Dare: A Stepbrother Romance (15 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

DREW

My fucking prick of a Dad was going down.

I’d been lying low for a week now, because he had no idea it was going to be his own son who took him down. I wanted it to be a surprise. I wanted to see his mouth drop open in a perfect ‘O’ when they called me to testify against him and tell the judge exactly what he’d been doing.

You shoulda heard the way the bastard tried to explain things to me when everything had blown up in his face. He’d just gotten out of the shower when Marie and Sophie went tearing out of the house, and his face was ashen when he’d seen me standing in the study with all the evidence of his deception.

“Son, this is all a misunderstanding,” he’d said, his face twisted in faux sadness. “When I found that toothbrush to give to the police a few weeks ago, I went back looking for more stuff in the attic the next day to see if there was anything else that might help prove it was Marie’s ex-husband who wrote those letters. I found the comb, an old letter and his old cologne. I thought that’d help prove it was definitely him, and I took it to the police but they said they already had enough. I kept it, just in case they ever did need it.”

I was willing to bet a million bucks he’d paid off a police officer to back that claim up if the need ever arose.

“Oh yeah? And what about this sheet of paper where it looks like you’ve been trying to learn to write just like him?” I’d said, unable to believe he was still telling such bald-faced lies.

He sighed. “Because we hadn’t heard from him again after we paid him off, I thought maybe I could pretend to write a letter from him to Marie, saying he’d received the money and was going to leave us alone. Just to give her peace of mind. I never ended up getting good enough at it to pull that off, though.”

Yeah, sure.

“Right. And what about the petition to divorce papers and the land sale documents? She had no idea one of your companies was buying the land, judging by her reaction just now.”

“I don’t know what to tell you. She was well aware that she was selling the land to one of my subsidiary companies. She was also well aware of all the money I’d make from developing it, and as my wife, she was going to be entitled to half. If she says otherwise, she’s lying. I have no idea why she’s reacting like this. Perhaps the stress of everything has driven her a little nuts.”

Jesus. He was actually trying to claim that Marie was just crazy.

“As for the petition to divorce papers,” he continued. “Well, I’ve had them sitting there for a while on the off chance the marriage does disintegrate. It doesn’t mean I was planning on divorcing her.”

It was all bullshit with a capital B. He was trying to get me on his side, because he knew if his own son testified against him, he’d be sprung. I honestly couldn’t believe he thought I was that stupid that I’d believe any of his crap. It was just so fucking obvious that he was lying.

I hadn’t tried to contact Sophie since she left. I knew what she thought of me now, and I knew if I even tried, she’d probably murder me. I didn’t exactly have the best track record at keeping her trust. All I could do was wait until she and her Mom realized I was going to help them in their case against my Dad, and then she’d realize I‘d had absolutely no part in the deception. Then I’d finally have her back in my arms again…if she was willing to look past the fact that my father had royally screwed her mother.

Right now I was meeting with Kevin Beck, who was going to be representing Marie in the case she was bringing against my father.

His eyes narrowed at me behind his glasses. “So what are you doing here, Drew? Come to offer a deal from your father? Because I’ll tell you now, Marie will
not
be paid off to keep her mouth shut. She wants justice for what he did. She deserves justice.”

“I know. I’ve come to help.”

His eyebrows shot up. “
You
want to help Marie?”

“Yes. My Dad is full of shit. I know he’s lying, and if you guys are bringing a case against him, I want to testify against him.”

Kevin took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes before looking back at me. “Son, if you actually want to do this, you know your father will be in a lot of trouble. He’ll face jail time.”

“Good.”             

He stared at me for a long moment, clearly not believing that I was actually serious.

“This isn’t a trick,” I said. “I don’t care if he’s my father. He destroyed an innocent woman’s life, just so he could develop that land and make a huge amount of money off it. He’s a fucking shark.”

“That’s exactly what he is,” Kevin said. “And we intend to make him pay. Drew…if you really want to do this, then this is a major coup for us. Right now we barely have a case. It’s basically Marie’s word against your father’s. But with your testimony, we’ll actually have a very decent shot at beating your father. I assume he’s destroyed the evidence you found in his study?”

“Well, he tried to tell me that it wasn’t even evidence.”

I filled him in on the excuse Dad had given me, and Kevin guffawed. “Christ. He must think we’re all a bunch of idiots.”

“I think he’s panicking. He’s used to people saying yes to him and believing everything he says.”

“So has he destroyed it or not?”

“I don’t know. He says he hasn’t, but who knows with him? Either way, he doesn’t know that I managed to liberate this from his office before he tried to clean up.”

I pulled out a sheet of paper from my bag. It was the scrap paper he’d been using to try and emulate the handwriting of Sophie’s father.

“I found this in his office along with the other stuff. He has an excuse for it, but any court will think that excuse is bullshit. He says he just wanted to write one fake letter to Marie to give her peace of mind. No one will believe that for a second, right?”

Kevin nodded and then stood up before extending a hand. “You’re doing a good thing, young man. It can’t be easy for you to abandon your own father and testify against him.”

I nodded, unsure of how to respond. It actually wasn’t that hard. The minute I’d figured out what he was up to, I’d started to hate him. I didn’t care if he lost his whole fortune. I didn’t care if he went to prison. I didn’t even care about the inheritance money I’d lose if I went ahead with this; hell, I made an okay amount at my modeling jobs, and I still had my trust fund. That had become legally mine as soon as I turned eighteen, and my Dad couldn’t touch it.

He could shove the rest up his ass.

All that mattered to me was Sophie. My Sophie. And now that I was working with her mother’s lawyer, I was going to get her back.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

SOPHIE

“It’s going to be okay,” Cerie said, squeezing my hand.

Lana was sitting on the other side of me in the doctor’s office, and she rubbed my back. “Yeah, it will be fine. No matter what happens, we’re here for you.”

I stared anxiously at a poster on the medical center’s wall before gazing down at my feet. “I don’t even know if I actually am pregnant. The test was positive, but I was bleeding a little bit this morning. So maybe the test was wrong and my period was just late.”

“My Mom said that when she was pregnant with me and my brothers, she had a bit of spotting in the early stages,” Cerie said. “It really freaked her out, but apparently it’s normal. So you might still be pregnant.”

She saw my face and backtracked. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out.”

“I know. I just don’t understand how this could have happened. I’m on the pill!”

“That can happen,” Lana said. “But there’s no point over-stressing yourself about it until you’ve actually seen the doctor.”

She was right, but I couldn’t help but stress about it. What would I do if I
was
pregnant? Would I have to drop the idea of going to college altogether? Did I really want to be a single mom at eighteen? So many questions, and so little time for me to think of any real answers. Just a few weeks ago during Drew’s pregnancy scare with Vanessa, I’d been thinking of how I wasn’t ready to be a stepmom…and now I was having to worry about being an actual mom. Alone.

A short grey-haired doctor emerged from the hallway and called my name.

“Sophie Ramirez?”

I stood up and followed her into her office, and she gestured for me to sit.

“Hi, Sophie, I’m Dr. Lang. What can I do for you today?” she asked, pulling up my records on her computer screen.

I clasped my hands together in my lap and mumbled a response. “I think I might be pregnant. My period was late, and I took a test. It said it was positive, but I started bleeding a bit this morning, so I don’t know what’s going on.”

She nodded. “I see here that you were prescribed a contraceptive pill a while ago. Have you still been taking it?”

“Yes. That’s why I’m so confused.”

“Unfortunately, contraceptives aren’t one-hundred percent effective. There are a number of different things that can make them fail, but first things first. Let’s see if you’re actually pregnant before we worry about anything else.”

“Okay.”

“Now, the quickest and easiest way for me to test that right here is if you give me a urine sample. Would you be able to go in the bathroom and fill this jar for me?”

She handed me a plastic specimen container, and I headed into the bathroom. Luckily, I’d had three cups of tea this morning, and that always made me need to pee like crazy. When I’d filled the specimen jar, I took it back in and gave it to the doctor. She took it into another part of the room and dipped some sort of strip in it, and she returned a few minutes later.

“Okay, Sophie, the pregnancy strip is definitely testing positive for HCG. That means it’s most likely that you are pregnant. I’d like to confirm by running some blood tests and doing a physical examination. When was your last period?”

“Five weeks ago.”

“We date pregnancies according to the date of your last ovulation, which would usually be around two weeks before your period. So that would put the pregnancy at seven weeks. Now, would you mind getting up on the exam table? I’ll do a quick ultrasound, and then I’ll send you down the hall to get some blood taken.”

Holy crap. Seven weeks pregnant, and I’d had no idea. I had been experiencing intermittent bouts of nausea over the last couple of weeks, but I’d assumed it was just stress or bad food.

I lay back on the exam table, and Dr. Lang lifted my shirt and rubbed a cool gel on my belly.

“Just relax,” she said. “At seven weeks, we can detect a tiny little heartbeat, so let’s have a look.”

She ran the ultrasound over my belly, keeping her eyes on the monitor.

“You said you’ve been experiencing some spotting?” she said, a concerned expression marring her otherwise friendly features.

“Yes.”

“Okay, Sophie, it looks like what has happened is that you
were
pregnant, but you’re experiencing an early miscarriage. That’s what’s causing the bleeding. There’s no heartbeat here.”

“So…so I was pregnant? But now I’m not?”

She nodded and wiped the gel off my stomach.

“This is actually very common,” she said in a soothing tone. “What a lot of people don’t know is that many pregnancies are lost in the very early stages. Some women don’t even notice, and they think it’s just their period when they bleed and cramp. You didn’t do anything to cause it, it’s just part of nature.”

She sat down and then began to type on her keyboard. “You’ll probably experience some more bleeding in the next few days, along with some cramping. You might also see some small clots. I’m going to prescribe you a mild sedative for the pain and also some antibiotics to stave off infection. I’ll also need you to come back in around a week and a half from now, just so we can confirm that all the tissue has expelled itself from your body.”

I nodded, unable to speak.

Only minutes ago, I’d been concerned about being pregnant to the Devil himself, aka Drew, but now…now all I felt was a crushing sense of loss at the discovery that I’d lost our baby before it was even a properly-formed fetus. That feeling led me to one indubitable conclusion. Despite everything, I still loved him.

Dr. Lang saw my eyes fill with tears, and she patted me on the shoulder.

“Just because this was an early miscarriage doesn’t mean it’s in any way less traumatic,” she said. “If you’d like, I can refer you to a counsellor. They’re very good at helping people cope with losses.”

I shook my head. This was my pain, and I didn’t want to share it with anyone. She stared at me for a moment before speaking again.

“This doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. The majority of women who experience miscarriages go on to experience healthy pregnancies.”

“Mm-hmm.”

I could still barely speak. My brain felt like it was about to explode. My only solace was the fact that at least I wouldn’t ever have to speak to Drew about it. If I was still pregnant, then I would have had to contact him to inform him. That would have been the right thing to do, even though he obviously didn’t care all that much about doing the right thing.

I left with Cerie and Lana a few minutes later, and I didn’t say a word until we reached the car.

“Oh god…I’m so sorry, Soph,” Lana said when I finally told them what the doctor had said. “I know this probably won’t make you feel any better, but at least you can still go to college now, I guess?”

She was right. It didn’t make me feel any better.

I stared out the window as Cerie drove us back to my house. Even though it was summer, the sky was still filled with grey clouds. Great, now even the weather was depressing. Screw this month. No,
fuck
this month. Way to kick a girl when she’s down, universe.

“Do you want us to come spend the rest of the day with you?” Cerie asked as her car lingered in the drive. She and Lana both had the same expression; a mixture of concern and apprehension. Neither of them knew how to help me, because none of us had ever gone through anything like this before.

“Thanks, but I think I just want to be alone for a while,” I replied.

“Call us if you need anything.”

When they left, I practically crawled upstairs, took some of the painkillers Dr. Lang had prescribed and then slid into bed. I was starting to get some cramps now, and I groaned as I tried to make myself comfortable.

Somehow I doubted I’d ever be comfortable again. It didn’t feel like I’d just lost a baby. It felt like I’d lost everything.