He opened his mouth to say something, but then closed it and thought about it for a moment before Alyssa cut him off. “Oh it was obvious you were jealous, Damien, and Jade, you didn’t come up with that idea, I did.” She crossed her arms over her chest and stared us down.
I smirked at her words. “So, does that mean you’re going to be our double agent?”
Alyssa sighed heavily, as if she had just let herself down by deciding to join us on team good guys. “She keeps all of the stuff she wants hidden in a file somewhere. I saw her putting in the newspaper clipping from your and Damien’s kiss before it went to print.”
“There’s a file and you never told me?” Damien asked. “There is actual proof that she isn’t the perfect person she claims to be and you didn’t tell me. Alyssa that would have been better than sending me away!”
“It wouldn’t have accomplished anything, Damien, you still would have been miserable even if you did have dirt on her. Now, I think it will be different which is why I’m telling you now,” she said giving me a soft smile to let me know that I was what made it different.
“Right, well not to ruin this wonderful sibling moment, but where is this file?” I asked, excited to finally have the upper hand on the senator.
In response to my question, Alyssa shrugged. “I think she keeps it in her office filing cabinet.”
I stood from the bed, still wearing my clothes from the night before. “Let’s go check it out then.”
Alyssa furrowed her eyebrows. “We can’t just stroll in there and grab it.”
“Why can’t we?” I questioned, walking from the room and into the hallway, heading toward the senator’s office. I heard Alyssa and Damien’s footfalls behind me as I took a turn down a long hall, remembering where her office had been from the time Matt and I had been in there with her and my dad.
“I’m sure it’s locked,” Damien stated.
“I bet it’s not.”
“What makes you say that?” Alyssa mumbled, hurrying along behind me.
I shrugged my shoulders. “Why lock a door to an office that’s in your house if you want to make it seem like you have nothing to hide? I doubt she would expect any of us to steal from her office, because firstly, Alyssa is her right hand man, and secondly, her office is too obvious of a hiding spot for Damien and me to have thought of.”
“I guess,” Damien spoke just as we arrived at the senator’s office.
The door was closed, and suddenly the thought that the senator might be inside passed through my mind. “Think she’s inside?” I questioned in a whisper.
Alyssa shook her head. “No, she left with your dad to go taste test cakes for the wedding. We’re the only people home.” She tilted her head sideways, thinking to herself for a moment before adding, “Well, I think the maids are here too, but they don’t ever talk to mom. They try to avoid her.”
“They’ve got the right idea,” I murmured, reaching out for the door knob. Just as I suspected, the door twisted open easily, opening wide. I tossed the siblings a look that said, “I told you so,” before we all entered the office, closing the door behind us.
“So. Filing cabinets?” I suggested, glancing around the office. Realistically, the only places to put files in here were in the filing cabinets. Unless she hid the file in her desk drawers like an amateur. A smile came to my face as an image of the senator taping the file under her desk came to mind. It was like how I used to tape my diary under my desk when I was younger, even though I barely wrote in it, and nothing inside was really top secret.
Alyssa nodded at my suggestion, heading over to the filing cabinets. She pulled them open easily, also countering her and Damien’s locked theory. Damien sat at his mom’s desk chair as I watched Alyssa’s fingers move quickly and skillfully through the contents of the top cabinet before she closed it and moved to the next.
“How are you so quick?” I questioned, watching in amazement as she flicked through that cabinet obviously finding nothing before she moved to the next one.
Alyssa kept searching through the cabinets while she answered my question. “I used to file for her during the summer. She said that I had natural organization skills from my dad, and if I didn’t help her all of her stuff would be a cluttered mess.”
I smirked. “Well that’s great for us, and bad for her.”
“How so?” she questioned, now going through the final drawer.
“Because you know where everything is, and she won’t know if anything is missing,” Damien spoke, answering her question for me.
“Exactly,” I agreed.
Alyssa pulled away from the final drawer, closing it with a loud clang as the metal slammed into each other.
“Nothing?” I asked.
“Nothing. I don’t know where else she would even keep it. It has to be in here somewhere.”
I bit my lip, my thoughts from earlier filling my mind again. Sighing, I came around the desk to where Damien was sitting and pulled his chair out of the way. I searched through all of the drawers, but none of them contained files. Then, in one last attempt to find the file, I leaned down, looking under the senator’s desk. When my eyes took in the large manila folder that was heavily taped to the bottom of the desk, my cheeks stretched into a large grin. Maybe the senator and I were more alike than I thought—we both had the same hiding place.
Reaching up, I carefully detached the folder and came out from under the desk.
“You found it?” Alyssa screeched, her eyes widening in excitement.
Damien looked shocked as he said, “How did you know it would be under there?”
I shrugged, setting the folder down on the desk. “I didn’t. I just thought of every hiding place there could be in this one room.”
“Well, it worked,” he said, smiling up at me. Suddenly, his hand wrapped around my wrist and he pulled me down onto his lap.
Alyssa joined us behind the desk and we all stared down at the folder.
“Who’s going to open it?” she mumbled, not taking her eyes off of it.
“I will,” Damien answered, reaching for the file, but I stopped him.
“You should open it Alyssa.” My eyes met hers. “Opening that and showing us what’s inside is your ultimate way of saying that you can’t be controlled by her anymore.”
Gulping, Alyssa leaned forward, picking up the file. “Are you two sure about this?”
Damien and I nodded simultaneously. I don’t think I had been surer of anything in my seventeen years of existence.
“Okay,” she sighed, finally opening the folder. She dumped the contents out on the empty desk in front of us. “Let’s see what we can find.”
The folder contained cut outs and folded up newspaper articles. It also had a few pictures. The first thing that caught my eye was a picture of the senator from when she was about our age. I picked it up, my mouth dropping to form a small ‘o’ shape as I stared at it. It wasn’t just any old picture; it was a mugshot.
The senator was frowning at the camera, and holding up a small sign that said her first and last name. Apparently before she had married Damien’s dad and become Tara Clark, and Alyssa’s dad and become Tara Jacobs, her name was Tara Bishop. Her hair in the picture was long and unruly, unlike the shoulder length hair that she often kept pulled back into a tight bun.
“Look at this,” I spoke, handing the picture to Alyssa.
She stared at the picture, laughing before showing it to Damien, who mumbled, “She has a mugshot?”
“Apparently.” I sighed before reaching for an article clipping, but was distracted when Damien spoke.
He held a letter in front of my face, waiting for me to take it. “Well, I guess I know why my dad left us.”
Alyssa’s head snapped to her brother. “What’s it say?”
He sighed, handing it to her. “It’s a letter from my dad to me. She must have intercepted it or something. Basically it says that he loves me, and him and mom divorcing had nothing to do with me. She was ha
ving an affair during their marriage and when he found out he couldn’t bare even the sight of her anymore, so he left. He said that he had tried to fight for me, but mom had so much stuff on him that he knew he wouldn’t get full custody, let alone shared, so he gave up.”
“He just gave up?” Alyssa mumbled, looking at the letter for herself.
Damien nodded. His eyes were hard and cold. “Yeah. He left his address and phone number at the bottom of the paper. Said that I should come and visit or at least give him a call, and he’ll always be there when I need him.”
Alyssa folded the letter and handed it back to Damien. “You should hang on to that. Technically it’s yours anyway.”
Listening to his sister, Damien stuffed the letter into his pocket. From where I sat on his lap, I looked back at him. “You should give him a call too. I’m sure you both would like that.”
He nodded again, leaning over the file’s contents. “Let’s keep looking,” he mumbled changing the subject away from him.
“Okay,” Alyssa and I said simultaneously.
It didn’t take us long to go through the rest of the folder’s contents. We found tons of incriminating stuff on the senator. Most of the stuff we came across had no doubt been covered up for the sake of her previous election. There were police reports from the senator’s teenage years, more information on the affair, and even a letter of arrest on public indecency. I had even found the article of Damien and I kissing, and I decided that I wanted to cut that picture out and put it on my wall. Damien and Alyssa had laughed when I told them that, but I replied by saying that if my wall had all of my favorite people on it, and it held good memories for me, then I needed to add a picture of Alyssa and me before it would be complete.
Finally, once we were done looking through the pictures, we all made sure the office was back to normal before we headed out into the hallway, me with the file tucked under my arm.
This was our only means of getting the senator to leave us alone, and I wasn’t about to leave our proof in her office. I was going to put this file in my other hiding spot; under my mattress. To even get to it she would have to have the maids unmake my bed, or do it herself, then she would have to find the slit I had cut in my mattress. Frankly, it would be too much work for her and by then Damien and I would have made copies of everything.
Alyssa smiled at Damien and me as we made our way down the hallway.
“Do you think we got it?” she asked.
I nodded. “Oh, we got it, all right.”
Chapter 26
I smiled as we all headed to the senator’s office with the file held tightly in my hands. Damien, Alyssa, and I had been waiting for my dad and the senator to get home so that we could present her with our new information. I was happy that we were finally able to level the playing field. She had stuff on us and now we had dirt on her too. I could get use to this blackmail thing. I was pretty good at it too. Maybe I’ve found my calling. Hell, even I had to make a living somehow.
The three of us entered the senator’s office without knocking, and since I was the one with the folder in hand, I headed over to her and slapped it down on the desk in front of her. The senator stared at the three of us in confusion before her eyes traveled to the folder and widened in shock.
“What are you doing with that?” She scowled, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning back in her chair.
I rolled my eyes at her attempt at acting calm and collected. I could see right through her thin exterior. She was obviously freaking out inside from the way her eyes were wider than normal and her lips were pressed together so tightly that there were wrinkles at the corners of her mouth.
“Don’t ask obvious questions.” I snatched the folder back off of her desk, going to take a seat in one of the chairs across from her desk. For good measure, before we came in here, we had kept a few of the worst things from the file hidden under my mattress, just in case she took the folder from us. Alyssa took a seat on the empty space next to me, and Damien sat on the armrest on my side of the love seat.
“How was that an obvious question, Jade? What, am I a mind reader now? Am I supposed to be able to look at you and know your thoughts?” The senator rolled her eyes.
I feigned a laugh. “You must feel pretty shocked right now. If I were you, I wouldn’t be taking us so lightly. You must think that we’re sitting here with the file on all of the stuff you’ve ever done wrong, and we’re just going to laugh and talk then hand it over and say we were joking about taking the folder.”
I looked up at Damien to see him glaring at his mom.
“Oh, I’m not worried. Whatever you all have in mind, you should know better than to do it.”
Damien scoffed. “But how would we know better than to blackmail you, mom? After all, with you as my role model all I should know how to do is blackmail people, and try to keep a flawless reputation.”
“And let’s not forget control people,” Alyssa mumbled, her eyes down at her feet.
I smiled at Alyssa’s words as Damien added, “Oh, and let’s not forget getting divorced and remarried. That’s something you taught us. As well as how to lie. I’m so curious mom. How did you manage to keep that letter from my dad from me for all these years? Two marriages later and you just continued to let me think that dad walked out on us after an argument you two had. You made him out to be the bad guy just to protect yourself.”
The senator stared at Damien, her face softening a bit. “I wanted to tell you, I just couldn’t.”
“Oh, bullshit. When dad left us, Alyssa was five and I was seven, and I always thought that we had the same dad until you told us that Alyssa’s dad was really Mr. Jacobs. I can’t believe I didn’t put it together until now. While you and dad were married, you were sleeping with Alyssa’s dad, and then you tried to pass her off as dad’s daughter, but he knew better. Then you had the nerve to threaten him, and make him not able to see me. What’s wrong with you? Do you thrive off of being a cold hearted bitch?” he yelled the last part, making Alyssa and me flinch, while the senator stayed frozen on the spot.
“It was for the best,” she said, leaning forward in her chair to take the file from me. “Now give me my file back. You’ve seen what you wanted now.”
I shook my head. “You aren’t getting this back. This is our way of leveling the playing field. If you tell anyone about Matt or ruin his scholarship in anyway, I’ll let all of this leak to the public. Even the stuff about Damien and me. How would that make you look in the election? I’m sure your opponents would love to get their hands on these photos, especially those mugshots from your teenage years.”
The senator glared at me, she knew that she didn’t have an answer for this other than to accept my demands. “Anything else you want, Jade?”
“Nope, just stay out of my and Matt’s life,” I nearly growled, feeling pretty smug with myself now that I had beaten her and protected my friends when they needed me the most.
“But there’s something I want,” Damien spoke up with a new tone in his voice. “You’re going to help convince Jade’s dad that she and I are better off being together,” he said as he placed a hand on my shoulder and gave me a short kiss on the cheek before continuing, “and you aren’t sending either of us anywhere. We stay here.”
“And,” Alyssa spoke up, leaning forward in her chair, “you aren’t going to treat me like I’m on some pedestal anymore. I want to be allowed to date and hang out with whomever I choose. I also want to take up some hobbies. I’m tired of being the perfect daughter and doing whatever you say. I’ll still keep my grades up and stay out of trouble, but it’s too much pressure always trying to do everything to please you.” Alyssa dared to look up at her mom, adding the word ‘sorry’ at the end before looking back down.
I smirked at the senator. “Got all of that? I sure hope so, because if any of that isn’t done on your part, then you can kiss the election goodbye, Senator. Even if you go back on our deal after the election, we can just use the stuff to ru
in your reputation by sending them to the press. Everything in this folder can only lead to one thing for you.”
The senator rolled her eyes at me. “And what may that be?”
“Bad publicity,” I answered smugly. “So do you understand the terms of our agreement?”
She nodded her head hesitantly. “I understand.”
“Good,” I stood up, getting ready to leave. “I guess we’re done here then. Nice talking with you, Senator, I hope to not have to do it again,” I said with a smile as we got up from our chairs and turned to leave.
As we all headed out of the room, we couldn’t help the smiles that took over our faces. Once we made it to my room and I hid the file again, we all started talking about how well that had gone.
“Her face was priceless,” Alyssa said.
“How would you know, you had your head down the entire time,” Damien joked, staring at his sister in confusion.
Alyssa crossed her arms. “I did not. I looked up a few times.”
I laughed at her words just as my phone buzzed in my pocket. Taking it out, I furrowed my eyebrows as Brooke’s smiling face flashed on my screen. I answered the call, pressing the phone to my ear.
“Hello?”
“Is it true?” came Brooke’s voice from the other end of the line. She sounded furious.
My heart stopped at her words and tone. “Is what true?” I asked curiously as I stopped dead in my tracks. I knew what was coming, but I was hoping to God that I was wrong. I would even consider going to church again if Brooke didn’t know that Austin and I had a fling. Damien and Alyssa each gave me strange looks from where they were seated on my bed. I could see Alyssa furrow her eyebrows and tilt her head curiously as Damien lifted an eyebrow as if he was asking what was going on.
“Did you or did you not have sex with my brother on multiple occasions?” Brooke cried over the phone. I felt myself lurch as if she was about to hit me or was right in my face yelling at me.
“Well, you see Brooke, Brooky,” I said trying to think of a way out of this, but I couldn’t. “It’s in the past. We stopped!”
Crush: A YA Romance Collection Page 19