Sinful Desire

by Lauren Blakely

  Her green eyes lit up. He hadn’t seen them so bright in months. “I watched his final episode. It was amazing,” she said, smacking her palm on the wooden table in excitement.

  Yup, that did it. Like a fisherman casting a rod, he’d dropped the lure in the water. She was the fish taking the bait.

  She chattered on about the show, and because Ryan had listened to a soap opera podcast on the five-hour drive, he was up to speed on which long-lost twin had reappeared, who had been kidnapped and sequestered away in a mansion, and who was pregnant with a secret baby.

  Soon, she was laughing, and he’d done it—he’d lulled her into a false sense of security. Tension curled through him, but this was the only chance he had to shock her into stumbling into the truth.

  “I think Sonny has to be behind the kidnapping,” she said, chatting about the show as he nodded a yes while reaching into his pocket to remove the pattern subtly. Under the table he unfolded it. Then he laid it on the wood surface, jammed his finger against the center of the paper, and interrupted her.

  “Who are T.J. and Kenny Nelson, and why are their names hidden in a code inside your prize dog jacket pattern?”

  She fumbled her next words as her jaw dropped and her eyes widened. “What did you just say?”

  “Mom, I know what this is. Don’t lie to me now. Please, God, after all I’ve done for you, don’t lie to me now,” he said, desperation infusing his tone. “Who are they and what role did they play in my father’s death?”

  “I don’t know,” she mumbled, dropping her gaze to her hands, twisting her fingers together.

  “You do, Mom. You do. You gave me this pattern; you asked me to keep it safe. I did that.” He tried to keep the exasperation from seeping into his voice. But that was damn near impossible. “I believed it was some kind of sign of hope for your future,” he said, brandishing the paper, faded and wrinkled from age. “I kept it safe for you. I was even going to have a friend make the damn jacket for you as a gift, to cheer you up. And when she did, she figured out it wasn’t a pattern. It has addresses in it and those addresses correspond to names, and one of those names is the man doing life for murder, and two of the others might be the broker and the getaway driver in the crime.” Her face remained stony even as she blinked several times. He pressed on. “Those other two names match the initials you told me last time I was here, when I asked you who were Stefano’s friends who were looking out for his son. You asked me if they were T.J. and K.” He leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms out wide in a waiting stance. “The initials all line up. Talk to me, Mom.”

  She pursed her lips together and squeezed her eyes shut. Her face looked pinched, as if she were sucking all her own secrets into her mouth and holding them in with her breath.

  Ryan huffed through his nostrils. Enough. This was fucking enough. He wanted to slam his fist into the wood. To knock the damn table over on its side. To throw things. But he wasn’t that kind of a man. He didn’t do that on the ice, and he didn’t do it in here. Violence begets more violence. Fear spawns more fear. He had to rely on his head and his heart.

  “Don’t you dare shut down on me again,” he seethed, the words curling out of his mouth like hot smoke. “Don’t you try that routine with me. I have a right to know what I’ve been carrying around for you. It’s not a secret anymore. The pattern was made. The names are revealed.” He thumped his fingertip against the table. “Jerry. T.J. Kenny. They were in your pattern, Mom. Yours.” He pointed at her for emphasis. “I want to know why the addresses, and therefore the names, of those men were hidden. Because for eighteen years, you tricked me into thinking this was special to you. I kept it safe. Because I fucking love you, Mom.”

  His throat hitched, and wild tears threatened to rain from his eyes. He stopped speaking, pressed his thumb and forefinger over the bridge of his nose, and pinched, keeping them at bay. “I love you, and I love Dad. I came to see you all the time, even when I was in college, even when I had leave from the army. I’m the one. I came here. I saw you. And I have been a messed-up son-of-a-bitch most of my life because of this. Please, I’m begging you. Tell me something.”

  She parted her lips and bit nervously on her thumbnail. Her eyes welled up. She dug into her thumb then whispered. “Ry,” she said, like a fearful creature. “They told me not to say a word about anything. That’s why I gave it to you. To get rid of it. To hide it.”

  He knit his brow. “Who? Who told you not to say a word?”

  “Those men.”

  “Why didn’t you just have me throw it out?”

  She glanced from side to side then under the table, as if she were sweeping the room for spies. Leaning across, she lowered her volume even more. He practically had to read her lips. “I thought I’d gotten rid of that stuff already. But then the cops came, and I still had it, and I couldn’t have you throwing out something the cops might think was evidence,” she said, her lips quivering. “I didn’t want to put that on you, or make you responsible for that. I had you keep it knowing no one would ever look inside my sewing pattern.”

  His chest burned with shame. He’d been played a fool by his own mother. But why? What was she so afraid of? “Why did you have it in the first place? Why did you put their addresses in there?” he asked, pressing on like a cross-examiner.

  She twisted a strand of her hair, back and forth, tight against her skull. “They were just my notes. That was all. They were notes about who I was meeting, and I was taking on so much extra sewing work to pay off my debt, so I wrote things down on my patterns.”

  “But this wasn’t on a pattern. It was in a pattern.”

  “I know,” she said through gritted teeth. “But I didn’t want anyone to know I was meeting them.” She dropped her forehead in her hands and hissed, “About the drugs. And I told you why. I wanted to try to stay clean about the drugs in case I ever got out, and I fought so hard to have my conviction overturned.”

  He drew a deep breath. “You put their addresses in a pattern because you were meeting them about drugs, Mom? C’mon. Why would you do that?”

  Her jaw was set hard. “I told you. I wanted to keep you all safe from them. I had to protect my babies. I had to.”

  “So you put the info on Stefano’s accomplices in a pattern to fucking protect us? You told me not to say anything about the drugs because you were trying to get out of here, but then you hid their addresses in a pattern. Something doesn’t add up.”

  She flinched, but didn’t answer, then brushed something unseen off her shoulder. Fuck. This was spiraling again.

  “Or was there something else going on? Did they have something else on you?” he asked, grasping at straws, but hell, he had to try something. Because it made no sense why she would need to shield all those names so badly.

  She covered her eyes. “I was scared. That’s why I hid the info. That’s why I didn’t want anyone to know the addresses and who I was meeting.”

  “Why? What did they have on you? Why were you so afraid of them? What did you have to hide? What was so important about those names that you asked me to hide this pattern? Because if it was that goddamn important, it sounds like it was more than drugs. It sounds like you gave me your own notes to plan a murder. Is that what it was? Was this your goddamn blueprint that you gave me?”

  “No!” She raised her voice—the same tone she’d admonished him with when he was a kid. “That is the truth. I put their addresses in there because I needed to remember them. That’s all.”

  But the dots didn’t connect. He pressed on. “Were you meeting them to plan the murder of my father?”

  “I told you, I didn’t do it,” she said in a whispered shout. “I told you I didn’t kill him. Are you ever going to believe me?”

  “I know you didn’t pull the trigger, Mom. Everyone knows that,” he said, exasperated, as he scrubbed his hand over his chin. “But you’ve told me other things that have turned out not to be true. So I want to know this—were T.J. Nelson and Kenny Nelson
working with Stefano? Were they his accomplices?”

  She said nothing.

  “Were you? Were you working with these men?”

  She gripped the edge of the table, her eyes like glassy pools of desperation. “I didn’t do it. I told you I didn’t do it.”

  “Were you involved?” he continued, a dog with a bone, not willing to relent. “Like the cops say you were. Like the state of Nevada says you were.”

  “I didn’t do it.”

  Wear her down. Just fucking wear her down. “Did you hire Jerry Stefano to kill my father? Did you? Did you hire him and plan it with those three guys? Did you go to their houses and plan the crime down to every last detail with the broker, and the shooter, and the goddamn getaway driver? Did you kill him for his life insurance money like they put you in Stella McLaren for?” he asked, his voice rising with each question.

  He ran his hands through his hair, tugging hard on it because he was at the end of his rope, but he couldn’t let go. “Don’t you understand what this has done to me? I don’t trust people. I don’t believe people. I don’t get close to people. Because of this. Because of what happened,” he said, trying a new approach. Go for the heart. Try to pierce that damn organ in her. “But Mom, I finally met someone. Okay? I finally met a woman and, my God, I am in love with her, and it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.” He softened momentarily as he thought of his sweet, sexy Sophie. He’d come so far with her, she’d shown him so much, and she’d opened so many possibilities in his life and helped him feel wonderful, amazing, incredible things. He hated the prospect of sling-shotting back to who he was before—closed off, shut down, and obsessed.

  “I need some clarity, for once. I need it so I can have a normal life with the woman I love. Don’t you want that for me? Don’t you want me to be happy? Because I do, Mom. I want it so damn badly that I’m here, asking you to just tell me the truth.”

  He waited. Seconds passed, spooling into minutes as Dora sat like a statue. Finally she broke her frozen stance, uncrossing her arms, and jerking her head away.

  He threw up his hands. This was a lost cause. He was getting nowhere. Sophie was right. He’d have to find the answers in himself, because he wasn’t getting them from his mother. He pushed back in his chair and stood up to leave. He bent his head to his mom, and kissed her forehead. “I love you, Mom, but I need to go,” he whispered.

  She grabbed his wrists, her bony fingers circling them. Her hands were papery and rough. “Do you love her?” she asked.

  “Yes. So much.”

  She exhaled. Deeply. It sounded like relief. “I’m happy for you, baby.”

  “Me, too.”

  “All I want is for you to be happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.” She gripped his hands tighter. “They told me they’d hurt you all.” Her voice was just a thread. “They told me they’d come after my babies if I said a word.”

  He blinked. Holy shit. She was talking. He leaned closer, resting his chin on her head. “Said a word about what, Mom?” he asked, anticipation weaving a dangerous path through his blood.

  “I tried to stop it.”

  “Did you start it?”

  A nod. He felt the barest hint of a nod of her head against his. Holy shit. “I’m telling you this now because I love you. Because you said you need this to be happy. And all I’ve ever wanted is for my babies to be happy. But they made me go through with it, Ry. And that’s why I did it. I did it for all of you,” she said, and then the words rained down. “Please don’t stop seeing me; please don’t stop coming. I went through with it because I had no choice. They told me they’d hurt you if I didn’t go through with it.”

  Like a wrecking ball to his gut, her admission walloped him. He stumbled and gripped the wall behind him. His head was swimming. It was a roiling sea. Eighteen fucking years were compressed into this moment. Her words echoed across the vast cavern of time, clanging through the days, the months, and the pages on the calendar, stabbing him with a million cuts. His own omissions. His own secrets. Most of all, his foolish hope that his mother wasn’t a murderer.

  “You had him murdered?” The question tasted like dirt.

  “I had to keep you safe.”

  “Why did he have to die to keep us safe? He didn’t have to die.” But even as the words came out of his mouth, he knew there was no point to them. The decision had been made eighteen years ago—whether for drugs, for money, for her lover, or from fear. He might not ever know why she did it. All he knew now was she did.

  “I love you and your sister and your brothers so much and I do, I still do. I swear I love you so much. I love you, baby. I love you, Ryan.” She began weeping, a deep, dark keening sound like a bruised, battered thing heaving itself onto the shore, defeated.

  Like Ryan.

  He’d travelled here hoping for an answer, but never expecting to get one.

  Instead, he’d received her confession.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  His legs were lead. His head was concrete. His heart had mutinied. It was somewhere lost in time. It was listening to Johnny Cash with his father before his dad’s friends came over. It was watching the end of the pirate show. It was wandering up and down the Strip without him.

  He made a beeline for the exit, pushing past Clara and the other correctional officers, putting blinders on to avoid the rest of the visiting families. The second he left the facility, the door falling shut behind him, he crumpled on the hot stone steps. He didn’t care one lick that you could fry an egg on them.

  Let him burn. Let him feel. Let the pain erase the foolishness, the shame, the utter shock.

  He dropped his forehead into his hand, replaying his mother’s last words. Wishing he could go back and redo them, erase them, rewrite them.

  Make them make sense.

  Not that this—his life visiting a women’s correctional center each month—would ever make much sense. He shut his eyes, but all he saw was the blood in the driveway. All he heard were the screams when she found the body.

  Were those fake too? Had she practiced them? Did she go to some abandoned house somewhere to rehearse her reaction to finding her husband shot dead?

  His stomach seized, and he coughed—a dry, hacking bark.

  Then, he flinched.

  A hand was on his back, rubbing the space between his shoulder blades. He lifted his head to see Clara. “Rough visit?” she asked gently, kneeling next to him.

  “Yeah,” he muttered.

  She nodded sagely. As if she’d seen it all. “That happens sometimes. Can I get you a Coke from the vending machine? Or a Diet Coke?”

  He shook his head then realized his throat was parched. “Coke would actually be great.”

  Two minutes later, she returned with two cold sodas. With a weary sigh, she settled in next to him on the steps, handed him a can and cracked open hers, taking a hearty gulp.

  He did the same, narrowing his focus to the coldness of the beverage and the bubbles in the drink. “She did it,” he said heavily as he turned the can around in his hand.

  Clara patted his knee. “They all did it, Ryan. That’s why they’re here.”

  “Fuck,” he muttered. “I really thought…”

  “Of course you did. You love her. She’s your mother. If you listen to the ladies in there,” she said, pointing her thumb at the concrete building, “there’s not a guilty one among ’em.” Clara shook her head in amusement, her brown curly hair bouncing with her. “Amazing, isn’t? A whole facility full of the innocent? Judge made a mistake. Someone else did it. Framed, I was framed,” she said, rattling off the stories the inmates told.

  The last one seared into him like a cattle brand.

  “That one. That was hers,” he said. Framed.

  Sure, there were details he didn’t know, like twisty rat tails coiled together, which would likely take years to unravel. He didn’t know why those men made her go through with the murder, or what their motivation was. He didn’t know precisely who played
what role. He didn’t know how far back in time the planning went, or where the other two men were.

  But he knew this much—his mother was involved in his father’s murder.

  His eighteen-year obsession had an answer.

  “You’ll still come see her, right?” Clara asked.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, what’s the point?”

  Clara answered in a plain, simple voice. “That’s what we do for family.”

  “But she did it,” Ryan pointed out. The specifics didn’t need to be outlined. The who, what, why, where and when could be sorted out by others.

  “Right,” she said slowly. “But that’s not why you come see her. You don’t come see her because she’s innocent of a crime. You come because you’re a good man. Because you have compassion. Because even the criminals of this world need someone who cares about them. Maybe she’s in for life, and she’ll never have a chance to be redeemed on the outside. But maybe the fact that you come here helps her to be a better person in this place. Maybe she finds her redemption behind bars, because of you.”

  “Do they? Find redemption?”

  Clara shrugged. “Some do. Some don’t. You still gotta come to work every day, right?” she said, then drained more of her soda.

  He did the same, then rose. “Better hit the road.”

  She nodded. “I’ll be looking for you around these parts.”

  He managed a half-hearted smile of acknowledgement. He didn’t know if he’d ever be in these parts again. He didn’t know where the ground was, where the sky ended, or how to find his way back home after hearing her confession.

  The only thing he knew for sure was how to avoid the speed traps, so he turned on an app when he got in his truck.

  A little more than four hours later, he’d dodged a speeding ticket, but hadn’t been able to stop playing the cruel song on repeat in his head—they made me do it, they made me do it, they made me do it.

  Did she set the wheels in motion, then try to cancel? But they forced her? How would that even work?