by S. M. Soto
This is the first time I’ve ever seen anything that resembles emotion come from him.
“Elaborate.”
“Remember that video I had you take care of?”
My lips thin. Yes, I do. All too well. I especially remember when the video’s star in question was murdered this summer while I was away. Guilt slams into me, just as it has so many times since I’ve found out the truth. I think about the night we sat on the decaying tree trunk, the air of melancholy surrounding her.
“What about it?”
“I need another favor. We need another favor.”
I sit back, waiting for him to go on, my gut telling me that I’m not going to like whatever he’s going to say next.
“We found her body in the woods that night. She was already dead.”
I stay silent, watching him, checking to see if he’s telling the truth. But that’s the thing about Vincent. He is a compulsive liar and always has been. If he truly wants you to believe something, he will make it happen. That’s why I could never trust him, brother or not.
“Odd timing, don’t you think? Have me get rid of any connection you have to the poor girl, and she ends up dead while I’m gone. Awfully suspicious.”
His lips thin. “You really think I could do this? I got rid of that tape for her. I care about her. I don’t fucking know why. She’s a bitch, but I do. I felt bad for recording us. She didn’t know about it, and the last thing I wanted to do was hurt her, and I ended up doing it anyway. How do you think that would’ve looked for me?”
“Why not go to the police when you found her body?”
“And say what? We were out smoking and drinking in the woods when we found her. They would’ve thought it was us. I couldn’t risk my future over it.”
“And what did you do exactly?”
His silence has my stomach clenching. My hands curl into fists at my sides as I regard him. He works a swallow, avoiding my gaze.
“We buried her remaining clothes. Zach chose the coordinates. Bought the stuff from his uncle’s supply shop.”
My stomach twists as he goes into details.
They covered up a fucking murder. The idiots. Her whole family could’ve had closure by now if they would’ve just done the right thing. If they would’ve left everything alone, it might’ve helped the case.
“So, you stripped her naked?” I grit, trying to process what the absolute fuck was going through their minds when they decided this was a good idea.
“We had no other choice!” he growls, raking a hand down his face. “Zach, the fucking idiot, touched her dead body. He tried to find a pulse to see if she was alive, when she obviously fucking wasn’t. Her blood was on his hands, his fingerprints on her. We had to do something. Then Trent and Marcus showed up. Everyone was involved now.”
“You could’ve explained that, Vincent. It was a mistake!”
“It wasn’t! I couldn’t risk it. We stripped her clothes, left her in her bra and panties, and got rid of everything else. We burned our clothes from that night.”
I swipe a frustrated hand down my face. “And what do you need from me exactly? Seems like you idiots already did most of the dirty work.”
“She has a sister.”
“Protect her for me, will you?” I hear Madison’s voice echo in my ear.
I rub at my temples, staving off the sudden headache that’s coming on from the overload of information. What the fuck did they want me to do with the sister? Did they expect me to kill her and keep her quiet? Jesus Christ.
“We just want to make sure she won’t ever be a problem. She’s caused too much of a stir already. We need her taken care of. She’s the reason we went to court. She’ll never forget, and as long as she’s alive, we’re all in danger. She thinks we had something to do with her sister’s death.”
“And why would she think that?” I ask dryly.
“Because Trent, the fucking idiot, invited her to the kissing rock that night. She thinks Trent did it.”
I scrub my hands over my face in frustration. After a long moment of silence, I pause, gathering my thoughts. Hating the words as soon as they leave my lips. “I’ll take care of it.”
The color slowly returns to his face, and the tension dissipates from his body, as if hearing this is a relief.
That memory is suddenly replaced with another one from our past.
A picture.
A fucking picture is all Vincent gave me to go off of. I didn’t even know Madison had a sister, let alone a twin sister. I didn’t know her well. She was popular, sure, but for the past year, she’d been gone, away in Italy, and even before that, my ex-girlfriend Summer hated her, so keeping my distance from Madison was always a given if I wanted to avoid hearing any of Summer’s shit.
Just like most towns and cities, Ferndale is broken into parts. My family, along with Vincent’s and a handful of our other friends, live in what we like to call the “Riches Circle.” The community is gated and only the higher class, the founding families, live here. Each house was built by our ancestors years ago, and it’s been passed down each generation.
And my house? My father had it built to fit in with the rest, so we wouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb. But, of course, in perfect Benedict fashion, he had to outdo everyone by making our house the biggest structure in all Ferndale.
Then you have the middle class. That’s where everyone else lives, the regular families on the north side, near downtown, but the lower class, those are the hillbillies of the city. The outcast, thrown into poverty, who are all looked down upon.
I stand on the incline of the hill, on the north side of town, staring out at the house that belongs to a dead girl. It also belongs to the living sister who I’m supposed to make disappear. With my hands shoved into my coat pockets and my breath fogging the air before me, I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. Of course, my father has men who handle this sort of thing for him, but before I make that call, I need to see with my own eyes who I am dealing with. Is she this horrible troublemaker they are making her out to be? Out for vengeance?
When she finally steps out of the house, my brows tug down as I take her in. She isn’t Madison. Clearly. She isn’t a threat either. With reading glasses, an olive-green knit sweater, and jeans straining over thick thighs, this girl looks harmless. And sad.
So fucking sad.
I shouldn’t do it, but I follow her all the way to the graveyard. My chest pangs when she sits near a makeshift tombstone in the grass that is a lot fresher looking than the surrounding ones. I don’t know how long I stand there and watch as she sobs into the cool air. Plumes of fog escape her lips with each breath she releases. Her back wracks with her deep sobs. I can see it trembling, her entire body shaking from where I stand.
My lips thin into a grim line. She is still mourning the loss of her sister. Of course she is angry. But she isn’t a threat, and she sure as shit isn’t dangerous. It’s obvious Vincent knows that. He wants her gone for whatever reason. And maybe it’s best that I do get rid of her.
I make the decision, then and there, to leave her be. To protect her at any costs, because I refuse to be the one to hurt her. Not while she’s already down.
Once I get back home, I slip into my father’s office. There’s only one reason I go into his space while he’s here, and he knows it just as well as I do. It kills me to do so. To even come to this man for help, but I have no other choice. She’s not a threat, and this…this is the safest bet.
“What do you need, Sebastian?”
I square my shoulders. “I need you to find anything you can on Madison Wright’s family and her sister. I need the sister gone, far away from here. Get her a scholarship, anything that gets her far away from here. From this town, from us.”
My father pauses, a tightness stealing over his features. He leans back in his winged back chair, observing me. “Something you want to tell me?”
“No. I just need her gone. Safe, but gone.”
“You know this is
going to cost you, right?”
My lips curl over my teeth in a sneer. “Didn’t expect anything less.”
Getting up, I shake away the memory. It was Mackenzie. It all makes sense now. I never asked for her name, never looked into her any more than I needed to. I had my father take care of it after I washed my hands of the mess of that summer. I didn’t read any of the papers because the part I played, what I did, I couldn’t stomach after Madison’s death. I left for college and never looked back at Ferndale. I didn’t go home and visit my parents. That was what our vacations were for.
After high school, Mackenzie disappeared, just like I promised she would, and she became someone else’s problem. I kept my word. I took care of it. My father got her a scholarship in Nebraska, but now I see that she never took that scholarship. She went to New York instead. But why? Why not take the full ride? What was I missing?
How did she stay under the radar for so many years? And most of all, why didn’t her name click in my mind? I might not have known her first name, but Wright… I should’ve recognized the last name and that story about her past, about her sister. She was giving me everything I needed, but I was blinded. I was blinded by her and how I felt about her, so I didn’t see it. I missed it all. Like a fucking fool.
She had me, too, with the fake name. Scarlett—anything to throw me off her scent. And I bet she was banking on me not remembering. On me being so caught up in her that I didn’t see what she was trying to do all along.
But what was she trying to do?
That I still haven’t quite figured out yet.
I make my way over to the bar, pour myself a glass of amber liquid, and pick up where I left off with a glass full of liquid courage.
If there’s anything you take away from this, let it be the names of the men who took a life, men who ruined my life and didn’t even see me coming. You’ll need to remember each of them and the significant roles they play.
Trent Ainsworth.
Vincent Hawthorne.
Zach Covington.
Marcus Whitehorn.
And the last one…he’s not really a part of this story. He’s a semi-innocent bystander dragged into this by lies and years of deceit.
I knock back the remaining liquid in my glass and hiss at the burn. It’s nothing compared to the burn in my chest. Everything feels tight, constricted, making it hard to breathe.
Because if she’s saying what I think she is, that changes everything.
Brushing away her journalistic piece, I toss open the file, and the frown I was wearing earlier deepens. At this rate, it’ll be permanently glued to my face.
My heart rate skyrockets as I roam over the first page. I don’t know how it’s possible. I looked into her already. I’d purposely done it myself, so I wouldn’t miss a beat. Seems I was wrong. Mackenzie Wright was never who she said she was. She’s a lot better at lying than I anticipated.
I flip through the pages of her background check. Mackenzie Wright. Age twenty-six. Thirty thousand dollars in debt. From New York, housing unspecified. None of those are what raises the red flags. The red flags are her hometown and the pages that run over the court proceedings she attended years ago. In Ferndale. The place I grew up. The same place she grew up. Confirming what her journalistic piece has already told me.
Mackenzie is a twin.
Her fucking twin sister is none other than Madison. The same Madison who begged me to watch over her the night she died. The same sister I betrayed by covering up her death for the guys.
I shoot away from the desk and push to my feet. I stalk around my office and pace, trying to piece it together. There has to be a logical explanation. She told me she grew up in California, so she didn’t technically lie. But she had to know where I was from. And if she did, she had to know who I was. Who we all were.
How long was this plan of hers in motion? How long has she been plotting her way into my life?
That night in my office, when I caught her at the safe, she said she was writing a piece on the rest of the guys, about the corruption and wealthy life of the elite here in Los Angeles. But that wasn’t why she was here at all.
Was she the one looking into the court proceedings again? I wonder idly if everything, from the first meeting at the hotel, was all a game to her, a part of her sick plan.
Suddenly, every odd occurrence now makes sense. The night I caught her sneaking around the resort, what was she looking for? Dirt on me, maybe. And that bullshit story she fed me about an ex-boyfriend. I should’ve known better. The first woman I allow into my life after years of being alone and she turns out to be a fucking liar. A damn good one.
Hypocritical coming from me, but I didn’t enter this relationship under false pretenses. I didn’t lie about who I was. I didn’t pretend to be someone I wasn’t just to glean information. The more I think about it, the more I feel my anger rise.
I take a more thorough look at the file, and as I get deeper, the pit in my stomach grows. Everything she ever told me was a white lie. She told the truth, just not the whole truth. She twisted everything the way she wanted me to perceive it.
I freeze, my entire body locking up when I read over the court file. I know exactly what she came here for. Why she sought me out, why she wanted to know my friends and so much about the past.
Mackenzie Wright isn’t a gold digger.
No, she is far worse.
She is a scorned woman with a vendetta. She is a woman looking for justice for her twin sister. And in doing so, she thinks she has found her culprits. But she is wrong.
She has to be.
The next few days pass in a blur of boring white walls, doctor visits, help using the restroom, and therapy sessions with Dr. Aster. I’m still wary of her. Each time she walks into the room, my eyes narrow as I try to glean whatever is going on behind those calculating eyes.
When I’m not sleeping or staring at the bare walls, I’m thinking, and in here, with nothing but time? That’s such a dangerous thing to do. All I do is think about Madison. I think about the wreck. I think about the rest of the guys and wonder if they’re all lounging around, with smarmy grins on their faces while I rot in here. But most of all, I think of Baz.
I wonder what he’s thinking. I wonder what he’s doing, and I hate myself for it.
When I close my eyes every night, it’s him I think about. I can still feel his hands on my skin. It is like my body doesn’t know what it’s like to survive without him. Day after day, in the turbulent chaos of my mind, I think about the way he made me feel and the warmth that would billow in my chest when he was near me. Then, those whispered words filter in, reminding me of all the bad, reminding me of just how foolish I was when I gave him pieces of myself. Because he was the monster I was after all along. All the parts of me still in love with Baz are dripping like nectar from my bones.
Flashes of those women on his bed prompt my heart to squeeze like in a vise. My chest tightens just thinking about him with another woman. Let alone two of them. I picture all the ways they could’ve pleasured him, and I grow angry. The backs of my eyes burn with emotion. I grit my teeth, trying to push those thoughts away. I shouldn’t care. Not after what he’s done.
I should hate him.
I need to hate him.
But deep down, I’m not sure I can do it.
When you love someone, it’s easy to fool yourself into believing it’s hate instead. They’re two sides of the same coin, both one and the same, and the two emotions are starting to blur together for me.
If I want to come out of being here with one thing, it’s to forget about my feelings for Baz and, instead, turn them into something else entirely. I want him to hurt the way I am hurting. I want him to suffer, just like the rest of them are supposed to.
I’m snapped out of my thoughts when the door is cracked open, and I have to actively refrain from rolling my eyes when I see who it is. Dr. Aster comes in with her stupid square-framed glasses, her stupid face, and the same stupid nurses. She
forces a semblance of a smile, but I see right through it. I know her kind all too well. She doesn’t care about me and my well-being. She just wants to prove to everyone that I belong here, and I refuse to let that be the case.
Summoning all my strength, I hold back a sneer as she makes her way in, just like she always does. Dr. Aster makes herself comfortable, finding an empty chair, pulling it up to the side of my bed and folding her hands across her lap. She stares at me expectantly.
“How are you today, Madison?” she asks.
The world shifts violently off its gently rotating axis.
My gaze narrows, and my heart thumps wildly in my chest. “What did you just call me?”
Her head inclines a few centimeters to the right as she regards me. She pops an inquisitive brow.
I grit my teeth. Propping myself up, I lean forward. “Why did you call me that?” I ask more forcefully.
Nothing flashes across her face. She just continues staring at me before she writes something down in her stupid little notebook.
“I just wanted to make sure you knew who you were,” she states, rather matter-of-factly. Like it’s normal for a doctor to call me by my dead sister’s name.
“Of course, I know who I am. I’m not a fucking idiot. And if you couldn’t tell, I don’t like being called by my sister’s name.”
“Why is that?” she asks, leaning forward ever so slightly. I realize she’s challenging me.
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because she’s fucking dead?”
“But is she really?” she asks.
Silence descends. My heart is pounding a violent beat in my chest. My brows tug low over my lids.
“What are you saying?”
She leans back, exhaling a breath dramatically. Everything she does has a purpose, and with each meeting, I’m left trying to figure out what the hell it all means. Each of our meetings is a sparring session of sorts. It’s the battle of wits and wills. How deep can she get into my mind and how far away can I push her from the truth?
