Charged: A Stepbrother Romance Novel (With FREE Bonus Novel Heated!) Read online

  “Checking accounts”, Philip mused, holding up a sheet of paper as though to indicate it. “Your mother’s spending. Please come in.”

  Gracey ventured past the door with a smile, closed it behind her and perched herself on the edge of the leather sofa that sunk down on one side from Philip’s increasing weight.

  “She’s always been good at it”, Gracey said.

  “Don’t I know”, Philip quipped. “How can I help you?”

  Gracey’s look told Philip all that he needed to know.

  “I can come back if it’s a bad time.”

  Philip sighed and then took hold of his scotch glass, swirling the contents around and watching as though an answer might be bequeathed from within. “You know I never went to University.”

  “I’ve been looking at courses”, Gracey said. “It’s not as expensive as you think. I mean, it doesn’t have to be.”

  Philip drank what remained in his glass, his eyes heavy and bag-ridden. “I need another drink”, he said, levering himself up with his hand on the back of the chair.

  “I’ll get it”, Gracey said quickly.

  Philip eased himself back down, the huge effort enough to make him short of breath. A second later his glass was refilled and back between his hands.

  “We’re going to have to do something about Alexander”, Philip said, changing the subject. “He’s off his food.”

  “How are you, Philip?” Gracey asked, concern lilting her voice. “I know the others don’t care, not even Mom, but I do.”

  “What do you care about me for?” Philip’s voice sounded more challenging than he intended it to be. “I’m just a pot of money aren’t I? Isn’t that what I’ve always been? An endless pot of money.”

  “To Mom maybe”, Gracey said, “not to me.”

  Philip let the whisky warm his tongue. “I’m fine”, he said eventually. “Fine.”

  Gracey knew he wasn’t telling the truth, but she really didn’t want to push it. Philip was volatile enough not to need any encouragement. It had taken her long enough to get him to gain enough confidence to allow her into his office, let alone question his health. She’d have to leave it at that.

  “Find the course and find the university”, Philip said. “but before all that, make sure you find the right reason to want to do it first. It’s no good doing something just because everyone else has done it before.”

  “Seriously?” Gracey said, a huge smile stretching out across her face. Philip was as deadpan as ever.

  “Just don’t come crying to me if it doesn’t work out for you.”

  “I won’t, I promise I won’t.”

  She wanted to hug him, but she knew that if she did, there was a high probability he’d rescind the offer. Instead, she just smiled like a moron and kept saying thank you.

  “I wish your sisters were more like you”, Philip said, the whisky making his whole body warm.

  “I thought you didn’t agree with University.”

  “I don’t”, Philip said. “I was talking about the way you are with me. Polite, respectful, deferential. Your sisters don’t know their place.”

  The comment made Gracey mad, but she wasn’t going to speak out of turn just in case he took back his offer. Philip was prone to moments of exaggeration, especially when he’d been drinking, and Gracey just felt like this was one of those moments. He probably didn’t mean what he said, it just came out the wrong way.

  “All Pandora cares about is fucking”, Philip said, “and as for Isabella, I have no idea what’s going on in that woman’s head half the time.”

  “Isabella has never known what she wanted to be”, Gracey said. “At least Pandora makes no apologies for who she is, I thought that might have appealed to your proactive side.”

  Philip’s sudden laugh shocked them both. “She’ll end up like her mother”, Philip said. “A parasitic drain.”

  “Why didn’t you divorce her?”

  Philip’s stare immediately made Gracey feel like she’d overstepped the mark. She was expecting Philip to launch into one of his trademark tirades, but nothing came.

  “Because I loved her”, Philip said. It was the frankest Gracey had ever heard him being. “Stupid, huh?”

  Gracey didn’t know what to say. Shaking her head didn’t seem like it was enough, so she added, “No, not at all. Mom loves you too, or at least she did”, but it didn’t feel convincing. Whatever she said, she knew the conversation was already over. She wanted so much to stay and talk to Philip, to pull the reasons for his sadness out of him like splinters from a bear’s paw, but today was not going to be the day that would happen. For a long time growing up Gracey had wanted him dead. She fantasized about it. She hated him more than anything in the world right up until she was old enough to understand that the way he behaved was because he carried around pain in such quantities, there was no other way for it to manifest itself. She began to feel sorry for him, and then she wanted to do everything she could to help. She sometimes saw glimmers of the man that Philip used to be in the private conversations that they had begun to have in his office, and she was convinced that little by little she could change him, that little by little she could bring out the good that used to exist in him in huge quantities. Philip’s past life intrigued her, even more so because she knew so little about it.

  “Was there anything else?” Philip said, shifting his body weight away from Gracey so both of his legs were back underneath his desk.

  “No”, Gracey said, shaking her head. And then, spontaneously, “Do you want me to take Alexander for a walk?”

  Philip seemed to contemplate this offer briefly and then let out a large sigh as though resigned to it, even if it might have been beneficial. “Don’t let him roll in fox shit”, he said. “And let me know if he eats anything. I haven’t had to fill his bowl in days.”

  Isabella watched her sister disappear into the grounds around the house, every once in a while picking up a stick and tossing it for Alexander to chase. When she made sure that Gracey had disappeared beyond the tree line, which represented a fifteen minute hike back up to the house, she gathered her things and took them into her sister’s bedroom. The digitalin had been much easier to make than she had expected. The foxgloves grew naturally in the countryside around the house and the internet at the library had provided her with a step by step guide on how to extract the poison.

  Isabella hated her stepfather with a passion. She’d wanted him dead for a long time, and decided that now was finally the time to do it. She hid the vial at the back of one of Gracey’s clothes drawers, deep enough for it not to be easy to find. Killing her stepfather was one thing, but framing her sister another completely. If she could, she would have done it without implicating anyone at all, but she knew that the police would continue to poke around until they’d found the culprit, and Isabella just couldn’t take the risk. Besides which, she resented Gracey. She resented her for being the intelligent one when that label could just as easily have stuck to her. Gracey wasn’t more intelligent than anyone else in the house, she just liked to think she was because she read books and wore glasses. Pandora had been a bitch too, but at least she’d stood by her younger sister, which was much more than Gracey had ever done, especially so recently, in what Isabella saw as a direct attempt to befriend the man that had made their childhood such hell.

  With the vile in place, and a separate quantity decanted to a pipette, Isabella went to her stepfather’s office, to slip the fluid brazenly into his drink with every intention to kill him. She had measured an amount that would take effect some hours after she’d given it to him, when Gracey would definitely be back from her walk. She thought about leaving the house and giving herself an alibi, but the potential to be around when he choked seemed like a much more favorable option.

  For the second time that night, Philip invited a guest into his office. He hadn’t expected Isabella, and despite telling her he was busy, the girl rudely barged into his room.

  “It will onl
y take a minute”, Isabella said. “But I think it’s something you should know.”

  Philip eyeballed her sternly.

  “I have a confession.”

  “Well”, Philip said, already irritated by this intrusion.

  Isabella paused theatrically. She drew breath and rubbed her hands. “Well what is it, girl?” Philip demanded.

  “I think you better have a drink before I tell you”, Isabella said.

  She hadn’t planned how to get the poison into his drink, but knew it wouldn’t be too difficult. There were two things Philip couldn’t resist in life, drink and money. His immobility was the thing that played the biggest part, however. Isabella had his glass in her hand before Philip had even thought about taking it to the drinks cabinet himself. Philip never kept the bottle by his side because he considered it vulgar. He thought it would make him look like an alcoholic.

  Philip reluctantly let Isabella take his glass, holding it momentarily before she pulled it out of his fingers.

  “This better be good”, he said, looking up to her suspiciously.

  “Oh, don’t you worry”, Isabella said, “it is.”

  The poison was squirted into his glass with the expertise of a CIA assassin. A twist of the spoon melded the two liquids together. Had Philip been about to drink his first and not sixth glass of the day, he may have noticed the subtle difference in flavor, as it was, he barely raised an eyelid.

  Isabella watched avidly as the liquid slipped past his lips, and then couldn’t help but smile as she watched him greedily gulp it down.

  “Well?”, Philip commanded.

  There was that pause again. That theatrical, manipulative hesitation. “Mom’s having an affair.”

  Philip studied the girl closely, and then sucked down the rest of his drink.

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  Isabella shrugged her shoulders. “I thought you would want to know.”

  “Is that it?” Philip said.

  “She’s fucking him right here in your house.”

  “Get out of here, Isabella.”

  “In your room”, Isabella said. “Everyone can hear it.”

  “Out”, Philip said calmly, even though he was far from it.

  “I just thought you should know”, Isabella said, already on the way to the door. “It was pretty obviously she was sucking his cock last night too, it’s fucking gross.”

  Isabella closed the door before Philip could respond.

  “Fucking cunt”, Philip spat out.

  Gracey returned with Alexander half an hour later. She noted an increase in Philip’s irascibility but nothing she wouldn’t have put down to drink. An hour after that, on her way to ask for some pocket money, Pandora found him slumped over the floor, his lips dotted with blood.

  Chapter 25

  Esmeralda pulled the huge document out of the jiffy bag cover. It was addressed to Leighton, of course, but anything addressed to her boss was eligible to be opened by his secretary. Leighton knew that. The lawyers who sent it would have known that. Everyone in the world would have known that, except for Philip Mandrake De Vries.

  “Dear Leighton”, Esmeralda read aloud. And then… “Fucking hell.”

  For the second time in a week, her plush white carpet bore the stains of a spilled glass of red wine.

  Part Four.

  Present day…

  Chapter 26

  For the sake of expediency, Leighton had agreed to have legal representation provided by mobile phone conference call, which he broadcast into the room by speaker phone. He tried to do the same for Gracey, but had no way of putting his team directly in contact with her. For all he knew, she was at a completely different police station on the other side of town, with her mobile phone already taken away from her and dispensed in a locker until she was finally let out again. The best he could do was give them her name and hope that they could find her in time. He didn’t really know how it worked at all, beyond what he’d seen on TV and films.

  The only thing he could be absolutely certain of was their innocence, what he had to do now was prove it.

  “Pandora and Isabella have confirmed that they saw you at the house on the evening of the fourteenth, can you tell me what you were doing there?”

  “What is my client being charged with?” crackled the mobile phone. “Leighton, you don’t need to answer that.”

  “This is ridiculous”, came another voice.

  “Esmeralda, can you tell Detective Foster what was I doing on the fourteenth?”

  “How much detail do you want me to give him?”

  Leighton rolled his eyes. “However much you think is necessary to confirm I wasn’t here, planning the murder of my estranged father.”

  “We were together on the fourteenth”, Esmeralda confirmed, her voice carrying a tone of bitterness.

  “Are you prepared to confirm that in a court of law?” Detective Foster said, taking a moment to examine the dirt underneath his fingernails.

  “Yes, I am”, Esmeralda said. “Leighton was with me all night.”

  “And are you absolutely sure it was the fourteenth?”

  “I have it in my diary. 8pm dinner with Leighton. 9pm until the early hours, fucking all night. Do you remember that Leighton?”

  “Esmeralda, this isn’t the time.”

  “The last I hear from you I’m being dumped, the next you’ve been arrested for murder. Thanks for keeping me in the loop. There’s something here for you by the way, something from Philip. I thought it was a legal pack, you know, something to do with the inheritance, but it’s not. It’s a letter or something. Some kind of apology.”

  “Thank you, Esmeralda. I’ll take a look at it when I get out of here.”

  “Is that it, can I go now?”

  Leighton looked to Detective Foster to give the answer, his hands spread out passively.

  “Someone will be in touch to take a statement”, Detective Foster said.

  “When you let him out, tell him to come home. This business is falling apart without him. Do you hear me Leighton?”

  Leighton sighed and Esmeralda clicked off. “What do you know about this document?” Leighton asked his legal team, but before they could respond, Detective Foster jumped in.

  “I have a few more questions first, if that’s ok with you?”

  “Look, inspector-”

  “Detective.”

  “Detective. You know I had nothing to do with this. What is it exactly you want from me?”

  “How did you know your father was dying?”

  “You don’t have to answer that Leighton”, came one of the voices from across the phone.

  “You show up, unannounced, nobody knows who you are, you make friends with the family, particularly Gracey, and then suddenly, you inherit some astonishing amount of money. Well, astonishing for most people. I guess it’s a drop in the ocean for someone like you.”

  “I came because Philip was my father”, Leighton said. “I wanted to see him before he died.”

  Detective Foster leaned forward on his chair, stabbing the air with the end of his thumb. “Yeah, but how did you know that?”

  Leighton sighed. “I didn’t kill Philip Mandrake De Vries, I didn’t even know him.”

  There was a pause that would have been filled with the inhaling or exhaling of cigarette smoke, had either of the two men been smokers. Leighton had never picked up the habit and Detective Foster had let go of it a long time ago.

  Leighton knew he didn’t have to explain any more than he already had about his father, but if he did, the Detective might let him out earlier, which meant he had much more chance of helping Gracey.

  “I paid a private Detective to find him, just so I knew who he was. I didn’t make contact, I didn’t watch him from afar, I just wanted a name, and that was it. That was about five or six years ago, I don’t remember exactly. I grew up without parents, Detective. I feel like it has made me the man I am today. Parents hold children back, they limit them from
reaching their full potential. I had people that looked after me for a while, but I never had what you would call ‘parents’.” Leighton made sure he encased the word in inverted commas he drew purposefully through the air.

  “So why bother looking for yours if you were happy not having any?”

  “Curiosity and weakness.” Leighton said leaning forwards challengingly, eyes leveled at the Detective’s. “We all have it.”

  “And you found Philip?”

  Leighton relaxed back into his chair.

  “I did eventually, yes. He’d been careful about hiding his tracks, and I almost didn’t find him at all. I got lucky. I guess I would have done anyway, after his death.”

  “Perhaps it would have been better if you had.”

  Leighton had to laugh at that. “Detective, you are the one holding me in here.”

  “What about the rest of your family?”

  “This really isn’t relevant”, one of the lawyers said.

  “I have my mother’s name, and a photo of her as a child. I have never had any intention of finding her.”

  “Not even if she has a few billion dollars she wants to donate?”

  “Where exactly is this line of questioning going, Detective?”

  Despite agreeing with his lawyer, Leighton decided to answer the Detective’s question anyway. “I didn’t come here for the money, and it’s not why I’ve stayed either.”

  “Gracey.”

  Leighton took a sip from the water that had been provided for him. It tasted like copper and peat.

  “She didn’t do it”, Leighton said.

  Detective Foster made a sound that fell somewhere between disagreement and intrigue.

  “She has motive, her prints were all over the glass he was poisoned from, the forensics team found the same poison in a vial hidden at the back of her chest of drawers, and she has no alibi.”

  “She didn’t do it”, Leighton repeated. “I think you believe the same as well.”

  Now it was Detective Foster’s turn to lean back in his chair.

  “Am I being charged, Detective?” Leighton said evenly.

  Detective Foster folded his hands over his chest, while he cocked his head to one side.