Broken: The MISTAKEN Series Complete Second Season (21 page)

S
even Years
Earlier

“
I
s Jenna around
?”

The thump-thump-thumping of the far-too-loud music was already giving me a headache and making me wonder why I was trying to weasel my way into a high school party in the first place.
Jenna
. She was all I had thought about for the past year. Well, all I had thought about between doing favors for this or that politician in exchange for information or a fat payout. She was
all
I had thought about. Now, though, I was thinking that I must be getting pretty old if a few seconds of loud music was already giving me a headache before I had even had anything to drink.

“Jenna?” The girl looked at me like I had grown an extra nose in the middle of my face. “Davis?”

I nodded. Jenna Davis. The woman I would spend the rest of my life with—now that she was a woman. She had turned eighteen over the summer and I could finally allow myself to meet her. To pursue her. A woman like her would almost certainly need pursuing. Something told me it wouldn’t be easy, but I knew I needed to find her. To at least
meet
her—at least that. I was tired of using women to get what I wanted—using them for information or to bribe them afterward. The business model I had built wasn’t sustainable—I knew that. It hadn’t stopped me from building it anyway, but I knew it wouldn’t last forever. I knew that it would come crashing down around my feet at some point, but hopefully not until after I met
her
. And if her father came down with me, then it would just be a bonus.

The girl snickered. “Jenna Davis at a party? Ri-i-ight.” She shook her head, then took another drink from a red tumbler that probably had a liquid in it that was pretty far from legal for someone her age. “You’re cute. Come in.” She swung the door open the rest of the way, stepping aside to let me through the entry.

I followed her in, feeling heat come to my cheeks. It was stupid to be embarrassed by something a high school girl was saying to me, considering I was used to hearing much more mature things from women who were quite a bit older than this girl standing in front of me. But she was also pretty cute, and if Jenna wasn’t here, I could at least talk to a few of these people. Maybe get a better idea of where she
would
be on a Saturday night.

We wedged our way among the huge crowd of people over to a corner of the large room. The girl turned back to me. “Are you in college?”

“George Mason Law.” Daniel had just graduated and it was the first thing that popped into my head. No need to tell her I hadn’t
actually
been in college in three years. No need to tell her that I was probably bribing her father or mother, or whoever it was that was the politician in her family. Considering most of the kids at this party went to Jenna’s fancy private school or the prep academy down the road, it was a fair bet that I’d had
some
interaction with almost all their parents.

“Ooh, a baby lawyer.” She lifted a brow and I could tell she was doing her best to be seductive. “I’m … Darlene. Darlene Edwards. You probably know my father.”

Damn. Not only did I know who her father was, I also knew about most of the stuff he was doing. I think
everyone
inside
and
outside the beltway knew most of the stuff he was doing, but no one had had the balls to do anything about it—not yet, anyway. Darlene was the older of the two daughters—I had learned that much some time ago. I’d spent most of my youth learning everything there was to know about the men my grandmother wanted punished for my father’s death, even if there was no way to prove any of them were involved. My grandmother was never kidding—the best way to take down a man was through his daughter. It was what she wanted and expected me to do. The opportunity had just never presented itself to me in quite this manner before. But I wasn’t there that night to take care of the “Congressman Edwards” problem, as I liked to refer to it. That night, I was only there to
meet
Jenna. Just to meet her. Not to think about how to use her or how to bribe her father when I was able to get what I wanted from her. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I wanted to do either of those things, anyway—to use her or to take down her father. Tonight, I just wanted to see her up close, in her own habitat. Get to know her as a person. God, I had almost been hoping she’d be here playing the piano, but I guess the huge parties that the ultra-rich kids throw are the same kinds of parties that I went to in high school. And it wasn’t as though I hadn’t been a rich-kid type myself. I was a scholarship kid, but I had been around plenty of these types of kids in the past.

The girl pulled me by the arm and we sat down on a couch in a corner. The music wasn’t quite so loud there and there weren’t as many people, so I didn’t have to shout as loudly when I asked her my questions. “Where’s Jenna tonight?”

She rolled her eyes and shrugged before taking another gulp from her cup. “Where is she ever? Probably at some concert or at home doing her homework. She’s doing…” She made air quotes with her fingers, almost spilling her drink in the process. “…college courses, you know.”

No, I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything about her, except for the small amount of information about her that was public. Her parents obviously kept her on a tight leash, her life neatly reined in so that only the information the Davis family wanted out in public was actually available.

The girl called over my shoulder. “Hey, John. Do you know where Jenna is tonight?”

The guy looked over at the girl and shrugged. “Not here. I think she said she was going to Seattle.”

She looked back at me and took another sip from her drink. “See? Seattle. She plays a lot.”

I knew that. That was one thing I
did
know. I had gone to see her play twice in the year since my grandmother’s birthday. I had looked up Jenna’s birthday after that concert and practically counted the minutes until I could find her—until she was eighteen. I knew that was only a magic number in the eyes of the law, but it just wasn’t worth the risk. I moved to Virginia a month before I knew she would be an adult. I told Krystal it was to be closer to work—closer to the political action I was so used to taking advantage of. But really, it was to be even in the same vicinity as Jenna.

It was like a lightning bolt hit my brain and I hadn’t realized it until that moment—I was stalking her. I’d found out about this party online and just assumed she would be here because it was at the house of one of her classmates. I didn’t know her or anything about her—why would I assume she would be here? I was seriously stalking her, and it was becoming an issue. Not just an issue—it was a huge fucking problem. I felt like I needed a twelve-step program to get this girl out of my head. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t recognized it before—it was probably only because my grandmother had pointed out who she was that night in San Francisco. If I hadn’t known her name, none of this would have happened. None of it would be happening now. I wouldn’t even be here in Virginia if I hadn’t known her name. I’d become obsessed with her without even realizing it, and it was only because deep down, I must only really want to destroy her father.

I turned to the girl sitting next to me. Darlene Edwards. Taking her father down wouldn’t just be a feather in my cap, it would be a favor to anyone who cared at all about politics—and taking Congressman Edwards down wouldn’t just be a favor to my grandmother, it would be a favor to the world. It wouldn’t even be that hard—it would only take a few names from this girl, maybe some dates and times to connect the dots and get him out of politics for good. Breaking up that combination of Congressman Edwards and Senator Davis had always been a dream of my grandmother’s—so it would benefit her, too. And this girl sitting next to me was into me, I could see that in her body language. It was almost going to be
too
easy.

I turned to her, smiling, and extended my hand. “Where are my manners? It’s nice to meet you, Darlene, wasn’t it? My name is Brandon.”

S
ix Years
Earlier

“
W
hat the hell
, Brandon?”

Daniel had walked in unannounced, as usual.
The prick doesn’t even knock anymore
. I continued what I was doing without looking up, packing up the boxes without much care. I needed to get out of there—out of D.C. and away from the shit storm I had created.

He slapped his hand down on the counter in front of me. “I asked you what the hell you were doing. Care to answer?”

I glanced up at him, barely making eye contact. I wasn’t going to miss Daniel, either. Since starting whatever the hell job he had on the Hill now, he’d become a major pain in my ass. I was getting pretty tired of being an errand boy for the politicians around here, anyway, but now that he had joined the fold… I wasn’t going to miss it. Not at all. I put a few more things in the box and closed it up, pulling an empty one to rest beside it on my kitchen counter.

“You won’t believe what happened to me today. It’s the fucking luckiest thing that has ever happened to anyone on the face of the planet, ever. I can basically write my own ticket now.”

I nodded and shoved a few things into the empty box. “That’s great, Daniel. Have fun with that. I’m getting the hell out of D.C., so I don’t really give a fuck at this point.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “I’m going to be a fucking Hennessey, man.”

My arm froze above the box. I’m pretty sure my jaw hit the floor before every bit of my body turned to ice. There was only one Hennessey left. Only one person he could be talking about. I shook my head. There was no way she would be with a douche bag like Daniel. No way she would choose him if she actually had a choice.

“I know, right? I could be president. I could be the fucking president, Brandon. Can you believe this shit?” He shook his head. “All because her father is an idiot and owed my father a favor. Can you believe it?”

I shook my head slowly. No, I definitely could not believe it. “So an arranged marriage? People are still doing that?”

He shrugged and opened one of my cupboards, pulling out a bottle of scotch that I still hadn’t packed. He opened another cupboard, looking for a glass. When he saw that cupboard was already empty, he pulled the cap from the bottle and took a swig. “Who cares? I’m sure she’s just a spineless little bitch who can’t say no to her parents, anyway.”

My skin prickled. I set my jaw and emptied another cupboard into the box. This news only made me want to leave even more. Maybe she was a spineless little bitch. She would have to be to agree to be anywhere near Daniel.

“So you’re high-tailing it out of here because you still feel bad? You won, man. People get hurt in this game. Get over it.”

I felt heat rise in my cheeks and my body tensed. “Sometimes, Daniel, winning isn’t everything.”

“Are you kidding me?” He took another swig from the bottle. “Winning
is
everything. And we both won this week, so we should be celebrating.” He took another long gulp. “Where the hell are you going, anyway?”

I shrugged. “Away. West coast, maybe. I don’t know.” Somewhere far away from D.C., Daniel, the Edwards family and every politician who thought he could get some advantage over someone else by paying me to do unspeakable damage to them. Away. The farther away, the better.

“You’ll have to come back for the wedding. I’m going to get married at that compound in Maine. No one’s been invited there in years, but I’m going to throw it open for the world to see. Invite the tabloids. It’s going to be epic.”

“Great.” With everything that had just happened in the past year, I hadn’t let myself even think about Jenna Davis. There hadn’t been room in my head for it. I had fucked up everything with Polly. Her lying about being Darlene when we met at that party hadn’t helped, but shit… Nothing had turned out how I had planned. Nothing had come out the way I expected. I mean, I knocked up a fucking sixteen-year-old…

I grabbed the bottle out of Daniel’s hand and took my own long drink before returning to packing. The only way out of this was
out
. Out of D.C. and out of politics. I didn’t even care about taking anyone else down. The sick feeling in the pit of my stomach was enough to tell me that I wasn’t cut out for this work. At least not like this—not up close and personal. And now, Daniel was going to have the senator’s daughter. It was too much to think about. Too much to bear.

“Yeah, I have to wait a couple years, though. Her parents agreed to keep her here until they think she’s old enough for me, but then she’s
mine
. They want her to finish college, then business school or law school, maybe. She’s a smart little thing, though. Already finished two years of college while she was in high school. And her dad’s pretty sure she’s still a virgin, so there’s that…”

I rubbed my temples. This was about the last thing I ever wanted to talk about, particularly with
Daniel.
The guy was an asshole on a good day, and he sure as hell didn’t deserve someone with Jenna’s talent…

“Wait, she’s not playing piano? Not going to music school?”

He chuckled. “You really
do
know everything about the Davis family, don’t you?” He took another swig from the bottle. “No, they made her give it up. It couldn’t have mattered too much to her since she agreed to it. I told you she was a spineless little bitch.”

Because they didn’t give her a choice.
I didn’t know her and she didn’t know me, but there was something inside me that
knew,
without a doubt, that
she
hadn’t made that decision. I’d heard her play too many times to believe otherwise.

“Four years, man. You’ll have to come back for the wedding. Four years and I’ll be a Hennessey by marriage. I should be ready to run for office by then, too. I can take that little bitch out with me on campaign stops—it’ll be like automatic votes. I can’t even believe this is real.”

My insides felt like they had turned to stone, and I knew in that moment that it was over. There was never going to be a Brandon and Jenna and I would never hear her play again.

I couldn’t believe it was real, either.