A Beautiful Lie (12 page)

All of this just helped to reinforce her views on love and happily ever after and that they were just one big messy entanglement she didn’t need in her life.  No man would ever want to settle down with a woman that couldn’t love him back and refused to give him all of herself because she was afraid of turning out like her father.  No woman would ever really want to be her friend because they could sense she kept part of herself hidden to avoid being hurt.  She had acquaintances and she had dates. She had people she hung out with and men who she slept with when her hands and toys couldn’t get her off.  All of those things just made her an obvious choice for recruitment.  And it made her decision that much easier.

She didn’t have a family to depend on or turn to—she only had herself.  Even though she was alone, deep down inside she was still the same person.  If her father called her and told her he missed her and wanted her to come home, she would have dropped out of school to go back home.  Regardless of how many miles she put between them, he was still her father.  And he was still a tool that could be used against her.

In the middle of July, Annabelle found herself sitting on a bench outside of the Arts and Sciences building doing some advanced research for her senior project.  She was one of a handful of students who lived in campus housing year-round.  Some of the professors usually felt sorry for the students that had nowhere to go during the summer months and gave them class syllabuses and outlines a few weeks early just to give them something to do on the quiet campus during the summer.

She was busy reading a study from Stanford about the impact of new technology on still photography and didn’t notice the man who sat down beside her.

He studied her for several long minutes, admiring the fact that she was so engrossed in her reading she hadn't even acknowledged his presence with a glance, a shift of her body, or a change in her breathing.

Everything he'd learned about her intrigued him.  She'd be good at this job, maybe even one of the best.  Now all he had to do was use his power of persuasion and she'd be his.

“Annabelle Elizabeth Parker, born April 25, 1981, daughter to Joe and Annie Parker,” the man spoke after a few minutes of silence.

Annabelle’s head jerked up at the first sound of his voice, and her fear at the knowledge he possessed made her skin crawl.  Parker didn't think he looked like a crazy stalker; he looked like a professor.  He appeared to be in his mid-forties. He had on khakis, a blue and white checkered button-down, and well-worn Oxfords on his feet.  All he was missing was the tweed jacket with leather on the elbows.  The thought made Parker laugh to herself.   She figured maybe he was one of her new teachers this year and someone from Admissions had pointed her out.  She calmed her racing heart with that thought.

“Do I know you?” she asked politely, just in case he really was one of her professors.  She figured there was no sense pissing him off before the first day of class.

“No, but I know you,” he said conspiratorially with a wink.

Annabelle was raised by a cop; she grew up surrounded by other cops.  She was taught at a young age not to trust or talk to strangers.  This man looked at her like he knew everything about her. He studied her like he was looking for the hidden meaning of life.  It left her feeling uneasy and just a little bit on edge.

She started nervously gathering her books and stuffing them into her backpack that rested on the ground by her feet, keeping her head down to avoid looking the man in the eyes.  Annabelle quickly stood up and flung the pack over one of her shoulders.

“If you’ll excuse me, I have some friends I’m supposed to meet,” she told him as she started to back away.

“Your mother died from Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia when you were seventeen years old," the man said, easing his arm to the back of the bench.  "She was diagnosed a year earlier, and for your entire senior year of high school, you sat by her bedside and watched her die.  She and your father were high school sweethearts and were married for eighteen years, three months and nineteen days the day she died."

The fake, polite smile Annabelle had previously plastered on her face quickly died.

"You spent eight months trying to nurse your father back to the land of the living, or should I say, out of the bottom of the bottle—to no avail.  On an average, for those eight months, he drank twenty-five ounces of whiskey every single day.  Now, it’s closer to thirty-five.  But you wouldn’t know that since the last time you spoke to your father was the day you left for college, almost three years ago, the day he told you for the hundredth time how much he hated the sight of you.  Only that time he called you by your mother’s name and you smacked him across the face.”

Annabelle’s blood had long since run cold as she stood there listening to a complete stranger tick off intimate facts about her life.  She stood a few feet away from him, unable to move, clutching the strap of her backpack hanging from her shoulder so tight her knuckles turned white.

He sat calmly on the bench with his ankle propped up on the opposite knee, studying his cuticles.

“You have acquaintances, not friends.  No one knows that your father is an alcoholic and you look so much like your mother you could have been twins.  You have affairs, not love.  There isn’t a man out there who could make you believe in happily ever after considering what you’ve witnessed with your father.  You’ve slept with a total of four men and none of them know your middle name or the name of the town you grew up in which was Manchester Township, Michigan, by the way.  Population: four-thousand-one-hundred-and-two.”

The rage and the embarrassment Annabelle felt made her want to lash out at this man.

“Who in the hell do you think you are?  I’m calling the police, you psychotic fuck.”

She turned, about to make a run for it, knowing a blue campus security phone was exactly one block away. 

“You just filled out an application for a student loan totaling twenty-three thousand dollars, which is currently in the process of being denied by the Financial Aid department.  You have exactly two thousand and thirty six dollars in your bank account, the sum total of all that is left of your mother’s life insurance policy.  The bottom line, Annabelle Parker, you can’t afford to finish college.”

The man watched her stop in her tracks and knew he had her...hook, line, and sinker.  He hoped he would get a raise for this one.

She stood with her back to the man, fighting back tears.  She’d looked at her bank account every day for the past six months, hoping it would magically quadruple in size.  She knew she wouldn’t have enough money for her last year, room and board, and food. She did everything she could to stretch out the money, but photography supplies were expensive.  Annabelle filled out the financial aid forms a few weeks ago, praying that something good would finally come her way.  She briefly wondered if this guy was from the Financial Aid department and that was why he knew so much about her.  But Annabelle was pretty certain it wasn't a job requirement to know the sexual history of all the applicants.

Annabelle was lost in thought, something she shouldn’t have been with a stranger that knew entirely too many personal details about her sitting just a few feet away. His arm suddenly came around her from behind, causing her to jump in fear.  She was amazed by the way he was able to sneak up on her so quietly.

He held a large manila envelope in front of her and spoke quietly into her ear.

“There’s some interesting information in here, Miss Parker.  Look it over.  I’ll be in touch.”

Since she refused to take the envelope or anything else he might have offered; it dropped down to the ground in front of her as he walked away.  She lost track of time as she stood there in the middle of campus shaking with fear.  She didn’t understand how someone could know so much information about her.  He had known how many men she slept with and about that awful day in her father’s kitchen when she left for college.  No one should know that information, and it scared the hell out of her that this man had so casually walked up to her in a public place and listed these things off the top of his head like it was no big deal.

Annabelle quickly looked around to see if anyone was near before dropping to the ground, picking up the envelope, and shoving it in her backpack.  She had run the whole way back to her dorm, shaking with apprehension at what could possibly be in the envelope and knowing that if that man already knew so much about her, and could locate her in the middle of a huge campus, he would easily be able to find her again.

Annabelle had unlocked her door with trembling hands, sat down on the bed in her dorm, and tore open the flap of the envelope, dumping the contents on top of her bedspread.  At least fifty pictures slipped out and flopped down to the bed in a scattered pile.  She threw the envelope to the floor and picked up one of the pictures.  It was a black and white photo of her father.  A man twice his size stood behind him, holding his arms behind his back while another man stood in front of him, his fist frozen in time against her father’s cheek.

She threw that one down on the bed and picked up another, this one in color.  It showed her father walking down the steps of her old home, his face badly beaten.  One eye was black and blue, he had a split lip, a cut above his eyebrow, and a bandage over his nose that most likely signified it was broken.

Annabelle tossed that one aside and picked up yet another, and another, and another until she had looked through each and every picture.  They were all more or less the same.  Her father with his face beat to hell or her father looking scared to death while he talked with some man in a suit.  Each photo was dated, not one was a duplicate.  The earliest photo was one of her father exchanging money with the same man in a suit.  It was dated six months before her mother died.

Annabelle had no idea what any of this was supposed to mean.  She didn’t understand what her father had gotten himself into or why she cared.  She shoved the pictures aside and grabbed the small note card that had fallen out with them.  Written in the middle of the card in block letters was a name:  Anthony Capuano.

Annabelle had flipped the card over, hoping for something else, but the back was blank.  She scrambled off of the bed and over to her desk, powering on her laptop.  She did a Google search for Anthony Capuano.  There were six-thousand-four-hundred-and-nineteen results.

The first link had provided took her to the New York Times and told her all she needed to know.

Parker let herself into the villa, grabbing a sock to stick between the door jam and the lock so Garrett could get back in.  She peeled off her sweaty clothes as she made her way to the bathroom for a quick shower.  As she stood under the warm spray and let the tension wash away, Parker thought back over everything that happened that day in college.  She would never allow herself to second guess her decision.  It had been the right one for her to make at the time.  The job had taught her so many things—things she’d never forget and things she wished she could forget.  Most of all, she wished she could forget the items in the envelope.  Garrett could blame her for lying about the job all he wanted, but no matter what, she was still the same person inside, the same person who would do anything for those she loved.

Garrett still wasn’t back to the villa by the time Parker got out of the shower.  She wasn’t going to worry about him or go looking for him.  She had said her piece and he was a big boy.  He could forgive her and they could move on, or he could continue to ignore her and be pissed.  The choice was up to him.

She dressed for bed in a pink Victoria’s Secret tank top and matching draw-string pajama bottoms and crawled into the king-sized haven, scooting as far over to one side as she could without falling on the floor.  Parker wondered if Garrett would climb in with her when he got to the room or if he'd sleep on the floor.  She wondered if he would even come back to the room at all.  She turned off the lamp on the nightstand and shut her eyes, trying to shut down her mind and not think about that day in college, but it was useless.

Annabelle had wished she could blame her father for everything.  It would be so easy to just give in to the hurt and the anger and finally admit that if it wasn’t for his bad choices, she wouldn’t have needed to clean up his mess.  In a sense it was true, but Annabelle wasn’t the type of person to do that.  No matter the circumstances, he was still her family.

Annabelle had found out that Anthony Capuano was the head of the New Jersey criminal syndicate.  In layman’s terms, he was in the mob.  He ran everything and everyone on the entire East Coast.  A few months into Annabelle’s mother’s illness, Joe Parker realized the medical bills were piling up.  Through a few back door connections at work, he was put in touch with a man who could give him an immediate loan, no questions asked, no references needed, no copies of ten years’ worth of pay stubs and tax returns required.  Joe was able to pay Anthony back with interest in the time allotted, and that should have been the end of it.  But then there were more bills, along with funeral costs, and it snowballed from there.  After Annabelle left for college, Joe borrowed well beyond his means and started gambling to pay back those debts, only to incur more on top of it.  Week after week he was punished for not coming up with the money, and week after week he continued to fall further into the hole.  By the time Annabelle was contacted, her father was in so deep with the mob there was no way out. 

A call to Annabelle’s cell phone three days later by an “unavailable number” provided her with the name of a restaurant, a date, and time before disconnecting without another word.  Annabelle almost skipped the appointment, but curiosity got the better of her.  The man that had spoken to her on campus a few days earlier was the one to show up and sit down across from her.  She would later find out that his name was Agent Brad Richmond, with the CIA, and they had been keeping her under surveillance for three years due to her father’s dealings with Anthony Capuano.  When they realized how intelligent she was, that as a cop’s daughter she had a wealth of knowledge about law enforcement, and that before her mother got sick she was a member of the junior rifle league, and by the time she was thirteen could handle a weapon better than adult men three times her age, they knew they wanted her as one of their own.  It was an added bonus that she was a self-imposed loner thanks to her father and that she was desperate to finish college.