Broken: The MISTAKEN Series Complete Second Season (5 page)

“
Y
ou forgot the tomatoes
, Mel.”

She giggled and gave me a little shove as we walked out of the theater. “You’re the one who wouldn’t go to her new movie. God, anything would have been better than that piece of shit we just saw.”

I shrugged. “No way would I have been able to sit through two hours of Robin Axelrod. Sorry.”

Her smile fell. “Are you okay?”

“Define ‘okay.’” I cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Um, not feeling the need to hide in the closet?” She jutted an elbow at me. “Not feeling like you want to gut the man you’re in love with?”

I groaned. “I’m not in love with him. I hate him.” Except that I didn’t. I just wanted to because I knew there was no way I could forgive him. There was no way I would ever be able to see him again, either.

“Right.” We walked down the sidewalk in silence for a while. “So what’s the plan, Stan?”

“Plan for what?” I glanced over and noticed her staring at the ground.

“Like, what do you want to do?” She looked up into my eyes.

“Right now? I was thinking fro-yo.”

She stopped walking, turning to me and grabbing my elbow. “I mean for your life, Jenna. School fell through. Your dad is obviously not going to be president, so that fell through. This governor job thingy fell through.” She dropped her gaze to the sidewalk again. “I’m worried about you. You say you didn’t want the job, but you were sure pissed off this morning when they told you that you couldn’t have it.”

“When
Brandon
said I couldn’t have it.” I let out a small sigh and forced a smile to my face. “Look, I’m a people pleaser. We all know that. If someone calls me and offers me a job, it isn’t like I can say no.” I pulled my elbow from her grasp and turned back to walk up the sidewalk. “I don’t know what I’m going to do yet.”

“But no politics?”

I stopped walking again, turning to face her. “What are you asking me, Mel? If my dad were to get back in the presidential race, would I go back to campaign for him? Probably. Will I campaign for him when he runs for the Senate again in a few years? Probably. What is it you want to know?”

She stared at the ground for a long moment. She finally looked up at me and shook her head. “Never mind. I don’t know.”

I glanced behind me, making sure Cade was a decent distance away and out of earshot. Having a body guard around all the time was more of a nuisance than anything most of the time. It wasn’t like anyone was out to get
me.
I was sure that after the antics my father had pulled the month before, there were probably plenty of people out to get
him.
“Spit it out, Mel.”

Her eyes darted back to Cade, who had propped himself up against a telephone pole, well out of hearing distance. “I just… I’m worried about you.”

I shook my head. “Worried about what? Taking a job with a politician is no different than taking a job anywhere else. Where is this coming from?”

We began walking again. She let out a long sigh. “I’m just worried about you, Jenna. That’s all.”

“I know. Everyone’s worried about me.”

“It’s not that.” She glanced behind us again. “You’re different. Since, you know…”

My eyes rolled up to look at the clear night sky. I knew. Since I thought Daniel had killed himself. Since I did my month at Shady Shores for trying to join him. “I’m not different.”

She nodded. “You are. Things that would have rolled off your back… I find you hiding in a closet now.”

I stopped walking and turned my head to her. The sharp edge of my voice threw us both off our guards. “If what happened to me tonight had happened to you, we would
not
be having this conversation right now. I would be holding your hand, telling you how much men sucked and how we didn’t need them. That’s how we used to handle things, Mel.” I started walking toward the fro-yo place again. “The way you’re treating me has changed. You and everyone else, treating me like a fragile little flower that can’t handle anything.”

“You were in the closet.”

“Because I wanted to hide. I just masturbated in front of fucking Robin Axelrod, for Christ’s sake. You wouldn’t want to hide?”

“I would…”

“But because it was me, I must be having another breakdown.”

“I’m sorry, Jenna. You’re right, I mean, if it happened the way you say it did…”

I turned to her again. I set my jaw, glaring down at her. “It did.”

She nodded. “Okay. Will you tell me if…”

I clenched my jaw. “I’m not having thoughts of suicide. I don’t have any plans to kill myself or hurt anyone else. Except for Brandon if he ever comes near me again.”

She let out a little snicker. “That’s fair. But you would tell me?”

“I promise I will tell you if I start feeling like I want to end my life. Do you want to do a blood oath or something?”

She shook her head with a grin. “Not necessary.”

M
y heart raced
in my chest. It felt like the right side of my body was on fire. The burning started in my fingertips and went all the way down to my toes. My head throbbed as I tried to figure out where in the hell I was. What the hell had happened to me?

“Oh, baby, you’re awake.”

I heard the woman’s voice from somewhere in the distance. I groaned, more from the pain, and then from the realization of who it was that was with me. What the hell was Robin doing there?

“Oh, God, Brandon, I was so worried about you. They said you almost died on the table.”

A loud groan escaped my lips. I tried to tell her to get the hell away from me, but the only sound I could make was a damned groan.

“You lost a considerable amount of blood, Mr. Richardson.”

A man’s voice that time, vaguely familiar. Another groan came from somewhere deep inside of me.

“We repaired a laceration on your right lung. We had to remove your right kidney and a lobe of your liver due to the bleeding we found. You’re lucky to be alive.”

Lucky? This was luck? And where was Jen? I definitely remembered someone telling me she was there before they put me out. Someone had said she had gone to give blood for me. I definitely remembered that. They said she loved me, that she was there. Where the hell was she now? I forced my eyes to open and saw Robin wringing her hands at the edge of my bed. The doctor stood at the foot of the bed, the concern on his face obvious. There were machines all around me, beeping and whirring. Where was Jen? I tried to ask again, but my voice betrayed me with a moan instead.

“We’ll increase the pain medication, Mr. Richardson. You’ll be able to leave critical care in a few days. We’ll keep a close eye on your liver and kidney functions. Assuming everything goes according to plan, you’ll be able to go to the private facility your fiancée has requested by early next week.”

I groaned again. I didn’t have a fiancée. What the hell was he talking about?

“Thank you, Doctor.” Robin peered over the rail of my bed into my eyes. “Do you remember what I said to you before you went into surgery, baby?”

I made a sound through my closed lips. Something about an answer to a question.

“I found the ring in your pocket.” She raised her left hand and dangled it in front of my face, a gleaming platinum band on her ring finger. “I know you’re too sick right now, but I don’t want to wait, baby. As soon as the doctors say you’re okay, we’ll go to Vegas and do it. We can have a big wedding when we get back, but I don’t want to wait another second. I’ve been waiting for this day for so long. I love you so much, Brandon.” She leaned down and brushed her lips over mine.

What the hell was she doing wearing Jen’s ring? It was like I had gone through the looking glass while I was asleep. Everything was backwards, upside down. How the hell had she gotten that ring unless I was in some alternate universe?

“Maybe in a few weeks, that’s what the doctor said. As long as you get healthy and do everything they tell you, we can go to Vegas in a few weeks. I wish you had let me meet you at the airport, baby, then none of this would have happened. You could have gotten down on one knee. I know you wanted to, and I’m sorry I ruined that.” She beamed down at me, stroking my hair. “But you can ask me later, if you want to. The answer will still be the same.”

What the fuck was going on? I tried again to talk, something like a grunt leaving my throat that time. I was getting closer to being able to speak. At least I thought I was. Where the hell had that ring come from?

My thoughts clouded again as the morphine flooded my body. They must have increased the pain medication, and I was thankful that the burning had stopped, but my mind was even more clouded than it had been before. I tried to piece it back together. Getting stabbed at the warehouse, I remembered that. What happened before that? I flew to L.A. That motherfucker called me and asked me to come. Things began to swim again in my mind and the memories swirled together with dreams. Jen had been here; I had seen her here. Hadn’t I? She was giving blood for me. Giving her blood. For me. She had to love me if she would come all this way just to give me her blood. She found out and she still chose me. And I had been such a dick to her this morning, telling her there was no way she was going to work for the man that was responsible for…

My eyes flew open and I fought through the cobwebs that had formed in my mind. I wanted to sit up, scream at Robin for taking that ring out of my pocket. I put it there when Jen threw it at me. When she’d been so pissed at me that she threw it at me and I shoved it in my pocket before taking that job away from her. That idiotic job that I knew she didn’t really want. Was she really here? I tried desperately to remember what they had said to me before they took me in for surgery. What had they said? She loves you. I looked up at the blonde woman towering over my bed. My stomach sank through my body when I realized they had been talking about Robin, not my sweet Jen. Shit, my memories were betraying me, too.

I wished I had died on the table.

I
was surprised
to find Melissa on the other side of my front door after answering the incessant knocking. I lifted an eyebrow. “What, you don’t let yourself in anymore?”

Her eyes crinkled a little with her grin. “Well, since I don’t live here anymore, I thought maybe it would be polite to knock.”

“You? Polite?” I rolled my eyes, matching her grin, and I let her in.

She wore the same red dress she tried to wear for our date on Friday. “Well? Are you up for it tonight?”

I let out a long sigh. I hated clubs, hated crowds in general, but I knew it was something she wanted to do. “Yeah, sounds fun.” The flatness of my voice would surely betray the words I had spoken.

“God, you’re a horrible liar.” She elbowed me on her way to sit on the bar stool at the kitchen counter. “You should get dressed so we can get going. I know how you feel about staying out late.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “Right.”

She giggled and shooed me into the bathroom to finish with my hair and makeup.

“How was Amanda today?” Somehow, hearing Melissa tell me about the crazy antics of her new boss could always lift me out of even the foulest of moods.

“As insane as usual. Today she decided that the office needed a dedicated cable for internet service. Not just our own, you know, internet service. She wants the city to run a frickin’
cable
into the office. Like hard wire our little office.”

“Why?” I tried to wind my straight, brown hair into something resembling curls; unsuccessfully, of course.

“Oh, who the hell knows? She’s nuts.” She paused for a moment. “Hey, Jenna.”

“Hey, Mel.” I unplugged the curling iron and tossed it aside, grabbing my makeup bag. My hair would just have to be acceptable as is.

“Do you still want to teach piano lessons? You know, to little kids?”

I shrugged my shoulders at myself in the mirror. “Maybe. Why? Who’s asking?”

I heard her giggle. “Me?”

“You’re not a little kid, Mel.” I peeked my head around the corner of the bathroom door and looked out at her. “Besides, we tried that, remember? You’re tone deaf.”

“No, not for me.” She paused for another moment. “Hey, I am not tone deaf. A little tone impaired, maybe…”

A snicker left my lips as I returned to the mirror to put on my lip gloss. “For who?”

“Well…”

I left the bathroom and turned the corner to face her. “Your evil boss?”

“Not exactly. Her kid.”

My eyes narrowed. “How old?”

“Four. She’s pretty convinced he’s the next Mozart.”

I rolled my eyes. “Of course he is. What is she looking for?”

She shrugged. “Not sure. Lessons at her house, probably.”

“She has a piano?”

“A baby grand. It’s beautiful, and I don’t know a damned thing about pianos. Apparently, the brat plays on it all the time. I guess he played something that sounded like something the other day.”

“Huh. Something that sounded like something?” I lifted an eyebrow.

“You know, it was almost a song. I don’t know. The brat can do no wrong, so what do I know?”

I nodded. “Does this brat have a name?”

“Yeah. Brat.”

My brows furrowed together. “Her son is seriously named Brat?”

Her lips turned up into a grin with her lilting laughter. “No, that’s just what I call him. I think his name is Mason.”

My eyebrow lifted again. “You
think
?”

She shrugged again. “I told her you played. I might have told her you were a little bit of a, you know…”

“A what?”

“You know, a freak of nature. A prodigy, kind of.”

“God, Mel, why did you do that? I clearly won’t be good enough for her son…”

“Sure you will. At least until he surpasses your abilities in a few months.” She snickered. “I’m joking. I’m sure he’s gifted, though. That’s what I hear, anyway.”

“It’s a bad idea. That woman does not like me.”

“Nah, she likes you just fine. She’s just pissed that you wouldn’t do her bidding while you were at that party.”

I shook my head with a frown. “I’ll think about it.” I picked up my bag from the counter. “Can we go now?”

“Yeah, yeah. No driver tonight?”

My brows knitted together again. “What are you talking about?”

“Your rental cop. Cash, or whatever his name is.”

“He’s not a rental cop, Mel. Cade has been working for my father for thirty years. What about him?”

“He must have the night off. He’s not out there.”

“Well, he does get time off, you know. He isn’t a slave.” But there was always
someone
there, especially since the Secret Service guys had been called off a few weeks ago. I never went anywhere alone, not since my father first announced his bid for the presidency, anyway. I shrugged it off; it probably wasn’t a big deal. Someone probably forgot to call someone or there was a mix-up with the schedule. It wasn’t like I was actually in any danger; this bodyguard thing was all my dad’s idea.

“I guess that means you’re driving, because I’m
definitely
drinking tonight.”

I rolled my eyes. “Super. I’ll try to keep you from ripping your dress off on the dance floor.”

She let out a long sigh. “That happened
one
time, Jenna…”

A small giggle escaped my lips. “As long as it doesn’t happen again.”

She sighed again, shaking her head. “Let’s just go.” She grabbed her purse from where she had tossed it on the counter.

Mel gave me directions to the new club she had been raving about all week. It was a place her boss had funded, and looked pretty normal, almost ambiguous from the outside. I found a nearby garage and parked and we walked to the entrance.

“You’re sure this is the right place?” It looked like any other office building from the outside. There were no bouncers, lines of people, loud music or any of the other things I would have expected a club that Mel wanted to go to would have.

She looked down at her phone. “It’s the right address.” She looked over at me. She lifted her shoulders and raised her eyebrows. “Maybe it’s inside?”

“Maybe.”

Mel opened the glass door to enter the office building and we walked down the hallway. She pointed to another set of curtained glass doors ahead of us. “That’s it, Club 99.”

I frowned and glanced back down the hallway. “You’re sure that’s it? It doesn’t look like the kind of club we usually go to, Mel. You know, the kind with loud music. Dancing.”

She nodded. “That’s it, though. I got the liquor license for the place, so it is definitely it. It’s supposed to be less, I don’t know, clubby. More for professionals. Grown-ups.” She walked up to the door and turned back to me.

“So we’re grown-ups now?” I lifted a brow at her.

She opened the door and we walked through. It was just a typical bar, like one that could be found in the lobby of a hotel. There was quiet music playing over a speaker system and there were many businessmen in expensive suits sitting at the tables that littered the room. But that was it—there were only men. I looked around and didn’t see any women, at least not in the front part of the bar.

A chill ran through me as I looked down at my low cut cocktail dress. “I think, maybe, this isn’t the kind of club we should be at, Mel.” I looked around again. “Is it for, I don’t know, only men?” I looked over at her.

She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. Why would the Agostinos have funded…” Her eyes widened. “Oh. You think, maybe?”

I nodded. “I think we don’t charge enough to be here.”

She licked her lips, looking around the room. All eyes had turned to the two of us, standing at the door.

I felt like I was on display, like one of the prize-winning goats at one of the myriad county fairs I had attended during my brief campaign tour through Iowa. I turned back to Melissa. “We should go.”

She nodded and we turned back to the door.

“Jenna Davis?” A man’s voice rang out from behind me. “What are you doing here?”

I glanced over my shoulder, not recognizing the voice. My eyes widened and I smiled when I saw who had recognized me. “Ryan.”

He pulled me into a light embrace and kissed my cheek. “We just opened last week. We’ve been having trouble getting women in the door. I think it’s the location, but my sister was sure…” He turned to face Melissa, whose jaw was almost on the floor. “Who’s your friend?”

“Ryan Agostino, this is your sister’s assistant, Melissa Bishop.” I turned to look at her, cocking an eyebrow. “Mel, this is Ryan. The guy who signs your paychecks.”

Her jaw lifted into a wide, glimmering smile. “Hi. I mean, hello. I’m Melissa.” She extended her shaking hand.

He was mesmerized. He stared into her eyes for a moment too long. “Melissa. We have a lot to talk about.”

She let out a nervous laugh. “I suppose we do. This bar, for one thing.” Her grin widened. “I mean, I guess I’m partly to blame, but Amanda won’t let me anywhere near your clients.”

“I’m sure we have a lot of stories we can swap about my sister.” He ran a hand through his sandy brown hair. “Can I buy you a drink?”

“Yeah, of course.” Her eyes widened, realizing she had forgotten I was still at her side. “I mean, you don’t mind, do you, Jenna?”

I smiled at them. “Of course not.” I motioned to the room full of men, still staring at us. “I’ll go mingle.”

“It’s ladies’ night, Jenna. All drinks are on the house.” He turned back to me for a moment. “Every night is going to have to be ladies’ night if we don’t do something about this disaster.” He turned back to Mel. “I don’t suppose you have any ideas for that, do you?”

I had never seen her smile like that. “I might.”

He motioned with his head toward a table in the back of the room and the two of them went to sit down.

“Great.” I made my way over to the bar, taking a seat on one of the bar stools. I ordered a white wine and tried not to make eye contact with any of the men I could feel staring at me.

“You’re Jenna Davis.” I guess there were other women there, because a woman sat down next to me, smiling.

The bartender handed me the wine glass and I turned to the woman with one of my prim smiles. “Guilty.”

She let out a laugh. It was hard to tell if it was genuine or if she had just had a little too much free alcohol. “I’m Lexi. Lexi Mitchell.” She extended her hand to me. “It’s good to finally meet you.”

I accepted her handshake, giving her hand a momentary squeeze. “Nice to meet you.”

“He didn’t tell you about me, did he?” She rolled her eyes, widening her smile. “It’s like him, though, don’t you think?”

“Sure.” I nodded, not really knowing what the hell she was talking about. Maybe she had me confused with someone else.

“I’ve been working with him for the last few months.” She took a sip from the cocktail sitting in front of her. “You’re way more beautiful in person than you are in the pictures. People probably tell you that all the time.”

I pressed my lips into another smile, sure the woman next to me was either drunk or out of her mind. “Not really, no.”

“God, you really are down to earth, just like he said. I can totally see what the fascination is.”

“Fascination?” I took another sip of my wine while meeting her gaze.

“It’s almost an obsession, isn’t it? You’re all he talks about.” She downed what was left in her glass and motioned to the bartender for another. “But he’s smoking hot, isn’t he? I wouldn’t mind having a piece of that ass.” She giggled, clearly drunk. “If he wasn’t so into you, I mean.”

“Right.” My eyes felt tight and cold, and I stared across the bar at nothing in particular. She worked for Brandon. He definitely had not told me about the gorgeous woman that was sitting next to me. Her sleek, black hair hung perfectly around her shoulders, framing her face in a way that my mousy locks never would. She was striking.
She was probably a model when she was younger.
I downed the last of the wine in my own glass, needing the little bit of liquid courage to get through the rest of this conversation.

“He’s here. We followed you, but he wasn’t sure if you’d go willingly to see him. I told him you would.” She staggered off the bar stool, taking a drink from her new cocktail. “Who wouldn’t want to see him, right? Power is so fucking sexy.”

My voice deepened. “Power, right.” I felt my nostrils flare. I was almost like a parrot, just mimicking her words. He was here? Why hadn’t he just called?
Because you wouldn’t have answered the phone, dumb ass.
“Right.” I breathed out my words on a sigh. “Is she here, too? Robin?”

The woman pressed her lips into a line, shaking her head. “I don’t know any Robin. Just him and me. Me and him.” She laughed and took another long drink of her cocktail. She bowed her head, looking at me through her bangs. “Not that I could ever come between
you
and him, though, obviously.”

I motioned the bartender over and ordered a Long Island. I was going to need a lot more alcohol than a little glass of white wine to be able to face him tonight. He needed to answer for what he had done, give me some kind of explanation. Something. The bartender brought my drink over. I pulled out the straw, taking a long sip from the edge of the glass. Liquid courage. Maybe that really was the answer, at least for tonight.

I motioned to the back room with my head, where I assumed he was before looking back over at Lexi. “Take me to see him.”