His Substitute Wife... My Sister Book One

by Sylvia Hubbard

  “Bad shot, but still a shot that kept him able to talk,” Onyx said. “I asked a specialist and he said from the autopsy report the side of the head Jonas shot himself in, he still could have the ability to speak.”

  “But how could they believe Cassandra? She was a domineering woman! She wouldn’t have listened to him if she was really concerned.”

  “You’re asking about someone who’s dead and I can’t get answers from. And the police wouldn’t know about this. Jonas never filed any reports against his wife so they didn’t suspect her of foul play, but because he had tried to kill himself before, it was easy to believe that this was another botch attempt. They knew about the arguments from the neighbors, but the fact that she was still there, was more domestic than anything. Flat out, the police believed her,” Onyx said flatly, but he could see the repugnance in her pitch black eyes. “An hour and a half after the daughters arrived home according to the police reports, Charisse entered the room with her father who she thought was sleeping, picked up the gun and it accidentally fired. Since the skull was opened from the prior wound more brain matter escaped than normal. She was later admitted to the hospital for reportedly self-inflicting wounds to herself, but Laurie said it wasn’t so. Cassandra beat her so bad, but not in anger. When Laurie heard the second shot she came over to see Cassandra over her daughter beating her in the chest and screaming for her to shut up. Ten-year-old Charisse was still saying what Cassandra wanted her to be quiet about. “Onyx stopped talking and that revolted look returned in force.

  Parker thought she wanted to hit something and her body seemed restless with an invisible aura of danger smoking from her. He had a feeling if Cassandra were alive today, Onyx would have no bones about beating her ass.

  “What was she saying, Onyx?”

  “My daddy told me you killed him and you’ll never get a dime.” Onyx flipped a couple of pages on her note pad after swallowing her anger. “According to the autopsy report, Jonas was brain dead before Charisse shot him. His body just didn’t know it. How she knew this information was a mystery to me. Jonas changed the benefactor to Charisse since he found out about the life insurance policy and then he went and made amends with his mother, who told her lawyer her son was going to leave Cassandra and file for custody of Charisse. The paperwork had started.”

  “And that wasn’t motive enough for the police to believe something bad had happened by Cassandra’s hand?”

  “Not enough. Who would ever believe back then a mother would go through such extremes to get their hands on a life insurance policy? Plus, she had instigated a way for the mother and son to get back together.”

  “She played them both for fools to gain more money for herself. Why wasn’t he filing for custody of the twins?” Parker questioned.

  “His mother ordered paternity tests done on all the children, two weeks before his death, which showed the twins weren’t his and-“ she stopped.

  She was saying and stopped abruptly looking at the door while taking out a thumb size blade out the top of her boot and aiming it at the door as it opened.

  “Hold up!” Parker ordered halting her from releasing the blade that could have killed Chyna, who entered the room looking angry.

  “Parker, who is this woman and how the hell does she know about my father’s paternity tests?” she screamed hysterically.

  Chapter 25

  “Who are you?!” Chyna asked again when Parker or Onyx didn’t respond to her demands for answers.

  “I could still kill her and get away with it,” Onyx said dryly replacing the blade. “She’s either stupid or really stupid.”

  Parker was thinking the same thing, but then his wife was shallow enough to not care that her life could be endangered. “This is my wife, Chyna.”

  Onyx only narrowed her eyes at Chyna.

  Chyna glared at Parker finally starting to feel uneasy. “W-Who is this?”

  Parker decided to be honest with his wife as he closed the door and then faced Chyna. “I hired Onyx to find out the answers you wouldn’t give me.”

  “About my parent’s past? About me? It doesn’t matter about the past, Parker. I thought we were going to live for the future.”

  “About everything,” he said perturbed. “The more I found out about how bad Charisse was treated-“

  “This is about Charisse?” she asked appalled. “I’m your wife, Parker. Can’t you just be happy that I want to forget all that and Charisse is willing to do the same?”

  “It matters when my child has to be from this and then I need to understand your own mothering behaviors.”

  “Jaelen was right. You don’t need any part of this selfish family. They’re all missing a few screws.”

  Chyna shot a vicious glare over her shoulder at the insufferable woman. “You don’t need to know this woman’s lies and that I was a bastard and my father was going to leave me!”

  “So you killed him?”

  “I didn’t pull the trigger,” she denied.

  “Helping is just as much as doing. You used Charisse like an instrument in getting it done. Why?”

  Chyna began to cry and Onyx cursed viciously. Walking up to Chyna, she snatched her to turn around and then backhanded her to the floor. “Shut the fuck up, bitch and answer his questions. I’m not lying. If I hear so much as a motherfucking sniffle from your ass I’ll cut your damn throat out!”

  Parker didn’t know if this was an empty threat just to scare the shit out of Chyna, but then again, Onyx never wrote a check with her mouth, that she didn’t cash.

  Helping his trembling wife up, he looked deeply at her with concern. “No matter what you tell me about the past Chyna, I won’t leave you. When I made a vow to stay with you no matter what, I plan on taking that seriously unless you leave me.”

  Chyna pushed away from him and sunk on the couch. “She’s not lying. Everything she said is true about my father.”

  “When did you find this out?” Parker asked.

  “The day we heard a loud gunshot from the family room. It was the first time Momma seriously slapped Charisse when she wanted to say good-bye to Dad. At lunchtime, Momma called Cheyenne at school and told her to hurry us all home. She sent Charisse out to the store and sent Joanie away. She told us Dad had finally succeeded in killing himself and we would have to come up with a plan to make it look like Daddy didn’t commit suicide because then we wouldn’t be able to live from day to day. His family would take all the money because we didn’t belong to him. We’d be living on the streets by nightfall if we didn’t do something. Cheyenne and I couldn’t come up with anything, but then we decided to confide in Joanie because her brothers came into trouble all the time and got out of it. She knew about the law and told us the younger the better and the more traumatized the person was about it the better it would be believed to be an accident. We knew Charisse would be hurt the most, but Momma stressed it had to look like an accident, so I convinced her to go pick up the gun and then when she didn’t pull the trigger… Cheyenne … scared her. It really was an accident, but Momma said we had to be mean to her. We had to treat her like that if we didn’t want her to go away with the money and we couldn’t let her know how much. We told them she went crazy and started hurting herself and they admitted her and then Cheyenne would lay the cow brain all over like when she would wake up and then the blood…” She looked ashamed. So ashamed she wouldn’t even look at Parker. “Cheyenne killed a dog and we put the blood all over the bathroom and livers all over her bed. That’s when she tried to kill herself the first time. But I thought when she got out it would be alright, but Momma didn’t stop the beatings. She said Charisse had to continue to pay for doing what she did.”

  “But she didn’t do anything!” Onyx sneered. “She didn’t hurt anyone!”

  “I didn’t know,” Chyna cried pathetically. Finally she looked up at Parker. “I really didn’t know, Parker. I really didn’t understand it all.”

  “You chose not to know,” Onyx refuted. “You
chose to treat the one person who was good in that family like she was nothing but a bank. How long were you going to keep Parker from knowing that the money you didn’t want to share with him was the same money you stole from Charisse’s?

  Chyna fell to her knees and wailed in her hands.

  Parker wanted to hold her because she was his wife, but he was angry and sickened at what his wife had done to innocent Charisse. “What else?” he asked hoarsely to Onyx. “What else did they do?”

  “No! No! NO!” Chyna screamed beseeching Onyx. “Don’t tell him any more! Please!”

  ***

  Rochelle came back upstairs from answering the door seeing Charisse was just rousing from her nap. Becoming normal was a lot of mental work, she noted to herself.

  “Ms. Gates is here to see you again. I’m stepping out to handle some affairs.”

  Charisse had fallen asleep in her clothes as soon as she came home from Kimberly and checked the company’s email out of habit. She went down to the foyer to meet her new friend.

  Kimberly had returned because Charisse had left her jacket in the van. “I dropped the baby off with her father because today is his quality time afternoon.”

  Charisse still couldn’t believe Jaelen to be anything that related to nice. Before she spoke on that, they were startled to hear the screams coming from the library.

  “What is that? Should we call the police?”

  “If it was anyone but Chyna screaming, I would say yes.” She motioned for Kimberly to stay there and let her investigate.

  The screaming instantly reminded her of the hysterical screams from patients desperately wanting to get away from all the madness in the middle of the night.

  What could make Chyna scream like that?

  Slowly going down the steps, she heard her sister screaming more, begging someone not to tell Parker anything.

  Was Cheyenne here?

  A shiver went down her spine at the thought of seeing her sister sooner than planned.

  “The money was barely spent on Charisse’s medical health,” a female's harsh voice said. “They went through it like it was water and when the last of Jonas’ family died and their money went to Charisse’s trust, by that time their mother was sick and Charisse was getting stronger while she was away at school, but they got in her head again knowing that if she reached her twenty sixth birthday and the doctor had given her a clean bill of health she’d take the money, so they decided to get her home from college and then drive her a little bit more crazy.”

  “I didn’t go along with that plan!” Chyna denied. “That’s why Cheyenne and I were on the outs for a while.”

  “But you did nothing to stop it,” Parker sneered. “She was your sister!”

  “I had problems of my own,” she said selfishly. “That was when… the affair happened.” There was some muffled sobbing. “P-Parker, when Momma died I was h-happy because I thought we wouldn’t have to be mean to her anymore. I-I thought it was over, and in the beginning I didn’t go along with C-Cheyenne being mean to her, until… until she told me how we could share the money. But then she t-took it all for herself.”

  “You stupid bitch,” The other female voice derided. “Didn’t it occur to you that she needed you to be on her side so she could steal the money without Charisse being the wiser about the situation.”

  There was a long silence and then Chyna said something incoherently. “…after a while, when I realized I’d done wrong to Charisse, I knew I had to do something to help her, but I didn’t know.”

  “Don’t you dare feel pity for her, Parker!” the other voice hissed. “Chyna, why don’t you tell him it wasn’t just losing him that made you realized you’d done wrong to him.”

  It was quiet some more.

  “What is she talking about, Chyna?” Parker asked.

  Charisse was very interested in this too and pressed her ear harder to the door.

  Parker bellowed, “Dammit! Say something!”

  “She didn’t leave Pascal. He left her,” the other female voice muttered. “He was still in love with the other sister and probably admitted this to Chyna. The one he was helping to steal the money and seducing Chyna was all part of the other sister’s plans. But then no one expected the baby.”

  “Baby?” Parker questioned, his voice deep in pain.

  “It was a mistake,” Chyna said bitterly. “I became pregnant and I knew I couldn’t let you know because I was ashamed, but I did think Pascal loved me. When I found out it was really just a rouse to destroy me, I knew that Cheyenne wasn’t just being mean to Charisse, she was being mean to me as well. Me!” There was actual shock in her voice. “And I knew there was nothing I could say or do. It was like Momma died and her ghost lived on in Cheyenne, but it was meaner and even more evil. I’m so sorry Parker. Sometimes I’m sorry I ever met you, but then I’m grateful, because if you hadn’t come in my life, I wouldn’t have experienced the goodness and I feel awful. Whether you believe me or not, I really hate myself for what I’ve done to you. And I can’t even give you back what you’ve given me. I can never be the wife you’ve longed for. Even now with the infection.” Her voice was too choked up to speak further.

  Knowingly, the other female finished, “Which makes it painful to have sex and if she doesn’t get the right treatment, she’ll eventually die from it, but asking you to foot a hysterectomy will be a lot of explaining, won’t it?”

  Charisse gasped not knowing it was that bad. But of course Chyna wouldn’t tell her the worse of it. Being totally honest was still not in her sister’s character.

  Yet, she was also dying to know who the hell was this woman? Obviously this was not Cheyenne as Charisse had suspected because her tone was filled with so much hate toward Chyna and Cheyenne, Charisse could feel it through the door.

  In a quiet voice with a cool calm, Chyna said, “Like I said, I knew I had done too much to make up for it, but I wanted to help. I wanted to make your dreams come true. I wanted to somehow give you the baby you desired.”

  “By stealing Cheyenne’s plan,” the other woman said triumphantly.

  “Who the hell are you?!” Chyna exclaimed.

  “You stole the page out of her diary. Where is it?”

  WHO THE HELL WAS THIS WOMAN?!

  Charisse was dying to know.

  Then she giggled to herself at that irony of thinking that but covered her mouth quickly to stifle the sound. ‘Dying to know.’ Did healing internally give her this sick sense of humor?

  “Charisse has it,” Chyna said.

  ‘You big mouth!’

  “What plan?” Parker asked.

  The other woman answered, “The plan to get Charisse pregnant. It was Cheyenne’s plan first. I found out because Pascal was easy to find and then beating him within an inch of his life for the information was much more satisfying than just asking him, but once he took a look at Mandingo’s face who came to help me out, that bitch peed on his sorry self and was willing to tell me anything I wanted.”

  There was a thud on the desk as if something had been slammed against it.

  “That is the printout of the computer program the little shit was using to extract large amounts of money from the trust. They needed Chyna’s signature for the bank account to validate the transfer of the money and she gave it to them.”

  “That was before I knew the betrayal of my sister and then she said if I ever said anything she would tell Parker about the baby and my illness,” Chyna quickly explained.

  “But when Charisse moved in here and agreed to have the baby, you could have stopped it?!” Parker said incredulously. “You could have told me the truth then. Why didn’t you?”

  “Because I thought I would lose you. I thought I would lose you and I wasn’t going to let Cheyenne win anymore. You can take Charisse and just leave me. You could and you know you could and never look back knowing the truth. And I’d have nothing, but aside from that, you’d be living with her.”

  “You deserve no less,” the
other woman said.

  Chyna ignored her remark and kept talking. “I wanted to fight for us. Make amends some how? I know you’re so upset with me that it sounds silly. I sound ridiculous and I know I don’t deserve you.“

  Kimberly tapped Charisse on the shoulder and she had to cover her mouth again to keep from screaming. Pressing her finger against her lip to motion Kimberly to quietness, she urged her new friend to listen at the door.

  Reluctantly, Kimberly joined her.

  “…not upset with you,” Parker was saying angrily. “I’m so damn disgusted and upset at what you did to your own sister, that I don’t know if I can look at your ass for another minute. Does Charisse know any of what you’ve done?”

  Chyna answered, “I don’t know if she knows all the details about how we kept her crazy, but she knows about the money and what we stole. I admitted this to her.”

  “And she still agreed to have the baby?!” he asked in disbelief.

  “This was after– “

  “Damn you Chyna! She must hate our motherfucking guts! How could you– “

  “She doesn’t hate you, Parker.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do! I do because she’s touched you.”

  ‘OH LAWD! She’s going to tell! She’s going to tell him!’

  “What’s wrong?” Kimberly whispered, seeing what must be a look of horror on Charisse’s face.

  “You got to stop her!” Charisse hissed.

  “She’s lying!” that other female voice said inside the door.

  “I’m not lying!” Chyna refuted. “Not too long ago. She did it for me.”

  “NOW!” Charisse implored. “Stop her now!”

  “She touched me? How? When?” Parker asked skeptically.

  Haltingly, Chyna started saying, “She came in here and– “

  The door swung opened and Kimberly went stumbling in looking confused and baffled. Charisse jumped to the side just in time so they wouldn’t see her praying that was enough distraction to shut Chyna up.