8. Broken Hearts Shattered Trust
Saturday morning came and Jonathan called Colin with an emergency business trip to Russia. He kissed Olivia and told her he would be back Tuesday night or Wednesday morning at the latest and to spend some quality time with Vanessa and Allison.
Olivia saw him off, waving at him from the front before heading upstairs to pack herself a bag. She pulled out her phone to text Vanessa.
Hey sis, impromptu girl’s weekend! I’m packing my bag now. Do you need me to stop on my way in and pick up anything? -Ollie
She took out a duffel bag and began to stuff items into it. Seeing her school backpack, she tried to dismiss it from her mind. Colin had asked her to take a break during the weekends for now because school was consuming her and so much studying could be counterproductive. She looked at her phone as it pinged twice.
I love you, please have fun this weekend. I’ll be checking up regularly so keep your phone close baby. -C
Yes, can you stop and get some vodka? I know it’s your favorite, but we ran out, and if you could get me something for this mocktail recipe that would be fire. See you in a bit, we need an all nighter! Should I ask Jonathan’s niece to join us so we can have adult fun after hours? I know I can’t drink but we can go dancing!!! -Nessie
Olivia bit off a giggle as she responded with a bunch of demon head emojis.
Hell yes sis! Going to stash my bookbag in the guest house and I’ll be headed your way in a bit.-Ollie
Olivia finished packing her bag and grabbed up her backpack, determined to make time to carve out space just for her schooling. Colin was right, she didn’t have much of a school and personal life balance and so she decided to take a page out of his book and designate a space just for her studies and architectural work.
Olivia looked out the window seeing the guest house was glowing, giving her an idea. She’d utilize one of the rooms there, so she could have a clear delineation of space. The only time she’d work on studies was in a work room.
Feeling like a huge weight had been lifted off her shoulders, she picked up her backpack and headed downstairs.
Letting herself into the guest house, she glanced around seeing all of Colin’s music equipment put away neatly, and the couch put back into place. There was a very nice bar and kitchen that led to a hallway. Heading down that way, she passed a bathroom and two bedrooms facing each other at the end of the hallway. Poking her head into one, she saw a very lush bedroom and smiled appreciatively, never having taken the time to explore the whole house.
She turned to the other bedroom door and tried to turn the knob; it was locked. She looked down and saw a touch pad for a code. Frowning, she glanced around at the other doors, not seeing any keypad to their entry.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood up as she put her bag down and whipped out her phone. Colin had previously given her every code to the house in an encrypted file that she kept on her just in case she needed to get in somewhere and couldn’t get in touch with him.
Olivia scrolled through the codes; front door, codes for every car, codes to the cellar in the basement, code to get into the master closet, code for the various safes in the home, etc. No guest bedroom code was present. She huffed, her curiosity peaked. She put her phone away and leaned down to try the code to get into their closet. Access denied.
Code for the safe. Access denied.
Code for the cellar. Access denied.
Code for the front gate. Access denied.
Irritated, she stood back and tapped a finger to her lips.
She tried his birthday. Access denied.
Olivia tried the code to his computer. Access denied. Then a warning sign. She’d almost utilized up the number allowed before the door locked for twenty-four hours. About to give up and shrugging her shoulders, she decided one last code couldn’t hurt, then she’d leave to go to her sisters.
She typed in her birthday off a guess.
Access granted.
Smiling in excitement as the lock disengaged, she swung the door open, suddenly surrounded by darkness in a windowless room. She felt around blindly for a light switch before finding it, her brow furrowed as the room suddenly illuminated in harsh LED lights. Her eyebrows raised and her lips parted on a harsh inhale.
Oh. My. God. What the entire fuck?Olivia’s brain struggled to process it all.
She took a hesitant step into the room before turning her head back to look down the hallway again, suddenly feeling frightened. She leapt forward and grabbed the lone wooden chair tucked under a desk that hosted a monitor and jammed it against the door, paranoid that it would close and she would be locked in.
Her eyes swept the expanse of the room, not knowing what to settle on first. There were a ton of newspaper clippings and articles on the wall behind the monitor, and on the opposite wall were huge canvas pictures of what Olivia could only guess was Colin’s family…though she thought he didn’t have one.
There was a much younger Colin standing with a man and a woman, the resemblance to his Latina mother striking, however he had his father’s bone structure. A picture of Colin as a child in a superman cape with his arm thrown around a dalmatian, laughing as the dog licked his cheek. A portrait of Colin’s parents posed together in a beach picture; Colin next to them as a toddler playing with a ball in the sand.
Then, in the very center of all the photographs, was Colin in a candid portrait of what looked to be him standing alone in front of a beautiful cherry wood casket in a massive church, standing close to a picture of his mother. It was his mother’s funeral. Olivia felt tears prick her eyes at his loss. He never spoke of his parents or his family to her. The look on his face was tortured. He was so young.
Barely an adult, if he even was one.
She pulled out her phone and typed a quick ‘I love you’ text to Colin before turning to the other wall, preparing to leave because she felt like she was snooping on something extremely private. But an article on the wall caught her eye.
It was a clipping that hosted a red headed family.
A mom, father, a teenage daughter, an adolescent boy and a baby girl. They were scrunched together in the photo smiling brightly in matching white tops and dark blue jeans. The adolescent boy and teenage girl had green eyes like hers.
She stepped closer. Her phone suddenly rang, but she was too enamored by the text on the newspaper clipping to answer it.
‘Local teen Colin McDermont (16) responsible for the death of a Connecticut family of five. McDermont will stand trial, but it is yet unknown if he will be tried as an adult. Details are unclear but McDermont hit the family going well above the legal speed limit and the car fell off into an embankment, killing the family instantly.’ Details as to whether the teen was drunk driving, or distracted driving is yet to be released.”
Olivia felt her body heat up and her flesh broke out in goosebumps. She put her hand to her mouth, swallowing bile.
He didn’t. No fucking way he didn’t, and then married me, knowing how I feel about my parents,she whimpered as she looked around the wall, seeing more clippings of the family, funeral details, and more articles about the wreck.
It was never made clear what happened. Tears welled into her eyes, momentarily blinding her. Seeing the computer, she figured that it would host the answers, since it was locked in the room with the rest of the information.
Olivia swallowed her nerves, stepped forward, and wiggled the monitor awake. She bent slightly, pulling the keyboard up from the rolling shelf that was under the top of the desk. She paused briefly, seeing another password prompt. She put her birthdate as the password in again and breathed a sigh of relief as it let her in the first attempt.
Her relief was extremely short lived.
She saw multiple electronic folders and clicked on the one named Olivia. The date was late August, around the time of the storm when they’d first met. She clicked on the folder to open it, seeing image after image of herself. Sitting in her car at the diner, sitting in her car at her apartment’s parking lot, looking up to the heavens at the food bank she went to for assistance. Images of her at the bar. There were videos of her leaving her clients’ houses, and a video from the night of the gala where he had recorded the interaction with the judge.
More pictures of her from their time together, all taken while she was unaware.
Pictures of her and Allison, her and Vanessa, studying on the floor in his office, staring out the window of his building, her sleeping in bed, her in the kitchen making bread with Mary. Olivia started shaking, turning and running to the bathroom; she barely made it before she vomited, staying hunched over for long minutes until there was nothing left, and the dry heaving was over.
Moaning in distress and pushing herself off the floor, she heard her phone pinging repeatedly. Her mind burned with lightning hot betrayal. She felt used, taken for a fool.
He picked me because he thought I would somehow fix him killing that family. He didn’t want me! I wasn’t worthy, after all! I was just the vehicle for him to use to absolve himself of his sick fucking life,she screamed in her head.
Olivia’s heart broke as she realized it was all a lie from the very beginning. She tore off her wedding ring and threw it on the computer back in the room and turned, leaving her book bag by the door. She looked at her phone. Thirteen missed calls from Colin and several texts. She blocked him without looking at them.
Racing to the main house, she ran back upstairs and yanked down another duffle bag, packing it as quickly as she could. She turned and got into the safe under the island in the closet and pulled out her passport and some spare cash. It wasn’t much but it was something.
She pulled out her phone with shaking hands again, running to the bed and ripping her charger from its port in the nightstand. She scrolled through her phone until she found the name she wanted.
Gypsy, I need your help. It’s an emergency. -Olivia
She grabbed her purse and raced downstairs to the garage, throwing herself into her car and trying to click the lock for the garage doors to open. They wouldn’t open. She threw the car into reverse and didn’t blink as she smashed his favorite bike into smithereens, taking out several other bikes in the process. Sirens filled the garage as the bikes’ alarms started going off.
“Fuuuck!” she screamed. Her car beeped, notifying her of an incoming call from Jonathan. She answered, uncaring of the sirens blaring in the background.
“Jonathan, you tell him to fucking open these doors right now! He can’t lock me in!” she yelled into the phone, opening her car to walk to the garage doors to see if there was a way to get it open manually. She couldn’t see any.
“Olivia, please slow down and let him explain,” Jonathan clipped through the phone, sounding like he was running. She could hear his muffled “I got her,” to whom she assumed was Colin.
Olivia hung up quickly and blocked Jonathan, then in turn blocking Vanessa. Then blocked Aliyah too, just in case. She went through her phone and blocked everyone: Mary, Beth, Sara, Stella, and even Vincent.
Her heart was racing, and all she could feel was her heart breaking, and the burning sting of betrayal tearing her life apart right before her eyes. She hadn’t felt this kind of pain since she realized she’d lost Allison and when her parents died.
She grabbed her bags from the car, leaving the keys in the ignition and the doors opened and went back through the house and out the front door. Taking out her phone, she called Gypsy who’d answered rather quickly.
“Gypsy, it’s me. I need a huge favor. Can you pick me up? I’ll text you the address and explain on the way. I need a ride to the airport. Thank you.”
She hauled ass down the long driveway, pulling up an uber app on her phone. Breathing a sigh of relief that the gate code still worked, she hurriedly paid online for a cab service to get her immediately and took her to the address she’d given Gypsy.
Thanking God that her debit card still worked.
***
Six hours later Olivia was sitting in an airport terminal.
She’d withdrawn a bunch of cash and moved her two hundred and fifty thousand dollars from one bank to another that was completely in her name, fully knowing that the transfer might not go through until next week. Hence her need for cash. She’d gotten a burner phone at the airport, tossing her cell in the trash after programming necessary numbers. Looking over her documents, she’d glanced again at the fake ID, passport, social and travel documents that Gypsy was able to give her on the fly, due to her lawyer connection.
The process took a little longer than Olivia expected, she’d wanted to be in the sky and well on her way out of the states by now. While she was in Gypsy’s lavish apartment waiting for the lawyer to process her documents, she took advantage of the extra time and dyed her hair a deep mahogany brown.
She fought like hell to keep the tears at bay, calling on years of practice oppressing her emotions to assist her in not breaking down in public.
Gypsy hugged her goodbye at the security checkpoint and promised to send a slew of clients her way once she knew she’d landed safely. She would also send her the address to the small bungalow that she’d found for her, in Macau, China. A hot spot for their touristy clients.
Olivia looked over her itinerary. She’d have to fly to Los Angeles, then to Hong Kong, before hopping on another connecting flight to Macau. Gypsy let her know that she’d paid to have a taxi pick her up at the airport and take her straight to the bungalow.
She felt completely disconnected from her body as she checked her bags in and took her carry on to the plane, barely making it on time. She refused to think about Colin and what he was assuming right now, placing him into that box of hurt that she’d ignored for weeks now, nailing it shut. She sat in the window and listened to the air hostess go through all the security measures before they took off.
Olivia felt her heart break for the final time as she let go of Allison, Vanessa, and Colin.