by Peak, Renna
He motioned for me to sit on one of the leather chairs. I took a seat, grasping the still-full glass tightly in front of me.
He sat down across from me, his smile falling. “Tell me how you found her.”
I nodded, leaning back into my chair. “There was a mention of her by some random girl who was vacationing in Waterville. It seemed as likely a lead as any of the others we’ve seen.”
“Hmm.” He cocked his head, his gaze moving to somewhere behind me. “Waterville. Speaking of random…” He shook his head, pausing for a long moment. “What could she have possibly been doing there? And there was no sign of Daniel?”
I shook my head. After what I had witnessed of her and the kid who seemed a little too into her, I knew that Daniel couldn’t have been anywhere nearby. My reaction to that boy had been harsh—I had almost pushed him through a brick wall—and I knew that Daniel wouldn’t have been even close to as kind if he was with Jen. Not that I really believed he had ever been with her since she had left the cabin in Montana nine months ago. It was possible that she had teamed up with him, and I knew I couldn’t completely dismiss the possibility, but it was unlikely. It was just a story that I knew the senator would believe and one that would keep me in his good graces.
“Hmm.” His eyes were almost glazed over, he was so lost in thought.
My stomach churned and my heart began to thump in my chest. I was all too familiar with that look—the glazing over of his eyes usually meant he had something in store for me. Something that would be difficult to do. Something that would be unpalatable for almost anyone else.
He blinked a few times and returned his gaze to mine. “I know I promised you I wouldn’t stand in your way once you brought her back into the fold.” He nodded a few times and glanced down into his drink. “I know that was the agreement.”
“It was.” My body tensed and my teeth gritted together. Any fear of what he might have asked me to do for him was quickly turning to rage as I realized he was about to renege on our deal. I had done so much for him. Too much. Too many things that I knew were going to come back to bite me in the ass. So many disgusting acts that I would never be able to explain to Jen, no matter how much I might have wanted to come clean to her—or to anyone, really. Carrying the guilt of what I had done over the past decade was becoming a very heavy burden to bear. But I disgusted myself—I knew there was no way I wouldn’t disgust Jen if she ever found out the kinds of things I had done for her father. I had always drawn the line at murder—at least until Amanda—but I had never said no to anything else he had asked of me. It was why he trusted me. It was why he was sitting with me now.
He nodded again. “I know how you feel about my daughter, Brandon. And in another life, I would have been happy to call you my son-in-law. But in this life…” He shook his head again, turning his gaze back to his glass. “You can’t give her this life.”
My head started to spin with my racing pulse. I had too much on him—he knew I did. If he changed his mind about me—if he decided that there was no room for me in his or Jen’s life, there was only one alternative. There was only one way for me to be released from the prison that working for him had become. And it wouldn’t be a faked death—it would be a real one.
But I couldn’t let myself think about the possibility of not working for him any longer. I had always had a price, and no matter how outrageous the price I named, if he wanted the job done enough, he met it. Every time. And there had only been one price this time. Only one thing that he could give me that would make the senseless acts I had committed for him worthwhile this time. And he had agreed. He had promised to honor that agreement and let Jen choose. It was the only thing I had asked for—to let her decide what kind of life she wanted. To let her choose me. I was confident that she would—absolutely sure that if her father took a step back and let her choose for once, she would choose me.
I tried to cover the shakiness of my breath. “With all due respect, I don’t think she wants this life.”
He smiled, taking a sip of his drink. “Did Jenna ever talk to you about her childhood?”
I shrugged. “A little, I guess.”
He nodded, taking another long sip from the glass before setting it on the table next to him. He clasped his hands together. “I was thinking the other day about her first cotillion. She must have only been nine or ten. The girls are so adorable at that age—dressing up like their mothers, hosting society parties to practice the skills they’ve learned.” He let out a sigh, a small smile coming to his face again. “She could name every piece of flatware on the table. It was impressive.” His lips curled into a full smile. “And the debutante balls when she was a teenager…” He let out another sigh, this one almost nostalgic. “That is the life she was brought up to lead.”
“But it isn’t the life she wants now. At least not from what I know about her. And if she changes her mind, I’ll give it to her. I’ll give her anything she wants. She can be a socialite if that’s what she wants—she can go to her charity luncheons and know how to use a shrimp fork. I won’t stop her.” I shook my head, almost in disbelief. “You and I have had this same conversation several times now.” I had to set my drink down on the side table next to me—I was grasping it so hard I knew the glass was going to break if I didn’t. “And we had an agreement.”
“I know.” His gaze moved behind me again and he sat in silence for a long moment before he spoke again. “And we both know I’m not a man who goes back on his word without a good reason. I think we’ve worked together long enough for you to know that about me.”
I nodded, my gaze narrowing. “I have. And I don’t think there is any reason that you could have for going back on it this time.”
He lifted a brow, his gaze meeting mine again. “We have a certain bond, don’t you think, Brandon? A certain link between us where you know what I want without my even having to ask?”
I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and felt my shoulders drop. I knew what this was—he was testing me. He wanted to know if I had been double-crossing him, even though I had never done a thing in our long history together to give him any sense that I would. And I hadn’t—I hadn’t had anything to do with Jen’s move to that podunk, piece of shit town where she had almost mocked me by hiding herself in plain sight. I was angry about it and I knew I would have to confront her about it eventually. It just hadn’t seemed right to be angry with her when we were in her little place. Not to stay angry, anyway. There was a part of me that wanted to lash out—wanted to know what in the hell she had been thinking. And who in the hell had been helping her.
And I knew that was what this was—he wanted me to double-cross Jen and find out who was responsible for her disappearance. Because we both knew that she wouldn’t have been capable of doing something like this on her own. I had let her father believe that Daniel must have been responsible, even though I knew it wasn’t true. Daniel wasn’t my problem anymore—and he wasn’t the senator’s problem anymore, either. He just didn’t know it yet. Letting Jen’s father think Daniel had taken her away gave me the best of both worlds—Daniel was out of my hair and it made Senator Davis trust me that much more. And when it came down to it, this was all about trust. Who I could and who I couldn’t trust.
“I need to know.” His gaze narrowed, his lips curling into a scowl. “I need to know who took her—who was responsible for hiding her. How she got away with hiding within two hours of her mother’s compound for so long without anyone saying so much as a peep.” He picked up his glass and took another swig, draining the cup before setting it down again. “And when I find out, there is going to be hell to pay.”
I could only nod in response. Jen had promised to be honest with me—to tell me everything. And I knew I was going to have to get her to tell me everything to have any chance of being with her.
3
“Hey.”
I turned away from the window and watched as Brandon slipped without a sound through the door
of the bedroom, closing it behind him. He stood there near the door, gazing at me with a look of longing that made my heart flutter in my chest.
I smiled, pulling my legs up to my chest and leaning myself back against the wall of the window seat. “Hey.”
He crossed the large room and sat down on the edge of the bed near where I was sitting. We sat there in silence for a long moment, his blue eyes boring into mine, almost as though he was trying to read my thoughts. He raked a hand through his black curls. “So that was a little awkward downstairs.”
I nodded, the smile falling from my face. I turned back to the window. The stars in the inky black sky did little to illuminate the ocean that I knew this window faced. I had spent many days and nights here, staring out across the water from this very seat. All those months, I sat here wondering what it would be like when Brandon and I were finally together again. And in not one of those many wishful dreams did being with him again include my father’s presence in our lives or the knowledge that Brandon had only found me at my father’s request.
“I didn’t want to say anything down there, but didn’t Cade say something about your mother wanting to see us? Or to see you? Or maybe just me?”
I turned back to glance at him, meeting his gaze. There was something there in his eyes again—the same something I had seen when we had first walked in and it had been my father who had met us at the door instead of the person I had expected. Not that Marian would have answered a door—I doubted that had ever happened in her life. She had people for that. This compound was the epitome of everything I hated about the life I had been brought up in—the servants who did everything for me. The disgusting grandeur of it all. When I thought about how I had lived the past several months—how my earnings from the gift shop were enough to barely feed me and pay my rent—I couldn’t help but feel guilty for having lived this life for so long. And not really for just living this life—for being so absolutely oblivious to the fact that most people didn’t live this way. That the vast majority of people were a hell of a lot more like the Becky-me than the Jenna-me.
But I knew that wasn’t what Brandon was here to discuss. We had danced around that particular subject before—the whole thing about me being the product of two infamous families. But that was before—before I found out that Marian Hennessey wasn’t really my mother and that my father had never been faithful to her. And Brandon didn’t know anything about what my childhood had been like. My father loved to paint the memories of my past with some magical brush that made him remember only what he wanted to. He seemed to always forget that I was raised by nannies and when my parents were around, my “mother” was anything but motherly.
None of that mattered, though—not now. I wished I could understand what it was in his eyes that I was seeing—it didn’t seem like jealousy. It also didn’t seem like inferiority—Brandon had never struck me as the type to feel inferior to anyone, anyway, but that could have had something to do with it. Most people had never seen this famous compound—the one where my grandmother had come to live after her husband had been assassinated. The aerial photos that everyone was so familiar with didn’t really do this place justice, and I remembered how I had felt when I had seen it for the first time as a teenager. The main house made our family’s house in Virginia look like the gardener’s cottage I had lived in for the past few months, even though that Virginia house was quite a bit larger than the carriage house we were in now. That had to be it—he was just overwhelmed with it all. Maybe it was that he finally knew what he was getting himself into by being with me, not that I wanted anything to do with this life anymore. The only reason I hadn’t resisted leaving Waterville with him was because Brandon needed to understand why I was here in Maine in the first place. And there wasn’t anyone better to do the explaining than the woman who had pretended to be my mother all these years.
I finally nodded. “Yes. Marian would have been the person Bob notified if he recognized you.”
His brow furrowed with confusion. “Bob?”
I cocked my head, pulling my knees even closer to my chest. “The guy in the gift shop. My boss. He and his wife were the only people in town who knew who I really was.” A pang of guilt stabbed at my stomach. I had deceived that entire town—and for what? The only reason I had been there was so that I didn’t have to be here. So that I didn’t have to live alone in this huge house, constantly reminded that this—this life—was the only thing my parents thought was worth protecting. And being hidden away from Brandon and my father had seemed reasonable at the time—everything had been such a mess in Montana. I had been afraid—scared of what Brandon was and the people he worked with. And there was that constant reminder from everyone in my life that he belonged to my father. My father had treated me as a pawn my entire adult life—just a puzzle piece in the game he was playing. I had almost become a thing instead of a person—some valuable piece of property that he was waiting to trade to the highest bidder.
And there was no way Brandon would ever be the high bidder in the stakes that had become my life. Not after everything my father had already pulled trying to get me to go back to Daniel for some unknown reason. That was the only thing that still made no sense to me—Krystal had been able to clear up so many of the other mysteries. But the stuff about Daniel—why my father had helped him fake his death. Why Brandon had helped him—I still didn’t understand. But I knew I was going to hold Brandon to the promises he had made me in the car. No more secrets. No more lies. If he couldn’t be up front with me, I knew I couldn’t have him in my life. I didn’t know what my future held at that moment, but I knew he wasn’t going to drag me any further into the political quagmire than either of them already had. I had committed myself to living a normal life, and if it meant living it without Brandon, I was fully prepared to do just that.
“Can you at least tell me what you were running from?” I turned back to face him and saw the look of pain in his eyes. He ran a hand through his hair again. “Tell me you weren’t running from me. I came back for you, Jen. It took some time, but I came back for you. You should have known—”
“Known what?” I couldn’t help but interrupt. When Krystal had revealed to me exactly what it was that Brandon did for a living—when she had told me what I should have known all along, I should have been disgusted. I should have hated him for the things he had done. But I didn’t. I couldn’t, because he and I shared something that went beyond any of the despicable things he may have done for my father in the past. It didn’t matter that Krystal and Cade and Marian didn’t want me with him. The only thing that mattered was that I understood now why we shared the bond we did. A bond that had only grown deeper for me since leaving him—and deeper still when I found out about the secret I was almost certain he didn’t know about yet.
“Known who I was with. You should have known it was Ryan and Melissa. I just … I just thought you would have been able to figure it out.” He shook his head, turning his gaze to the darkness outside the window.
“I knew. I knew because of the way the bed had been made. I took the gun out of the drawer and I—”
His gaze returned to mine, his eyes widening as he interrupted. “You knew about the gun? I didn’t think you even knew how to hold a gun, Jen.”
“I didn’t. I still don’t.” I turned back to the window. “I don’t want that life any more than I want this life.”
“You have to tell him that. Your father, I mean. You have to tell him that you choose me—that you don’t want this.” He reached out, touching my leg. “You have to tell him you’re willing to let it all go. It’s the only way we can be together.”
I couldn’t even look at him, my gaze still fixed on the window. “Is this how you pictured it? The Hennessey Compound?” I turned to look at him. “Is it everything you imagined it would be? Because it’s mine, you know. Even though I’m not a Hennessey by blood, Marian’s name is on my birth certificate. I’m the only heir.”
“Jen, about that…” He let o
ut a long sigh. “There’s so much about that. About your mother…” He pulled his hand away from my leg. “It’s not something I should have kept from you.”
“I know.” I turned back to face him. “I know everything.”
He tilted his head, his gaze softening. He shook his head. “I mean your real mother. I should have told you before.”
“I know. I mean, I know you should have told me. And I know.”
His eyes widened again, and he almost looked panicked. “Does your father know that you know?”
I shrugged. “I doubt it. I haven’t seen him since before I last saw you. Did you miss that in the short little interaction we had down there? He thought I was with Daniel. Why would he think that, Brandon? Why would he think I was with Daniel?” I could feel every muscle in my body tense as I waited for his response.
He turned his gaze to the floor. “I know I said I’d tell you everything.” He lifted his gaze to meet mine. “And I will. But first you need to tell me what you know about your mother. Your biological mother.”
“Why? You said you already knew.” My brow furrowed. “Do you think I’m trying to trick you into telling me? Didn’t you promise you’d tell me everything, anyway? Didn’t we spend two hours in the car talking about how you weren’t going to lie to me ever again?”
“It’s not a lie, Jen. It’s a situation.”
I shook my head. “You aren’t the only person who could answer the questions I had, Brandon. You aren’t the only one who holds the keys. And the keys…” I shook my head again, tilting my head to meet his gaze. “I don’t think you’re even remotely aware of the keys you’re missing yourself.”
He winced, almost like I had slapped him. “And what the hell is that supposed to mean? That you think you’re privy to something that I’m not? You’re trying to hold something over me?”