by Peak, Renna
I could tell he could sense it—the feelings I was having again. I’m sure it was written all over me. The buzzing feeling that had never really left but had only been hidden for a moment under the surface. He reached out and touched my hand again, sending a jolt of electricity through my arm. My breath caught in my chest—I hadn’t felt it in what seemed like so long. That heady feeling that made me want to tear his clothes off and let him have his way with me.
Krystal cleared her throat. Apparently, she could sense it, too.
I sucked in a breath to try to regain control of my raging hormones, a small smile coming to my face. He did know me. He wasn’t trying to own me at all. He wanted to give me what I had always wanted. The only thing I had ever really wanted. A choice. The ability to choose how to live my own life. It was why I had moved to Waterville. Because it was my choice.
The sudden release of the tension in my body sent a wave of relief over me, but jumbled my thoughts. For a moment, I couldn’t even remember why we were all sitting there in the bedroom. I just wanted him to hold me. To tell me we could finally find happiness together and that we would figure it out as we went.
Krystal cleared her throat again. “I would tell you two to get a room, but since I was sent here to prevent that from happening…”
He finally tore his gaze from mine and turned to her. “Did you really take her?”
She nodded. “Yep. You can check it out with Cade, though I doubt he’ll be as forthcoming as I am with you. Considering you hate him and all.” She smiled, turning her gaze to me. “I told you it was foolproof. Say what you want about your mother—and don’t get me wrong, the woman is a conniving bitch. But she’s a goddamned genius.”
Brandon shook his head. “What in the hell am I supposed to tell him? That she took off on her own? That she managed to hide herself in that shithole town all by herself?”
Krystal laughed. “Your problem. Definitely not mine.”
He shook his head again. “Fuck.” He lifted his gaze to meet mine. “I’ll tell him it was Melissa. He might not believe it, but it will buy us some time.”
She laughed again. “Tell him the truth. I dare you. Wasn’t honesty the new policy? Isn’t that what you just said?”
He let out a long breath, dropping his gaze to the floor.
I knew it wasn’t the most opportune time to change the subject, but I knew I needed to tell him the part of this story that I was sure he didn’t know. And having Krystal there in the room with me gave me the courage I needed to tell him. “Brandon, I need to tell you something else. Something I should have told you before.”
Krystal cocked her head. “I’m not sure this is the best time, Jenna.”
Brandon turned to her. “You swore to me. You looked me right in the eye six months ago and told me you didn’t know where she was.” A pained look came to his face. “You lied to me. Right to my face.”
She rolled her eyes. “Get over it. It isn’t like you haven’t done the same thing to me dozens of times.”
He shook his head, almost like he couldn’t believe his sister had betrayed him. “Not like that. Not when it mattered, Krystal. Family…” He paused, lifting his gaze to meet hers. “Why would you do that to me? You’re my sister. I would never lie to you about something important. Someone important. Not about something—someone—you loved. I would never do that to you.”
She lifted a brow. “About that…” She turned her gaze to meet mine. “I changed my mind. Maybe it is a good time.”
“A good time for what?” Brandon turned to look at me, too. “What is she talking about?”
I gulped. What had seemed like a good idea only a few minutes before now seemed like a terrible one. A very terrible one.
Krystal’s gaze narrowed. I knew she wasn’t going to let this go—not after she had just been called a liar. “It seems that Jenna met someone back in San Francisco.”
“Oh?” He lifted a brow, and I could see he was fighting himself to keep a sneer from forming on his lips. “Do tell.”
I fought the urge to roll my eyes. “Not a man, Brandon. A woman came up to me in a bar one night.” I let out a long breath. “I should have talked to you about this before, but I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything until Krystal brought me here and told me about the genetic testing we had done in the hospital.”
He shook his head. “We do not need to talk about that again.” His gaze darted between the two of us. “I’m fine. I didn’t need a kidney, and I’m fine. And I was relieved to know that your father didn’t knock up my mother. Seriously. Relived doesn’t even begin to describe what I felt.” He looked up at the ceiling. “There was this little part of me that knew it was possible—I mean, the guy has spread his seed to so many—”
“Shut up for a second and let her finish.” Krystal interrupted him. “Just listen for a second.”
I nodded, turning my gaze to his. I tried to tell him with my eyes that he was going to be okay—that this was going to hurt like hell for a little while, but then it would be fine. That it didn’t change anything. But I knew there was no way I could really telegraph any of that to him—not without telling him. Not without saying the actual words.
I let out another shaky breath. “This woman came up to me in the bar that night. It was the night you had the two co-eds in your apartment.”
He rolled his eyes. “Oh, Christ, are we really going there again? I was out-of-my-mind drunk, Jen. Seriously, I don’t remember ever being that drunk. It was one of the reasons I gave the shit up. I told you that today. I’m not drinking anymore. I won’t ever drink again.”
I nodded. “The co-eds aren’t the point, Brandon. The woman—she came up to me and told me to stay away from you. She told me she was your mother. Cade was there—you can ask him. He said that he knew your mother. He said—”
“This is bullshit.” He interrupted me, shaking his head in disbelief again. “My mother…” He turned to face Krystal. “Our mother died in a boating accident when I was four years old. Krystal was seventeen. She died.”
Krystal reached out to touch his hand. “I couldn’t donate my kidney to you because we didn’t share any genetic markers. None. I thought it was weird, Brandon, and I had them compare our DNA. It didn’t match. It wasn’t a sibling match. You aren’t my brother.”
“Who the fuck am I then?” He stood up and started for the door, pushing Krystal’s hand away before his hands balled into fists. “This is a sick joke, you two. Sick. And wrong. And seriously fucked up.” He strode to the door, turning to face us before he opened it. “So what the fuck does that mean, Krystal? You’ve known for how long now? A year? You’ve known we aren’t related and you chose not to say anything?”
She closed her eyes, opening them before turning to face him. “I’m sorry. Jenna didn’t know. Not until she came here. Cade convinced her that night at the bar that it was just some random weirdo, but it turns out … maybe she wasn’t.” She winced. “I’m sorry. And I am your sister. You’re the only family I have, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you just walk out.”
His eyes were almost crazed and he shook his head. “Fuck you, Krystal. Let’s see if Senator Davis believes the truth about who took his daughter nine months ago.” He turned away from us, opening the door before slamming it closed behind him.
“Shit. That did not go how I had hoped it would.” She turned back to face me. “I knew he would take it hard, but I hoped maybe not quite that hard. Hopefully he’ll go for a walk before he does something stupid.”
6
I barely slept at all. I hadn’t had a nightmare in months , but every time sleep found me that night, I would wake up in a cold sweat, certain that Brandon was dead.
Just as she had promised, the hair guy that Krystal had sent for showed up before dawn—well before I had to face Marian. My horrible home-dye job was restored to something close to my natural brown. It would be good enough to face my mother, but the knowledge of the other things I was going to have
to face now—the endless press conferences and campaigning were already beginning to weigh on me. Something inside me said that it was the first day of the rest of my life—the first time I would actually be able to make my own choices in life. And while there was something thrilling about that, it was also terrifying. Adding in the fact that Brandon had all but abandoned me last night was making me an emotional wreck. I couldn’t even describe what it was I was feeling—my stomach was twisted into knots and my heart was pounding so hard I couldn’t hear a thing.
I made my way downstairs, hoping that I would see Brandon before I saw anyone else. I needed him to know that I understood. My own reaction to finding out that I wasn’t who I thought I was had been different—I barely remembered that night, but I knew I had been devastated. And it had taken me months to come to terms with the new knowledge of who I was and who I wasn’t, but that was just it. I had come to terms with it. And I knew he could, too, given enough time. And that was a luxury that we were going to be allowed to have now. Time. There was no ticking clock anymore. There didn’t have to be any more running or hiding, not if what Brandon had said was true. Not if the deal he had made with my father was going to be honored. If he really had agreed to work for my father for the past nine months in exchange only for my ability to make my own choices—I couldn’t have asked for anything else. It was all that I had ever wanted, and I would give up anything and everything else to choose Brandon.
And I wanted to believe that if he knew that, he could find something to hold onto right now. He could hold onto me. I remembered how lost I had felt in those days after finding out that Marian wasn’t my mother, and he had given me something to hang onto. He had given me himself, and I knew I wanted to do that for him now. I wanted him to know that I was his for as long as he would have me. That I would give him as much as he needed from me so that he would be able to get through this, and that we could work together to find out who that woman in the bar was if it was something he wanted.
He had choices, too. And I knew he needed to know that more than anything else.
I reached the bottom of the stairs, only to find no one was there.
Something was wrong. I could feel it—something was very wrong. This house, even though it wasn’t the main house, was always bustling with activity. It had a full staff that were on duty all day, and it was late enough that they should have been preparing for Marian’s arrival. And my father—he should have been there, too. He should have been sitting in the dining room or the living room, waiting for me. Waiting to ask me about whatever it was that Brandon had decided to tell him last night.
But there was no one. The silence in the house was almost deafening.
I thought for a second that it might have been another one of my nightmares, but I knew it wasn’t. I knew somewhere inside myself that was going to turn into a nightmare, though, and I knew I needed to open the front door to find out what in the hell it was that was going on.
A chill ran through me as I walked to the massive front door, almost like icy water was flowing through my veins.
It wasn’t quiet any longer when I opened that door. The nervous chattering of the group crowded in the driveway slowed for only a moment—and maybe it hadn’t slowed at all. It might have just been my mental faculties that slowed when I saw what I saw that morning. The huge pool of red that was such a contrast to the blue eyes that met mine.
I wasn’t sure if it was the heavy nod that Brandon gave me from across the driveway that made my knees buckle under me or if it was the dizziness from the panicked racing of my heart that was already making me see dark spots. I just knew that what I had seen in the driveway had only barely entered my consciousness before I blacked out completely.
Blood. So much blood.
Taken #4
The MISTAKEN Series - Part Sixteen
1
Last Night
There was no way I was going to tell him. Senator Davis and I may have had an agreement, but I knew there was no way in hell I was going to let him in on this bullshit. She had crossed him. They all had—Jen, her mother, Krystal, Cade … all of them were going to burn for what they had attempted if he found out.
She should have known better. Jen had seen firsthand what happened to Daniel when he tried to cross her father. She of all people should have known more than enough to try to pull anything over on him. The fact that it had gone on this long only meant one thing—the hammer would be coming down on them. Soon.
Jen’s father had sent me up to that room for one thing, and it had nothing to do with what I wished I could have done with her alone in her bedroom. He only wanted to know who put her up to the disappearing act.
I slipped down the stairs and out the front door, away from where the senator was probably still drinking and making his plans for world domination. One of the security people nodded as I passed him on the porch. I may not have been an expected guest, but once these security people found out I was with Senator Davis, they didn’t seem to want to have anything to do with me.
I needed to find a way out—some way out of this place, whatever the hell this place was. I knew I had to have been close to a mile from the second gate we had passed when we came in. There was a road, but it was well illuminated—it wasn’t like I could just go for a hike back to the gate and expect they would let me out. Especially if I had Jen with me.
I walked out onto the road, trying to remember what there was around the houses. There were trees, but they were the purposefully planted type, not the forest that I would have needed to hide us if I was going to be able to sneak the two of us out of here. The ocean was in the other direction, and it was pretty clear why the Hennessey family had built their compound here so many years ago—it was practically inaccessible by water. There were huge rock walls on both the northern and southern sides of the compound. The southern edge had looked more promising, but it was dark and it wasn’t like I had a headlamp or even a fucking flashlight to get out of there. And I knew there had to be security watching the place.
Trying to come up with an escape plan helped to bury the other thoughts that I knew wanted to swirl around in my mind that night. The bullshit that Krystal and Jen had told me—DNA tests that showed I wasn’t related to Krystal and some unbelievable story about my mother accosting Jen in a bar. It wasn’t just that it wasn’t believable—it was insanity. No, planning an impossible escape from this place seemed to be much more likely than the thought that I would ever believe any of that other shit. Not that any of it mattered now. Not really. I had to remind myself of that—I had found Jen. She was here. I glanced up at the house I had just exited, trying to remember which window would be hers. I could go back to her. I could slip upstairs and go back to her and no one would be the wiser. I would tell Krystal to leave us the hell alone, and I would remind her why I had found her again in the first place. Nothing else mattered now. Only that we were together again and that I was never going to let her go.
I let out a long breath and tried to clear the familiar anger that still seemed to bubble up inside me every time something stood between me and the life I had been dreaming about for so long. The quiet, normal life that we both wanted.
I nodded to myself, taking in a long breath before starting back for the door of the carriage house. I hadn’t even taken two steps before I felt a hand over my mouth and the barrel of a gun against my temple.
“If you want to live, don’t make a sound.”
The voice was familiar, but the hammering of my heart in my ears and my sudden inability to think made it difficult to place. I could only nod in agreement.
He pulled me off the road and into the shadows, almost shoving me forward as the gun barrel moved from my temple to the small of my back.
We walked several feet before coming to another large path that I could see led to the main house in the compound. Calling it a house was more than an understatement. The “carriage house” that Jen was at was enormous, but the main house—the one I could onl
y see from a distance from where I had originally been taken—was bigger than anything I had ever seen in my life. It was a monstrosity. And it occurred to me in that moment that it was an appropriate place for a monster to live. Jen’s mother, or the woman she used to call her mother.
“I told you she wanted to see you, Brandon.” He shoved the barrel of the gun into my back again, urging me forward.
It was Cade, but his voice was different, almost frightened. I didn’t dare turn to confirm his identity, but I had never been more sure of anything.
Just knowing it was Cade was almost calming in itself. The man and I had certainly had our differences in the past, but I knew he wasn’t about to actually hurt me. I sucked in a breath, trying to steel my voice. “Why the gun, Cade?”
“So you don’t run.”
“Why would I run?” It seemed stupid—the thought that I would actually try to take off, or at least the thought of leaving without Jen. I had spent too much time looking for her—invested too much. I wasn’t leaving without her, and every person here was going to know it, no matter how insane they were.
“And to remind you that you and your boss are not the proprietors of this establishment.”
“Ah.” It was like a lightbulb suddenly flicked on in my head. This had nothing to do with Jen. Well, maybe it did, but this was mostly a pissing contest between Marian and her husband—not between me and Marian. There was more to their story than I ever wanted to know about, but the way Cade was handling me made perfect sense now.
We walked in silence, the gun still pressed firmly against my back. We finally arrived at the house several minutes later, but we didn’t head for the front door. Instead, he shoved me in the direction he wanted me to go, heading for a darkened side entrance.