Love's Deception

by DC Renee

  Every time he left for work, I wondered what “business” he was truly doing that day. Every time he was agitated about a disastrous call, I worried whether it was something that would come back to bite us in the ass. Every time he took off after a call in the middle of the night, I was scared whether he’d return.

  I loved Nolan. I might have even loved him more after this entire fiasco, which was precisely why I couldn’t stay with him if he was going to continue this life. I couldn’t worry about him the way I was worrying without it having lasting effects on me. I was going to worry myself into an early grave, and for once, I was putting me first.

  “I know this is what you grew up with and what you know. I know this is not just about a business, it’s also about your family. I’m not asking you to choose, Nolan,” I told him as he finally put his fork down, his dinner forgotten. “I’m just telling you that I can’t do this anymore. I … we … I want a divorce.”

  “No,” he said so vehemently that I was actually taken aback.

  “What do you mean no? I’m not asking you, Nolan. I’m telling you.”

  “God, Lise, this is so fucked up,” he said as he ran his hands through his hair. “We can’t get a divorce. Once you’re in, you’re in. Do you honestly think I’d choose this life over you? I’d walk away in a heartbeat, leave it all, even say fuck you with a proud middle finger to all my family if it was you or them, but it’s not like that.” His voice cracked as he spoke, and I was suddenly very aware that I was about to learn something new about this all, something I didn’t think I’d like very much.

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying there’s no getting out. There’s no walking away, no turning your back on family, no saying fuck it, and no divorce.”

  “How can that be?” I cried out.

  “My family has stepped away from a lot of the old traditions, from the things that made my family true TV mafia material to what we are today. But some traditions have stuck it out like cockroaches that won’t die. This is one of them. It’s in for life … or death.”

  “No!” I cried out. “Who the hell would stop me from walking away? One of your cousins would actually pull a gun on me? They’d shoot me in the head because I didn’t want this life? This life I didn’t even know I’d entered into.” My words were cruel, like daggers straight into Nolan’s heart, and I saw him flinch. At least he had the decency to look remorseful.

  “Me, Lise. It would be me,” he told me calmly, but I had the feeling the words themselves felt like a heavy burden.

  “What the hell do you mean?”

  “I brought you in, so I would have to take you out.”

  “You’re joking. You’d actually kill me?”

  “Never,” he said with an angry edge like he couldn’t believe I’d even accuse him of such a thing.

  “And what about you? What if you wanted to leave? No one brought you in,” I pointed out.

  “My dad. Technically, he brought me in if you want to call it that,” he answered wryly.

  “He wouldn’t kill you,” I responded immediately. Nolan didn’t answer, and I couldn’t read his expression. “You won’t kill me,” I said after a minute. “So let me leave.”

  “I can’t, Lise. You don’t understand. If you leave, you’re dead regardless. If I won’t do it, which I won’t, then someone will kill us both. Either way, you lose your life. Mine? I don’t give a shit. They can kill me and drop me in the river for all I care. But you? No!” he yelled as he pounded his fist down on the table. “I won’t let you die. I’m sorry,” he said more quietly, his words breaking. “I’m so fucking sorry,” he said as tears spilled down his face. “I couldn’t lose you, and I thought … I thought that if I hid this, maybe it wouldn’t touch you, maybe you could be happy … with me. But I just fucked it all up. And now … I’ve lost you anyway, haven’t I? You’ll stay because you don’t have a choice …”

  I could have said something right then to comfort him, to assure him I still loved him no matter what, which I did, but his words rang true. By trying to keep me, he’d caged me into an impossible situation. I was staying because I couldn’t leave. Had he told me way back when, I would have stayed because I couldn’t see myself leaving. Similar sentences but completely different meanings. One meant I had a choice; one meant I didn’t.

  We sat there in uncomfortable silence for what seemed like hours before Nolan finally spoke softly. “I’m sorry.”

  “I know.”

  “I love you.”

  “I know.”

  “I fucked this all up.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you still love me?” The question was softer than his exclamations, fearful, tentative.

  “Yes,” I answered honestly and without hesitation.

  “That makes this worse somehow.”

  “Yes, Nolan, it does.” It did. And even I couldn’t understand why, but it did.

  “We’ll work through this. We’ll figure it out,” he said with false hope, his words full of fake encouragement.

  “We have no choice.”

  “We have death,” he responded, his lame attempt at a very, very bad joke.

  “No, Nolan, we only have love.” Because of that love, I finally put him out of his misery. “I’m here because I love you.” It was true. If it meant his death, I’d stay a thousand times over. “I’m staying because I love you.”

  “Thank you, Lise.” I nodded because I had no other words. I was stuck. I was stuck with a man I loved more than my own life in a world I didn’t choose, hoping I could learn to live with it.

  “LISE, YOU HAVE to stop,” Nolan urged.

  It had been two months since I’d found out there was no leaving this life. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t still bitter about being blindsided. There were times I resented Nolan for putting me in this position, but I didn’t stop loving him and didn’t stop wanting to be with him. I just didn’t want to keep feeling the way I was feeling—powerless, vulnerable, fearful.

  I truly believed that maybe had I been told in the beginning, I would have had time to adjust to the worries and dangers before committing to this life. Now, I was swimming in the deep end with no life preserver in sight. I was paddling, kicking my feet to stay afloat, but at some point, I was going to get tired, and then what? Would I drown?

  I wanted to love Nolan for the rest of my life, but I was afraid my love would become obstructed over time because he’d taken away my choice. I didn’t want to look at him on our tenth, twentieth, fiftieth wedding anniversary and have some hate mixed into my emotions when I looked at my husband. And kids? I wanted children, very much so. I especially wanted them with Nolan, but could I bring them into this life? Could I expose them to the dangers of being a Corrington?

  I tried so hard to hide my doubts, my insecurities, even my anger and my frustration, but apparently, I wore my emotions on my face and my feelings on my sleeve.

  “He told you finally?” one of Nolan’s aunts asked me at one of his family gatherings. I knew immediately what she was asking.

  “Sort of,” I responded. “How did you … how did you know?” I asked tentatively.

  “Sweet child,” she said sympathetically as she placed my face in her hands. “You are an open book, Annalise. I can read your thoughts as clearly as if they were my own. I see the searching look in your eyes. I understand the nervous way you play with your necklace. These things, they were not here last time.”

  “It could be something else.”

  “Yes,” she said with a nod. “But it is not. And everyone here knows it.”

  “I feel like a fool,” I admitted. “I missed all the signs.” I’d gone over it all in my head a thousand times. All those moments I didn’t question, and all the ones I did and still let it get away.

  “He made sure you did. But it was out of love, Annalise. As clearly as you wear your pain, he wears his love,” she said as she nodded her head toward Nolan, standing by his dad. “It’s crazy the
things we do to keep the ones we love. It’s not so bad. To be loved like that. And this life? It’s not so bad either.”

  I nodded because I didn’t know what to say. The life might not have been bad, per se, but the dangers involved were. I saw firsthand what could happen the day I learned about my husband. A man had come into the party to hurt everyone there. Luckily, he was caught, and as a result, he was hurt. But what would have happened if he had slipped through unnoticed?

  Some of Nolan’s other family were just as sympathetic, but some of his cousins, or I guess more specifically, the wives of some of the cousins, were not.

  “What? You think you’re better than us? You look down on us because we actually want to be with our husbands no matter what they do for a living, you uppity bitch?” I’ll give you three guesses who said that. Yep, that was the wonderful Vanessa, wife of Rick.

  I heard a similar variation of those words on three separate occasions. I let it go the first two times. But the last time, I was done.

  “I’m just better than you, period. You want to put me down, go ahead. It’ll just keep proving me right.” I could have stopped there. I should have stopped there, but apparently Vanessa became an outlet for my frustration. “Oh, and look, I just schooled you without being a tacky bitch like you.”

  “What the fuck did you just call me?” she asked, her claws coming out.

  “I just call it like I see it,” I said with a casual shrug. “You might be able to do that too one day if you ever gain a few more IQ points.”

  “Did you just call me dumb?” she yelled, not caring that we were drawing a crowd.

  “Oh my, I think you just gained a couple of IQ points right there. Catching on quick, I see.” I was poking the bear with a stick, and I knew this, but I needed some things off my chest, and Vanessa truly needed someone to put her in her place.

  “You fucking bitch,” she screamed right before launching herself at me. Luckily, I managed to duck quickly, but she caught me as I started to turn around. I was about to slap her away when I felt myself being tugged away, and I saw Vanessa being carted off too.

  Nolan dragged me to the car, and we drove home in silence. He spoke the minute we were in the door, telling me I had to stop.

  “Stop what, Nolan?” I asked. “Stop putting people in their places when they call me a bitch?”

  “God no,” he said with a hard shake of his head. “Vanessa deserved that and more, and if I had my way, I would have let you go at her for a few minutes before pulling you away.” For some reason, that made me smile.

  “You think I could kick her ass?”

  “She’s all bark and no bite. You’d have had her on her ass on the floor in less than a minute.”

  I smiled genuinely for the first time in a long time. “Then stop what?”

  “Stop making it so obvious how miserable you are about what my family does. Everyone knows you know, and everyone knows you hate it. If you keep it up, I don’t … let’s just say I don’t want to think about the consequences, okay?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m trying, I swear I am. But there has to be a way out, Nolan.”

  “There isn’t, Lise.”

  “What if we ran away?”

  “They’ll chase us, and even if we could manage to live on the run, they’ll blame my dad. I can’t do that to him, Lise.”

  I shut up immediately. The implication was clear. His dad was a dead man if we ran away.

  “I’ll try harder,” I said softly.

  “I’m sorry, Lise. Truly, I am.”

  “I know,” I told him before I took pity on him and wrapped my arms around him, dragging his face down so I could capture his lips.

  “I need you, Lise.” I needed him too, but instead of telling him, I showed him. I moved back so he could see me as I slowly pulled my dress over my head.

  “You’re a work of art, Lise, a fucking perfect sculpture, and every time I look at you, I get lost in your beauty,” he said as his eyes took in my form, clad only in a matching bra and panties. I discarded those too and nudged my head toward Nolan, telling him to lose his clothes as well. It was almost comedic how quickly he undressed. Then we stood a few feet apart, simply staring at each other. In many ways, we had grown closer because of this situation, and in many ways, we’d grown apart. But in love, we’d stayed the same.

  And then it was like a switch we both magically had connected because we stepped toward each other at the same moment, his lips on mine and one hand on my breast, the other traveling slowly down as my hand found his shaft. I moved my hand up and down, feeling him grow in my hand as he groaned into my mouth at the same time as his fingers found my clit. He rubbed little circles on it as one finger entered me, and it was now my turn to moan. We did this for just a few minutes, my panting increasing as my climax neared, and finally, I came on his hand, and he pulled away.

  “Fuck, every day with you is a miracle. I need to be inside you, now.”

  “Yes,” I said as I stepped back, my legs hitting the couch before my body descended. Nolan knelt, pulling my legs toward him so my body was on the couch but my legs were around him, and in one swift movement, he was buried in me.

  He moved in and out, fast, hard, but his eyes never left mine, and mine stayed locked with his. It was at these moments when we thought only with our bodies, when our hearts beat together, and our brains were shut off that I knew I had stayed with Nolan because I wanted to. It was at these moments that I couldn’t even fathom resenting him when I belonged to him so completely. It was at these moments I knew we’d work everything out.

  We came like that, staring at each other with love and hope shining through.

  It wasn’t until we were in bed and ready for sleep, my eyes slowly drifting closed, that I heard Nolan whisper. “I’m trying, Lise. I am. I just don’t know if it’s enough.”

  I went to sleep feeling better than I had in a long time. All I could ask for was for Nolan to try. But he was right … it might not be enough.

  I WAS GOING to die.

  I didn’t know when or how, but I knew it was going to happen. I just prayed with everything in me that Nolan wasn’t going down too.

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out I wasn’t a fan favorite when it came to certain members of Nolan’s family. Namely, Vanessa, her husband Rick, and a few others who for some unknown reason sympathized with the bitch and her posse.

  When I lashed back at her—and rightfully so, I might add—apparently, I’d started something with her. She’d taken to campaigning that I was a liability for the entire family. I overheard her saying, “Her clear dislike of what we do as a business—no, really, as a ‘family unit’—is detrimental to everyone.” I think I snorted when I heard that. I didn’t even know she knew big words like that.

  “Fuck, Lise, I don’t want to tell you this,” he said one day after I’d come home from work. He was waiting for me in the living room, a glass of whiskey in one hand, the other running through his hair, his expression a mixture of pain and frustration. “But I promised I wouldn’t keep any more secrets,” he added like it was a curse.

  “Just spit it out, Nolan. Better to rip the Band-Aid off quickly,” I told him.

  “Vanessa is causing trouble, and it’s not good.”

  And then he laid it all out for me. How she was all for getting rid of me … literally. The forever kind.

  Turned out the family was divided on this, which shocked me, and not in a good way. So many of Nolan’s family who I actually cared about and thought cared about me too were for me going by the way of swimming with the fishes.

  “I thought she liked me!” I cried out indignantly when he named the first shocking name.

  “It’s not about whether she likes you or not, Lise. It’s about what can happen to her son if you go rogue. You have to understand that her family will always come first, and right now, the way Vanessa is spinning this story, you are a loose cannon. She’s saying that you were sweet and demure until you found out what we�
��re really about, and now you’ve changed. She’s using your little argument as proof. Some of the older generation wants to be lenient, but others are worried that you’re going to go run to the police, and their sons and daughters will get locked up.”

  “I wouldn’t do that!”

  “I know that, but they can’t take that chance, Lise.”

  “So, they’d rather kill an innocent person just in case?”

  “To them, you’re not innocent.”

  “I can’t believe this.”

  “Fuck, this is all my fault.” I stayed silent because I didn’t trust myself not to agree with him. “I’ll fix this,” he told me. “Don’t worry; I’ll fix this.”

  “I trust you.” I didn’t tell him I knew he’d fix it because I had a feeling he couldn’t. I knew he made it a point to tell anyone who would listen that I wasn’t upset about the family business; I was upset about being lied to.

  “Just … just lay low for a bit, okay?” he asked, and I tried.

  But it was hard to lay low when we had family gatherings. If I didn’t go, it was proof I didn’t like the family. But if I went, the ones who I knew were out for me were getting the stink eye, which was proof I didn’t like the family.

  “I’m damned if I do, and damned if I don’t,” I even said to Nolan when we got ready to go to one of these family gatherings. “There’s literally no winning for me. So basically, I’m screwed,” I voiced.

  “Don’t say that,” he pleaded with me. “Please don’t ever say that, Lise. I’ll figure this all out, I promise.” So I stopped saying it … out loud.

  I knew it was only a matter of time before someone either took it upon themselves to get rid of me, or they convinced the majority of the family it was better for me to be gone. Nolan would be expected to comply, he’d refuse, and then we were both dead.

  I contemplated killing myself only so that Nolan wouldn’t get hit in the crossfire when it was my turn to die. But I couldn’t. I didn’t know if that made me a coward or if that made me strong. Maybe I was just taking a risk based on hope that maybe, just maybe, I’d get to live.