Broken: The MISTAKEN Series Complete Second Season

by Peak, Renna

  My father’s eyes were cold and now fixed on me. “What happens to rule breakers, Daniel?”

  “They’re eliminated.”

  I think my heart stopped in my chest again and I could feel that icy chill of fear flowing through me again. I felt Daniel’s eyes on me. Eliminated. Is that what had happened to him? He had broken one of my father’s rules and had been “eliminated?”

  My father’s eyes never left mine, even when Daniel was speaking. “Is that what Brandon wants, Jenna? Is that what you want?”

  My heart definitely stopped this time. My breath stopped again, too. I was pretty sure I was clinically dead again. He had warned me when I was in Virginia. He had told me to stay the hell away from him while I waited to find out if Brandon was even going to live. I was a rule breaker. Was he really suggesting that he would eliminate me? I found my breath long enough to breathe out my words. “Of course not.”

  My father shook his head. “Then why are you defying me? Why, when I’ve given you everything you could ever want?”

  I didn’t even hesitate. “Because I love him.” I turned to look at Brandon. “Because I love him.” I turned my gaze and let it rest on Daniel for just a second. There was nothing there. Not even a hint of what I once thought I felt for him. Not even a trace. “And I never loved Daniel.” My father was wrong. He hadn’t given me everything I ever wanted. He had taken away the one thing that had ever really mattered to me so that he could give me to Daniel. He had taken away my music and forced me to bend to his will—to accept an arranged marriage to a man I had never loved. I had given my father everything he ever wanted. And now that I wanted to stand up for myself—now that I was finally finding my backbone, now I was the one in the wrong.

  My father let out another long breath and almost glared at me. “How many times do we have to go through this, Jenna?” He turned his focus back to the man sitting next to me. “I need a status report, Brandon. I gave you a job to do. I realize you may have signed that contract under duress, but I need a status report. Your deadline was up two days ago, and I haven’t heard from you, which honestly concerns me more than that fact that you’re fucking my daughter.”

  My stomach flipped, but Brandon didn’t even flinch at the words. “I need two more days.” His voice was quiet, almost too reserved.

  My father shook his head. “You know how I feel about blackmailers, Brandon. I needed this taken care of before the convention. That was why I gave you the length of time I did. It was more than enough time…”

  Brandon nodded, pursing his lips. He still just stared down at his hands. “I realize that, sir. I’ll take care of it in the next forty-eight hours.” I didn’t like this Brandon. The one who spoke like this to my father—almost respectful, almost fearful. I didn’t like the Brandon who worked for my father. Who took direction from him—who was talking to him, agreeing with him about something I didn’t even know or understand. About something I didn’t want to know about.

  My father pressed his palms to the table. “See that you do, Brandon. Or the ending will not be pretty for any of you.”

  Brandon still hadn’t looked up to make eye contact with him or with anyone else at the table—he just nodded his head in agreement.

  I could feel Daniel’s gaze burning into me and I wanted to slap him. I wanted him to suffer for everything he had ever done to me, but I knew as long as he was with my father—and it didn’t matter if it was literally or metaphorically—he was safe. Untouchable. But how he had managed to weasel himself back into my father’s good graces after his “elimination,” I still wasn’t sure…

  My father turned his gaze back to mine and slapped a hand against the table, making me wince. “We have another problem, Jenna.”

  6

  Eighteen Months Earlier

  I was running late—again. Daniel hated it when I was running late, but this time it really was unavoidable. I was desperately trying to finish a project for my last marketing class. This class was almost killing me, I hated it so much. This was my last semester—I just had to get through it and I’d have my MBA. Less than four months. It was all within reach.

  I really just wanted to get home that evening. The drive from Georgetown to Baltimore … sucked. And that was putting it kindly. Especially in rush hour traffic, and more especially with this weather. Winter here wasn’t fun, but this freezing rain stuff—it was a nightmare to drive in. I had been sitting in traffic for almost two hours—and I had forgotten my phone charger, so my phone’s battery was dead and there was no way for me to let Daniel know I was going to be late. Again. For the third time this week. And I knew how much he was going to piss and moan about having to have takeout again that night.

  I glanced in the rear view mirror and noticed my hair. My roots were awful—I hadn’t had time to get them done because of this project, and Daniel had already given me shit about it once this week. I hated being blonde. Hated it. But he loved it and it was so important to him. It made me feel violently ill that I had let him talk me into this hair thing at all—disappointed in myself for having no backbone with him. I had almost completely lost my ability to stand up for myself, and the longer I was with him, the worse I was becoming. Spineless. I suppose I should have been angrier with myself for letting him convince me to dye my hair in the first place, but it was pretty easy to let myself blame him. I was sick of him—sick of everything. It might piss him off, but I was going back to my natural color this weekend. I had a pretty good feeling that it wasn’t going to matter much to him after tonight, anyway.

  I couldn’t help but smile when I glanced down at the passenger seat where I had the letter lying open. I had probably looked at it about a thousand times in the past three days, having to constantly remind myself that it was real. It still made me feel like I was floating on clouds. The San Francisco Conservatory had accepted me into their Master’s program and I was going to start in September. It was really real and I was really going to do it, and I felt like I wanted to scream out the car window just thinking about it again. It hadn’t been my first choice of schools, but it was music. It was what mattered to me. And Curtis and Julliard were in the past—long gone opportunities. But San Francisco was real, and I had a real offer to go back to the piano. My stomach was fluttering just thinking about it—I’m really going to get to play again.

  The nightmare was almost over. I could finish my MBA at Georgetown and make my parents happy, then I would move to San Francisco and make myself happy. And I didn’t really give a shit about Daniel anymore. If I had to hear one more time about how fat I was or how awful my hair was … for as mean as he was to me, I may as well have been living with my mother. And he had his political career here in Baltimore now. He was going to be a congressman—his lifelong dream. I wasn’t going to be his arm candy anymore, or whatever the hell it was that he thought of me. Not anymore. I was going to take control of my life. I was almost twenty-three years old, for Christ’s sake—I should be able to control my own life. Living with him had been like a bad dream—worse than living with my parents in more ways than one. The fact that I was pretty sure he was cheating on me … scratch that. He was cheating on me. There was no “pretty sure” about it. He wasn’t even trying to hide it from me anymore, and when I questioned him … let’s just say I got the same “boys will be boys” bullshit that my dad had always fed me. No more. I was moving to San Francisco whether he approved or not. And the wedding was going to be off after tonight. I was giving him back the ring. And burning the dress. I couldn’t ask him to leave the house, though, not in the middle of a campaign. I’d been around politics long enough to know that much, but it wasn’t going to stop me from leaving him in the fall. The press would eat that shit up, anyway—Jenna Davis returns to the piano. The best part was going to be never having to hear another word about how I must be a huge disappointment to the Hennessey family for them to not allow their only blood heir to get married at the Maine compound.

  I sighed. I was getting really tire
d of hearing about how much the Hennesseys hated me. I didn’t know them. I never had. And I didn’t much care.

  I drove through a taco place and got dinner for Daniel before I went home. It wasn’t as though he wasn’t perfectly capable of getting his own damned food, but I knew he wouldn’t. And then he’d bitch at me the rest of the night about how I didn’t care about how important he was and how he deserved better than tacos. I’d get to hear how I needed to make the time to learn how to cook for him so that I could be a perfect wife. He had a car and he could drive through a taco restaurant just as easily as I could. And he had two hands and could learn to cook just as easily as I could. But he wouldn’t because then he wouldn’t be able to complain about how awful I was. How I wasn’t what he’d signed up for. How he could do so much better than me.

  I pulled into the driveway and was surprised for a second that his car wasn’t there. It was dark—after eight, but he wasn’t home yet. He’s probably with his girlfriend.

  I went inside and plugged in my phone, but there were no messages from him. No texts about what he wanted me to pick up for dinner … no nothing. He at least usually texted to tell me he loved me, especially if he had been particularly mean that morning or the night before. I thought back to the conversation we’d had the previous night—the one where he told me my hair looked like shit. And something about too much takeout. “Jenna plus takeout equals that extra twenty pounds that’s going to make you need to resize your wedding dress.” Yeah, that definitely warranted an apology text.

  I took off my engagement ring and set it on top of the piano in the living room, feeling at least twenty pounds lighter with the weight of the ring off my finger. I sat down at the keyboard and started to play, willing all the bad thoughts out of my head. It’s all going to be over after tonight. I don’t have to hear any more from him after tonight.

  It was just like it always was when I sat down at the piano—I lost track of time. I wasn’t even sure what time it was when I heard the pounding on the door. I was shocked when I glanced at the clock on the living room wall—it was just after midnight. Daniel must have lost his house key or something while he was out with his girlfriend. Or girlfriends. It didn’t matter. It was all going to be over in a minute. I would show him the letter, give him back the ring and then it would all be over.

  I pulled open the door without even looking. “Nice, Daniel. It’s after midnight. Did you even think…?” I finally looked up. It wasn’t Daniel at the door. It was two police officers.

  “Miss Davis?”

  My legs felt like they were frozen, too heavy to even move. The sound that came from my throat wasn’t even my voice—it was a high-pitched squeal that sounded more like it belonged to a small rodent than a grown woman. “Yes?”

  “Miss Davis, may we come in?”

  I somehow made room for the two to enter my house. Our house. The one I shared with Daniel. The one I knew I wouldn’t be sharing with him anymore after that night. I knew. I knew the second they said, “Miss Davis?” I knew. I felt it in my heart, in the way it fluttered in my chest and in the way my stomach sank through the floor. I knew.

  I remember sitting down on the couch and the two of them sitting across from me. Or one of them might have been sitting next to me. Yes, he probably was sitting next to me because I think he caught me when I fainted. And I think the other one called my parents. The entire interaction was pretty much a blur except for what they said when we first sat down.

  “Miss Davis, your fiancé is dead.”

  7

  Present Day

  Another problem. There was nothing else that could surprise me tonight, and it was almost a relief that the shock and disgust that I had been feeling since Brandon and I had sat down was giving way to something much more comforting—numbness. Numbness was a safe feeling, and one I had embraced all too often in the past eighteen months or so. Before I met Brandon, anyway.

  I turned to look at him. His gaze was still glued to his hands—I don’t think he had looked up since we sat down. The color had drained from his face and it looked like he might be having just as much trouble breathing as I was.

  The realization that he had been lying to me—probably the entire time we had known each other—was only just starting to sink in. All the flowery words, the promises that the universe wanted us to be together—it was all bullshit. And I should have known.

  My father interrupted my thoughts. “Daniel has something he would like to say to you.” He turned to the tall man sitting next to him. “Don’t you, Daniel?”

  Daniel’s gaze was still fixed on me. I thought for sure it had been since I had sat down—Brandon couldn’t look away from his hands, and Daniel couldn’t look away from me. I didn’t even want to think about what that meant.

  Daniel nodded, never looking away. “I do.” He took a sip from the glass that was in front of him. “I need to apologize, Jenna.”

  I felt heat rise in my cheeks. I could hear my pulse pounding in my ears and it took every bit of strength I had not to dive over the table and strangle the man.

  I knew my father sensed the rage I was feeling when he reached his hand across the table to pat my arm. “Jenna. Let him explain.” The calmness in his voice almost made me want to turn my anger to him—at that moment, I could have strangled either of them.

  Daniel licked his lips, almost suggestively, his eyes narrowing. “We have a long history together, Jenna. I don’t want you to turn your back on that.”

  I wanted to slap that look from his face—that look he had that said I should just sit back and shut up because I was too dumb to know any better. Too spineless to do anything about what he had done to me. I shook my head, looking between Daniel and my father. “You raped me. You raped me. And now you think an apology…”

  It was almost a smirk that came to Daniel’s lips. Almost a smug look that told me he didn’t give a fuck what I thought about him.

  But my father was the one who interrupted. “Jenna, I think you’re overreacting a bit. From what Daniel tells me…”

  Daniel interrupted. “You wanted it.”

  The look my father shot him when he spoke shut him up again, but his words were still out there. Mocking me.

  I wanted it. I wanted it? I looked over at Brandon. His eyes were squeezed shut and his hands were balled into fists. He may have been almost as pissed off as I was at Daniel’s words, but it was clear he wasn’t about to do a thing about it.

  My father pressed his palms to the table. “You’re not pregnant, right? So the whole he-said-she-said aspect of this spat isn’t important. What’s important, Jenna…” I could tell the pause was for dramatic effect, not to mention the need for him to punctuate the fact that he saw the entire incident as my fault. “What’s important is that you forgive your fiancé. Because the press is going to have a field day with the news that Daniel is alive, and I’m going to need you to stand by him. Krystal is working on it now…”

  “No.” I stood up from the table. “No.”

  If daggers could have actually flown from my father’s eyes, I would have been a dead woman. Not that death would have necessarily been a bad thing, especially at the thought of having to be engaged to him. Even for a second. Even if it was temporary. There was no way I was going allow myself to be anywhere near him—never, ever again.

  “I’m not doing it. This … this family is beyond twisted. I’m done. I just want a normal life. I’m going back to San Francisco. I’ll get a job. I’ll…”

  “Sit down, Jenna.” If it had been my father who had said the words, I might have run. If it had been Daniel, I might have flown over the table to strangle the bastard. But it wasn’t either of them who said it. It was Brandon. “Sit.” He patted his hand on the seat I had vacated only a moment before.

  I looked back at the table—at Brandon. He finally made eye contact with me, but I couldn’t read what was in his gaze. But there was something—something that said he wasn’t really going to let this happen. Somet
hing that said none of this would really happen if I could just make it through the next few minutes. And so I sat.

  He called me Jenna. My head began to spin again and I felt tears stinging at my eyes. Maybe I shouldn’t have trusted that look in his eyes. I probably shouldn’t have trusted anything, but I was out of options, out of choices.

  “Thank you, Brandon.” My father blew out an exasperated sigh. “As I was saying, it is going to be important for you to uphold your end of this agreement, Jenna.”

  “I never agreed to anything.” I couldn’t believe I still had the ability to speak, considering how badly my chest was aching.

  My father set his jaw and I saw one of his hands ball into a fist. “You agreed to marry Daniel. Now, as I was saying, until this dies down in the press, I’ll need to you stand by him. Support him. Krystal is going to come up with a mutually acceptable story…”

  “Mutually acceptable to whom? To me?” I looked again between my father and Daniel. I was so sick of being treated as though I was an afterthought in their stories. As long as it made my father look good, it didn’t really matter who else was hurt. It didn’t matter if anyone else had their life ruined. The only important thing was protecting his golden image.

  I just wanted out. I could live in Montana, in some rustic cabin that probably didn’t have running water or electricity. I could do it, and it would be so much better than having to live the lies that these men kept trying to get me to support. Anything would be better than trying to figure out what was real and what wasn’t real.

  I turned my gaze to Brandon, who was now glaring across at Daniel. It was just too bad Daniel hadn’t seemed to notice at all, because Daniel’s gaze was still permanently fixed on me. I still had no idea what had transpired. What the whole kidnapping thing was about. What any of this was about. But I could feel myself slowly beginning to lose my sanity. And maybe it really wasn’t all that slow. I was definitely losing it, and spending some time at Shady Shores seemed like it might just be a better option than trying to figure out what in the hell was going on here. Hell, just telling the staff at an insane asylum about this twisted mess would probably get me admitted there for life. And to be honest, playing in the sand forever didn’t seem like too bad of an option given the choices I had in front of me. Or lack of choices.