Broken Illusions (His Agenda Volume 3) Read online

  When we met, Iris and Walter told me that Summer’s dream when she grew up was to become a model. They wanted her to be one for a day. I could not refuse the opportunity to put a smile on a dying child’s face. I even went as far as offering them my services for free, and they had obviously saved up to buy their daughter the perfect dress—a dream of pink and cream lace and chiffon that made her look like an angel. An angel in pain.

  The week before the shoot, I visited Summer a few times at Serendipity Memorial Hospital. I liked to meet my clients beforehand, to study the angles on their faces that put them in the best light, to find the features that made them unique, since those were the things I focused on during the shoot.

  I moved my gaze from Summer and met her mother’s tired brown eyes. “I'll give you a call when I'm done editing the photos.”

  “Okay.” Iris gave me a sad smile and went to sit at her daughter's bedside. I glanced at Summer’s innocent face one more time and then slipped out of the room.

  Though the air outside was lighter, my heart was so heavy the only way I could release the tension was to cry. And I did, inside a bathroom stall of the pediatric intensive care unit. I wept as if I were the mother of that dying child. I cried as if I were Summer herself, about to lose a life barely lived.

  I jolted when someone knocked on my cubicle.

  “Are you okay in there?”

  I wiped my eyes and blew my nose. “I'm fine,” I said, but my voice was too broken to be believed.

  “Do you need anything?” The woman on the other side sounded somehow familiar but I couldn't place her voice. Just what I needed, someone I knew seeing me like this.

  “No. I'm fine. Thanks.”

  “Okay.” The voice sounded unsure, but accepting.

  A few moments later, I exited the stall and wiped off the mascara running under my eyes.

  As I walked down the hall, I heard the familiar voice again behind me. I spun around and my mouth dropped open.

  “Haley? Haley Bradley?.” The woman rushed toward me and engulfed me in a hug while I was still getting used to the surprise of seeing her again.

  “Oh my God, Becca,” I said into her shoulder. “It’s been such a long time.”

  Becca Pellugrosso stood back and surveyed me, but her smile fell when our eyes met. “I recognized your voice instantly. I waited out here for you because I wanted to make sure I wasn’t mistaken. Are you okay? Looks like you still cry in toilets.” She gave a small laugh.

  “I'm fine.” I waved a dismissive hand, remembering the day Becca had found me crying inside the toilet of Allure, and I’d opened up to her about my financial troubles. “I visited a patient. It was… hard.”

  Becca nodded. “I know what you mean. I'm sorry.”

  She was so beautiful with no makeup on, tall, with skin like porcelain, brown eyes sparkling, and her bright red hair pulled back in a braided bun. I had only ever seen her with heavy makeup and wigs. “You look great,” I said, noticing her scrubs. “Do you work here?”

  “Yep.” She shrugged. “My dream of becoming a doctor didn't pan out in the end.” She smoothed down her scrub top. “This is the next best thing for me. I still get to help people.”

  I nodded, full of questions but not wanting to pry. It had been years since we last saw each other. We were both different people now, shaped by life in different ways. I had no idea where she had been. She might not have read about me in the papers, but somehow I doubted it.

  Everyone in town knew, and for months, most turned their backs on me, as they had done when my mother died. The way they saw it, I was responsible for the deaths of the prostitutes. The blood was on my hands as much as Jude’s. I didn’t blame them for thinking that. He killed those women because I left him. I should have stayed, should have made him pay right where I was, inside his mansion. Only then should I have walked away to start afresh.

  “How have you been?” She averted her gaze as soon as she asked the question, and my heart sank. She definitely knew what had happened to me. “I heard—”

  “I’m… My life is good. I’m a photographer now.” I pointed to my camera equipment, a sliver of excitement trailing down my spine. I had accomplished something after all.

  “I heard you’re brilliant. Good for you. I’m so happy.” She paused. “We should meet up sometime—catch up, you know.”

  “Yeah, we should. I’d like that,” I said, meaning it. It would be nice to meet up with an old friend for a drink, someone who knew me at my worst and still wanted to spend time with me.

  “Great.” She pulled a small notepad and pen from one of her pockets. “Give me your number.”

  After another quick hug, we said goodbye.

  As I ate dinner with Dustin a few hours later, Becca made good on her promise to call, and we arranged to meet for coffee at Mel’s Delights the next day.

  “Must be exciting, meeting up with an old friend. How do you know her?” Dustin asked as he cleared the table. He had sent his housekeeper home so we could spend some time alone.

  I gave him a tight smile. I had no reason to be ashamed around him, but I couldn’t help it. Some habits are hard to break. “She worked at Allure with me.”

  Dustin simply nodded, smiled, and came to kiss me on the forehead. “I’m glad you ran into each other.”

  Chapter Four

  “I have to admit something to you. No, actually, I’d like to apologize,” Becca said, nursing her coffee. I had told her what happened with Jude and she’d looked completely horrified to hear my story firsthand.

  “What for?”

  “When I read about you… everything in the papers, I felt guilty. If I hadn’t convinced you to, you know… go all the way…”

  “It’s not your fault. I was old enough to make my own decisions.”

  “But that one decision changed your life forever. Terribly.”

  I sipped my hot chocolate, relishing the caramel aftertaste. “It did. But it was still a decision I made all on my own. You were not my babysitter.”

  “Still, I felt… I feel sort of responsible.”

  “Well, stop feeling that way. If it makes you feel better, I think I’d have run into Jude at some point. He would have found another way to get to me.”

  Becca sighed deeply. “I’m so glad you’re alive. It’s really nice to see you again.” She smiled, her teeth sparkling white against her pink lips. “I’m also glad we both got out of Allure. Did you hear it closed down?” She bit into her chocolate cupcake.

  “Yeah, I did.” Jude’s killing spree had left a mark on the whole community. Out of fear, many prostitutes and strippers quit their jobs. Some even left town, leaving businesses that depended on their services to go bankrupt. “I wonder what Bruno does now.”

  “I think he does several things.” Becca leaned forward and lowered her voice. “I saw him a few months back working at a gas station. You’d have hardly recognized him.”

  “Can he still afford his toupees?”

  “Nope. He was bald as an egg. He pretended not to know me.”

  “He did?” I laughed, almost choking on my hot chocolate. “What did you do?”

  “I gave him a huge tip. Embarrassed him half to death.” She sighed. “He’s the past. We’re here and we made it through. I hope this won’t be the last time we meet up. I’d love to keep in touch.”

  “So would I. I don’t have many friends.”

  “Well,” she said, taking my hand in hers, “you have one more now.”

  “So do you.” I felt a foreign lightness in my chest.

  After our meeting, I was on cloud nine, as if I was one step closer to becoming whole again.

  Two weeks later, Becca and I met again, and a few more times after that. During one of those times I introduced her to Dustin.

  We started getting together at least once every two weeks for a girls’ night out or in. We rarely talked about the past anymore. We laughed, cried, and had a lot of fun together. For the first time in my life, I had a c
lose friend. Someone besides Dustin I could trust.

  Even though I still had little moments of sadness and fear, my life was finally normal. I only prayed it would remain that way. Jude had made a pessimist out of me. I had become the person who was always waiting for something bad to happen, who found it hard to believe that happiness could be a lasting thing. Or that I even deserved it in the first place.

  Chapter Five

  Something had dragged me straight out of the depths of sleep. Behind my closed lids, I was awake, but I couldn’t bring myself to open my eyes.

  Next to me, Dustin stirred and turned to drape an arm around me. It was a hot night, and his body heat didn’t help the problem, but I felt cozy and safe in his arms.

  I snuggled closer and enjoyed the feel of his breath on the back of my neck. Then I heard something—a soft swish coming from somewhere in the room. I forced my eyes open. I widened them at the same time that my heart clenched. I blinked several times to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.

  I wasn’t.

  One of the sheer Ripple-Fold drapes lifted, fluttered a few inches away from the window, and fell back into place. The large window was wide open. Despite the heat, my paranoia would never let me sleep with the windows open anymore. Dustin had come to get used to it.

  It was hard to see outside in the darkness, but my skin prickled the way it did when I felt I was being watched. The only way someone would be able to peer through my window was if they climbed a ladder up to the third floor, but despite the implausibility of that scenario, I felt uneasy.

  Holding my breath, I nudged Dustin. He groaned and murmured my name, his voice rusty with sleep.

  “You okay?”

  “Did you open the window?” I whispered, barely moving my lips. My eyes were still glued to the open window and the darkness beyond, the darkness I hoped didn’t hide anything—or anyone—sinister.

  “I would never do that, sweetheart. You don’t like it,” Dustin whispered back.

  I licked my dry lips as my whole body clenched. “It’s open, Dustin.”

  Without saying anything more, Dustin released me, and to my horror, climbed out of bed.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered. “Where are you going?”

  “To close it.” He approached the window and closed it without looking out. “Maybe we forgot to close it last night.” His voice was louder now.

  I sat up in bed, my heart still thumping. “That’s the problem, Dustin. I never forget to close the windows.”

  It was a ritual of mine to make my rounds through the apartment, checking that all doors and windows were closed and locked. In the two years I’d been living in my apartment, I had never once woken up to an open window. Or forgotten to make my bed, for that matter.

  Dustin stepped into the bathroom and flicked on the light. A soft yellow glow slipped out through the crack of the open door, chasing the darkness from the bedroom, but not my heart. I stayed in bed, my feet pulled up under me, my arms wrapped around my legs.

  “Sweetheart, you were wiped out last night,” Dustin said from the bathroom. “And that cocktail you drank really knocked you out. It’s easy not to remember if you closed the window.”

  The toilet flushed and the faucet ran. Dustin returned to the room. “You should stop driving yourself crazy. Jude is gone forever.”

  “But these weird things keep happening. I can’t explain them.” I bit my lip. I wanted to believe him, but something inside me hesitated.

  “What weird things?” Dustin climbed back under the duvet and so did I.

  I sighed. “Nothing.” I wanted to tell him about the unmade bed, the feeling of being watched, but suddenly it all sounded too ridiculous in my head. It had been two years. If Jude were still alive somehow, he would have shown up sooner. “I’m being paranoid.”

  Dustin wrapped his arms around me again, sliding me toward him. “You don’t have to be afraid anymore. This life that you’re living now, Haley? It’s all yours. No one will ever control it again. Go back to sleep, my love.”

  I buried my face in the hollow of his neck, breathing him in. I couldn’t tell him that even though I had moved on, even though I had started my life over from scratch and succeeded, I still felt that from the grave, Jude was controlling me. I could never let down my guard completely. My OCD was getting the better of me lately, and the nightmares made it hard to relax. Fortunately, the nightmares only tended to attack me when Dustin was not around. Maybe because I felt safer with him near.

  I had put Dustin through so much already. For the sake of our relationship, I had to continue pretending to be fine. I didn’t want my memories of Jude to ruin what we had. Jude was gone. Everything I was seeing was in my head, my subconscious mind sabotaging my happiness.

  “You make it all better.” I kissed his warm neck. As if a light had been switched on, I thought of what Jude had done to those prostitutes, the infinity symbols carved into the hollows of their necks.

  Even after all this time, everything reminded me of him. When would it all end? When would I allow myself to let him go? I wanted to so badly. I wanted it for me. I wanted it for Dustin. He had been patient long enough. He had given me all the time I needed to heal, but I was still holding back.

  Two years was a long time. Time to move on, to take the next step. Dustin was far from the man Jude had been. Dustin would never try to break me.

  “Are you sleeping?” I smiled in the dark.

  “You’re clearly not. Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Yes. I’ve been thinking about your offer,” I said.

  “My offer? What conclusion have you come to?”

  I pulled back and looked into his face, even if it was too dark to see his expression.

  “The answer is yes. I want us to live together.” I paused. “On one condition.”

  Giving up my own space wouldn’t come easy. My two-bedroom apartment had been all mine for two years, the length of time Dustin and I had been officially dating. He'd asked me on several occasions to move into his house with him. When I declined the first time, with the excuse that a mansion reminded me too much of Jude's house, he said we could buy a smaller place that was all ours. I declined that offer too. But the reality was that we spent so many nights together, both at his place and mine, it already felt as if we lived together. We only needed to make it official.

  “Whatever you want. Name it.” Dustin pressed his face to mine.

  “You move in with me. Come and stay here.” I was willing to move on from my demons, but this apartment had become my haven and I was hesitant to let it go. “We can take our time looking for a new place of our own.”

  He lifted himself up on one elbow. “You know that doesn’t have to take time, right? A few phone calls and we’d have the keys to our own home in a matter of hours or days.”

  There were times I forgot the powerful connections Dustin had. He lived such a normal life, far from that of the billionaire he was. Flaunting his wealth and power was not in his DNA. The few times I’d felt the impact of his success were usually when we went away on holiday together. He treated everyone with respect, often tipping staff in hotels and restaurants more than they earned in a month. I loved his generosity. But the man that made my heart race was the normal guy lying next to me, the man who didn’t call a plumber to fix a leaky faucet or a clogged toilet because he preferred to do it himself.

  “I get that. But I need to spend a little more time here first. Let me make you a promise.” I touched his face. “Move in here for six months. Six months and then we can move into a place of our own.”

  “You sure you don’t just want to move into my house?”

  “No,” I said without hesitation. “Your house is way too big for the two of us.”

  “Okay. I’ll take your offer. I’ll move in after my conference in Dubai.” Dustin pulled me close and ran a hand down my back until it reached my butt. He pulled me closer, his erection pushing hard against my stomach. “I think this calls for
celebration, don’t you?”

  Chapter Six

  Baby photo shoots were my favorites. They could be challenging when a baby wouldn’t stop crying, but they were also full of magic. It only took a gurgle or a gummy smile to bring back the magic of the moment.

  As I walked out of a lakeside cottage where I had photographed a one-month-old boy, I glanced at my watch. I was running late. Inside my car, I gave Becca a call and she picked up on the first ring.

  “I'll be at your place in five,” she said. “I finished my shift early.”

  “I'll be there in fifteen,” I said. “I'm so sorry. The baby had just woken from his nap and he wasn't in the mood for flashing lights.”

  “Can't do anything about that. I'll hang around outside, watching people.”

  “Make sure not to stare too long.” I paused as I watched a man cross the street. He was walking in the opposite direction, so I couldn't see his face, but he wore a black suit and his dark brown hair shone in the bright summer sunlight.

  My spine chilled and my throat tightened. My free hand gripped the steering wheel as if it would help me hang on to my sanity.

  “Haley, are you there?”

  I swallowed hard and moved the phone to my other ear, because my right hand was slippery with sweat. “Yeah… yeah, I'm here.”

  I was seeing things again. Jude couldn’t be alive. No way. What was wrong with me?

  “You okay? You were awfully quiet for a moment there.”

  The man turned, waving at someone coming from my direction.

  My lungs almost collapsed with relief. It wasn't him. I forced a smile even though my heart was still racing. “I'm okay. I'll see you in a bit.”

  ***

  “Your mind is fucking with you big time,” Becca said, pouring herself a glass of wine.

  I placed my empty box of Chinese takeout on the kitchen table and massaged my temples. “Now that Garrett is no longer helping me through my issues, I think my mind is taking revenge.”