by Peak, Renna
I wouldn’t allow myself to feel used. I knew what I was getting myself into with Brandon, and it was worth every bit of hurt that it caused me every time he left. I’d never felt the things that he made me feel, not even with Daniel. I lifted the pillow he had slept on and breathed in his scent. I closed my eyes and let it wash over me. Just a whiff of the clean scent of his cologne was enough to melt me again, to make it almost okay that he was gone. He would come back; he had to.
I got up from the bed and pulled on a t-shirt and some underwear. I hated lying around naked, especially with no one else there to appreciate it. I saw Brandon had draped what was left of his dress shirt across the back of the desk chair. I smiled to myself, remembering how it had come to have its buttons removed.
I grabbed my phone from the desk to check my email. My assistant didn’t seem to be able to communicate any other way, so I needed to make sure my schedule for the day hadn’t changed.
When I opened my lock screen, I saw four missed calls from Melissa. I’d turned the ringer off the night before when I’d gone to the bar with Brandon. A feeling of guilt swept over me, and I hoped that it was nothing important.
I decided to call her, even though it was still early in Portland. I did the quick calculation in my head—if it was five o’clock here, it was only three o’clock there. Her last call had been only thirty minutes before, so I decided to risk it.
I dialed the phone and she answered on the first ring.
“Jesus Christ, Jenna, why don’t you answer your fucking phone?”
“Hello to you, too, my dear. It’s pretty early and I had my ringer off. Sorry.”
I heard her sniffle, definitely not like her. “Is it too late?”
“Too late for what?”
Her sniffle turned into more of a sob. “To come out there? To Iowa?”
I sat down on the bed and pulled my knees up to my chest. “What happened?”
“I’m on my way to the airport. You’re in Des Moines, right?” She sniffled again, and I could tell she was just barely holding herself together.
“Right, Des Moines.” I pulled my t-shirt over my knees and wrapped an arm around the bottom of my legs. My heart raced and I felt my mouth go dry. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”
“I can’t.” She muffled a little sob that was still far too audible. “I’ll call you when I get a ticket.”
“Okay.” I paused for a moment, my breath quickening. “Are you okay?”
“No.” She sniffled into the phone. “I need to get away from here. Can you come pick me up at the airport when I get there?”
“Of course.” An empty feeling took over in the pit of my stomach.
“’Kay. Do you think they’ll still let me work for the campaign? Or can I at least stay with you?”
“I know you can stay here for as long as you want. I don’t know about the job.” I thought about my crappy assistant and how I’d like to fire her anyway, but I wasn’t sure if I was even allowed to do that. I didn’t know how bad it would look to fire her to hire my best friend, even though Emma was sleeping with Will. I knew I’d have to talk it over with Krystal, which sent a different sort of shiver down my spine.
“Can we talk about it when I get there? I’m really not in any shape to be working right now, anyway.”
“What do you mean?” The concern was evident in my voice.
“You’ll see when I get there. It’s not pretty.”
I sucked in my breath. “Did that asshole hurt you?”
Her voice broke. “Not on the phone, Jenna. Okay?”
“Okay. Do you need to go to the hospital, Mel?”
I heard her breathing quicken as she tried to maintain control of her emotions. “I’m fine. I’ll call you when I get my plane ticket, ‘kay?”
“Okay. Can I do anything?”
“Just come to the airport to get me. Don’t send one of those freaky Secret Service guys. You come.”
“I’ll have to bring one of them with me, Mel. They don’t let me go anywhere…”
She cut me off. “I don’t care. I just need you.”
I tried to be as gentle as I could with my voice. “Do you want me to come there instead?”
“No.” Her voice was emphatic. “No.”
“Okay. Text me when you get a ticket. I’ll be there.”
A chill ran through me after she’d hung up. What the hell could have happened that would make her so upset that she’d run away from Portland?
7
I was drying my hair when I heard a knock at the door. I cracked open the door, expecting to see one of the security people. I peered through the opening and instead saw the large frame of the woman that wanted to end my relationship with her brother. Krystal.
“Yes?” I hid my only partially clothed body behind the heavy wooden door.
She tried to look into the room, but wasn’t able to see through the small opening. Her voice was hushed. “I need to speak with you. In private.”
I narrowed my gaze at her, taking in her stocky build. Perhaps the broad shoulders were also genetic. “About what?”
“Get dressed and come to the lobby. Alone.” She licked at her lips and I saw her hands wrenching together.
I opened the door wider, allowing her to enter. “I’m already alone. Why don’t you just come in now?” She walked into the room and I closed the door behind her. I returned to the nearby dressing area to finish with my unruly hair. It had a bit of curl in it when it was wet, making it an ugly, frizzy mess in the Iowa heat.
“Is that what you’re wearing today?” She looked at me through the mirror.
I looked down at my camisole. “No, I thought I’d actually wear a shirt today, Krystal.”
She rolled her eyes. “I mean the skirt. You have the business leader’s luncheon this morning. Didn’t you look at your agenda for the day?”
Okay, so the swishy red skirt was more appropriate for the county fair than for a fancy luncheon, but I hadn’t received an itinerary or an agenda in days. “I didn’t get one.” I motioned for her to move away from the closet door that was behind me. I reached in and pulled out one of the designer suits my mother had chosen for me before I left for Des Moines, a black fitted suit that even I had to admit looked pretty good on me. “Better?” I held it up for her approval.
She nodded. “Much.”
I went into the bathroom that was adjacent to where we were standing and pulled off the loose skirt in favor of the form fitting pencil one. I came back out of the bathroom and did a little turn for her.
She nodded again with her approval. “Much more appropriate.” She reached into the closet and pulled out a sky blue blouse. She held it out to me. “This is the one to wear with that suit. It matches the color of your eyes.”
I took it from her and hung it on the hook attached to the bathroom door, right in front of the matching black suit jacket. I went back to struggling with my hair, trying to get it to go into a bun at the nape of my neck.
She leaned against the closet door and watched me through the mirror. “Your date left?” She cocked an eyebrow at me, suggesting more than I was willing to admit to her.
“A while ago, yeah.” I reached behind my head and pulled out the atrocious bun I’d been working on. I pulled a brush into my hand to smooth down the strands before trying again.
She let out a long sigh. “And why haven’t you been looking at your itinerary? It’s e-mailed to you every night.”
I shook my head, combing at my hair. “I haven’t gotten one in a while.”
“Your assistant…”
“…Doesn’t send them,” I interrupted.
Her mouth twisted around and she began chewing at her bottom lip. “Hmm.”
I shrugged my shoulders, meeting her gaze through the mirror, and began to coax my hair again, trying to force it to cooperate this time.
“We may need to find you a new assistant.” She looked at me expectantly, as though I needed to give her a reason why she
should.
“Melissa’s coming tonight. She said she wanted to come work for the campaign.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Things didn’t work out with the band? Shocking.” I could see her trying to hide her amusement.
I raised my shoulders in another shrug. “I guess not.”
She nodded. “I’ll talk to her when she gets here. I can pick her up from the airport. What time is she due in?”
I gave my head a little shake. “No, she asked me to come. I need to be there.”
“Alright. I’ll go with you.” She took a step toward me and shooed my hands away from my hair. The towering woman took the strands of hair I’d managed to tangle into a knot and smoothed them down with her hands. She began twisting the strands the way I’d been trying to do. “Jenna, I should apologize for my behavior last night.”
My eyes widened and I met her stare again in the mirror.
Her face fell a little, and she continued working at my hair. “I don’t always see things clearly when it comes to my brother.”
“Oh.” It was all I could manage to get out.
She looked up from the back of my neck to look at my reflection again. She took a deep breath before she continued. “We haven’t had the best relationship over the years.”
“I could tell.” I winced as she pulled a hair away from my neck.
“Sorry.” She lifted another section of hair. “Look, I just need you to know that Brandon isn’t all that he seems. He’s a dangerous man.” She looked up, reconsidering her words. “He can be a dangerous man.”
He had warned me that she’d say something about him. It was hard to know which of them to trust.
She looked up at the mirror again, my hair in her hands. “You need to know what he’s capable of before you pursue any kind of relationship with him. Not that it’s really my business.”
“Right.” It seemed to me that my personal life was the business of everyone except me. I didn’t think that was about to change anytime soon.
“I mean it.” She nodded to herself, staring at my hair. “Your personal life should be yours. As long as you don’t bring any of this into your public life, I’ll try to stay out of it. I just hope you’ll be…” She paused, parsing her words. “…careful. At least when it comes to Brandon.” She released my hair, now in a completed chignon, and looked up and smiled at me through the mirror.
“Thanks.” I patted the back of my hair, better than anything I would have been able to do myself. I turned around to face her, resting my rear against the counter in front of the sink.
“Jenna, the thing with Pauline.” She pressed her lips into a line. “That was a real thing. He destroyed her father.”
I wasn’t supposed to believe everything she told me, that was what he had said, what he had made me promise. I was sure there was an explanation. There had to be.
“I don’t want to see what happened to him happen to your father.”
I nodded. I didn’t want to see my father destroyed either, not that I really believed that it could happen at the hands of Brandon. I turned back around to begin applying my makeup.
She leaned back against the closet door in the narrow dressing area again. “He doesn’t do things without an ulterior motive. If I can’t get anything else across to you, just remember that.”
I bit at my lip and reached for my sunscreen infused moisturizer. I smoothed it onto my face, trying not to make eye contact again.
“He has the ability to take down anyone. He has ways of finding things that even the politicians themselves didn’t know they were doing.”
“Okay.” I avoided her gaze and began the rest of my quick makeup routine. A little powder and a little mascara and I’d be done.
She took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. “We should talk about what happened with Daniel.”
I spun around to face her. “He said he didn’t know what happened with Daniel. That you called him to transport a package. He said he didn’t have anything to do with it.”
She tilted her head and looked almost like she pitied me. “Do you actually believe that?”
Tears I didn’t even know were there sprung to my eyes. I forced myself to hold them back. I snapped back around to the mirror and reached for my mascara. “I want to believe that.”
She nodded. “I know you want to believe him. But that isn’t what he does for a living, Jenna.” Her pity had turned to empathy and she reached out a hand to touch my shoulder. “I don’t know what his angle is with this.” She nodded at me. “With you. I just know there is one.” Her voice softened. “There always is.”
I somehow managed to hold back the waterworks. I finished putting on my mascara, the weight of her hand heavy against my shoulder. I turned again to face her. “Tell me about Polly.”
She pressed her lips together, the look on her face telling me that she wished I hadn’t asked. She took a step away from me and motioned for me to sit down at the desk. She took a seat at the edge of the bed across from it.
I sat down and waited for her to tell me what it was she knew.
She folded her hands on her lap and picked at her fingernails. Her face twisted with an agony I’d never seen on her. “I think, maybe, that I should tell you about Daniel instead.”
8
My mouth fell open a little. I blinked my eyes a few times, still shocked that she was even offering to tell me anything. Everyone denied knowing anything about it, including my father. It was hard to believe that now was the time when I’d find out what had happened to my fiance. “Why?”
“Why?” She looked at me as though I’d grown an extra head. “Why what?”
“Why now?” I leaned back in my chair and looked across at her, waiting for her to respond.
She shifted on the bed and refused to meet my gaze, staring instead at the wall behind me. “You need to know what my brother is capable of. You need to know why he’s here.” Her lips turned into a frown and she finally met my gaze. “You may not want to know, but you need to know. You need to know that he isn’t what he seems.”
I folded my arms across my chest and returned her stony gaze.
“Daniel was running for Congress.”
I let out a sigh and looked up at the ceiling. “Yes, I know that. We were engaged for Christ’s sake.”
“Jenna, please. Let me tell you what I know, okay?” She gave me an expectant look.
I supposed I could have seemed like a little bit of a petulant child. “Sorry.” I bit at the tip of my tongue to remind myself to keep my mouth shut.
“He was afraid he wouldn’t be elected. He was up in the polls, so I’m not sure where he came up with that idea. The primary was only a few weeks away and people knew the two of you were together.” She paused and looked over at me again. “Being connected to your family is pretty powerful.”
I nodded and didn’t speak.
“There was just this desperation about him; I don’t know what it was about or where it came from. He’d convinced himself that he’d already lost and that it meant that he would lose you.” She shook her head. “I don’t have a clue where his insecurity came from. He’d had a great campaign so far…”
“Did he talk to my mother?” I knew that she had a way of making anyone feel insecure.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.” She met my gaze again. “He did some really stupid stuff, Jenna. He got himself involved with some people that more or less guaranteed him a victory. For a price.”
“People always want things from politicians. They donate money, then expect favors. That’s not really anything unique, Krystal.” I shrugged my shoulders at her.
“Not like that. It wasn’t just favors that they were asking. The wanted unfettered access to everything. Including you. Including your father.” Her eyes hardened and she leaned over her lap, directing her gaze at me. “It wasn’t something he could promise, but he did. Your family couldn’t let that happen.”
“He wouldn’t have promised that.” M
y hands clutched at my upper arms and I felt my stomach drop to my feet. “He wouldn’t have done that.” My voice dropped to almost a whisper. “He wouldn’t have. He couldn’t have.”
“But he did. And he asked Brandon to help him.”
“No.” I shook my head, my breath quickening. “I don’t believe that. Brandon told me his only involvement was in getting Daniel to Japan.”
She shook her head. “No. Brandon took Daniel to Japan because he felt guilty. Daniel was about to get himself killed, and Brandon didn’t want that on his conscience.”
“No.” Goosebumps rose on my skin. Every drop of heat had left my body. “No.”
“Daniel had family in Japan. Brandon had that damned electronics company and could give him a good job there. The only missing piece was you.”
All I could do was shake my head at her. Why would he lie? Why would they both lie to me?”
She nodded. “I know why you don’t want to believe it, and I don’t blame you. He told you he didn’t know who you were, right?” She saw my expression and nodded again. “I don’t want to tell you that he did, because I don’t know that with absolute certainty. But the odds that he didn’t…” She shook her head. “Infinitesimal.”
My head shook; my body trembled. None of this could be true.
“I blame myself for this, Jenna. I was the one who introduced my brother to the world of politics. I had no idea that he’d turn it into the game he has. I love what I do, and I hate dealing with the scum like him.” She tilted her head to force me to look at her. “And he is scum, Jenna. Believe that.”
I stood up from the chair and walked back over the dressing area. She followed close behind. I grabbed the blouse from the hanger on the door and buttoned it over my camisole. I steadied myself against the counter and refused to meet her gaze. My terror was quickly becoming anger, and I was one step away from losing it.
I reached for the black velvet box that held the necklace Brandon had given me. I hesitated for a moment, rubbing my fingers over the soft fabric covering the box. I shook my head to myself and opened it, taking it from the container. I began fastening it around my neck.
