She pushed the doorbell. Her stomach tossed. Her heart palpitated. She heard commotion on the other side of the door.
Rosa answered, and her jaw dropped at the sight of their visitor.
“Miss Pratt?” Her volume was louder than normal, and she cocked her head to the side to project over her shoulder. Looking back at Jessica, she asked in a sickly sweet tone, “What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to talk to the mother of Bryan’s son.” She stood her ground, coming across more defiant than she felt.
“I don’t know if…I mean I’ll see if she’s available. One moment, please.” The woman’s mouth twitched slightly, and her shoulders drooped. She went to close the door.
“I’ll only be a moment.” Jessica pushed by the older woman into the house.
“Miss Pratt, this is a private residence, I’m going to have to ask you to wait outside.”
Rosa stared her down, but her formidable attitude was short-lived.
That struck Jessica as odd… The woman was always feisty.
Colleen came down the stairs.
Jessica felt faint. The moment had arrived. Heartache and betrayal fought for supremacy, but she could not allow room for them. It all made sense now why Bryan had such a soft spot for Will and Colleen. Her instincts had been right. She was a fool for ignoring them.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Colleen moved closer to Jessica. Her demeanor changed from past encounters. Now she had a sense of arrogance. She kept her eyes on Jessica and paced around her. She ignored the interrogation Jessica wanted to begin.
“You’re looking fine these days, Jessica. You happy? Rosa told me you found a new boyfriend.”
The words left Colleen’s lips and Rosa hummed a tune.
“Maybe I should go see if Jayson’s doing okay.” Rosa passed a glance to Colleen on her way to the kitchen.
“Jayson? Who’s that?” Jessica asked.
“It wasn’t my place to tell you.” Colleen ignored Jessica’s immediate inquiry. “You were in a relationship with Bryan. Why would I assume he didn’t tell you?”
“Colleen, where the hell are you?” A man’s voice yelled out from the kitchen. Jessica heard the sliding door shut. The man’s voice was familiar and provided an eerie sense of déjà vu.
“Jessica, maybe you should leave.”
Jessica wasn’t listening. Her mind focused on that voice. She pressed beyond Colleen when the man emerged from the doorway with Rosa behind him.
He stopped when he saw her.
The entire household went quiet.
Jessica went cold. Now she knew why the man’s voice sounded familiar. She knew it well. Yet the man’s appearance had been changed. He had black hair, trimmed really short, a black mustache, glasses, and blue eyes.
Colored contacts? She got closer to him. “Bryan?”
He remained silent, but his eyes betrayed him.
The women left the room.
“How dare you do all this to me? I loved you!” She screamed at him.
He reached for her arms.
“Don’t you even think of touching me!”
She held her hand up to stave him off. Any heartbreak, or pain, was gone. Anger replaced them. Her mind started putting everything together, including why Colleen was upset that day when she and Will came to the house and she went into the den with Bryan. He must have told her his plan then, about how he was going to fake his death, but that Will would get everything. Her sudden upheaval made a little more sense too.
“Jessica, I didn’t want to do this, but I had no choice.”
“I don’t even know who you are!” She worked at catching her breath. “All the hell you’ve put me through, the lies, the deception. I buried you!” She said the words and stalled on them. “Who did I bury?”
“Listen, I had no choice.”
“Wrong, Bryan, you always have a choice. Isn’t that what you prided your life on? The Lexan name. Men too proud to bend at the knee to anyone?”
“He would have murdered me.”
“So why lie to me, tell me you love me? Propose to me?” She choked on her words. “You sacrificed my heart, my life, to him instead.”
“I loved you, Jessica.”
“Please, save it.” They came to an impasse. Jessica broke the silence. “Why not fake my death too and escape with me? Why leave me behind?”
He shifted his stance. “I didn’t think you would come with me.”
“I’ve loved you all my life.” Tears brimmed in her eyes. She blinked carefully to abate them from falling down her cheeks.
“We are different people, Jess.”
To hear him say that sliced at her soul. Maybe it hurt even more because she knew it held the truth.
“Like I said, you never would have come with me. You didn’t want to leave your apartment even when they tossed it and made threatening phone calls.”
It hurt to breathe. Her heart shot splinter-pain with each inhale. “How long had you planned to fake your death?”
His eyes drifted to the floor. “I had something put in place during the final days of the trial. Someone approached me, actually. It sounded too good.”
“It sounded good to leave me like that? What is wrong with you? Why ask me to marry you?” The questions birthed from her mouth.
“I did love you, Jess.”
She couldn’t look at him anymore. She glanced past him.
“I had the ring since the middle of the trial. I had been hoping to celebrate the victory and ask you then. Then everything took a turn for the worse. I lost. Dimitre’s threat on my life became a reality. When we went away that weekend to the resort, I had convinced myself to bring the ring. We would be okay despite the threat that hung over my head. We would get through it together. I was going to ask at dinner that night but changed my mind, convincing myself you deserved someone better.”
“I do.” She stood with her hands on her hips.
“But after we made love, it slipped out. Then when my business was burnt down, it was really getting too close to home. I didn’t want to endanger your life. It was time to run. I knew Dimitre would leave you alone with me out of the way.”
“How would you know that for sure? The truth is you didn’t care if he left me alone. And now you’re trying to convince me that you put me through all of this because you loved me?”
“I did.”
He stepped toward her.
She moved back.
“Bullshit, Bryan. How did you do it? You must have had a lot of people in on this. I mean, I can think of a few people on your payroll. What, your lawyer? Did he know?”
He didn’t respond.
“Your dentist? You paid him to falsify the dental record confirmation. You must have had someone who could stage the whole thing and get you a new identity.”
His jaw clenched so tight, there was a pulse in his cheeks.
Then the thought hit her.
“That phone call I received,” she said. His eyes avoided hers. “The day you went missing, it was different from the calls I received before that. It was a man with a Russian accent but not the same one who threatened me before.” She left that observation out there and was about to continue.
“I had that staged.” He looked past her.
Her chest tightened. She directed things back to where it had been before.
“And speaking of your new identity. What was it again? Right…Jayson. I’ll be sure to remember that. I guess that’s what is supposed to help me sleep at night, is it, Bryan? Knowing that the man I loved died. Speaking of death, I thought you told me Will’s father was dead. The lies are piling up.”
He remained silent.
“Your disappearing made it easier on you.”
“I knew Dimitre wouldn’t have his men go after you
. He only had his vendetta against me. I proposed to you because I did love you.”
“Bullshit! You were willing to test your theory. You know that’s all it was. A theory. You didn’t give a crap about me and obviously you never did.” She blinked hard to make her tears go away. Her words, her accusations, sat stagnant in the air.
His voice cracked as he spoke, “I did love you.” He put his hand through his hair. “I still love you.”
“How dare you say that? I don’t know you…Jayson, and I guess I never really knew Bryan either. If you loved me, you would have found another way.”
She stopped at the door. His attention was on her. His eyes were glassy and his face pale.
Even after all he put her through, she had to coach herself not to succumb to thinking his expression was one of heartbreak rather than what it truly resulted from—having been caught.
“Were you sleeping with Colleen when we were together?” She asked.
He didn’t answer and that provided her with what she needed to know. She bobbed her head and bit down on her bottom lip.
“There’s one more thing I have to get off my chest.”
He moved closer to her. “And, what’s that?”
“You’re a coward.”
She slammed the door behind her. She knew that was the worst thing she could say to him. But it was the simple truth.
-
Chapter 34
“THAT TWO-FACED SON OF A BITCH,” Sergey exclaimed, forcing spittle from his mouth. He paced the floor in the office of the shipping company. “I knew it.” He pointed his finger at Anatolli.
They were able to gain access to the torched body, through a bribe, and connection at the morgue and the results just came back. There was no way it could have been the lawyer. The evidence had been staring them in the face all this time. They knew the bowler hat guy worked with cadavers of cancer patients as he had helped them out on a few occasions.
“Dimitre’s gonna shit.”
“Dimitre’s not going to find out. Wake up! Do you want to die? Because that’s what’s going to happen. We bought ourselves only minutes when we had him feed Dimitre the lie about business being taken care of. We still haven’t tracked down the lawyer. Torturing Calin didn’t get us anywhere.”
“Maybe if he didn’t have us waste time by making us play with the lawyer’s mind—”
Sergey slapped him across his face.
“That’s disrespectful.” Sergey scrunched up his face.
Anatolli stood there rubbing his face, a handprint impression welting. “Now what?”
“Now what?” Sergey repeated snidely. “You have to ask, now what? I should have hit you harder.” He moved toward Anatolli, but he moved out of his reach. “You, go and kill that son of a bitch! Make him bleed. But first find out everything he knows about the lawyer.”
THE CONSTANT HUMMING OF THE window air conditioning unit did nothing to combat the stale, humid air in the apartment. He sat at his dining room table staring at a place beyond his counters, beyond the stacks of dirty dishes, where only his thoughts haunted him. A lone cockroach scurried across the plates. Just like him, all alone.
He swigged back on the bottle of Jack Daniel’s and put it on the table with enough force to make the hat that was sitting on the edge bounce off. Bending over to pick it up he placed it on his head. His sweaty hair was now vacuum-sealed.
He traced the edge of the bowler hat and smiled. He had been great in his day, barely escaping the bullets many times. This time would be different. He got himself in over his head—two-timing a Russian mafia boss wasn’t a good idea. The thought of that man sent chills running down his spine. Dimitre’s eyes had the ability to suffocate the life force from his mind all while wearing a pompous smile.
He took a long drag on his cigarette and tapped it on a saucer.
What a loser you are! Pulling cons all your life but you failed to look ahead this time.
After taking one last drag on the cigarette, he snuffed it out on the plate.
His mind lingered on his past when he was successful. He knew how to swindle people from their money and knew where to hide it. He always kept a day job and lived lower than his fraudulent means. No sense alerting the government. At one time, he even went by his true identity—Mitch Hanover. Damn, it had been a long time since he heard anyone call him that.
Now he hid behind an assumed identity with the documents to support the fabrication. His clients from his day job were never judgmental. They were all dead. He ran the medical research lab at the local university and worked on the cadavers of people who had succumbed to their cancer. He was to try and find a cure.
Screw that, who could escape the disease? It was more like a worldwide epidemic.
He ran his hand along the edge of the briefcase that sat in front of him, fingering the clasp.
All this money at his fingertips yet he would never have a chance to spend it. The lawyer had handed it over like it was insignificant to him. It might as well have been ten bucks. He shit thousand dollar bills.
The disgusting contrast between his life and that of the rich always made him livid. No matter how many scams he pulled, he was deprived like the child raised on the outskirts of town, the wrong side of the tracks, who only caught glimpses of the other side.
Society made him feel inferior to their affluence. Now he had exchanged his soul for the very thing he loved all these years—money. His blood for paper—useless, meaningless paper.
He opened the clasp, taking out a stack that was neatly wrapped with a paper band. Holding it to his nose, he smelled the bills as he fanned the edges, ten thousand. He ran his fingers over the other stacks—five hundred thousand dollars in all.
Why the hell hadn’t he run off with it and hid? He knew the answer. He got greedy. He wanted to hang around for the remainder and that time was just about here, but it was too far off.
He had paid Calin to make the call to the woman and hadn’t been able to reach him despite all his efforts. It would only be a matter of time before Sergey and Anatolli would tie everything back to him. Hell, Calin was likely dead and he’d be next.
His past relations with them now meant nothing. The fact that he knew where the remains of twenty-three people were only made him more of a liability. But that’s also why things had perfectly, symmetrically, coincided in his favor. He was the perfect liaison. It enabled him to keep tabs for all concerned parties. But now he had outlived his usefulness...
How could I be so stupid?
Draining back the rest of the bottle, he pitched it across the room. His eyes followed as it flew into a full-length mirror near the door and shattered.
Good thing I won’t be around for another seven years of bad luck!
Seeing his reflection in a large shard of glass, his entire body trembled. There was no way out of this one. No matter where he ran, he’d be found.
He should never have approached the lawyer with his plan, but the thought of all those green bills had muted his common sense.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
How the hell can I get out of this endeavor alive?
The rhetorical question he had asked himself repeatedly. He knew the answer. His coming out of this deal alive had never been negotiated and he’d rather go out on his own terms.
Lifting the gun off the table, he handled it with fondness. It would be the last thing he would touch.
Breathing in one last inhale, he coughed, choking on the cigarette smoke in his lungs. It was time. Time to end this pathetic miserable excuse of a life.
He inserted the gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger.
“I CAN’T BELIEVE I WAS that stupid, that gullible.” Jessica sat on her couch with Mason beside her.
“Sometimes you can’t help who you fall in love with.” Mason ran his fingers through her hair.
&n
bsp; She took a sip of her wine.
“I mean that was the last thing that I expected when I went by today. Who would have thought he would be capable of that much deception and manipulation? I do have good news for you, though. I’m over him.”
Mason laughed. “All it took was him faking his death, hiding a child, and forging a new identity. Let me see, am I missing anything?”
He put a finger on his chin pretending to be in thought. Jessica slapped his arm jokingly.
“Yeah, that’s all it took. Just a warning for you. Don’t ever try pulling it off ’cause, buddy, it won’t work twice. And I might actually end up killing the second guy.” She laughed.
“I’m just sorry you had to go through all that. I never did like the guy. But I promise I’ll never hurt you like that.”
She held up her finger to his lips to silence him.
“No promises, okay. Let’s just take one day at a time.” His eyes expressed confusion. “One day at a time, with the rest of our lives together in view.” She kissed him.
They were both silent for a moment. Mason took a drink of his wine and sat the glass down.
“I just can’t get over how everything has worked out.”
“Not exactly how I’d put it, but in what regards?” She crossed her leg toward him.
“In all aspects really. Think of the irony in this. It all started with Dimitre getting a life sentence, but he’s not the only one whose life has been altered since the jury passed the verdict. Bryan was condemned to a life of cowardice and deceit. He had to give up his identity to save his life, another irony. However, I don’t really care about that guy.” A small grin spread across his lips. “And now, you—you’re paying with your life.”
She pressed her forehead. “Paying with my life?”
“Well, with the way things have changed, you’re now my baby and sentenced to a lifetime of loving me.” His eyes sparkled. “I’m hoping you want that sentence.”
“I look forward to serving it.” She smiled.
-
Chapter 35
“DIMITRE, YOU HAVE A VISITOR.” The guard tapped on the bars of the cell.
Life Sentence Page 23
