Brutal Lies: Pacific Prep #2 Read online

  This was not part of my plan.

  Enrolling at Pacific Prep was supposed to gain me freedom and a feeling of control over my life. Buried truths are being revealed, and my goals are becoming less clear by the day.

  My entire life, I’ve wanted a family; wanted to know if I had one out there. I’ve craved answers and now that I’m getting them, I don’t know if I’m ready.

  I have a brother, a family.

  Sadly, the knowledge of that isn’t comforting, because I can’t trust them.

  The same distrust extends to the guys that are invading every aspect of my life. Suddenly, they’re everywhere, demanding the truth from my lips and tugging at a heart that’s been cold for far too long.

  Will the truth set me free, or rip me apart?

  Brutal Lies

  Broken Trust Copyright © 2021 R.A. Smyth

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN: 9798455216053

  Cover & Interior Design by Nikki Epperson. All Rights Reserved.

  Editing by Heart Full of Reads Editing Services.

  Formatting by Rachel Smyth.

  Pacific Prep Playlist

  Just Tonight – The Pretty Reckless

  Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing – Set it Off

  I Miss the Misery – Halestorm

  Maybe – Sick Puppies

  Kill Me – The Pretty Reckless

  Nightmare – Halsey

  Greater Things – Ashes Remain

  No Life – Dark Station

  Body Bag – Machine Gun Kelly

  Hate (I Really Don’t Like You) – Plain White Ts

  Set Me Free – Pop Evil

  Last Stand – Adelitas Way

  DEVIL – Shinedown

  Dead Yet – Gabriel Black

  Without You – The Kid LAROI

  Let Me Be Your Superhero – Smash Into Pieces

  Bad Habits – Ed Sheeran

  Man or a Monster – Sam Tinnesz, Zayde Wolf

  …And many more

  Play Now

  This book is a dark, contemporary, new adult reverse harem romance, meaning the FMC will end up with 3+ males. The book has trigger warnings for abuse, violence and graphic scenes.

  The book also ends on a cliffhanger.

  The series will ultimately have an HEA.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  I don’t waste a second once I’m home, dumping my stuff in my room before starting a search of the house. If Hadley really is my sister, there’s got to be something hidden here to prove it. Not that I doubt West or those stupid lab reports, but why the fuck did he have to go digging and stirring shit up.

  Heading straight for my dad’s office where he keeps his safe, I type in the code, lifting out various files and folders and flicking through each of them for signs of anything related to Hadley.

  Coming up empty, I groan in frustration. He’s got some vague looking work papers, insurance documents, the deed to the house, even our birth certificates and passports in here, but nothing that hints at anything about a long-lost daughter.

  Is it possible West is wrong?

  I run my hand through my hair as I look around the room, before I start to pull open drawers. I even flick through books in the bookcase, in case he’s got a secret photograph hidden amongst the pages. Nothing. There isn’t a single trace of her here.

  Racking my brain for anywhere else they could hide something, I stride up the stairs. Instead of turning right toward my room, I head left, opening the door to their suite.

  I haven’t been in here since I was a little kid, and even then, I was rarely allowed to come in. Usually only if I had a nightmare, which wasn’t often, and more frequently than not, the nanny was left to deal with me when I did have one. Glancing around the neat bedroom with the made bed and perfectly positioned decorative cushions, I search through their nightstands first, once again finding nothing useful.

  Heading into the attached dressing room, I push sweaters and shoes aside, searching the shelves before dropping down to the ground and rifling through a bunch of shoe boxes.

  I’m about to give up when I spot a small safe tucked in the back left corner of the closet. Moving closer, I stare at it, my mind racing with the possibilities of the secrets it could be hiding. I know it’s not jewelry or important documents—all that shit is kept in the main safe I just searched through. So, what could they possibly be hiding in this one?

  Pressing the buttons, I enter the standard pin my dad uses for everything, not even questioning that it could be anything else. But when the safe bleeps, the screen flashing with a red error sign, I’m taken by surprise. What the hell else could the pin be?

  I stare baffled at the keypad, thinking over the possibilities before trying my birth date—0108. Nope, another error message flashes across the screen. Confused, I try a few random combinations to see if I have any luck.

  After several more annoying bleeps, I sigh in frustration, rattling my brain for another combination. Something personal that could be related to Hadley...or to me. Or to both of us?

  On a whim, I type in 8946—the numbers spelling out T-W-I-N.

  The screen flashes green, the satisfying sound of the lock disengaging as the door clicks open. After gaping slack-jawed at it for a moment—seriously? Fucking twin?—I pull open the door. Inside, there’s a small stack of documents, and nothing else.

  With nerves fluttering in my gut, I lift the pile out, my eyes landing on the top page—a photograph. It’s of two toddlers—a boy and a girl, each with white-blonde hair and mischievous looks—sitting in high chairs, their faces smeared with food as they laugh at one another. There’s a brightness in her eyes and a goofy grin on his, neither of which belong to the adults these kids became.

  With a strange twisting in my stomach, I set the photo aside, flicking through the others in the stack before coming across a birth certificate. Something tugs at the corner of my brain; a memory I can’t quite grasp, but a strange familiarity comes over me as I read her name, Elizabeth Jane Davenport.

  Hawk and Elizabeth.

  There’s something so familiar about that. Like I’ve heard it a hundred times, but I don’t ever remember hearing it.

  Somehow, I can’t picture Hadley as an Elizabeth. It sounds too uppity or something. Not her at all. It’s the kind of name you expect the other rich superficial girls at Pac to have, but not Hadley. She’s never been one of them, never fitted into the same world as the rest of us, so why would her name be any different?

  What stands out to me is the date of birth on the certificate. It’s the exact same as mine, confirming my suspicion. We’re not just siblings, we’re
fucking twins—assuming of course, this is Hadley, although I can’t deny it’s getting more and more difficult to refute that assumption.

  Not sure what to make of any of this, I grab a shoe box, emptying out the pair of overpriced Manolo Blahnik heels and shoving the contents of the safe into it. Lifting the first photo I came across, I pause, once again looking at the cheerful smiles on the toddlers’ faces before stuffing it in my back pocket, choosing not to think about the fact I’m holding on to it.

  Quickly leaving my parents’ room before they can come home and find me snooping, I text the guys.

  Hawk: Found something.

  Mason: What did you find?

  Hawk: I’ll show you tonight.

  That night, the guys come over and I turn some football game on the TV, letting it play in the background. Ensuring the door to the den is closed in case my parents come home—not that they often do—I hand out beers to the guys.

  My ass has barely hit the seat when West open fires with the questions.

  “Well, what did you find?”

  Sighing, I lift the box from beside my chair. As I stretch forward to set it on the coffee table, West leans in, snatches it from me and flips off the lid. Silently, he takes his time as he goes through every photo before looking at the birth certificate.

  Mason leans in close beside him, looking over his shoulder so he can see the documents too. Cam, on the other hand, glowers at the box like it’s at fault for the fucked up state of his whatevership with Hadley.

  Both Mason and West's eyes widen as they move through the few photos.

  “Damn, I didn’t know you knew how to smile.” Mason laughs as I throw my bottle cap at him.

  “You were both pretty cute as kids. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a photo of you this young before.”

  “Yeah,” I agree, ignoring West’s statement about me looking cute. I was never fucking cute looking. “I guess we know why.”

  “So it’s true then?” Cam questions, eyeing the photos in West’s hands like they’re a bomb that’s about to go off and not some innocent pictures. “She really is your sister?”

  I shrug, not really having an answer. “It seems like it. I guess it’s possible the kid in the photos isn’t her.”

  It’s probably fucked up that some part of me hopes that’s true, but even as I say the words, I know it’s only wishful thinking. Something that’s confirmed by West’s deadpan expression.

  “It’s her,” he assures us.

  Mason’s brows are furrowed as he ponders something. “How the hell did she end up in foster care? And after all these years, she just so happened to turn up at Pac? What are the chances?”

  “Too fucking unlikely.” There’s no way it’s just a fucking coincidence. A lot more is going on here than we know, and I don’t fucking like being left in the dark.

  Setting aside the last photograph, the two of them finally read over the birth certificate.

  “Her name is Elizabeth?” His voice hitches at the end and he tilts his head slightly, like he can’t make the name fit with the girl he’s come to know.

  Cam’s head snaps up, his eyes narrowed on Mason. “What did you just say?”

  The harsh snap of his words has all three of us turning to look at him, confused at his hostile reaction. I get it, he hates the girl, and so he should, but it’s just a fucking name.

  “Elizabeth?” Mason repeats slowly, looking at Cam in bewilderment.

  Cam’s up and out of his chair in the blink of an eye, snatching the certificate from West’s hands, nearly tearing the damn thing in his urge to see it.

  “Watch it!” I bark, but the asshole ignores me. His face pales as he looks at the words on the page, confirming with his own eyes that her name is in fact Elizabeth—how many bloody times does it need to be mentioned?

  “Cam.” West uses a much more gentle tone, his hand resting on Cam’s forearm, jolting him out of whatever fucking trance he was caught in. “What’s going on?”

  I can see the wheels spinning in his head as he looks at each of us, confusion and something much darker marking his features.

  “My dad knows her.”

  “What?” all three of us demand at once.

  “That’s not possible,” I insist.

  “What makes you think that?” West questions, staring intently at Cam, just like I am.

  “At my last swim meet, I heard him say her name,” he explains vaguely, his thoughts straying back to that day as he tries to recall what happened. “He didn’t hear me approach, but I heard him say Elizabeth. I followed where he was looking up into the stands, but I didn’t see anyone with that name.”

  Scoffing, I wave him off. “He could have been talking about anyone.”

  “He was looking right fucking at her,” Cam snaps, turning to glare at me. “He was looking right at her, and afterward, he asked me who she was. He claimed he didn’t know there was a new scholarship student and he wanted to make sure the school had done their due diligence.”

  I take a moment to think through what he’s saying, but none of it adds up. “So...what does that mean?” I finally ask. “That he knows her?”

  “What else could it mean?” Cam demands.

  “I mean, all of our parents must know about her,” West suggests. “Is it possible he recognized her?”

  “From when she was a toddler?” I snort, waving my hand at the stack of photos. “She looks nothing like she did at that age.”

  “No.” Cam spits the word out between gritted teeth, his lip curling back in a sneer as he shakes his head. His eyes are still narrowed as he attempts to put the puzzle pieces together. “She knows my dad. She has to. Nothing else makes sense.”

  “How though?” Mason questions. “How the fuck would a foster kid like her know your dad?”

  “I don’t know,” Cam grits out in exasperation, throwing his hands up in the air. “Maybe he tracked her down and brought her to Pac?”

  “That wouldn’t explain why he was surprised to see her at your swim meet,” Mason reasons.

  “Then maybe she’s sleeping with him,” Cam argues.

  The rest of us remain silent, no one having a reasonable rebuttal to that statement.

  “What about the notebook?” West eventually asks. “She had all of our parents in it. What was that about?”

  “Blackmail?” Cam suggests, clearly full of theories. “Maybe she decided to blackmail my dad, and was using us and whatever information she could find on our parents to do it?”

  I slowly nod my head as I try to work my way through it. It’s not an impossible assumption. Hell, it’s the best one we’ve got, the only theory that fits the few puzzle pieces we have.

  “If your dad knows who she is,” West begins, looking up at Cam with the same questions the rest of us are asking ourselves swimming in his eyes, “how come he never told her? There’s no way she knew anything about being a Davenport.” He insists for like the fiftieth fucking time.

  He’s so sure she wasn’t pulling the wool over his eyes. I’m not so fucking sure, though. She’s made it more than obvious she can manipulate us and pull our strings on a whim. I don’t believe one fucking word out of her mouth.

  No one seems to have any answers, all of us looking at each other.

  “We need more information. We need to find out more about her, where she came from, how she could have met Cam’s dad.” I look pointedly at West. “You need to do some digging.”

  His lips thin, not exactly happy with that idea, but he doesn’t argue, simply nodding his head in agreement. “I’ll see what I can find.”

  ***

  On Christmas day, the house is abuzz with energy as staff run back and forth between the kitchen and dining room, preparing for our guests. The house is tastefully decorated with a tree and other Christmas decorations in some vain attempt to get us all in the Christmas spirit.

  All our families eat together on holidays, our parents usually finding time in their busy schedules to come home and
check in with all of us, however briefly or unwanted it may be.

  The guys’ families will be over later this afternoon so all of us can sit down to dine together. My father pulled me aside this morning to tell me that they need to talk to us after dinner, so we’re not to disappear after we’ve eaten.

  A quick text to the guys confirms they’ve been told the same thing.

  We’ve been back and forth debating what it could be and we’re certain they’re finally going to spill the beans on what their company—Nocturnal Enterprises—actually does to earn most of its money. After all, they want us to come and work for them in a few short months. They’d have to tell us sooner or later.

  Of course, they’re several months too late.

  Over the summer, we were searching for something—anything—we could use against them, to blackmail them into letting us live our own lives for a few more years—go to college and just enjoy our youth. West was digging into their company to see what he could find, and fucking hell, did he find something alright.

  It was a single breadcrumb at first, but the deeper he dug, he discovered Nocturnal Enterprises is nothing more than a front for the fucked up shit they’re really involved in.

  It turns out there’s a whole other covert side to their business—Nocturnal Mercenaries. Our parents have been using their connections from their legitimate business contracts with the military to recruit people that have been discharged and are looking for lucrative, private work. From the employee bios we found, most of the men they hire are highly trained, having done time on special ops teams, however they have a history of issues with authority and aggression problems, and ultimately ended up being dishonorably discharged. That’s when our parents swoop in and offer them employment…as fucking mercenaries, accepting contracts from all sorts of low-life scum, wanting to dick over or piss off someone who has wronged them.

  To say we were shocked is an understatement. Our minds were fucking blown, each of us trying to compute this new information with what we knew about our parents; trying to rifle through our memories and work out what tells we missed that could have had us clued in years ago.