Beautiful Lies (The Beautiful Series Book 2)

by Emery Rose

  “That’s one way to get yourself in trouble,” Keira said.

  She was right. Word on the street traveled, and even in big cities, the circles were small.

  “What are we going to do about it?” she asked.

  “We are not doing anything.”

  “But you have a plan, right?”

  I tilted my head and studied her face. “Whose side are you on?”

  “Mine. And yours. I did the right thing by coming here and I’m not going back to Miami. I’m staying. This is my life to live…not my father’s and not my mother’s…mine. And I want to live it on my own terms.” She sounded defiant, and looked me in the eye, waiting for me to shoot holes in her plan. I wouldn’t. Keira and I had a lot more in common than I would have suspected.

  I wasn’t sure when I’d decided that she deserved a shot at freedom and happiness, or that it had become my mission to help her get that, but I had. “If that’s what you want, I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

  “Really?”

  The first time we’d met, she’d been a means to an end. I’d been hoping to find out more about my mysterious mother. I’d told her my real name and that I was from Brooklyn, and I’d known from the look on her face, that she had no idea who I was or that we were in any way related. I could also tell that she found me attractive, so I played her. A part of me had hated her, resented her for having my mother in her life when Killian and I had been left by the wayside. But she shouldn’t be made to pay for the sins of her father. None of that was her fault. Our mother may have abandoned us, but Keira wanted to be a part of our lives and I wanted her to have that chance. Truth be told, I was warming to the idea of having a younger sister and over the course of this conversation, I had started to like her as a person.

  “Really. I understand what it’s like to need a fresh start.”

  “I guess you would,” she said, no judgment on her face or in her voice. “How do you know Tate? He only agreed to help me unload the car because of you.”

  “He’s my sponsor.”

  She nodded. “He seems like a good guy.”

  I eyed her suspiciously, knowing damn well she had an angle. Tate told me she’d been a nuisance, poking around under the hood of his prized Mustang, peppering him with questions about his business. She’d suggested that he buy muscle cars and restore them to turn a profit. “Sounds like she wants to run the damn place,” he’d grumbled. “She asked me for a job. No way in hell am I gonna hire a woman like her.”

  “Afraid she’ll boss you around?” I’d teased.

  “Wouldn’t put it past her to try.”

  Keira gave me a dazzling smile and I’d already figured out it was the one she used to get her way. I suspected a lot of men fell for it. “I want to work for him,” she said, not beating around the bush.

  “Yeah, I got that.”

  “Maybe you could put in a good word for me.”

  I chuckled and shook my head, thinking that I’d never hear the end of it if he did end up hiring her. I eyed her manicured hand wrapped around the bottle of water. “I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty,” she said, reading my mind.

  “You just got here. Let’s give it a few days.” To see if you’ll still be around by then. I noticed that she hadn’t checked her phone once, so I assumed she’d left it behind in Miami. Her father probably had tracking devices on it.

  She conceded, but I knew it wasn’t the end of this discussion. “Now that we’re on the same side, what’s the deal with you and Ava?”

  “You’re like a dog with a bone.”

  “I’m tenacious. And curious. We’re bonding.”

  “Bonding. Right. Ava and I are taking a break. I’m trying to make things right.”

  “You’re a good guy, Connor.”

  “Not always.”

  “A little bit of bad is good for a girl. Otherwise, she’d be bored out of her skull.”

  Her logic was skewed, but I appreciated the effort.

  “She loves you. That much was obvious. What’s so wrong about that?” she asked like she really wanted to know, and my answer mattered to her.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “The best love stories always are.” She propped her chin on her hands as if she was waiting for me to tell her the whole story. We didn’t have that kind of time.

  “Have you ever been in love?” I asked, expecting her to laugh it off or say no if what she said about never going on a date was true.

  “I…love someone. But it could never work out.”

  “Why not?” I suspected it was related to her daddy issues.

  She closed one eye as if trying to figure out how much she was willing to tell me. “He works for my dad.”

  “Anthony,” I said, taking a wild guess. Anthony had been Ronan’s driver and from what I gathered, the man he trusted most. He was quiet, mid-thirties if I had to guess, and ex-military. A step above Ronan’s other foot soldiers. Anthony was a fixer. His job was to get rid of Marco’s body, but I didn’t mention that.

  “Yeah. Anthony.”

  It was my turn to be intrigued. “Did it go both ways?”

  “If love were a contest, he would win. I’ve loved him since I was like…twelve. Maybe even before that. When I turned eighteen, I thought maybe we’d have a shot. Wishful thinking. We could never be together. Especially now…”

  “Because you’re in Brooklyn?” I asked, knowing there was more to separate them than geography.

  She gave me a sad little smile. “Anthony loves me, but he’s not in love with me. In his eyes, I’ll always be my father’s daughter, a person he wants to protect. He would never cross the line into something more, but it never stopped me from hoping for more. Sometimes you have to let someone go. Because you love them enough that you want the best for them. But sometimes… when you find the right person, you have to hold on tight and never let go.” She gave me a shrewd look and I knew the last sentence was tacked on for my benefit.

  “I don’t remember asking for advice.”

  “You didn’t. I’m giving it for free.”

  “That’s big of you.”

  Keira laughed. “Since we’re going down the whole honesty route…it’s refreshing, by the way…I was using you too. When we met, I was trying to find a guy closer to my age. Someone who wasn’t forbidden. I thought you were the perfect candidate.” Her eyes widened. “Wow. That was a fail. I must be a magnet for forbidden love.”

  We both cracked up over that one. This whole situation was so crazy that all I could do was laugh.

  “Are you and Killian a lot alike?” she asked me a little while later as I made up the sofa where I’d be sleeping.

  Killian. Tomorrow morning, I had to break the news to him. That should be fun. I considered her question for a minute. “We look a lot alike, but that’s where the resemblance ends. We’re very different.”

  After she left me alone in the living room, the bedroom door closing behind her, I wondered how true that was. Killian had a tough exterior and was better at hiding his emotions, but I suspected he felt things as deeply as I did. He just dealt with it in a different way.

  Before I fell asleep, I envisioned Ava just like I did every night, in hopes she’d visit me in my dreams. She never did. Maybe I was a fool for asking her to wait for me. Maybe I should have held on tight and never let her go. But I didn’t want her to fight my battles for me or put her through more of my shit. I needed to do this on my own and show her that I could be the kind of man she could depend on. I knew why she hadn’t told me what Jake Masters did. She’d been trying to protect me from the truth. Ever since that night we were sixteen and Seamus paid a visit, Ava had made it her mission to ‘fix me.’ She had believed that her love would be enough to save me, and in an ideal world, it would have been. But we didn’t live in an ideal world. And her love was no match for my quest to self-destruct. I didn’t want to be broken anymore. I didn’t want her to be left to pick up the pieces. She deserved better than that.

>   28

  Connor

  “What did you need to talk to me about?” Killian asked, taking the cardboard cup of black coffee I handed him as we walked to the end of the pier at Transmitter Park. At this early hour, we had it to ourselves. “Do you need relationship advice?”

  That was funny. Before Eden, Killian had never had a relationship. It had been one-night stands and casual hook-ups for him. “You’re an expert now?”

  “Yep.” He chuckled, recognizing the humor in that statement. “You and Ava doing okay?”

  “We’ve got some things to work out.”

  “Huh.”

  “How was Thanksgiving?” I asked, partly because I didn’t want to talk about Ava, but also because I cared.

  “Good. You should come with us next year.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.” I stared out at the choppy water of the East River, bracing myself against the cold wind as I wracked my brain for the right words. Fuck it. There were no right words. He’d either support me or walk away and shut me out. “I need to tell you what really happened in Miami.”

  “Don’t pull this shit on me. Not again.” He turned to go.

  I grabbed his arm to stop him from leaving. “You need to stay, and you need to listen.”

  He squinted at something in the distance, his jaw clenched, but I released his arm and he stayed. I repeated the story I’d told Ava last night about the night I’d gone to see Seamus.

  “…he told me she’d been having an affair, gave me the man’s name, and said they lived in Miami.”

  Killian leveled me with a hard look. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”

  “I wanted to find a way to make things up to you. After all you did for me—”

  “You thought that feeding me more lies, keeping secrets, was the way to repay me?” he asked incredulously.

  “I thought I’d go down there, find her, and she’d tell me she wanted to be a part of our lives. I thought I’d be able to call you and say, ‘Hey, I found our mom. Come on down.’” It sounded ridiculous and so naïve now, but at the time I’d truly believed I was doing something worthy. Making good on a promise I’d made so many years ago.

  “Fucking hell, Connor. I would have gone with you. We could have done it together.” He sounded more hurt than angry. “Did you see her?”

  “Once. Briefly.” I envisioned the woman I hadn’t even remembered. She was still beautiful, with dark, glossy hair and the same blue eyes Killian and I had inherited from her. “She said it was nice to see me again, but it had been a long time and she had a new life now.”

  I saw the hurt flash across Killian’s face before he locked it down and clenched his jaw. “That’s it? That’s all she gave you?”

  I nodded, wishing I could tell him something kinder but that was all I’d gotten from the woman. That, and her plea not to tell Keira who I was. It was obvious that she was more interested in protecting her daughter than her sons. She’d chosen her second family over her first, but I didn’t understand why she needed to keep us a secret. I didn’t understand any of it and I’d given up trying to figure it out. Some things weren’t worth the effort.

  “I always thought Seamus abused her… that she was scared,” I said. “Maybe he threatened her and that’s why she had to leave us behind.”

  “I don’t know,” Killian said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I have no memory of it. But I’d walked in on her with another man once. She’d asked me to keep my mouth shut.”

  I let out a harsh laugh. So many secrets and lies. When would it end? I took some comfort in the fact that Killian was still standing next to me and hadn’t stormed off.

  “What’s his name?” he asked.

  “Ronan Shaughnessy. He owns a nightclub. Among other things,” I said. “He set me up. I never bought those drugs. The cops busted my motel room and conveniently found drugs in my bag.”

  “You didn’t buy the drugs,” he said, fixing me with a look.

  “No.” I held his gaze until he saw that I was speaking the truth. I left out the part about how they’d ‘coerced’ me into cooperating with them.

  “Why? Why would he do that?” Killian’s brow furrowed, trying to inject logic into a situation that defied it.

  “He warned me to stay away from Maggie,” I said, using our mother’s first name. She didn’t deserve the title of mother. “… and his daughter Keira. But I didn’t listen.” I played with fire and I got burned.

  “His daughter…” I could see the wheels in his head spinning, trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

  “Keira is our sister.”

  “What the fuck?” he asked, his face registering shock.

  I gave Killian a few minutes to process all this information. It was a lot to take in at once. Killian was usually sharp. Not a lot got past him, so it had surprised me that he’d bought my story about getting busted for weed and ecstasy. If I had bought drugs, it wouldn’t have been a dime bag and some club drugs. Not to mention that the Miami Vice had bigger fish to fry than busting some noob for marijuana.

  “How old is she?”

  “Twenty-one in January.”

  He did the math in his head, coming to the same conclusion I had. Our mother must have been pregnant with Keira when she left us.

  “Fuck,” he said, and then said it three more times for good measure, reduced to the only word that fit this situation. “Why did Shaughnessy set you up?”

  Because he could. “I stuck my nose in his business. The drug dealer I got cozy with had screwed him over. The cops who busted me… they must have been on Ronan’s payroll. They busted the warehouse where Marco, the dealer, kept his drugs and weapons and they killed Marco. Ronan’s men cleaned up the mess and confiscated a shitload of coke and weapons. And I was granted my freedom.” I let out a bitter laugh. The irony of it all. Freedom was a myth. My chest tightened, and I rubbed it, trying to ease the guilt. “Shaughnessy hadn’t needed me. He already knew how to get to Marco. He’s just a sick, twisted motherfucker who used me as a pawn in his game. And that’s what it was to him. A game.”

  “Fucking hell,” Killian muttered.

  “Shaughnessy promised me my safety in exchange for returning to Brooklyn and keeping my mouth shut about everything that happened down there.”

  “You could have told me this when you got back last year,” Killian said. “I would have—”

  “You would have what?” I asked, knowing exactly how he’d respond.

  “I would have gone down to fucking Miami and taken care of it.”

  I shook my head. “That’s why I didn’t tell you. What would you have done? Beat him up? Round up all the men working for him? The undercover cops? Security? He’s a criminal in an expensive suit with enough money and power to get whatever he wants in that town.”

  Killian considered this for a minute. “Why didn’t you go to the cops…honest cops…and report his ass?”

  Yeah, that sounded easy. Why didn’t I do that? “At the time, I figured it was smarter to keep my mouth shut. Who would have believed the word of a junkie? Shaughnessy has connections in Miami…” I let my voice trail off. Killian got it now. I could see it on his face that he believed me.

  Last night, before I’d gone to Tate’s garage to see Ava, I’d told Deacon Ramsey the whole story. Every detail I’d left out in my statement. I trusted Ramsey more than I’d ever trusted Seamus. Ramsey had believed my story and hadn’t treated me like I was unreliable or a liar because of my past and for that the man had my undying gratitude. Since Miami was out of his jurisdiction, I needed to go to the Feds with my story. Which I planned to do today. I told Killian my plan and he nodded in approval.

  “Good. I’ll come with you. We’ll—”

  “No. Listen…I appreciate the support.” I wasn’t sure how I’d expected Killian to react to my confession, but I hadn’t expected this kind of support. Maybe I should have given him more credit. “But I need to do this on my own. It’s another thing I have to do to make amend
s.”

  He was silent for a few seconds and I waited for him to agree. “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  “Why did Shaughnessy go to so much trouble to keep us away from her?” Killian asked.

  I wasn’t sure if he was talking about our mother or the sister we never knew about. Either way, the answer was the same. “Why does anyone do what they do? Why did Seamus beat the shit out of you? Why does Nico’s stepfather knock his mom around? Maybe guys like that get off on hurting people. Maybe they’re so insecure they need to exert their power to make them feel like men.” I shook my head. “I couldn’t even begin to tell you why people do what they do.”

  “This past year… I thought the worst of you.”

  “You had every right.”

  He shook his head. “You’ve been through a lot.”

  “We all have,” I said.

  “Stop being so fucking reasonable.”

  I huffed out a laugh. I rarely got accused of being reasonable. “Listen… if I ever thought those guys would have come to the house, I never would have let Eden hang out there with me. I don’t think Shaughnessy sent them. I suspect they were low-level street dealers who got cheated out of some money. But I’m so fucking sorry you and Eden got caught up in that. You have no idea how sorry I am.”

  He nodded, his expression thoughtful. Free of my lies and secrets, I felt some of the burden being lifted off my shoulders. Apologies were just words, but I could tell he knew I meant them. “I know. But you should have—”

  “I told Seamus,” I said, knowing that was where he was headed with this. Killian had told me once before that if I’d told Seamus, he could have put his best men on the case to protect me. Bullshit. I knew better. “I told him everything three days before those guys turned up at our house.”

  Killian’s face registered shock and for a few stunned moments, he said nothing. “Fucking Seamus. He knew… and he did nothing to help.”

  It was all out there now. The whole ugly truth. For some reason, Killian had always clung to the belief that there was a sliver of decency in Seamus. Maybe because he knew him before the drinking started. Before our mother left and Seamus started knocking him around. He’d always thought Seamus was a good cop, and Killian had been grateful he’d come to our rescue that night. Now I’d shown him the story in a different light and he didn’t know what to think. Welcome to the fucking club.