Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-five
The Sister
Nico
The throbbing in my head intensifies. I swear it feels like my skull is split open.
Lazily, I open my eyes, but everything is blurry.
There is something in my eye. I try to swipe my face, but my hands are tied.
It’s then that I remember the wreck. The G-Wagon flipping through the air and landing upside down.
Jake’s limp body not responding to my call.
The pain in my leg registers again. I groan as I try to blink a few times to clear my vision.
“Look who’s finally waking up.” It’s that familiar voice again. It’s the same one that I heard when I was being carried from the wreck.
“Ezra?” My throat is dry, and my voice is weak.
Finally, my vision clears enough. Ezra leans down into my view.
The clean pretty-boy looks are no more. He actually looks as if he hasn’t slept or bathed in a few days.
His facial hair has grown out; his usually perfectly styled hair is messy and all over the place.
There are heavy bags under his eyes, and all around his nose is bright red, like he has a cold or something.
“How’s it going, Tiff?” he sneers before he grabs me by the hair and sits me up.
I cry out at the searing pain from his grip in my hair. The excruciating pain in my skull and the throbbing pain in my leg almost make me black out.
Ezra sits me upright and then shoves me against a wall. Looking down at my leg, I can now see where the throbbing is coming from. My leg is broken. The tip of a bone is protruding through my pants leg.
“Where am I?”
I glance around at my surroundings. I’m in some type of old fish processing plant. The tin roof has holes in it. The walls are missing large slabs of metal. Pipes move through the room in organized routes. The ground is covered in dirt, trash, and some type of sludge.
Two large rusted cylinders are at the far end of the rectangular-shaped building. The smell of fish is pungent, and from the sounds of the seagulls and the splashing from outside, I can tell we are right off the lake.
There is a giant hole in the floor. I can tell at some point there were safety railings around it, but they’ve all been torn down.
“Don’t worry, you’re still in the city.” He squats in front of me. “Bet you wish you would’ve given me a chance now, don’t you?”
Hell no. He rubs his nose and sniffs.
“Cause I have your pretty little wife.”
I turn to the sound of the familiar voice. Lauren is pacing the dirty floor while she talks on the phone. Standing beside her is her supposed husband. He looks just as bad as Ezra. They look nothing like the wealthy family I met.
“That’s right.” Ezra’s comment has me turning back to him. “You’ve been played.”
My brain is muddled, still probably dealing with the concussion from the wreck. But I try to think back to everything I know. Everything about Ezra looked legit.
The house was really in his name. Although I couldn’t verify the Bankman stuff, it was obvious he was an artist by the painting he made of me. What the hell did I miss?
“If you want to see your wife again, little brother, you’re going to follow my rules,” Lauren’s voice brings me back to the present.
“It takes forty minutes to get from the jail to the old Weberman fishing mill. Come alone, little brother. I have eyes everywhere. If I get an inkling that you’re trying to set up something, I will put a bullet in your bitch’s head.”
Benjamin laughs. Lauren’s hazel gaze turns to me.
“And you better hurry.” She grins. “Ezra is dying to sample her.” With those last words, she hangs up the phone.
Benjamin walks over to her, wrapping her in his arms. “You pulled that off smoothly, baby. I can’t believe how well this went. You really think we can get away with millions?”
So that’s what this was about. Lauren or Marissa was after Nico’s money.
She grins. “More like billions.” She turns to me with a glare. “It all depends on how much Nic loves his little wife.”
“Trust me.” Ezra lifts his bandaged hand with a frown. “He loves her.” He stands upright before going over to the couple.
“Give me a hit.”
Benjamin pulls something out of his coat pocket. It’s a small bag with a white powdery substance. He hands it over to Ezra, who pours some onto the side of his hand where the thumb and forefinger meet, then sniffs it into his nose. I turn away from the sight.
“Do you like stories, Tiffany?” Marissa announces as she walks over to me.
She squats down in front of me. Her long blonde hair was pulled up in a ponytail. The grin on her face is so evil, dread slides down my spine.
“Let me tell you the story of a little girl born into a too small box. I’m not sure how much my brother has told you about his past, especially since he changed his name, but he and I were born to simple parents.
“My mother was a nurse, and my father was a very intelligent man. One of those guys with a high IQ. When he was in his early twenties, he developed a brilliant computer program. One that companies paid top dollar for.”
She stands up straight, runs a hand down her pants and paces.
“He and his best friend went into business together. My father, the brains of the company, and his friend, the mouthpiece. For years they did well. My family was wealthy, but my parents weren’t showy.
“My father bought a nice-size home in a beautiful suburban neighborhood. Every year we went on wonderful vacations. On Christmas and birthdays, Nic and I got whatever we wanted. But my father and mother both came from nothing. And they were hell-bent on living modestly.”
She says the word modestly as if it is absolute trash. Like they were living on the street. When Nico tells the story, he talks about a loving home and fun family trips. He doesn’t refer to his childhood as lacking in any way.
“From the outside looking in, we were a happy, loving family.”
Benjamin scoffs at that notion.
“But I was miserable. I knew I was meant for bigger and better things.” She stops pacing to glare at me.
“I’d ask for jewelry or name-brand clothes, and my mother would turn her nose up at me.
She’d ask why I would need such expensive things.
She told me that material things had little value.
Like she knew anything about fashion and style.
I wanted to look like the celebrities I saw.
I deserved to have nice things. I was a good kid, unlike my brother with his mental health bullshit. ”
Mental health? Come on, Tiff, use your head. You know what she’s talking about.
“I’ve always dealt with my temper.” Nico’s words that day by his parent’s grave comes back. She’s talking about his anger issues.
“I was sick and tired of begging them to hear me out. To buy me the things that I wanted.” Marissa jabs a finger at her chest to emphasize her point.
“The day I heard Daddy and Uncle Walter arguing about Walter’s money issues, I knew that I was with the wrong people. I was too good for that family, and the only person who would understand me, was Walter.” She stops pacing and turns to face me.
For some reason, the smirk on her face makes my heart race.
“I came up with a plan. I knew that Uncle Walter was our godfather. If anything happened to my parents, we would go to him, along with our inheritance.”
That unsettling feeling increases. Without her saying the words, I already know what she did.
“You killed them?”
She laughs a high-pitched evil cackle. “Yes. I cut their brakes. I dated a guy in high school that worked at an auto shop. He’s the one who told me not to cut the entire brake line, but to make a small enough hole so that the brake fluid would slowly leak.
That night before they went for their regular drive, I put a hole in the brake line.
” She laughs as if this is in any way funny.
“They didn’t stand a chance. And the best thing about it was that my stupid little brother asked them to make an extra stop on their night out. If not for him and his burger request, they might’ve made it home safely.”
I feel sick to my stomach. Knowing that all these years, it was her that caused the wreck. Nico thought it was his uncle, but all this time it was Marissa. Plus, it’s because of her that he was drowning in guilt because he sent them to that burger spot.
“You really fucked them over, babe.” Benjamin snorts a line of the white powdery substance before laughing.
“You’re sick,” I tell her.
She grins. “You don’t even know the half of it. Once Walter took over, things were great. He had no problems spending Daddy’s money. And as long as I signed on the dotted line, he gave me whatever I wanted. Things were perfect for a while until Nicholas caught on.”
She rolls her eyes in disgust. “I immediately told my uncle that Nic was asking questions. He had no idea how to handle him, so I told him how to push Nic to the edge. I told him about his little anger problem, and if we only exacerbated it, we could send him away.” She shrugs.
“Took less than six months for him to lose his shit on some kid at school. He got sent away, and life was great.”
I didn’t tell her that her selfish desires had put my husband at that fucking school where he was abused and tortured. Her greed caused him to be scarred for most of his life. I don’t tell her any of this, because this stupid bitch wouldn’t care.
“If life was so great, why are you doing this?”
Her gaze narrows. “Because nothing lasts forever. Walter got too cocky. Started spending more than he was giving me. I called him on his bullshit, and when I turned twenty-five, he kicked me out with only ten thousand dollars. That was all that was left of me and Nic’s inheritance.
“I tried to go to Nic. He was making a little money on the streets by then. But do you know he had the nerve to put me out too? He chose those fake, so-called brothers over me. It’s okay though, I left with fifty thousand dollars of his money.”
“That’s when we met.” Benjamin comes up to her and wraps his hands around her waist, kissing her neck.