6 Dirty Secrets: A Tease Novel

by Alexis Anne

  My father’s words from the night of the accident haunted me.

  “I knew you were fucking Higgins. Did you really think that was something I would miss?”

  After the Boys had pulled me from the car I was transported back to my father in Kensington, brought to this room and tied to this chair. My hands bound to the chair arms, my ankles to the legs, my torso to the back. Father stood in front of me and slowly, methodically, broke me.

  My passport—shredded.

  My bank accounts—emptied.

  My new Italian home—burned to the ground.

  All of that was painful. Painful beyond belief. But it was what he forced me to watch next that tore out my heart.

  “Eyes open, Nicole.”

  So I watched the video feed of Father’s favorite team destroying Theo and Darcy’s flat. They knifed the furniture, emptied drawers, left messages painted on the walls, and then…

  My heart hurt even thinking about it.

  Then they took my gift to Darcy, my painting, and cut it to pieces.

  Just like Darcy and me. What had once, briefly, been beautiful, was now in shreds, never to be the same again.

  That was two weeks ago.

  I’d been given just enough food and water to keep me alive and not once let out of my room, although the restraints had been removed. Down on the street two men stood keeping watch on my window, making sure I didn’t try something ridiculous. Not that I had the resources to do so. Father had stripped the room of anything sharp. He’d even taken the sheets from the bed, most likely so I couldn’t hang myself. The security panel had been retrofitted so I couldn’t open it, but if Father knew what I was capable of then I was sure that he’d changed that too.

  The one and only piece of good news was that Father assured me no harm had come to either Darcy or Theo. When I asked why he shrugged. “Better to know what you want is out there and you’ll never have it, Nicole.”

  And even after all this, I knew the worst was still to come.

  He’d promised to come see me when he was done with work for the day. The sun had set an hour ago so I expected to see his miserable face soon. He didn’t make me wait long.

  “Good evening, Nicole.” He shut the door and leaned against it.

  I didn’t turn.

  “How is the food?”

  Tastes like sawdust. “I’m sure it’s fine.”

  “You’re angry with me.”

  Was I supposed to answer? Father didn’t usually seek conversation.

  “I want to get on the same page, Nicole.” I heard him shuffle closer. “I allowed you freedom in the hopes you’d kick your addictions permanently. You’ve done that. When Ian didn’t work out I decided to allow you some fun while I sought out a suitable replacement.”

  “Fun?”

  “Fucking Higgins wasn’t fun for you?” His voice dripped with sarcasm.

  The way Father cast things turned my stomach and I couldn’t afford to lose the little bit of food I’d eaten that night at supper. “What is your point?”

  “I made a mistake in giving you that freedom and now we’re both paying the price. It’s time to put the past in the past and focus on where we go from here.”

  I finally forced myself to look up at my father. He was dressed in his usual blue suit, the one he wore during the week. “And where is it we are headed, Father dear?”

  “I’ve selected your husband. You will marry Thomas Wainwright.”

  All the blood drained from my head making me dizzy, but now was not the time to lose control. “You can’t be serious. He’s nearly as old as you.”

  “Age has nothing to do with this. I’d be thrilled to marry a nice young woman.”

  “Then why don’t you do that and leave me the hell alone?”

  His eyes practically sparkled in the dim light of my room. He loved riling me up and I was doing an excellent job of feeding his addiction. “Thomas has agreed to unite under my banner in exchange for you.”

  Thomas ran a very similar operation to my father that focused on gambling instead of drugs. They were shockingly similar in more ways that that. Thomas was notoriously controlling of women and his first wife had died under mysterious circumstances.

  This was as bad as I imagined.

  “No,” I said firmly. Because no. This couldn’t be happening.

  “Yes,” he said just as firmly, then bent down to look into my eyes. “And if I do not have your absolute compliance I will put you right back where you used to be. I will fill your veins with heroin and force you to comply with my wishes.”

  I stared into his cold, dead eyes for a good long minute, terrified of going back under the darkness of my addiction, before I replied. “I will comply.” I had no choice. My father would absolutely tie me down and fill me with drugs until I was so addicted I couldn’t think straight. I’d come back once, I knew I couldn’t do it again.

  “Excellent.” He stood up. “The wedding will take place in one month. It will be downstairs.”

  “Can Theo attend?”

  He froze. “No.”

  “Please? It’s the only thing I ask.”

  “You shouldn’t be asking for anything at all.”

  A tremble started somewhere deep inside me, rippling out to my hands and lips. “Please, Father? I will never disobey you again. I will marry Thomas, I will bear his children, I will never complain. I will be the perfect wife. Just please, let me have my brother at my side when I do it.”

  “Promises from you mean nothing, Nicole.”

  “Please?” I begged, tears starting to stream down my face. “Please?”

  I saw it—the flicker of doubt. He wasn’t stupid. He knew he could control me but pushing too hard would break me. And then where would he be? “Fine. I will request both your brothers attend instead of just Michael. You and Theo always were a pair. Good night, Nicole.”

  I waited until the locks all clicked back into place before I let out that little sigh of relief. If there was anything that could be done Theo would do it—now that he’d know what was coming.

  * * *

  Aside from literally being locked in a room, I felt handcuffed. No matter what, I’d always been allowed to paint or draw. Now even that had been taken from me. My skin felt tight. My muscles contracted as if they were in a permanent state of tension. Images and thoughts bottled up inside me with nowhere to go.

  I was slowly losing my grip on reality as I refused to deal with the emotions running rampant through my mind. How did one deal with having zero control over their own life? I was being sold as a bride in exchange for a business deal as if this were some sort of medieval royalty marrying off a princess for military support.

  I alternated between anger and misery. I’d always let misery win out in the past and I didn’t think that was the best course of action now. Allowing my misery to plunge me into darkness had led me to drugs, to forcing myself on a man instead of talking to him, to drowning in doubts.

  It had nearly killed me and as dark and hopeless as this situation was, I didn’t want to end my life. I believed there was light at the end of this tunnel.

  The only question was how long the tunnel would run.

  So that left me with anger.

  I discovered that anger was a powerful emotion to have simmering in my veins. It seemed to breed. One minute I was angry and the next I was furious. Some days it mounted until I wanted to explode.

  And then the next day I’d wake up and start all over again.

  Until one day the locks slid back and my father walked in with a very grim look on his face. “You’re free to go,” he sneered.

  Was this a trick to see how obedient I’d be? If I stepped forward would he hit me? “I don’t understand.”

  Theo stepped in behind him. “Come on, Nik. Let’s go.”

  Father didn’t meet my eyes and I didn’t hesitate. I surged forward, taking Theo’s hand and relishing in the unfamiliar feel of human contact. He led me down the back stairs at breakneck
speed and out the side door to a waiting car. A woman sat in the backseat.

  “Hello?” She smiled up at me as Theo opened the door. My heart stopped.

  Time stopped.

  I turned to stare at Theo, my mouth hanging open. “Mother?” I managed to whisper.

  All he did was nod. “Get in before Father changes his mind.”

  So I threw myself into the backseat beside the woman who I’d never met but looked exactly like me. “It’s so nice to meet you,” she whispered, blinking back tears.

  I want to say I was delighted to see her, that I hugged her close and forgave her for leaving me behind, but I didn’t. I was too shocked, the anger still too fresh, and anger was my new best friend.

  Instead I sat there with my mouth hanging open and a million questions running through my mind.

  “I’m so sorry, Nicki,” she murmured.

  “Sorry?” I screamed.

  Theo flinched, the muscles in his neck tensing. “Can we save the yelling for the flat?”

  “No!” I shrieked back. “You’re sorry? You left us behind with that!” I thrust my hand back toward the house we’d just left. “You saved yourself and left us behind.”

  She swallowed hard and bowed her head. Her hands clasped tight in her lap, her pretty brown hair falling in waves over her shoulders. “And I have never forgiven myself for it. You have every right to hate me. I have no defense. But I am sorry.”

  I stared. And stared and stared and stared.

  Theo cleared his throat. “She’s the one who got you out of there, Nik.”

  My entire body was locked in one position. My muscles refused to move so only my eyes darted between the front seat and the back. “What do you mean?”

  His jaw tensed as he ground his teeth. “She pulled the strings. You’re out because of her, not me.”

  Her head shook back and forth as tears spilled down her cheeks. “I couldn’t do anything until,” she took a deep breath and swallowed. “Until I could get him in a corner. I would have come for you sooner if I could have.”

  “It took you twenty-two years to find the perfect time?”

  She flinched. “If you know your father then you know the answer to that.” She was still sniffling but she managed to look me square in the eye. It was impossible to ignore the look in her eyes. It matched mine. Broken, powerless, angry, and a fire that Donald couldn’t extinguish.

  I slid across the seat and hugged my mother for the very first time. She was small but strong and smelled strangely familiar. She squeezed me tight and I didn’t know if she’d ever let me go. “It’s so nice to finally meet you, Nicki. You prefer Nicki?” But she did let me go and glanced up at Theo who must’ve told her about how much I hated being called Nicole, thanks to Father.

  “Yes,” I murmured. “Nicki, please.”

  She gave me a quick nod. “And you can call me whatever makes you comfortable. Mary, Mother, Hey You…”

  “How about we start with Mary.” A bizarre calm had settled over me. It reminded me of the way my body would rise and fall while I was in withdrawal. I’d be wild and so jittery one minute, then so calm I wondered if my heart was beating the next.

  The car stopped and Theo threw it into park. Glancing out the window I saw that were at my flat, one of the last places I expected. “What are we doing here?”

  “It’s yours,” Mary said, as if that meant something specific.

  “I don’t understand.” Because I didn’t. I didn’t understand why Father had released me, or that my mother was sitting beside me, or why we were at my or apartment.

  Or, for that matter, why I was so damn calm.

  “We’ll explain upstairs,” she said.

  So I followed Theo up to my flat and found that nothing had changed. He handed me the keys and hugged me tight. “Just for your peace of mind, I had the flat swept for surveillance and they came up empty. The security system has been changed out and I’ve assigned you a guard.”

  “A bodyguard?”

  “Yes. And you won’t say a word about it. This is a fucked up situation we’re living in. Let’s sit and explain. Water? Food? You look like you need ten hamburgers.” He frowned as he looked down at my body.

  For the first time in a long time, my stomach growled.

  Theo laughed. “I’ll take that as a yes. Martin?”

  A man materialized from the shadows. He was tall and trim but unmistakably a badass, like James Bond. “Sir?”

  “Can you have food brought up from the market down the street?”

  “Of course.”

  Martin disappeared into the hallway and I heard him giving instructions to someone else.

  “You have a small army now, don’t you?”

  He grimaced. “Sit. I’ll get your water.”

  It was unbelievably awkward to try and figure out where to sit. Mary mercifully chose the single armchair and spared me any other wrangling. “This is lovely,” she offered as an icebreaker.

  “Thank you. Father bought it for me.”

  “But you decorated it.”

  I nodded.

  “And that’s your art?” She pointed across the room to the floor-to-ceiling windows that poured light onto my canvases.

  “It is.”

  Her lip quivered slightly. “You are very talented. So is Michael.”

  “You’ve seen him?”

  She nodded and an even sadder look shuttered her eyes.

  Where was Michael? And where was Darcy? As the minutes ticked by my body started to ache for his arms to hold me together.

  Theo set three glasses of water down on the table. “I guess we can start with him. When Michael found out Father intended to marry you off to Thomas he went ballistic. He and Father had a fight to end all fights. Luckily when I heard the news about your marriage I had the same reaction. I came home just as Father was ordering—well, you know.” He looked away and downed his water.

  He had to be kidding. I mean, we all knew Father was capable of it, but I never truly believed he would rather murder one of his children than let them go from his control. “You stopped him?”

  Theo nodded. “I did. Mary arrived the next day and made the deal.” His eyes flitted over to hers.

  “What’s the deal?”

  “He let Michael leave on the condition he never returns to London,” she smiled at me tightly, “and Donald will disown you, leaving you to live your life on your terms.”

  “In exchange for what?” I spun over to Theo.

  “Ten million pounds over the next five years and my promise to run Sutherland Industries when the time comes.”

  He’d sold his soul to the devil to save us, the bastard.

  “Theo, no. That’s too much.”

  “The money is nothing. Mary paid him off, not me.”

  I ignored that. “You know that’s not what I mean. You’re sacrificing yourself for us.”

  Donald only wanted the money because he knew it would hurt us. What he really wanted he got: Theo as heir to the throne.

  “I’m buying us time,” he corrected. “Father isn’t stepping back from the top anytime soon and trust me, he likes me running iON Innovations and earning all that tech money.”

  Meaning he was seeing a legacy to end all legacies. He would go down as the most successful man to ever lead the Duncan Boys.

  But Theo wasn’t that stupid. Too smart for his own good, yes, but never stupid.

  I cocked an eyebrow. “You still think you can beat him.”

  There was a twinkle in my brother’s eyes, the big dumb idiot.

  “Higgins has uncovered some information about Donald and Dan Christie that will prove advantageous when the time comes.”

  “And how is Darcy?” I tried to mask the way my pulse took off at the mention of his name, but it was pointless.

  Theo’s eyes went dark and pinched. “He’s fine. Took a good knock to the head at the accident and suffered a concussion. It’s had him a little, well, he’s been struggling with it.”
<
br />   “What does that mean?” Was that why he was missing? I couldn’t imagine Darcy not coming to get me with Theo.

  In fact, now that I thought about it, I was getting a very strange vibe from Theo. He was nervous, his fingers fiddling at a million miles an hour like when he’s had a stroke of genius for one of his projects.

  “It means he’s not himself right now, Nik. Sometimes brain injuries do funny things. His memory is spotty, he’s having focus issues.”

  “His memory?” My heart leapt straight up into my throat and lodged so I couldn’t breathe.

  “Like I said, it’s spotty. He remembers bits and pieces of the last few months, but there are huge blank spots, too.”

  And that’s when the panic set in. “He doesn’t remember us, does he?”

  Theo winced. “He remembers a lot of your time together, but not all of it. It scares him and he was afraid of doing more harm than good after what you’ve just been through, so I sent him up to Edinburgh for the week to get some information and let you settle in.”

  Darcy didn’t want to see me and I really didn’t know how to process that. That anger I’d been slowly building suddenly wanted to travel in one new direction. “To hell with him.”

  Theo blinked. “Excuse me?”

  I lifted my chin, slinking on an impenetrable steel armor. “I needed him and he’s not here. If half the shit he told me were true he wouldn’t run off to Edinburgh at a time like this.”

  His eyes widened. “Nik…no. That’s not it at all. This information he uncovered could change everything. He’s doing this for you.”

  But I couldn’t hear any of that. I was too hurt, too needy—all because Darcy convinced me I was safe. I’d let him in and now, when I needed him most, he was gone. Maybe it wasn’t fair of me to feel this way considering he was hurt too, but I was so angry that those details got lost in the tidal wave of loneliness that overtook my soul.

  “No,” I spat, “he’s doing this for himself. For you.” I spun back to Mary, throwing my hand out at Theo. “Has he told you what he did with his life? Do you understand the destruction you left in your wake? You left and I got to take your place. I lived in your rooms. I was shoved behind locked doors and told to behave.” I knew I was being irrational. I knew I was losing it and saying things that were hurtful for the sole purpose of hurting, but I couldn’t stop myself. I’d been too good for too long. “Theo was a thief and he should be dead. Michael has been miserable every fucking day of his life. You saved yourself and you left us to pick up the pieces.” If I’d been stronger I would have strangled her or spit at her feet or something to physically demonstrate my disgust. “Thank you getting me out of there. Now, please leave me be. It’s what you do best.”