Truth (Scandals of Banner-Hill Book 1)

by Cassie James

  The man looks to my father for permission, knowing I’m not the Adams he answers to. He’s answered with a dismissive wave. My father knows as well as I do that the conversation that’s about to happen is for family only.

  My eyes take stock of the things that will have to be replaced: art, throw pillows, picture frames, books. The room is silent until the front door clicks closed, putting up a barrier just the way my father likes it between the Adamses and the help.

  “How could you let this happen?” he growls, eyes blazing.

  “Let what happen?” I stand there passively, features schooled into a blank expression that gives nothing away. I don’t expect him to fall for it. I hold my breath waiting for him to call me out, to reveal he knows exactly what I’ve done.

  He heaves a sigh and collapses into a chair.

  “That fucking gnat of a blogger got his hands on pictures of you tonight.” He eyes my exposed collarbone with contempt. “These pictures.”

  He takes a tablet off the table which has somehow gone unharmed in my father’s rage. He holds it out, forcing me to walk further into the room, my heels balancing precariously as I walk over the feathers coating the floor from my destroyed throw pillows. I take the tablet from him and look down emotionlessly at the photos he’s talking about.

  I don’t need to look at them considering I took them, but what he doesn’t know will hopefully kill him. Eventually.

  “I need to know who leaked these photos.” To anyone else, my father’s voice would sound calm, controlled. But just like me, I know he’s using that facade to hide his true intent.

  I prepared for this.

  “I have no idea. Rodney had a party, but I didn’t recognize anyone else there. And security was off for the night for… obvious reasons.” I hand him the tablet, hoping like hell I’m doing a good enough job selling this lie.

  The party was going on in the apartment below Rodney’s, but I’m banking on my dad being too furious to look too closely at those details. If he talks to the doormen or looks at lobby footage, he’ll see the unfamiliar crowd for himself. And if by some miracle he does find out the party wasn’t where I said, he’ll still be hard-pressed to find the host. Considering the place was rented for the night by a fake name, courtesy of one very dirty real estate tycoon.

  Uncle Murph strikes again.

  “The show won’t like this.” He stands again, walking to the bar in my kitchen to fix himself a drink. He shoots back straight whiskey. “This season is supposed to be your redemption arc. The fans are bored with this overgrown party girl schtick of yours.”

  “You mean the schtick you helped Megan come up with?” I raise an eyebrow at him.

  His mouth curls up into a snarl, but he holds his sharp tongue. He wants to play his cards right, thinking he can avoid alienating me by coddling me. Keeping me from the truth. Too late, daddy dearest.

  “You can hardly fault me for living up to the reputation you helped our producer create,” I continue. “Just because Megan thinks the fans are growing bored of it doesn’t mean I have.”

  He curses under his breath. “Four years. It’s been four years since you’ve been in a rehab. Do you realize how bad the optics are? Every gossip site in America is going to have a fucking field day with this. All our plans for your clothing line are going to be right down the fucking drain when the investors catch wind of this.”

  He keeps rambling, talking about all the things my indiscretion has fucked up for him. All I feel is relief. Losing that stupid fucking clothing line would be the best case scenario for me right now. I know the whole thing is only an opportunity for my dad to launder money anyway. Better to keep my name as far away from his shit as possible.

  I might not come out of this unscathed, but I’m sure as hell going to do my best to minimize the casualties.

  “Are you listening? Or are you too fucking high right now?”

  I raise a cool eyebrow at him. “No more than you are.”

  His mouth snaps closed. I’m actually not high at all—I wanted a clear head for this—but the same can’t be said of him. Even standing in different rooms, I can see his bloated pupils and the slight twitch in his fingers.

  “I’m sure this will blow over. I can lay low in one of those cushy west coast rehabs for awhile, stay out of the public eye until a bigger story hits and buries this one.”

  This is it. The part where I have to hold my breath and wait to see if this whole thing blows up in my face.

  My father sneers. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’d hardly send you across the country when there’s a place we trust practically in our own backyard. You’ll go back to Banner-Hill, where you’ve always gone.”

  “I don’t want to go back there,” I challenge, the words coming out so true despite my plans. If there was any other way…

  “This choice isn’t yours, Natalie.” There’s a hard edge to his voice, but he forces it to soften. “I’m only doing what’s best for you. What’s best for this family.”

  I give him a demure nod, my expression thoughtful even though I wish I could roll my eyes so hard they’d probably wind up lodged staring at the inside of my skull. When my father says ‘what’s best for this family’ he really means what’s best for him. And what’s best for him is no longer good enough for me.

  2

  My father loves the cameras.

  The millions of people who tune in to watch our family’s lives play out on television never know, of course. To them, he plays the perfect role of a patriarch begrudgingly filming at the whim of the women in his life. When our show started seven seasons ago, my mother was one of those women. When she left four years ago, Anita slid effortlessly into her place.

  Now, as we take a luxury SUV on a short road-trip to Banner-Hill, it’s Anita perched in the seat next to me, pretending to fuss over me the way she does her actual child. If I were her teenage daughter, Madison, I would definitely have killed myself by now.

  One of the perks of being seventeen by the time Anita was on the scene is that the extent of most of our scenes together have been the producers goading us into arguments. There’s something therapeutic about yelling at a woman whose Botox makes her look perpetually shocked.

  My father sits tucked in the far backseat behind us. On camera, he’ll look gracious and concerned, leaning up occasionally to reassuringly pat my shoulder.

  It’s all for the cameras.

  The reality is that my father pulled me aside before we ever got into the SUV to warn me that I needed to sell this for the cameras. He made it very clear that my little trip to rehab is about the family narrative, not about what he still assumes is an actual drug problem.

  I have exactly two actual problems at the moment.

  My contract with Lee Marie Productions, locking me into three more seasons of this fucking show. And my father—the man who didn’t hide his skeletons as well as he thought he did. There are bones in his basement. Real, tangible, human bones. I won’t stop until I know where they came from and why. My father’s manipulation has blinded me for long enough.

  “We’re here.” The driver’s ominous voice perfectly matches the rain that greets us at the gates.

  Ignoring the camera man who zooms in on me from the front seat, I lean forward to look ahead, studying the big, brick compound that makes up Banner-Hill. In the four long years since I last laid eyes on this place, it hasn’t changed at all.

  My whole body feels hot enough to catch fire. Wouldn’t that be something? Reality TV Star Combusts on Camera. I write the imaginary headline for myself.

  The driver, a guy that works for the show’s crew, speaks in hushed tones to security at the iron gates until the man waves us ahead, pushing the gates open for us. As we pass, I notice a cheesy grin on his face, the kind people get when they think you might catch them on camera. I wish I could tell them all that the cameras don’t care about them. Our cameras don’t know how to capture anything real.

  The SUV crawls up the drive, two other ca
rs following behind us. I’m sure Megan is in one of them, here to make sure she gets all the footage she needs to spin this in a way that works best for the network.

  We stop in front of a set of intricate, iron doors. Everyone jumps into motion, desperately trying to prove their worth by creating something meaningless. If the whole thing didn’t feel so bleak, I might appreciate the irony more. Instead, my eyes fall on the gold plated sign next to the front door, its inscription taunting me.

  Our doors are open.

  It takes so long for the cameras to set up that we start to draw a crowd. The staff of Banner-Hill might be used to serving the privileged upper-class, but I imagine they’ve rarely seen them in action. Trips to rehab aren’t usually such a… spectacle.

  “For fuck’s sake,” Blake, the lead camera guy mutters under his breath.

  He hates shooting outside, even more so when it’s raining. His camera is bundled under plastic, an assistant holding an umbrella over it, but he still glares around at us like we’ve all conspired to ruin his child. I swear he probably sleeps with that camera.

  “Could be worse,” I tell him quietly. “At least you don’t have to go inside.”

  Blake snorts. “This place gives me the fucking creeps. You sure you want to stick around? We could probably tuck you in the trunk without anyone noticing.”

  He’s probably right. I glance over to where my father and Anita stand with Megan under a pop-up tent, heads tucked close together as the trio stands shielded from the rain. My father catches my eye and tries to beckon me over, but I shake my head. I’ll probably look like a drowned rat by the time they film me, but the cool rain on my skin keeps me grounded. Reminds me why I’m here.

  I wait it out for twenty more minutes before I can’t take it anymore.

  “What’s the hold up?” I snap, stepping under the protection of production’s tent.

  My father turns, hands on his hips as he stares at me with sharp eyes. He’s looking for something, but I can’t fathom what it is. Even if he’s figured out I planted the photos myself, it’s too late now to do anything about it. There’s no explaining away those pictures without a rehab stint.

  “We’re just dealing with some unexpected contingencies. That’s all,” Megan pipes in. She looks less concerned than my father, but that doesn’t tell me much. Megan is a no problems, only solutions kind of woman.

  “What kind of contingencies?”

  Anita glances over at my father, and a wave of concern hits me. Her forehead is pinched. Whatever is going on, it’s enough to render Anita’s Botox ineffective.

  Blake steps in beside me, his fingers tangled in the long, swirling beard that hangs down about a foot from his face. He doesn’t speak up often, so when he does, Megan listens. He’s the only original camera guy still standing. Our show’s had a revolving door of them, but Blake has always been loyal.

  “Rain’s picking up. If we want the shot we got to get it now, Megs. Audio’s already gonna be shit to deal with as it is.”

  She studies him for a moment before nodding. She turns to my father, raising her eyebrows at him. She’s siding with Blake, but she’s also giving my father the chance to make the final call.

  His eyes find me again. He still studies me with that shrewd look in his dark eyes, the ones that look nothing like mine. I can tell he doesn’t want to give in, but digging his heels in now would only make him look like an ass.

  “Let’s film it,” he says finally, everyone but him looking relieved by the command. With that, he stalks off toward the cameras, Megan and Blake trailing behind.

  Anita raises her voice slightly to be heard over the rain rattling the flimsy roof of the tent. “I hope you’re ready for some serious deja-vu.”

  I eye her but say nothing. Of course I’m feeling deja-vu. This place has barely changed since the last time I was here. There’s a little more ivy creeping up the front of the building, making this look like the perfect setting for a horror movie, but otherwise it’s the same Banner-Hill I left behind.

  Filming the tearful goodbye scene where my father and pseudo step-mother drop me off at rehab is almost unbearable. When Megan tells me to do a heartfelt apology for my mistakes for the sixth time, my face must tell her I’m minutes away from losing it, because she backs down and announces we’ve gotten what we need after all.

  My father stops me as I grab my bags out of the SUV, everyone else distracted breaking their temporary set down.

  “I was awfully quick to shoot down your idea of another rehab. If you want, we could pick a different place. Reshooting the scenes wouldn’t be so bad on the west coast, there’d be much less chance of rain.” He slides his hands into his pockets, another move meant to make him look like the unassuming father that he’s never been.

  “We’re already here.” I wrap my hand around my suitcase handle, gripping it tight enough for my fingers to go white. I’ve invested too much time into this plan for it to go south now.

  “I don’t think—”

  His words are cut off by an unfamiliar woman, a rainbow umbrella shielding her from the rain. She steps right into the middle of our conversation without a second thought.

  “We wondered where all the staff were disappearing to.” She gives a wry grin and holds her hand out for me to shake. “I’m Lynne, the therapist assigned to you for your stay. Can I help you with your bags?”

  “I can—” My father starts to reach for my suitcase but Lynne beats him to it, cutting him off again.

  “No family members inside during check-in, I’m afraid. Though I hope you will join us for family day in a couple weeks.” Lynne’s smile is warm, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

  “See you soon,” I tell my father as Lynne guides me past him. The words come out sounding more like a threat than I meant for them to, my father narrowing his eyes to let me know he heard it, too.

  The therapist mercifully ushers me off before he has the chance to call me on it.

  We weave our way through the Adams Ever After crew, stopping only when Megan comes darting our way.

  “Wait, wait!” She huffs, thrusting a stack of papers out in front of me. “You have to sign the contract deviation, otherwise we can’t film without you while you’re here. That would set us back months on season eight.”

  I try not to groan as I take the pen she offers and scribble a messy version of my signature on the form where she points. This woman and her fucking contracts will be the death of me.

  As Lynne nudges me through the door into Banner-Hill, she tsks at me. “You shouldn’t sign things without reading them.”

  I turn my head and study the woman. She’s a pretty Black woman, though a bit frazzled looking. Glasses perch on the tip of her nose, faux-pearl buttons on her sweater buttoned all the way up, sensible flat shoes, and a little smear of dark pink lipstick by the corner of her lips. The whole thing gives her a bit of a schoolteacher look that might be comforting for some people but only makes me more wary of her and her intentions.

  Finally, realizing she’s waiting for some response from her, I scoff. “If I read every contract my producer shoved in front of me, nothing would ever get done. That’s what lawyers are for.” And it’s the reason I hired my own lawyers this year, instead of continuing to leave things to my father’s lawyers.

  As far as I’m concerned, no one within my father’s reach is trustworthy.

  “Ah, to be young and wealthy,” Lynne jokes, or at least I think it’s a joke. She laughs, so at least one of us thinks it’s funny.

  Pausing by the front desk inside of the familiar lobby, Lynne takes my duffel bag from me to hand it and my suitcase off to another member of the staff. I’m glad to see it’s a woman this time, since the last time I was here a man checked my bags and I ended up with three less pairs of underwear. I shudder now remembering it.

  “They’ll just check your things for contraband and then deliver them back to you in your room,” Lynne explains as if this is my first rodeo.

 
; I don’t respond. I like the anxious pinch her forehead gets as I stare blankly at her, throwing her off-guard. Maybe she’s expecting me to throw a fit about being here or start convulsing in detox any minute. I have no intention of doing either.

  Lynne points toward the sweeping staircase that leads to the second floor where the bedroom suites are. I reluctantly wave her ahead of me, dread starting to pool in my stomach. I knew what it would mean to come here in theory, but the reality starts to sink in as we climb the stairs.

  As I look around me—eyes sliding over the small fortune in Expressionist art that lines the walls—I feel like I’m searching for ghosts. I can feel them lingering in these walls. Ready to haunt the already haunted.

  I could choke on the weight of all the ghosts of my own that I left here.

  At the top of the stairs, Lynne turns right. It’s mercifully the opposite hall from where I stayed as a teenager. I think I probably would have gone into cardiac arrest if she tried to show me to the same room.

  Instead, she points me to a room smack dab in the middle of the long hallway. The side of the hall that guarantees me a view of the front of the compound rather than the back. It’s perfect because the last thing my insomnia needs is a view of the woods behind Banner-Hill.

  “I know you’ve been here before, and things are more or less the same. If you need anything you can ring the front desk from the phone in your room. There’s a group therapy schedule on your bedside table. You can choose your sessions, but you’re required to do at least two a week during your stay. When you’re ready, we can meet privately to talk about…” She keeps talking but I’m not listening anymore.

  The sound of someone plucking at guitar strings drifts into the hall and the hair on the back of my neck stands straight up. Lynne pauses in the hall when she realizes I’m frozen.