My past. My parents. My fears.
I didn’t want to start fresh. I wanted to start here, where it felt like I still had a purpose—where there was more for me to do.
I wanted to show this town that the Rock Beach Princess had promise and perseverance, that she was more than just a pretty face in fancy clothes living above the rest of the world in her giant palace.
When I was younger, my parents had distanced me from the town and a community I was only just starting to belong to. It was both selfish and foolish to think I could have them both, but as I waved to the Covingtons and then chatted with Josie when we stopped at the intersection by the Carmel bakery, I knew these people had given me more of themselves in the past couple of weeks than my parents had in the last couple decades.
“What do you want to do when we get home?”
I shivered, liking the idea of Mick’s apartment as home. It was small, and that made me incredibly happy. It meant I would never be lost in it, drowning in too many rooms and hallways to count. And it meant that he would never be far from me… and that was the best part of it all.
We were almost to the apartment building when police sirens started blaring behind us.
I glanced to Mick, seeing him look in the rearview, stern frustration descending over the easy smile that had been present the whole drive home. I didn’t say anything, but I could tell he had no idea why he was being pulled over. There were too many cars on Ocean Avenue for us to have been going over the speed limit, and we’d spent longer at the last stop sign because we’d said hello to Josie.
Mick turned into the apartment parking lot. The police cruiser pulled up behind us, blocking Mick’s truck in the spot as the officer got out. Vaguely, I recalled his face. He’d never stayed at Rock Beach, but he’d been there several times for events and such that my parents held to show their support for the community—a community they didn’t actually want to be a part of.
The pudgy policeman walked toward us, a surly expression on his face and, as I turned, I could see that he approached with one hand on his weapon.
Mick rolled down his window and spoke first, “Afternoon, officer. What seems to be the problem?”
As he stood at the driver’s window, I caught his name on his uniform: Officer Peters.
Tom Peters.
Instantly, I recalled the numerous times he’d provided added security at Rock Beach at my father’s insistence. My stomach curled into about fifteen different kinds of knots, dreading what was coming and knowing it couldn’t be a coincidence.
The other man tensed. “Are you Mick Madison?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m going to have to ask you to step out of the vehicle,” he requested, even though his tone was nothing short of a command.
“Mick…” My heart felt like it was beating inside my throat.
What was going on?
“It’s alright.” He squeezed my hand from where he’d been holding it the whole drive.
Slowly opening the door, he stepped down from the truck, asking calmly, “Can I ask what this is about?”
The air felt so thick—too thick with tension to fit into my lungs as I tried to not freak out.
I didn’t know if it was because I’d seen this cop at Rock Beach or talking to my parents in the past or just his overall demeanor, but I didn’t trust him. I didn’t trust what was happening. And because I didn’t trust it, I knew it wasn’t going to be good.
“Please turn and put your hands behind your back.” Another thinly veiled command.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t know what is goin’ on here. If you could tell me what this—” Mick tried to press kindly, but he was cut off when the cop gripped his shirt sleeve, Mick’s arm too wide for him to be able to hold that effectively, and forcibly turned him to face the car.
“Mick!” I cried, scrambling to free myself from my seat belt, so I could get out there.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” the cop ground out.
I could see the rage brewing in Mick’s eyes from being so rudely mistreated.
He’d just been asking. He hadn’t been resisting, yet the cop was treating him like he was. And if he had been resisting, the other man would have been flat on the ground because he was half Mick’s size, and most of that was carried in his gut.
My hands froze on the door handle as the cop continued, “Mick Madison, you are under arrest for illegal possession and use of a firearm resulting in a homicide.”
“What the—” Mick grunted as the man pushed him roughly against the truck, and I heard the telltale click of handcuffs cinching around his wrists.
This couldn’t be happening.
I shook my head frantically, throwing open the door and rounding to the other side.
“Sir, there’s been a mistake—”
“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to step back. I need to take this man into custody,” he sneered, enjoying his inflated power over a man Mick’s size.
“No!” I yelled, reaching for Mick even as the cop put himself between us. “Y-You are wrong. You have the wrong man,” I lied. I lied like my life depended on it because my heart did—and that was essentially the same thing. “Please, you are—”
“Miss Vandelsen.” I froze at his tone. “I have it on good authority that it was your recent testimony, that it was in fact this man who saved your life and shot and killed a Mr. Alexander Blackman in the process.”
The explosion in my head rocked me harder than being hit by that very man that night.
I felt so hot—pulsing heat like the sun was beating down on me, only the heat was coming from inside me, from the shock and anger and guilt.
“W-What are y-you—” I began to stammer, shaking my head like I could wake up from this nightmare. “Mick!” I yelled as Officer Reynolds roughly pushed Mick into the back of his cruiser; Mick hadn’t been resisting, but it was difficult for a man of his size to climb handcuffed into a backseat.
“Darlin’,” Mick’s hard and steady voice paralyzed my fear and pulled me into focus. “I’ll be fine. Take a deep breath and call Laurel.”
Calling Laurel also meant Eli, and Eli also meant Ace and the rest of Covington Security.
Tears rolled down my cheeks as I nodded, noticing the small crowd had forming on the sidewalk. I flinched as the door slammed shut and Officer Reynolds had the twisted audacity to smirk at me before climbing into his cruiser and driving off.
In a blink, I was back at the passenger door, shaking hands rifling through my purse in search of my phone. I was about to hit Laurel’s number when the sickening thought hit me that somehow my phone might be bugged. There was no doubt my parents were responsible for this.
It was my punishment for leaving—for ruining their plans. In my mind, I couldn’t find a concrete bottom to the depths they would sink, I couldn’t find a single reason that would stop them from invading my privacy this way.
Seeing Mick’s cell in the cupholder of the truck, I reached for his instead.
“Hello?” My cousin’s startled voice answered.
“Laurel? It’s Jules.” God, my voice was so shaky.
“Hey. Are you okay—”
There was no time for me, only him.
“They took Mick.” I pinched the bridge of my nose in frustration. Words and thoughts muddied by fear. “W-We just got back from Colorado and Officer Peters pulled us over. He arrested Mick. H-He took him. For… for shooting Blackman.”
“Oh God…” She trailed off in a horror that was only a shadow compared to my own. “Are you okay? Can you come to the house?”
“Yes,” I replied without a thought.
“Okay, just get here. I’m calling Ace.” I heard her yell to Eli.
“T-They took him, Laurel. They arrested him. I don’t even know… how could this…” I gasped for air.
“It’s going to be okay, Jules, alright? He’s going to be okay. Just take a deep breath for me and get here. Safely.”
/> I mumbled something in response before hanging up, wanting her to get on the phone with Ace. He would know how to fix it. He had to.
I jogged around and climbed in the driver’s side of Mick’s pickup and roared the engine to life.
Following roads I, thankfully, knew by heart, my thoughts pounded in my head, just like after my concussion, only this time, they weren’t foggy.
How could they take him?
How could they know?
Why would he say they had my testimony?
With each hectic beat of my heart, I flipped back through recent events. It had to be a lie. That was the only explanation. I would never have confessed that Mick had killed—
“He saved me that night.”
A cry escaped my chest as a single memory physically assaulted me—a single memory from the night that had been both a beginning and an end.
The truth had slipped from my mouth in an emotional, thoughtless moment to try to change my parents’ opinion about Mick—an opinion that never had to do with the man who captured my heart and everything to do with the image our relationship would tarnish, and a plan our love would ruin.
Once more, my parents had sunk below what I considered Rock Beach bottom.
I drove down Laurel and Eli’s driveway in horrified shock, parking and sliding down from the seat. My limbs moved like dead weight attached to the guilt that filled my lungs, drowning me from the inside out.
It was me.
I’d given them this power.
This was all my fault.
Jules
I couldn’t have been three feet from the truck when Laurel came sprinting out of the front door and pulled me into her arms.
“It’s going to be okay,” was the only thing she said as she hugged me and led me inside.
Eli was still on the phone with Ace, I presumed, as we walked into the dining room.
“He’ll be here in a few minutes,” he informed us, his expression calm even though he was on edge.
“What happened?”
“It’s my fault.” The confession was thick and lifeless from my lips.
Warm fingers gripped mine. “No, Jules. None of this is your fault—”
I pulled back and covered my face for a second. “No, it’s my fault, Laurel. It’s my fault they know the truth.”
Two sets of quizzical stares mired with concern focused on me. I didn’t know what Mick had told them, so I succinctly trailed through the facts even though my entire body kept twisting further and further with worry.
“The night of the Snow Ball, my parents told me the new investor in Rock Beach came with a price.” I met their eyes. “Me.”
Laurel’s gasp was enough to tell me that Mick hadn’t revealed the sordid details or my break with my family—only that it happened.
“I told them no.” I shuddered. “After all this time, I finally told them no. And then I thought, stupidly, they would care about what I wanted for my own life, that they would be happy to know I’d found someone—a good man—and that I was in love.”
“Oh, Jules…”
I stared down at my hands, knowing if I looked at Laurel to see her crying, I wouldn’t be able to hold it together.
“They told me I couldn’t be in love with just a carpenter,” I continued hollowly. “So I told them he saved my life.”
Love was a double-edged sword. It had defended and destroyed him in the same breath.
“I told them that he saved me like I had something to prove.” The words fell like shell casings of spent bullets, clanking with the damage I’d done. “I was so upset and in shock. I just thought if they knew, it would change everything. It would make them stop the insane road they were going down—and dragging me down. But now, they’ve done this… they’ve had him arrested.”
I looked up to them, rubbing my hands along the outsides of my arms, tears slipping from my eyes. “It’s all my fault. This is all my fault,” I repeated.
“Don’t!” Laurel glared at me. “Don’t even say it. This is not your fault. This was their choice and their failing as parents, but in no way is this your fault.”
We all turned as Ace burst through the door. His half-shaved head and angry Viking stare, startling even the depths of my devastation.
“You okay?” His question and his eyes were only directed at me.
I nodded mutely.
“Alright,” he groused. “Someone tell me what the hell happened.”
In more succinct terms than I’d just explained to my cousin, I told the head of Covington Security—the man who’d taken the blame for shooting Blackman—that I’d made a mistake, and now Mick was paying for it.
“What are they going to do to him?”
Ace’s mouth thinned. “Unless you are prepared to lie under oath and say that it was me, they are going to crucify him for illegal possession of a weapon, use of that weapon, and some degree of manslaughter.”
I choked. “How?”
“It’s the law. It doesn’t matter that he was saving your life. He’s not allowed to have it or use it here and that’s all they will care about, especially with your parents working against him. Money buys a lot of favors, Miss Vandelsen, and some of those favors are used to bring down the full weight of the law.”
“I’ll talk to them,” I blurted out. “I have to. I’ll talk to them and get them to stop this. Maybe if I just agree to come back and still work at the resort, work with Mr. Couronne and Crown Enterprises—”
“Crown?” Ace’s voice boomed low like a bass note, vibrating through the room and taking everyone’s heartbeat with it.
I gulped. “Crown Enterprises. The new investor at Rock Beach.”
I recalled sharing Dominic Couronne’s name with Ace, but, now that I thought about it, I just realized I’d only learned the name of his company that night, my father shooting it at me along with his threats.
“Fuck.”
There were similar murmurs from Laurel and Eli as I glanced around to all of them, clearly missing a piece of the puzzle they already had.
“Crown Enterprises…” Laurel muttered, looking to Ace. “Do you think that’s the Crown Cartel?”
“Why the hell did Rich Vandelsen get intimately involved with a cartel? And why?” Eli demanded tightly.
“Money,” I answered quietly, my father’s words washing over me.
I’d hadn’t given them much thought then. I was too shocked by the slap to my face and the arranged marriage they’d tried to levy on me.
“He said the resort was in trouble.” I gulped. “That if I walked away, they’d lose the deal, and the money.” I shook my head and stood, planting my hands on the table. “I need to go talk to them.”
“Jules, I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Laurel’s was only the loudest of the protests that drowned out in the hollow of my head.
My parents were working with a cartel.
The Crown Cartel.
My parents…
I guess that was the thing about glass houses, they shimmer and sparkle and make a beautiful picture, but it only takes one crack in the façade for the entire structure to come toppling down.
“Miss Vandelsen, the Crown has already threatened your life once. I don’t think—”
“Stop,” I commanded, cutting Ace off, the pounding in my head becoming louder, more insistent.
My eyes squeezed shut, trying to force them into focus but everything was getting blurrier as the sharp pains in my head became more distinct.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, memories flashing of a bald head and a bright, bitter smile of the man who held a gun to my head. Normally, the images went forward from there, the blinding pain of being hit, Laurel pulling me out of Roasters… Mick…
But this time they went back.
I remembered how my eyelids felt so unbearably heavy as I pried them open to see the bald man—Blackman—driving in the seat in front of me. He’d laid me in the back seat of his car and my limbs had been too heavy to move.
“Jules…” Laurel’s voice and face were in front of me, but I wasn’t seeing her, I was seeing the missing pieces of that night.
The final moment my memory fought for.
“Jules, what’s wrong? Are you okay?” I pulled away from Laurel who gently shook my shoulders.
Closing my eyes, I held up a hand and stepped back. There was still something I had to find.
I’d just finished dinner with the president of Berkeley, stopping to meet with Mrs. Potts on my way up to my room about a few specifics for Congressman Watts who was due to arrive the following day and liked things in his room to be a certain way.
I was afraid to hold on to hope in the months after my grandfather’s death, feeling like I’d lost the last person who would support my dreams. After how things had ended with Laurel when we were kids, I didn’t expect her to care about what happened to me. After what happened to her family, I didn’t expect her to care about this town.
But then she stayed.
In spite of everything that she’d lost, she’d decided to stay and start over.
And if she could find the strength to not let her past hold her back, then so could I.
That was the night I’d decided I would still pursue school and nursing. And, after talking to Mrs. Potts, I wanted to tell my parents the truth about my dreams, so, instead of going to my room, I headed for my father’s office.
The carpet in the halls didn’t dampen their voices like it normally did.
“Is this really necessary, Richard?” my mother’s voice hissed.
“We need that deed otherwise they’re going to come for the resort. Is that what you want?” my father snapped back.
My feet picked up their pace. The door to my father’s office was ajar, letting the elevated emotions leak out from the crack.
“Of course not, but I don’t think it’s wise to involve Julia,” she said tersely.
My pulse began to trip faster, hearing my name. What was going on? Deed for what? Who was after the resort?
“You sure this will do the trick?” my father demanded.
I halted outside the door at the unfamiliar voice, smooth and deadly like hemlock. “Absolutely. Laurel won’t risk hurting her cousin. She’ll hand over the deed without a problem as long as your girl doesn’t cause any trouble.”
Bespoken: An Opposites-Attract Standalone Romance (Carmel Cove Book 2) Page 31
