood there was no way you could ever get her out. I was a prime example.

  I fell in love with an eleven year old Star. I remembered first seeing her in the cast of the moon’s glow. The removal trucks were still moving her family in to the house she lived in from that day forward. Even after the sun had set they continued to move furniture inside.

  I lived a few streets over in a nicer area. Her smile lifted to me when she noticed me. I was late home and my dad was going to ground me but I couldn’t move. I was only thirteen but I felt it, a jolt, a connection. Her mum dragged her inside.

  I had stared at the house until long after the removal truck left, waiting, and then the curtain twitched and green eyes looked back at me.

  The next day she showed up at my school. She walked straight up to me in the cafeteria and placed a drawing in front of me. It was of me on my bike outside her house. It was so lifelike; she had even captured the infatuated look in my eyes. How could someone so young draw so well?

  All eyes went to this new brazen girl who’d placed her tray next to mine and sat amongst all my friends. “Hey, I’m Faye!” She beamed, reaching her hand out to me. I blinked a few times before taking it in my palm. I looked down and noticed a faint birthmark on her wrist. “It’s the shape of a star,” I murmured. Her eyebrow rose but I smiled, turned to everyone and told them, “This is, Star. She’s with me.”

  For six years she was by my side, we were a unit. I was different from most of our friends; there was something inside me that set me apart from everyone emotionally, everyone but her. I had issues with authority and it all stemmed from never feeling like I fit in amongst my family. My father was in the entertainment business and wanted the same fate for his children but it never appealed to me.

  I had an IQ of 160; I was more intelligent than most of the teachers at our school but my parents didn’t send me to private school to master my intellect. They believed public school taught value and a backbone, so despite their wealth, that was where I went.

  Science interested me, and luckily I had an amazing teacher who knew what to do with me, and who to contact for colleges. When I was approached for an internship with a major pharmaceutical company and college scholarship, my parents didn’t even congratulate me. Any other parents would have thrown a party, cried a little and told their kid they were proud, but I got nothing. Star did all those things. She was willing to put our future on hold while I went to college.

  Little did I know it was so she could fuck him behind my back without the fear of getting caught. She didn’t even wait for me to leave the state before she went to him. The day I planned to tell her I gave it all up because I couldn’t be away from her.

  I’d do what my father wanted and go to community college and then go into entertainment like him. I bought her a ring and held my tongue all through my farewell party the night before. She had said her goodbyes the night before because she couldn’t bear seeing me drive away. Fucking lying bitch.

  The next evening after I planned everything out for her proposal, I drove towards her house but slowed to a stop when I saw her leaving her house with him. I followed them to a motel. I was dizzy; my world tipped on its axel. My insides twisted and threatened to leave my body. How could she do this to me? How could THEY do this? She was mine, she had always been mine. I fucking loved her. I breathed for her; she was the only person who believed in me. I took her for who she was. I kept her safe from her horrid mother. I gave her everything she wanted, including my heart.

  I couldn’t breathe, but when I finally did inhale it wasn’t air, it was vengeance. I switched it off, everything I felt for her. I incinerated it inside me and let the embers sizzle with new-found hate in my heart. They were all mocking me and they would all pay for it. Fuck my parents. Fuck her and fuck the cunt fucking her.

  I waited outside their motel until the sun set and rose. Then I left and never went back.

  I ditched my phone, my only communication to her so she couldn’t ever reach inside me and touch what she had broken. What they had all broken.

  When the plane I was supposed to be on that day had engine failure and dropped from the sky, exploding into a ball of flames on impact, no one waited to have confirmation I was on the plane, they assumed, accepted and told everyone I was dead. How could people who are engineered to love their children just accept one’s death without knowing for sure? How could a girl who shared my soul for six years not wait, not come looking for me?

  My love for her saved and destroyed me all in one day.

  A month later they were informed I had never boarded the plane and was very much alive. Not even then did one of them come looking for me. That was the final cut to let the ruth
less bastard I harbored under the surface take the reins of my life. I embraced the other side of myself. I fed it with the betrayal I felt so deep inside me; the craving for vengeance was always there waiting for an opportunity.

  I built myself a name. Worked through an internship and finished college two years earlier than it took most people. I was determined and focused. I was given a full time position when my internship finished and I worked up the ranks quickly, honing my skills, making a name for myself and then I slipped into the darker dealings of my craft and made my empire.

  Years went by with no contact and then I almost choked when I first saw her on TV. It was a commercial for God knows what; all I could hear was my own heart beat banging in my ears and all I saw were those green eyes, mocking me. She had done what everyone else wanted her to do. She became an actress instead of the artist she was created to be.

  The anger and ache of betrayal surfaced. I watched her grow from a nothing into a starlet. Commercial after commercial, then into films until she was known worldwide alongside …HIM. They never admitted to being couple to the media. Their agent’s assistant, Theo, told me it was the agents who made them keep their relationship secret. They were worth more single and got more privacy that way.

  The hate festered, growing darker and more urgent but I had waited long enough. I needed to wait for the right time and the right method of payback but I didn’t plan on it being as brutal as it became until fate stepped in.

  Six months previous

  “The drug’s ready, everything is set up. We just need to decide on the target and money of course.” I quirked a brow and thought back to how we ended up here. Ten men congregated around the table in the back of the restaurant Davies had chosen for us to eat at.

  We were going to leave business until after dinner when we were in the privacy of my office but the little runt wouldn’t stop asking questions. I wasn’t a fan of the slave trade but unfortunately, when you played in the underworld, Hades’ true nature dwelled there and that was the sex trade.

  I usually dealt in the drugs. I made them and distributed them. I dealt in truth serums, drugs that numbed certain areas and not others. Drugs to bring on death without evidence of cause. Those were my side projects. I had finished working on a new drug to remove the bad feelings associated with traumatic events, taking away painful memories. ‘Fear extinction’. It could help rid sufferers of post-traumatic stress and phobias from their anxiety and trauma.

  Medical boards all wanted their hands on the goods. My name was in medical media everywhere. I loved the power, but it wasn’t enough. I tweaked the drug, suppressing all memories and leaving the brain open to suggestion, to re-learn, to be molded and corrupted, and let the world’s most immoral bid on its exclusivity.

  When Hunter approached me with a proposal for a new business, it was power of a whole new level. We would start a secret club of the world’s most rich and powerful, but also people who we knew were depraved and had kinks and urges that needed to be fed in the shadows of society. They would all have access to vote on a target. Someone desired by them or millions, or just a payback from one of our wealthier clients who wanted a personal arrangement.

  When you fucked over these men, they harbored revenge until they could exact it in the most destructive way possible. I admired that because I was the same way. What better way than to take one of their enemies’ women and change her memories, make her a whore or make her fall in love with you to spite him. The possibilities were endless. They would vote on a target and then we would set a plan in motion to steal said target from their lives, wipe their memory and begin to rebuild them in any way we wanted. Or they requested. Convince them of anything, or play with them like a lion would a mouse.

  Each elite member could pay to have acts or stories performed. They would all have live feeds to all cameras where their prize would be held. If they paid enough they could even be involved in the act.

  I smirked and tipped the whiskey placed in front of me by an attractive waitress who batted her eyelashes at every man at our table. The warmth coated my throat.

  Hunter tapped his knee while everyone but Davies looked at him to continue. Hunter was the expert in this area and my go to person when I had business with other sex traffickers.

  Davies had a leer on his face, he was convinced this wouldn’t work and wasn’t shy about making that known to his father, who was the only reason I allowed Davies to even be in on this meeting. “We want to see a trial run. Proof you can do as you claim. No disrespect, Troy! But this isn’t your field of expertise. I have a friend, Daniel, who may be of some assistance in this area.”

  Hunter stiffened at the name and glowered at Davies. “You may not mean any disrespect but you forget he has me as his partner and even though I have every faith Troy is capable, we both know I am capable of breaking down a woman, or man, and you’ve tasted the proof, Davies. You forget your fucking place!”

  My fist clenched under the table. I hated this cunt and although Hunter meant to take up for me, he made me look weak by coming to my defense.

  “Holy shit, look at that.” All heads spun to look in the direction his eyes were fixed on. My breath left me. Star. As beautiful as I remembered. Her hair was thick and hung in layers down her back, her trim physique that was toned in the right places made my dick awaken.

  “Oh yeah, I forgot she comes here when in town.” That little prick. “I’d pay anything to watch her though a live feed.” He grunted. “Wasn’t she the one who screwed you over?”

  The table had grown eerily silent as my temper simmered on the edge of boiling over. How the hell did he know about her?

  All eyes went to me as I stood and walked towards her. It was her. In the flesh. Her scent engulfed me. I dragged in some air to prepare myself. Grabbing her arm, I spun her to face me. She hadn’t changed. The girl I fell in love with the girl who hardened my heart to impenetrable rock stared back at me. She was so close I could taste the breath that left her in a gasp. Her mouth dropped open, then smiled, then dropped back open. Her huge wide eyes formed tears, making her striking green irises glisten as she stared at me.

  My hand slid down her arm to her hand. I shook when my finger brushed over a diamond on her ring finger. My eyes trailed the path my hand took and fell to her engagement ring. She snatched her hand back, drawing my eyes back to hers.

  “Is it him?” I growled.

  Her eyes squinted and her chest stuttered with her short, sharp breaths. “Dante?...

  “Is it him?”

  “You abandoned me,” she whispered. To hear her soft voice again caused my heart to clench, but fury pushed it back as the image of when I had last seen her came tumbling back in, solidifying the ice once more.

  “Because you’re a whore!” I spat.

  She inhaled, her eyes blinking and releasing the tears that had pooled in them. Her hand reared back and connected with my cheek before I could react or stop it.

  She stormed from the restaurant, her chin as high as her defenses.

  You could have heard a pin drop. Everyone had ceased eating; hell they’d even ceased breathing.

  Turning back to our table, ten angry, judgmental eyes seared me. I let a woman, that fucking woman, humiliate me, making me look weak in their eyes. They saw women as objects beneath them.

  I waltzed towards them, emanating confidence and power, and sat. Raising my glass, I lifted it in the air and grinned. “A toast. We have our trial run target gentlemen.” I smirked.

  Hunter had used his contacts to gather every single detail about the life of Faye Avery, Hollywood Queen, from birth up to the day in the restaurant. It was incredible that he had got every single detail, even her confidential medical records.

  It was those I was reading through when my heart stopped. Flicking over the form, my eyes scanning but only registering certain parts.

  Name - Faye Avery

  Age – Seventeen

  Known allergies – Penicillin

  Ter
mination – One foetus

  Gestation - Eight weeks, three days

  Method – Mifepristone

  I couldn’t breathe, my eyes blurring from staring at the same fact over and over

  Seventeen! She was with me then. Did she kill my baby?

  A month later, Hunter found a weakness in her staff. The assistant, Theo. Money hungry and power hungry. He would set up a trip for her and we would step in and take her. We would make her disappear, and I knew what method we would use. A plane crash. Poetic.

  It had been so easy. Theo drugged her drink with a sleeping pill on the private plane he claimed to have hired for her. The plan went off without a hitch. The plane landed on private property, we torched it and we took her away. Once I had her in my arms she awoke from her slumber, her face pinching in confusion. My palm wrapped around her throat. “The baby you killed, was it mine?” Her eyes expanded to huge round orbs. “Answer me,” I growled, tightening my hold.

  Tears welled and dropped from her eyes as she whispered though the strain. “Yes.”

  That was all I needed. I injected her with more sedative and planned her demise.

  Present

  Everything was coming to a head, I could feel the end game approaching. I had stopped slipping the drug into her food over two weeks ago. Her memories would filter back in slowly but soon the truth would come crashing into her. I still loved her. I always would and I refused to let her go. This was their punishment for betraying me.

  She stole my chance of becoming a father, all for what? So she could fuck around and still keep me on her leash and have both?

  It wasn’t something I had ever thought about, being a parent, but I wasn’t given a choice. She killed something I put inside her, something created through the love I had for her then.

  I would make her rectify everything she stole. He would feel the pain I felt.

  I watched her run through the house and out the front door. Switching to the outdoor cameras, my heart flickered in my chest at her race towards the dock, her dainty hand holding over her heart.