The Rebirth of Sin (Wicked Trinity Book 2) (12 page)

She made me talk to her lackey—husband—whenever I needed to speak to her after the compound burned down. It pissed me off to no end, but I had other things on my mind to worry about other than her need to be petty. “Instead of making me talk to you through Adam, you should’ve answered the fucking phone when I called and discussed the reason you were so upset with me. I’m sure you feel monumentally dumb right now; you were angry over something that wasn’t true.”

“You have to admit you were acting like a new Noah with her,” she said, finding her fight. “The things you did to and for her? You’ve never been that soft on anyone.” She paused for a beat to stare out of her window. “I caught a few of the things you said to her—especially that night. Do you really love her?”

“You know most of what I said to her—many of the things you didn’t hear—were lies.”

“Why lie about it?” she asked, shrugging her shoulders and raising her voice. I gave her a look to make her keep it in check. She nodded, complying, and set her eyes back to the window. “Why didn’t you break her like you did the other girls?”

“I did what needed to be done to change Keaton at the time. Treating her with the same formula wouldn’t have worked; it would’ve repeated the same outcomes as all the other women before her. I needed a different reaction with her, especially once I found out she’d been raped. I needed Keaton to change, but still be compliant to me and what I wanted.”

“Why?” she asked, blurting out the question in a bad-tempered way. “Why is she so fucking special?”

I let my silence be her answer. I could see the glint of her pearly whites in my peripheral vision as she slowly caught on.

“You, jerk!” She laughed. “Why didn’t you trust me and tell me all this before?”

“Partially, because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with her. Something was made clear to me this morning. Keaton is going to be very important to what we need to do.” I gripped the steering wheel a little tighter as traffic became intense. I thought about the questions Keaton had asked me when I found her in Quebec City. It was mostly an exchange where I let her make up the answers to the questions she asked me because I was too tired to think up creative lies for her. Her answers seemed plausible, so I let her think her assumptions were right. “Did you tell her everything you were directed to say when she found out the truth?”

She bobbed her head. “To the letter.”

“And she believed it all?”

“She’s with you now, isn’t she?” She grabbed her purse from the ground and rummaged through it. “So what’s up with the eye patch? Did she turn rabid puppy on you?”

“If you pull out a piece of gum,” I warned, pissed off that she reminded me of something I wanted to forget and doing one of the many things that drove me fucking crazy about her. “I will throw you out of the car onto the fucking highway.”

“Fine, killjoy. Sheesh. No gum.” She threw her arms across her chest and exhaled loudly. “I see being with Keaton hasn’t kept you from being tense as hell all the time.” She flicked her nails. “Why was I summoned to D.C. of all fucking places?”

“This is where it all begins,” I replied.

“You mean this is where you need my help because you haven’t gotten her to where she needed to be yet? All the shit I told you about how to fuck a woman’s head went on deaf ears, huh?”

“For the record,” I contended, “you never taught me how to fuck with heads, I’ve been doing that a long time, Nadine, before I ever met you. The only thing you did do, is help me find out how to hone my needs and keep them more controlled. Mrs. Sherman began the process, but it ended with you.”

“Then why do you need me here? What’s the problem?”

I shifted in my seat, hating the way she phrased it and further hating that she knew I needed her. “What I’m doing to her is making her resilient toward me, not pliant.”

“What do you need me to do?”

I flashed my signature smirk at her. “What you do best, Nadine.”

“Hope was the disease of the devil.” 

-THE SECT

I felt harried and haggard after a very busy day. If I were physically able to sit down, I wouldn’t have had a second’s rest to do so.

I looked at the people inside my mother’s office, requesting nine different things at once. Between the battles I waged with Noah, my friends, my mother, and now taking up a position for a job in which I felt wholly unqualified for, I was on a downward spiral, losing everything I tried to regain. 

“Phone call for your mother.” Mrs. Harris, my mother’s secretary walked into the office and spoke over the creative director who fretted over the theme for the next makeup collection. “But I thought you could take it.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Harris,” I apologized with an equally apologetic smile. “I can’t take it now. Can you put the call on hold until I finish this up?” 

“He’s been on hold for fifteen minutes.” Her eyes shot darts at the creative director and the new trade manager who began talking over one another. “I buzzed you fifteen minutes ago about him, and you said to give you ten.”

“Right,” I said, recollecting. “Can you take a message?”

“After I told him you were here, he said he needed to speak with you,” she replied. “Immediately.” She overemphasized the word and nodded persistently.

“But he called my mother’s office, why would he need to speak to me unless…?” I looked down at the mockups, lipstick samples, and the comp cards for the choice of celebrities to become a spokesmodel for our next collection. “Who is it?”

“Braedan Michaels.”

My chin immediately slanted up. My face scrunched up as I tried to seek a motive in his need for me. 

“Your mother is on the road, remember?” Mrs. Harris reminded me. “Maybe he wants to talk to you because he might not be able to get to her.”

“Veronica would move oceans to make sure my mother was able to speak with him. He’s the golden boy for her campaign. Strange.” I turned back to the people in my office and gave them their marching orders in quick succession. They filed out, intending to carry out their duties.

I stared at the blinking light on the phone for a few counted breaths. Clearing my throat, I picked up the receiver and pressed the blinking light. “Sherilynn Mara’s office,” I said in my chipper professional voice. “This is Keaton Mara speaking. Whom am I speaking with?”

There was a pause and the clearing of a throat. “Braedan.” The quality of his voice was so hoarse, low, and soft I had to strain to hear him. It was also deeply masculine. There was warmth and friendliness in his cadence that could’ve easily provoked the most untrusting individual to trust everything he had to say. “I missed the opportunity to meet with you the other night.”

“Right.” I cleared the sudden obstruction in my throat and drank a little of the bottle of water on my desk. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“Your mother…” Silence hit the line for enough seconds to make me think something was wrong, “She didn’t tell you, did she?”

“Tell me what?” I pulled out my chair intending to sit down, but the cramp between my thighs changed my mind. I swiveled around to appreciate the view of the downtown area through the floor to ceiling windows.

“I spoke to her a few days ago. We discussed the charity event occurring next month. I offhandedly mentioned that I didn’t have a date and she requested—actually, she
pleaded
with me to call you. I apologize for the time it took me to ring you. I was hoping to speak to you at the charity event and well… I’ve been occupied.” He added in an even quieter tone, “Or maybe I was a little nervous about speaking with you.”

Noah had fallen quickly from my mother’s good graces and as typical of her, she was lining up the next available prospect.

“Are you there, Keaton?”

“Yes. Sorry.” I touched the cold glass, watching the snowflakes create water bubbles on the glass. “Nervous about speaking with me? I’m not anyone important, Braedan.”

“I suppose…with the way people who know you have talked about you and other things, there’s a lot of celebrity attached to your name.” 

It seemed every one of my friends had met Braedan and were so taken with him, they chatted about me. No one wanted to see me with Noah. I couldn’t uncover a reason to disagree with them. At this point, I should have. I was never one to so easily give up. I still had a modicum of faith in the real Noah. 

Closing my eyes, I listened to the faint sound of the traffic below. “I’m sorry I’m not very talkative. It’s been a very long day.”

“I won’t trouble you,” he muttered under his breath, the dispiritedness in his voice tangible. “I was reluctant to call you. I figured it was worth a try. Another time.”

The disappointment in his voice made me feel guilty. “I’m sorry.”

“That would count as the third time you’ve apologized to me, and we’ve only been on the phone for a few minutes. You don’t need to, Keaton.” The deepened and commanding overtone in his voice sent a shuddering chill down my spine. 

I examined the ceiling, sure that they turned on the air conditioning by mistake. “You should make a profession of speaking to people, your voice…it’s…”

“It’s,” he drawled, apparently waiting for me to jump in at anytime, “what?”

Ideal for a phone-sex operator.
I punished the thought and shoved it quickly out of my head.
“I want to say sorry for apologizing so much, but you said I shouldn’t. I can’t help it. I feel like nothing I do is right anymore and every decision I make is never a good one. I’ve been apologizing a lot.” Exhaling expressively, I placed my forehead against the cold glass allowing it to numb my headache. “I’m overwhelmed.” Remembering what I was taught and fully aware that dumping my problems on him would be deemed inappropriate, I quickly readopted my professional voice. “I shouldn’t have done that. I should let you go.”

“I have time, Keaton,” he assured me, the warmth in his voice felt like a tangible electric blanket placed over my shoulders. “If you need someone to talk to, I’m here.”

“I really shouldn’t,” I asserted at a level below a whisper. 

“We don’t know each other, and it’s all the more reason you should. I don’t have any expectations of you, nor do you have any of me.”

“You could be the press. It’s not a good idea.”

He laughed, low and huskily. It was infectious enough to make me smile. I looked up at my reflection, beyond my red-streaked, tired eyes and my broad white smile. It had been a very long time since I’d smiled so brightly. He had a very contagious way about him; it was mystifying. 

“I’m not a member of the press. Not remotely. I won’t mislead you and say I don’t have connections to the press or that I don’t own a media conglomerate, but it wouldn’t make sense for me to betray you or your mother’s trust when all I want is to help her win the senate seat. If anything, I’ve been keeping the negative publicity away from your mother.”

“Why
are
you helping her?”

“Because I believe in what she believes. Her interests and hope for a change in certain policies align with my ideas.”

“And what are those policies, Mr. Michaels?”

“It’s simply Braedan.” I heard him exhale as if smoking a cigarette. “Don’t think I didn’t catch onto your diversion tactic. Keaton…” he left my name to dangle in the air for a moment. “You can say anything to me without any worries of me seeing you any differently or betraying your trust. Anonymity breeds honesty.”

“You will see me differently,” I groaned. A part of me wanted to unload. I was brimming with so many thoughts and feelings I couldn’t share with anyone. I’d held on to them for too long. For some reason, I felt it now more than I ever had in the past. 

“I'm a stranger, my opinion of you doesn't matter.”

“I can’t say that’s true.”

“Then let me pose a question to you: How are you?”

The catch in my throat was audible. I couldn’t recall a time in which someone had bluntly asked the question, nor stated it with actual interest instead of a kind duty. 

“Did my question bother you?”

“Yes,” I croaked.

“Why? Has no one asked you that?”

“No. Not really.”

“When you carry the weight of others on your back, no one stops and asks if the weight is too much.”

“And they don’t ask if they can help and lessen the weight, either,” I added.

“Give me some of the weight.” 

His words were a gentle massage, lessening my tension and apprehension. Whatever held me back from showing the vulnerable sides of myself to a complete stranger dissipated. “I came to D.C. and returned to the people-pleasing behavior I thought was gone. I put on a face when I returned. Everyone in D.C. and parts of the world know who I am now and they all expect one thing from me; for me to be this strong woman who is completely unaffected by her past. I’ve been permanently branded with a label, and it’s hard to get around. Everyone who knew me before the incident walks on eggshells around me, or they try so hard to make sure I’m happy. I want to be happy for them, because people would judge me for having everything and being depressed.”

I covered my mouth, a little aghast. “I didn’t mean to unload on you like that. You must think I’m a completely ungrateful brat.”