End of the Lie
by Diana Rodriguez Wallach
Copyright © 2019 by Diana Rodriguez Wallach. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
CHAPTER ONE
USA Times
February 1st
Massachusetts Woman Declared Dead Found Alive in Italy
BROOKLINE, MA - A Brookline woman presumed dead for nearly 8 months has been found alive in Italy, and her abductors have alleged criminal ties to her late parents.
Keira Phoenix, a twenty-four year old emergency room nurse at Boston General Hospital, vanished from a blood-filled bath tub in her home after a raucous Mother’s Day celebration this past May. At the time, officials from the Boston Police Department said Phoenix, who spent the night with a man only identified as “Craig,” was the victim of a probable homicide due the significant blood loss found at the scene. But now, a video has surfaced of Phoenix speaking directly into the camera, detailing her horrific ordeal, her escape from captivity, and her parents’ criminal connections to those who took her.
As reported by The Boston Tattler this past December, speculation has been mounting over whether Keira Phoenix was abducted or murdered, and whether her parents, Michael and Irina Phoenix, really died in a car crash four years ago. (Link to news article from December) The Phoenixes, high profile executives in the Dresden Chemical Corporation, were rumored to have faked their deaths to avoid prosecution for criminal activities alleged to be related to their corporate endeavors. But their daughter tells a different story.
Keira Phoenix claims she was not the daughter of engineers, or white collar corporate criminals, but enemy spies responsible for decades of global conspiracies. Whether or not her parents are alive remains to be proven, but sources with the FBI say they are taking Keira Phoenix’s accusations seriously and have reopened an investigation into both her parents and the Dresden Chemical Corporation. Full transcript is below.
KEIRA IRENE PHOENIX [Looking directly into the camera. Footage released by Phillip Stone Media, Inc.]
“Hi. My name is Keira Phoenix, and I am the daughter of international criminals. In May, I was kidnapped by a man named Craig Bernard, who at the time, I thought was my boyfriend. We had met weeks before at a bar in Boston. The anniversary of my parents’ death had just passed, so I was upset when he showed up, acting nice. [She scoffs, rolling her eyes.] I invited him to a party I was hosting, then later that night he drugged me and took me from my home.
I don’t remember the abduction—one minute I was in my bed, the next I’m waking up on an airplane, my head pounding and my hands bound together with plastic cable ties. [She rubs her wrists.] I was held captive in Italy for months, by armed guards, and I had no idea why. Eventually, I learned that Craig Bernard and all of the men involved in my kidnapping used to work for my parents. Only not as engineers for the Dresden Chemical Corporation. They were spies. All of them, especially my mom and dad. It turns out that my parents, along with Randolph Urban, CEO of Dresden, conspired to create a criminal enterprise known as Department D, which stretches back long before I was born. We have photographic proof that my parents were involved in the assassination of Italy’s Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978, and we have a journal, in my father’s handwriting along with eye witness testimony, that proves he was involved in the fake terrorist plot that defamed nearly a half dozen Islamic women in London two years ago, along with the reporter who covered the story, Julian Stone.
I believe I was taken by enemies of my parents as payback for their past criminal activity. Evidence of my time in captivity is undeniable. [For the camera, Phoenix holds up a proof of life photo with a church bulletin, and a posed photo of her body in the trunk of a car.] I was rescued by my sister, Anastasia, and her friends who acted alone, because the Boston P.D. refused to listen to them, for reasons none of us understand. After my rescue, my sister, her friends, and I made statements to Italian law enforcement and the CIA, and I was instructed to stay in hiding for my own protection. But I was never safe. No one around us is safe. Tyson Westbrook, a seventeen-year-old friend of my sister’s, was murdered recently as a way to get to us, to lure me and Anastasia out of hiding. When that didn’t work, when we continued to fight, these people poisoned one us—Marcus Rey, son of Dresden executives Carlos and Rosario Rey.
They’re picking us off one by one, and we don’t know high up the corruption goes. Our parents were hired by world leaders to create propaganda for decades. Now these same people are covering up their crimes against us—including kidnapping, poisoning, and murder. They’re trying to silence us, take us out, and prevent us from exposing the truth behind Department D and its shell corporation, Dresden Chemical.
We won’t stay silent anymore.
We won’t stay in hiding.
And we won’t trust law enforcement to act on our behalf.
That’s why I’m coming forward now. I’m telling my story, in my own words. I need the world to know what’s going on, so hopefully no one else gets hurt.
I’ve learned a lot about my parents recently, and you will too over the coming weeks. They did a lot of bad things. I know that. And they might even still be alive. [She cocks her head.] I’ve heard the rumors, like you, but I swear, if they are, I haven’t seen them.
However, I am certain that the only way my sister and I will ever be safe is if we bring down the Dresden Chemical Corporation and its corrupt underbelly, Department D. We need to take back our lives and stop paying for crimes we didn’t commit.
My name is Keira Phoenix and I survived Department D. But will you?”
#
Viral Video
Regina Villanueva
2,123,606 online views to date
Staring directly into the camera, her childhood bedroom in the background, including a shelf full of rainbow-colored My Little Pony stuffed animals.
“This is Regina Villanueva, grieving girlfriend, best friend to liars, speaker of truth, here to tell you that you are all being fed a pile of crap by Keira Phoenix. By now, you’ve seen her video, it plays in a constant loop on cable news. Oh Keira, poor Keira, victim Keira. Seriously, do not believe her lies. She and her sister, Anastasia, are both directly responsible for the death of my boyfriend, Tyson Westbrook. He’s the real victim here. Not her.
You might recognize Tyson’s name from Keira’s video— she mentions how his death is all about her. And she’s right, in a sense. My boyfriend was murdered at the age of seventeen on the streets of Boston, in cold blood, not for the $37 his killer stole from his wallet—which, screw you for that—but because he was friends with Anastasia Phoenix. Tyson’s was murdered as a way to get to Keira and Anastasia. They don’t even deny it. It’s right there in Keira’s video. They caused Tyson’s death.
Yet they aren’t facing any charges for withholding evidence, hindering a police investigation, obstructing justice, accessory after the fact, or hell, being involved in the whole thing to begin with! Nothing. Even our own government told Keira to stay hidden. Go ahead, have a nice time in Europe! Never mind those pesky murders being committed in your name! Keira and Anastasia don’t deserve our protection or our help, and Tyson’s case needs to stay open until they pay, which might be impossible because the Boston PD is so corrupt.
They found Tyson’s murderer, which should be good news, except the guy got stabbed in prison to death the night they brought him in. He didn’t answer a single question about why he attacked us. Because if he did, he would have said the name Anastasia Phoenix, and I know this, because he said her name to me.
I didn’t come forward before, because I was scared. Ty’s killer threatened to murder my entire family if I talked, and I had just watched my boyfriend die in an alley. But now it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. I can’t stay silent anymore. I can’t let the people who did this walk free or worse get some crap reality show on cable.
Tyson’s murderer stood over his dead body and said, “This isn’t over, and if Anastasia thinks she can hide from us, she’s kidding herself. We can get to anyone, and we will. Unless she gives us what we want.”
That’s what he said! I swear it on Tyson’s grave. And I know this means I’m ‘changing my statement’ [she put air quotes around the words]. Heaven forbid! But it’s the truth. And that doesn’t make me some pathetic Mean Girl who wants revenge on her BFF, or some desperate puppy who hopes her boyfriend will come back from the dead like Anastasia’s sister—though I got to love the creativity of the cops who don’t want to listen to me. Too bad they don’t apply that brain power to Tyson’s case. His killer told me to deliver a message to Anastasia, and Keira told you that her parents are alive—connect the giant dots! Tyson’s death is because of the Phoenixes. Anastasia, Keira, and their non-dead parents were all involved with his killer—and I think her parents even hired him. Why not? They’re psychopaths who faked their own deaths! And I swear I will not rest until that entire family goes down for what they’ve done.
Anastasia, I confronted with you with the killers’ message at Tyson’s funeral, and you said nothing! You offered no explanation. In fact, you stood next to his casket with fake tears in your eyes pretending you were still grieving over your sister. Oh, I’m sooo sorry, Regina! I know exactly how you feel! No you don’t, bitch. Your sister is alive, and you knew that.
You know what else you knew—that your parents are criminal lunatics! They were never engineers. Have any of you seen those conspiracy websites? Seriously, I think her parents killed Jimmy Hoffa, and there’s some really solid evidence placing them in Dallas on the day that JFK was shot, that’s all I’m saying.
Not to mention, Keira flat-out admitted she was kidnapped by her parents’ enemies, and apparently just sitting next to a girl in a high school cafeteria will put you on an assassin’s hit list. Well, you know what? It would have been nice to know that before we let you sit with us! Hell, you didn’t have a single friend in that school. You were the weird girl with the dead parents—now that’s not even true, but still—we were nice to you. We hung out with you. And what did that get us? Dead. Tyson is dead. Because of you.
You know you are the reason he was killed, Anastasia, you and your evil parents. So if you’re watching, why don’t you and your sister tell the truth for once. What did that killer want from you that was so important it was worth Tyson’s life? And where are your precious mom and dad now? Stop protecting them, and yourself, because I’m done protecting you.
My name is Regina Villanueva, and my boyfriend, Tyson Westbrook, did not survive Department D, or whatever you call your parent’s crazy criminal crap. Tyson’s dead.
So what are you going to do about that?
CHAPTER TWO
“When’s the 20/20 interview?” Keira asked, frowning as she stared at her phone, swiping through online comments offering (often negative) opinions of every lock of her hair and every blink of her eyes. “Are we still doing CNN?”
“20/20 is Friday and CNN is Monday, though they’re pissed about that. We also have a three-part series with some celebrity psychiatrist that airs during daytime,” said Charlotte Conner, our cyber hacking best friend, who now also managed my sister’s ever expanding media schedule.
Keira nervously bit her bottom lip, absently peeling chapped skin with her tooth until a hint of blood appeared in a crack. She didn’t seem to notice. I did.
This was a huge mistake.
When I made my video deposition to Julian Stone—our benefactor and billionaire media buddy—I was still seeing swirling spots of panic and fighting hyperventilation. Marcus had just been poisoned in Rio de Janeiro. I watched him foam at the mouth. Then I learned that Allen Cross, our only adult ally with ties to espionage, was behind the poisoning. That alone would have been enough to cause the funk to circle over my head like a Category 5 hurricane about to touch land, but that was before I confronted my parents, before I watched them murder Cross right in front of me. That was before I learned that every Dresden Kid I’d spoken to over a span of many months was lying, and that Marcus’ brother, Antonio, had orchestrated the entire plot, turning each Dresden Kid against us before we arrived on their doorsteps. Then Antonio slept with my sister.
So when I got off the plane from Brazil, after all of that, I might as well have crawled on gnarled hands and knees waving a tattered white flag tied to a broken stick. I was beaten. We all were. And I sided with Julian. I listened to the plan he’d been pushing since the day I’d met him, his idea to keep us safe by raising our profile so high no one could touch us. I told him everything. On video. Then so did Keira.
We decided—by a group vote—to release Keira’s confession to the wild, tossing a dripping piece of steak to a pack of starving hyenas. The reporters barely chewed. Within days, Bravo contacted us about a reality series chronicling Keira’s “return to life following a death certificate and a tombstone.” Four New York City publishers were fighting for her book rights. Celebrity News Online offered $100,000 for a picture of Keira in a bath tub. And several high-profile publicists begged Keira to date their has-been clients.
Keira had finally achieved her dream—her picture was on the cover of tabloids, news outlets screamed her name, and trolls crawled from under bridges with sharpened fingernails poised over keyboards. “Who would kidnap her?”“How disgusting to use her parents’ crimes to get famous.” “Her mom killed my cousin’s neighbor. I hope they all rot in hell.” “You know Keira’s in on it. I bet she ordered that hit on Tyson.” “She’s not even pretty. Have you seen her from behind? Huge!” “I’d bang her.” “Please, she’s already banged half of Boston. Trust me, I used to work with her.” “I heard she dropped out of college.” “Dumb and sexy, just how I like them. Don’t worry, babe, I won’t be gentle…”
Keira was kidnapped, drugged, held at gunpoint, and betrayed by the last two men she cared about. (If she wasn’t in love with Antonio, then she was in serious like.) Now the cyber universe had her shoulders constantly slumped, and it was getting harder to ignore the wine bottles collecting in the recycling bins.
What was I thinking? I should have never listened to them…
“All of the interviews will be conducted here, right?” Keira asked, licking blood from her lip as she lifted her dead eyes from her phone.
“Yes, the reporters are coming here. No travel for you,” Julian reassured her as he approached, shooting me a worried look. He could read her expression too, or maybe he saw the words “slutty bitch” in CAPS lock glaring from the comments on her screen.
His interview, “Keira Phoenix: Rising from the Ashes,” was a global sensation. He delivered on his promise—with so much media coverage, no one could harm us without raising suspicion. In return, his reputation had gone from laughing stock who racially profiled a bunch of innocent Islamic women, to serious journalist who broke the year’s biggest story. The down side? He turned my sister into Edward Snowden mixed with Monica Lewinski—Keira was a victim, a whistleblower, and a sex scandal all in one. The news constantly talked about how she slept with her kidnapper (Craig Bernard had yet to be seen, let alone captured), how she was taken from a bathtub in the nude (There was no way that was true, but the rumor persisted.), and how she was too dumb to realize her parents were Dr. Evils. They even scoured social media for every picture of Keira holding a cocktail or wearing a bikini, and used that as the photo on TV when they talked about her being “back from the dead.” And this was coming from the journalists.
“Your security is paramount,” Julian continued, his tone unnaturally calm as a wrinkle formed between his perfectly shaped brows. “They’re displeased that my father owns the estate. and they’re worried that their news outlets will be unduly monitored, but I assured them that will not be the case. Our first priority is your safety. After what you’ve been through, no one can argue with that.”
Keira briefly looked up from her online tormenters to flick a glance at the armed guard wearing a tailored black suit and an earpiece by the doorway to the library. There was another somewhere else inside the compound, and two more outside—our new normal. “Good. Here is good.” Keira nodded then turned back to her phone.
“Put. That. Down,” I insisted. Her face reminded me of the day I found her in Venice, scared and helpless, chained to a sink. This wasn’t the stoic sister who raised me, who refused to shed a tear in my presence. “It’s getting late. Don’t you want to watch the Bachelor? I hear one of the girls has an old boyfriend show up on the group date.”
I hated the Bachelor but I smiled so wide, even I was starting to believe I cared about Britta and Peter’s fake TV romance. Keira loved this stuff. Or she used to, back when we were normal. Only this Keira didn’t even flinch to suggest she heard me. She was too busy reading death threats. At least once a day someone online threatened to rape her. They also asked her to marry them. They sent her pictures of their kids and asked for money for experimental surgeries. They claimed to have gone to school with us in Morocco, or Milan, or New Orleans. One person took the photo of her in the trunk of a car in Rome and added blood dripping her mouth and eyes. Every dawn was a new surprise.
Charlotte plucked the phone from my sister’s hand. “I need to update your schedule,” she said as if that were the reason she wanted the device.
I nodded in appreciation when Charlotte met my eyes. We had become my sister’s counselors, and I feared we were very inept at the task. Exhibit A) Keira hardly washed her hair, saying she “didn’t see the point” of showering if she wasn’t in front of a camera. B) She rarely left the compound. C) She claimed her nursing career was “dead forever.” And D) She was so raw with emotion, tearing up and curling inward, that looking at her often felt like watching an abused animal ad on TV. This from the girl who greeted guests at her parents’ funeral with the detached etiquette of Martha Stewart. She never said she regretted giving her deposition, becoming our poster child, because she couldn’t—that would mean saying she wished I were going through all of this online harassment instead. She couldn’t wish that out loud. But she had to regret that viral newscast everyday she read a fresh death threat in a comment section. I knew I did.
“I don’t see the point of another interview. I’ve said everything I need to say,” she muttered.
“Every outlet has its own angle on events,” Julian explained like the newsman he was. “With each interview you keep the light shining on your story. You keep people looking for your parents, and you get closer to ending all of this.”
“Yeah, because some guy with a bag of Fritos and WiFi is going to find my mom and dad,” she snapped. “The freakin’ CIA can’t find my parents.”
“She has a point,” I scoffed, and Charlotte shot me a look.
But it was true. Ending this nightmare was our full-time jobs, we looked for our parents all day, using every connection we had, and so far we’d only partially succeeded.
The FBI raided Dresden’s Chemical’s offices the day after Julian released Keira’s statement. We all watched, with buttered popcorn and bubbling flutes of champagne, as computers and cardboard boxes were hauled from the company’s downtown Boston skyscraper. There was helicopter footage and evening news teasers, front page headlines and trending topics on social media. We thought we’d won. Dresden Chemical was dismantled, eliminating the front for Department D. Urban’s empire was confiscated and ruined in a single news cycle. It was what made Keira so famous—her video brought down one of the largest and most influential chemical companies in the world. This was epic news from the business community to the espionage world all the way to Us Weekly. Then we found out that Randolph and Sophia Urban, along with Marcus’ parents, took off before the raid. They were probably hiding in matching caves alongside my parents. So our mission changed, at least mine did. It was time for our parents to face justice in a court of law—no CIA black sites, no cemeteries, and no free rides on a fountain of margaritas. For us to be safe, for us to ever be normal, we had to make sure their enemies couldn’t use us as live bait, and they had a lot of enemies—from damaged families like the Dresden Kids, to governments who didn’t want their conspiracies outed, to spies bent on revenge.
We had to find them. So every day Marcus and I scanned CCTV footage from Rio to Boston to London; Charlotte hacked into bank statements, airline records, anything she could find that might offer some hint as to where any of our parents went. So far, nothing.
“Your story’s getting all kinds of new coverage because of Regina’s latest video. The media’s turning it into an Bond Girl cat fight.” Charlotte shook her curly hair in disgust as she tucked Keira’s phone in her back pocket, not returning it. Thank God. “Last week, #JusticeForTyson was trending, and there’s even a donation page now.”
“What’s Regina buying with the money? Eyeliner?” Marcus quipped, and I swatted his arm.
Though I barely recognized my old friend—first she chopped her hair for Tyson’s funeral, now she was sporting a dramatic pixy cut and coating her eyes with so much liner it winged halfway to her ears. Even the sound of her voice on that video made me cringe. I’d never been hated like that before, not by anyone who really knew me, not by anyone who was really justified.
Regina was right. Tyson would be alive if it weren’t for me. And I wished I could tell her how much I hated myself for that, maybe that would make her feel better, knowing that I dreamed of him being swallowed by a shadow while I watched frozen, only to awake dripping with sweat. Maybe she’d be happy that I cried so easily now, and that my throat felt so tight all the time I could hardly swallow food. I wanted to tell her these things, and I tried. Charlotte sent several messages via online channels, but Regina’s response was to make another video slamming us for attempting to “silence her movement.” We stopped after that. I didn’t want to antagonize her into making more clips, into dragging herself into this horror any further. Regina might despise me, but I didn’t despise her. I didn’t want her in this life. Especially when all I was trying to do was free myself from it. Regina was my last connection to the old me, the normal me, and she had to stay there. I owed her that. I owed that to Tyson.
“Regina’s grieving. We can’t blame her for that.” I squeezed my hands, my nails forming little half moons on my palms as I pictured Regina’s face spitting words at the camera, at me. We used to share baby carrots at lunch.
“At least people love her. Regina’s the vigilante girlfriend.” Keira made a face like this was a compliment, like Regina was in an enviable position. Her boyfriend was dead. “I’m the girl who got what was coming to her. Because our parents did this, because my boyfriend screwed me. Literally.”
“You have to stop.” I rose to my feet, marching to my sister. “You’re listening to a bunch of Internet trolls. They’re idiots! You know this! No one who knows anything blames you.”
“I blame me! What do you think I was doing all those months locked in hotel rooms? I thought you were going to get killed because of me. I thought I was going to get killed. Because I ran a DNA test on mom and dad, because I went out with Craig Bernard to begin with. And now the whole world knows how stupid I am—”
“Stop saying that!” I yelled, and Charlotte grabbed my arm. I wasn’t helping.
But I couldn’t listen to this anymore. I let them talk us into going public. I was so angry at myself for forcing Marcus to go to Brazil. I was so mortified that I listened to Allen Cross and let him manipulate me into that ridiculous Dresden Kid plan. I doubted my judgment now. I let the group vote to put our story on the evening news, and to make Keira our poster child. It seemed like a logical idea while my head was full of poison attempts, undead parents, and jewel-encrusted daggers. I listened when they insisted that Keira was the better choice, because she didn’t have to lie. Everything she said on that video was true. She was abducted from our bathroom. She was held against her will, bound and gagged, and declared dead by the Boston P.D. She was taken by enemies of our parents. Our parents were criminals, and if they were alive, she hadn’t seen them.
That was the big difference between Keira and me—I not only saw our parents back from the dead, but I watched them commit murder. If the world knew our parents were alive and had killed a man as recently as a few weeks ago, the investigation would stop there. That sensational headline alone would be enough to convince any jury, any human, that my parents were the villains of this story. And they were, but they weren’t the only villains. Randolph Urban kidnapped my sister, and the Reys sabotaged every Dresden Kid we met in an attempt to pin decades worth of crimes solely on my parents. And someone killed Tyson. I was not going to let any of them act like innocent employees of an engineering firm who had no idea criminal activity was being committed. This time, they were all going to burn, without any beasts rising from any ashes.
So I gave an honest deposition to Julian, detailing every tiny element of my twisted story, and locked it in a safety deposit box with “in case of emergency break glass” instructions. Only now, while my glass was still in tact, I was starting to feel like Keira’s was irreparably shattered.
“If you don’t want to do this interview, any interviews, you don’t have to.” I sat on the puffy arm of my sister’s wingback chair, the elegant damask pattern clashing with her gray yoga pants stained with yogurt. “You’ve done enough.”
“If I stop now, it will be for nothing. All of it. They’re still out there. People still want to kill us to get to them. The only difference is the whole world thinks we suck too. I can’t let it end like this.” Keira squinted her eyes shut, shaking her head, like everything hurt.
“It’s not up to you to fix it. You’ve been through enough. If you want to be done, then we’re done.” I watched the wrinkles deepen on her forehead.
“I can cancel,” Julian insisted, not an ounce of judgment in his voice. “But if you want to continue, you know you’re safe here.”
“Yeah, here.” Keira’s eyes flung open. “Problem is, I’m acting crazy and I know it. I’m afraid to go to New York City for an interview, because I think a flight attendant might poison my ginger ale or a lunatic might break into my hotel room. I know how pathetic that is.”
“You are not pathetic or crazy, those are valid concerns,” Charlotte offered.
“Si. I was nearly poisoned to death,” said Marcus.
“That’s not helping.” I shot him a look, not wanting to add to my sister’s paranoia.
“Mom and Dad must have seen my video, my interviews,” said Keira, peering at me with a gaze so lifeless I wanted to reach for a crash cart and shock her chest. She needed to feel something other than torment. “They haven’t tried to contact me once. After everything they did, don’t they think I deserve an apology? An explanation? Something?”
Yes, she did. But if that was the reason she was on camera, I needed to cancel every interview she had scheduled. An apology wasn’t coming. I tried to explain that to her before, tell her that the people I met in Rio were not the people who raised us, but she couldn’t accept it. She had to see them for herself, and she deserved that. But the parents I confronted spent their entire time with me justifying every unforgivable thing they did, including the murder of Allen Cross’s sick wife and then his murder right in front of me. They didn’t see the damage they caused. Though it shouldn’t take a mommy and me class to learn that first degree murder was not something you wanted to share with your kids. It shouldn’t take a parenting manual to realize that faking your death was a pretty traumatic thing to do to your children.
“We’ll find Mom and Dad,” I assured her, keeping my opinions to myself. She needed hope, and I was not about to take that away.
“I just wish they would find me. I wish someone cared about me,” she mumbled.
“We care about you!” everyone shouted in unison.
Her head shot up. “That’s not what I mean, and you know it! Julian, you and Charlotte have each other. And you and Marcus are together.” She looked at me like her words were an accusation. “We may be isolated here, surrounded by guards and nut jobs, but at least all of you have a life, a real one, and I don’t. It’s freakin’ Valentine’s Day tomorrow!”
Damn. I gulped.
I had hoped she hadn’t noticed the date. Not that we ever celebrated Valentine’s Day before. Not sincerely anyway. Keira and I never had a boyfriend to take us to dinner or buy us perfume. We were always each other’s Valentines. We’d buy cheesy stuffed animals and cheap assorted chocolates from the drug store and make fun of everyone who took the commercialism so seriously. But while I truly disliked the millions of people buying cards full of vapid romantic sentiments written by a corporate conglomerate, I sensed my sister always wished she had a guy who’d take the time to pick up a wilting bundle of roses. Romantically, she couldn’t be any more damaged and alone right now than if she were in solitary confinement.
“Valentine’s Day sucks,” I stated the obvious.
“You can say that. You have a guy who threw himself in front of a loaded gun for you!” She furrowed her brow at Marcus.
“Si.” Marcus shrugged with a look of I am awesome. And he was. He rescued me from Luis Basso in Cortona, stealing a motorbike and everything, but his brother also betrayed us, and my sister in particular. I didn’t need him making her feel worse. I shot him a look.
“We all care about you,” he quickly added.
“And being single is a good thing,” I said. “You’re strong, you’re independent…”
“I’m a freak show.”
“You are not!” Charlotte yelped.
“Yes, I am. My last two boyfriends were fake. My parents are fake. My entire reality-star wannabe persona is fake.”
“We’re real,” said Charlotte.
“Yeah, and are you and Julian gonna invite me to watch The Notebook with you tomorrow?” Keira snapped.
“Actually, and this probably isn’t the best time to say this,” Julian gazed at Charlotte. “But I thought we might go out tomorrow, somewhere nice.” His shoulders raised apologetically at my sister, who slumped further in her seat. Meanwhile, Charlotte’s face lit up like he’d just offered her the keys to the NSA. Like Keira and I, I couldn’t remember Charlotte ever having a real date on Valentine’s Day.
“We’re going out?” Charlotte asked, her pale skin glowing. She deserved to be happy. Not that I wanted to make my sister hurt worse, abut I also didn’t want to strip any joy from Charlotte. She was sacrificing a lot for us, including her career and her life back in Boston, so she got to have a moment once in awhile.
Julian nodding, and Charlotte leaned toward him, eyes sappy, then she quickly looked away, like she would betray my sister if she dared to smile.
“Great.” Keira sighed, noticing the interaction. “I’m the fun sucker.”
“Hey,” I nudged her shoulder. “We’re not doing anything.” I squeezed Marcus’ forearm like ‘you better back me on this.’ He swiftly nodded. “You know I hate Valentine’s Day. It’s stupid. Let’s show Marcus how we used to celebrate.”
I pumped my eyebrows, trying to remind her of holidays past, the ones with just her and me. We always made them work, in our own way, the two of us.
Now it would be the three of us.
That wasn’t awkward.
Marcus grabbed my hand, and I ignored the look on his face.
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