Page 113 of Wicked Beautiful (Wicked Games 1)
A lie that she’s kept like a secret lover, all these years. I remember all the times she railed against Parker, cursed his name, wished him dead, and I’m sick all over again.
I understand why she did what she did. It’s simple, really: revenge. She wanted to make Parker pay for the agony he put me through when he left. But she didn’t know that he was just trying to do the right thing. She didn’t know he’d already paid, and paid, and paid. And would be paying for years to come. Would pay forever.
So this is the poisoned fruit that bigotry and revenge have borne. Here we sit, two broken hearts, two ruined souls, two stunted, loveless people staring at the ghosts of their former selves hanging on the walls.
I put my face into my hands and sob.
Parker rushes over to me. He kneels in front of me and grips my upper arms.
“Victoria, please—don’t be upset! I didn’t tell you this to try to make you feel sorry for me, or jealous of her, or for any other reason than that I wanted you to know everything about me, what makes me tick! I want you to know all my secrets so that you’ll trust me when I say I can keep your secrets. I want us to be on even footing going forward, equals. You understand?”
I have no idea what he’s talking about. I cry harder.
He gathers me into his arms. His voice comes out in a rush, the words spilling over one another in his hurry to get them out. “Listen to me—after I opened Bel Époch I got obsessed with trying to get my father back for being such a prick. Through a friend I’d made—a guy with a military background who owned a security company—I found out my father wasn’t running a legit import/export business; he was a drug dealer. We’d lived in Laredo because Mexico was right across the goddamn river. What he really was importing was mountains of cocaine.”
I lift my head and stare at him, tears streaming down my cheeks.
What I wouldn’t have given for this information even one hour ago.
Parker nods. “That’s how he made all his money. The only reason I didn’t turn him in to the police was my mother. I knew she didn’t know anything about the drugs, and she probably would have been implicated in an investigation. Even if she wasn’t, the scandal would’ve killed her. So I made him a deal: retire, become a fucking pillar of the community, give away most of your money, and you get to stay out of prison. One little slip and you’re taking it up the ass by a guy named Big Daddy for the rest of your life.
“My friend Connor covered up the nasty fact of my family business, erased any connections my father had to the cartel—but nothing is foolproof. I’m sure if you wanted to leak that to the press, someone would come forward to corroborate it. Some criminal would use it in a plea bargain, and my company would kick me off the board—and forget about my run for Congress. Who knows? I might even get thrown in jail for collusion. For all intents and purposes, my life would be over.
“So there’s another of my secrets, OK? My father’s a former drug lord. I’m basically a murderer. And I’ve already told you I spent time in jail—that was for possession of pot, by the way. I’ve got enough dirt in my background that you could build a life-size replica of the Taj Mahal from it.”
His voice gentles. His frantic tone grows soft. “I’m telling you all this so that you feel safe with me knowing what I know about you. So that you know I’ll never tell anyone who you really are, because I trust you, and you trust me, and together our secrets are safe from the world.”
I don’t know if it’s the barrage of emotion that’s making me unable to comprehend what precisely it is that Parker’s telling me, or if I’m just in the middle of a mental breakdown.
“W-who I really am?”
Parker smooths the hair off my face, wipes my wet cheeks with his thumbs, and smiles a smile of such beautiful tenderness it almost sends me into a fresh onslaught of tears.
“Yes,” he says softly. “I know who you are, and you don’t have to hide from me, Victoria. You never have to hide again.”
A terrible feeling of doom settles in the pit of my stomach. I whisper, “Who am I, exactly?”
He shakes his head and smiles wider, as if I’m playing a game. “Polaroid.”
When he sees the furrow form between my brows, he adds, “The Hello Kitty hacker. The woman who breaks into government computer systems for fun, writes sophisticated software programs that can’t be traced, is on law enforcement’s most wanted lists. I suspected it before, but when I saw your little good luck charm on the nightstand, the calling card you always leave behind when you hack a system—like when you tried to hack into mine—well…”
It hits me with such force I nearly double over.
Tabby. Oh my God, Tabby. He thinks I’m her.
He nods in satisfaction when he sees the horrified recognition on my face, taking it for an admission of my guilt. And then, when I put together what he’s just said about us being on equal footing, about keeping my secrets—“Have you ever heard of something called spousal privilege?”—I realize what this whole exercise in disclosure is really all about. Why he’s really brought me to the House of Truth.
Blackmail.
A boom of thunder rattles the windows. A jagged bolt of white flashes brilliantly across the black sky, and then the clouds crack open and release their burden of rain.
THIRTY-FOUR
Because all my muscles are immobilized under the crushing weight of my spirit, which has collapsed upon itself like a black hole formed from a dying star, I can’t walk—or even stand up, for that matter—so Parker lifts me and carries me into the master bedroom.
So rarely in my adult life have I been rendered speechless that, viewed objectively, it’s an interesting experience. Or it would be, if I weren’t so busy trying to block out the deafening chorus of my silent screams.
The inside of my head is Armageddon.
