Filthy Lies

by Raine Miller

  Filthy Lies

  Blackstone Dynasty II

  Raine Miller

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  Blackstone Family Connections

  A BLACKSTONE CHRISTMAS

  About the Author

  Also by Raine Miller

  THIS book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  NO part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  * * *

  Copyright © 2018 Raine Miller

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Image by © Scott Hoover

  Cover Design by Jena Brignola

  Editing by Marion Archer

  Dedication

  For the two Z's

  * * *

  "I'm much more me when I'm with you."

  (unknown)

  Acknowledgments

  What a journey. Some days I don’t know how I got here. True story. To the people who have supported me throughout the process of creating this book probably have only a fraction of the understanding of just how important their input was to me at the time they gave it, I can never thank you enough. The only thing keeping me tapping away on a keyboard has been my readers.

  The email love-bombs, the private messages on Facebook, the late-night sprints organized by Kristy Bromberg, the fun promo events created by Vi Keeland, the awesome Tweets and Insta posts, the support from the amazing ladies of Raine Miller Romance Readers who offer nothing but love and joy in the words, the confessionals from people who shared with me something positive my books have brought to them in some fashion—all were part of the process for Filthy Lies.

  These were all pretty much “render-me-speechless” moments along the journey, but most of all, the special magic that made Filthy Lies even possible at all. I can hardly express what your support has meant to me throughout the long creative process.

  To Wendy, Martha, and Miria, your holding down the fort at RMRR is more precious to me than I can ever say.

  To Simba, your random doses of humor and ridiculousness make me laugh with much-needed pure joy.

  To Jena, your patience in putting up with me as I made ten million revisions to this stunning cover for James and Winter is noted and much appreciated.

  To Marion, for always making my words read so much better after your thoughtful input.

  To Luna and Franzi, I hope you realize the importance you play in getting books out of me. I couldn’t have done it without either of you.

  To Jana Aston and Katie Ashley, I NEED you in my life in order to do this writing gig. Seriously, I am not kidding even a little—I’ll need to keep you guys around indefinitely.

  To my better half, thank you evermore for taking this journey with me.

  I am so very blessed.

  * * *

  xxoo R

  Prologue

  WINTER

  On the day I turned fifteen, I knew I loved James Blakney. There was a look in his eye that told me he'd finally noticed I existed in a realm beyond best-friend's-much-younger-off-limits-don't-even-think-about-it-little sister. Call it womanly intuition, despite the fact I was barely qualified for being an actual woman at fifteen—and only in the biological sense—but still, I knew my own feelings.

  I shared those feelings with no one.

  James came to my birthday that year. To the gathering at Blackwater on the island where my family summered and vacationed as often as my father could convince my mother to spend time at the old estate perched on its coast. We were in the pool playing chicken fights when it happened. Wyatt was carrying me on his shoulders while Lucas carried Janice Thorndike, and the two of us squared off. Janice was one of those people we were forced to tolerate because our parents were close. She was a manipulative attention whore most of the time, and it being my birthday didn't change that one iota. Why she would go out of her way to humiliate someone who was much younger than her, and during their birthday celebration no less, was beyond me.

  But she did.

  Janice yanked on the tie at my neck that held up my bikini top and announced to all within shouting distance to have a look at my tits when it fell down. I was mortified to the depths of my soul as I frantically tried to cover back up after jumping from Wyatt's shoulders into the water. Awkwardly struggling with my chest submerged, I turned away from everyone and pulled myself together as best I could through hot tears. I think my brothers were either too freaked out or oblivious to what had happened, because neither said anything to me as I made for the edge of the pool to leave. Maybe they figured I didn't want any more attention drawn to myself—which I most certainly didn't—but a little compassion would have been nice too. Brothers can be stupidly dense.

  It was James who met me at the steps with a towel and told me Janice was a jealous bitch who wished she looked as good as I did without her bikini top.

  "You saw?" I asked him on a sob.

  His striking greeny-brown eyes burned right into me before he answered. "You have nothing to be ashamed of, Winter, and you didn't do anything wrong. You can't help that you're beautiful and sweet." The way he looked at me told me we'd moved beyond our big brother/little sister relationship in that moment. It wasn't him being pervy with me either. It was simply James being my champion when I desperately needed one.

  "Thank you," I mumbled, still mortified that he'd seen my boobs, but strangely aware the incident had given me the gift of James Blakney's attention at the same time.

  "Don't let this ruin your special day, Win. You are perfectly lovely in every way," he said before grinning at me in a way that could only be described as a tiny bit wicked. My skin pebbled along with my nipples, as I stood there like a mute. James winked as he took a swig of his Sam Adams before going back to his group of friends on the grass as if nothing had ever happened.

  And just like that I fell in love with him.

  Not even my twin sister, Willow, was privy to the innermost secrets of my heart concerning James Blakney. Within the safety of my dreams he was mine alone, and I didn't have to share him with anyone else. Or be humiliated because I'd set my sights far too high on a man who could never possibly be interested in a young girl like me. And that right there was the division between us. James was a man at twenty-three, and I was merely a girl at fifteen. Those eight years spanning between us was gargantuan—far too great of a distance to cross over.

  Then.

  But I'd always known him. James had been around and in my life for as long as I could remember. He met my oldest brother, Caleb, at St. Damien's when they were ten years old, and they'd been friends ever since. I was two. Willow and I went to St. Damien's eight years later when it was our turn to be shipped off to boarding school—our twin brothers, Wyatt and Lucas, five years before us. In the Blackstone
family, children were schooled away from home because it built character and toughened them up for the real world. Even though the "real world" was so far removed from our lifestyle it was laughable. Things like: twenty-year-old mothers who worked the streets so her children could have food and a place to sleep; or homeless vets struggling with wartime PTSD manifested in drug abuse and suicide were the real world.

  Those things just weren't the "real world" examples my parents referred to.

  Boarding school was only one of the many requirements that came with the territory of growing up rich. James understood completely because he'd been raised in much the same way. The Blakneys owned a beach retreat on Blackstone Island not far from my family's ancestral estate, Blackwater, and so our time had been spent at the same gatherings and social functions for as long as we both could remember.

  As the years went along, I loved James from afar, watching him grow more serious…and more cynical. I think his fiancée dumping him at the altar five years ago to run away with a senior partner in his father's law firm had a lot to do with the change in his personality. Leah Rawlings turned out to be a money-hungry bitch who'd left a trail of destruction in her wake. She broke my James's heart. And she did it publicly in a way that was cruel and unnecessary, and on the day they were to be married. With the guests already arriving at the church. I'll never forget the look on James's face when Caleb led him out of there.

  Crushed.

  I didn't know all the reasons for his devastation at the time. It was more than just Leah leaving him hanging at the altar. Worse than that, I would discover in time.

  I couldn't have known all of the machinations that went on behind the scenes in our world when I was barely nineteen years old, but I'd learned enough to know a lot of it wasn't nice.

  Despicable was a much better adjective.

  James had been twenty-seven when he found out there were many secret deals and plenty of depravity in plain sight if you knew where to look.

  I think the discovery of just how depraved was part of my interest in choosing social work at Boston University. I wanted to live my life differently than the people in my "social" circle. I didn't desire to be impoverished, but I didn't desire to waste my money on frivolous excess either. I wanted to use it to help make a difference for people who desperately needed someone to care, and had no one.

  No one at all.

  After his wedding-that-didn't-happen, I heard that James stayed drunk for about a month before pulling himself back together. With fierce resolve to overcome the betrayal of those who'd done him wrong, a mask descended over his handsome face. James lost his carefree manner and the easy smile he'd always had for others, and most importantly, in my mind, for me. He became more closed off, and far less engaging after Leah worked him over.

  I missed the old James terribly at first, but I didn't have many encounters with him during the years I was an undergrad at BU. I was busy being a student, and James was busy separating himself from his father's firm. There was drama over that decision at the time. I remember my parents discussing it, but in the end, James made his own stamp in the legal community, establishing himself as the go-to guy for contract law in New England. James R. Blakney & Associates, P.C. was retained by my dad for Blackstone Global Enterprises as soon as James had set up on his own. Nothing had changed with Caleb heading up BGE since Dad's death. In fact, James probated his will—a complicated undertaking for anyone faced with settling the billion-dollar personal fortune our father left to us—and he handled it without a blip. On top of being a close family friend, James knew the conditions of my trust fund. He knew what was required for me to gain access to it before my thirtieth birthday, too. He was the one who'd explained it to my sister and me at the reading of the will. Lucas and Wyatt had nothing to worry about given they were twenty-nine when Dad passed away.

  It's fair to say I hated Leah. Not so much for being with James in the first place, but for wounding him and leaving him a changed man. For that reason, she was on my unforgivable sinners' list. Because I was not confident he was as capable of forgiveness and goodwill toward people who grieved him as he might have been in the past. Which was what worried me the most, because now I've done something to hurt James. Something that could make him hate me, even though it would kill me inside if he did.

  I stole from him.

  I took advantage of James in a weak moment. I knew it was wrong, and yet I didn't care as I crossed over a dangerous line with him. I indulged nearly a decade's worth of craving to experience the magic of being loved by James Blakney. Loved? Probably more like fucked. It was done lovingly, so I didn't care. Carelessness indeed. I knew the risks and took my chances anyway.

  Still, it was so very wrong of me to let it happen, because the circumstances were too close to how Leah betrayed him. My betrayal was even worse, because the ripple effects would be felt by many.

  And now?

  I'd have to face up to the consequences of what I did.

  To James.

  To us.

  To our unborn child.

  Chapter One

  JAMES

  Three months earlier.

  Boston

  There was one reason and one reason only why I was at my father's law office today. The woman who birthed me. My mother asked me to see him, so I agreed, even though I'd rather take a swim in the Charles River. That I would prefer immersing myself into a polluted-as-fuck body of water to meeting with my dad, spoke volumes.

  The truth? I loved my mother, but I couldn't say the same about my father. Harsh as it was to acknowledge, pragmatism told me I wasn't the first son to feel this way about a parent. History was filled with examples.

  I dreaded this meeting because I knew whatever message he wanted to deliver to me personally wasn't anything I'd want to hear. Nothing he ever imparted was good news, but this felt like walking into an ambush. To say we had a stiff relationship was a polite way of describing it. I kept myself guarded because I had to. If your father sat on the First Circuit Court of Appeals that would probably do it for most people. The fact I practiced law in the same city as him required the appearance of family solidarity even if there was none. I had a fuck-ton of valid reasons for feeling the way I did.

  Even though I'd been in his presence at family dinners and holiday occasions, I hadn't been in his office since the day I left it five years ago. The feelings of anger and disgust simmered below the surface where I'd forced them to stay. After this, I'd need a release to bring me back down to level. I knew where I'd be heading tonight. Annnnnd wasn't the irony just fucking beautiful considering where I was right now?

  "He's ready for you, James." Patricia's smile held a touch of sympathy. She probably knew the reason for my summons. My father, the judge, only hired the best, and every lawyer with half a brain understood a smooth running office existed in direct correlation to the skills of his or her legal secretary.

  "Thanks. Oh, before I forget, tell Chase to get in touch with Marguerite at my offices if he's interested in an internship." Patricia's oldest son was a first year law student at Suffolk and probably a smart kid if he was anything like his mom.

  "Oh, that's so kind. I know Chase will jump at the opportunity, James." She smiled with genuine thanks before leading me into my father's inner sanctum.

  He tracked me with his eyes as I entered the room. I had to work fucking hard to keep a lid on my emotions and remain impassive. I was on enemy turf for as long as this meeting lasted. I thought of my mother, and that helped to keep my feet planted. If not for her request, I'd be out the fucking door and back on the street where I could breathe again.

  "Sit down, son."

  I settled into one of his soft leather chairs and leaned back with an expression of relaxed comfort. An acting performance that should probably earn me an Academy Award because in reality, it felt like I was being ass-fucked on a bed of nails. I would probably walk out of here feeling the same way when this meeting was over.

  "Thank you for c
oming today. I realize your mother had to persuade you."

  I kept my eyes forward and ignored the calculated barb. "How is she?" I deflected by asking him a question.

  "Your mother is very well as she always is." Undoubtedly he was lying, but I'd learned long ago that my parents' relationship was not my battle to fight. "I've asked you for a private meeting to share my news. You need to know what's coming."

  I said nothing. There wasn't a thing on earth that could've compelled me to ask him for the information. I wasn't able to pretend that much with my father. All my energy was taken up by being present in the first place. I knew my silent disinterest rankled him. And I fucking loved that it did.

  "Ted Robinson's recent cancer diagnosis has ended his political career."

  "You know what they say about karma," I answered. All I could envision was the darkly beautiful goddess that was karma swooping in for her well-deserved due, because Ted Robinson shared space on the same list with my dad. Cut from exactly the same cloth. "Besides, he has Mrs. Robinson to care for his every need now, so he can certainly take some comfort in that."

  Bitch, please.

  The idea of my ex, Leah, nursing her sick husband back to health was so outrageous even I had to call bullshit on my own inner monologue. Robinson would abso-fucking-lutely have private in-home nursing care, because his adoring wife certainly wouldn't soil her hands cleaning up his piss and puke.