“I see.” I looked away from her, not knowing what to say.

“When you f**ked him, did he say my name?” Maria leaned towards me and hissed. “Did he tell you that he likes to f**k me in the car, in the shower, in the elevator, in the kitchen?”

“He told me he’s never slept with you.” I jumped up, angry and upset. I wanted to be away from this woman. “He told me he doesn’t love you, that he only became engaged to you because of your dad.”

Maria started laughing, but I could see her face turning red. “I suppose he’s right about one thing. The only woman he ever really loved was Denise.”

“Who?” I frowned and turned to look at her.

“Denise. She’s the one who ruined him. The one he wishes every woman was like. She was a freak in the bedroom, let him do things to her that other women wouldn’t even think of.” Maria stood up and smiled at me. “I suppose I should feel sorry for me. You’re like me. You got caught up in his lies and his spell. He doesn’t love you, you know. This is just about revenge and power for him. He uses us because his true love, Denise, used him. Once you submit to him, he will be gone. Just like he was before.”

“You’re lying.” I turned away from her, not wanting to hear anything else she had to say.

“Go to his study, turn on the TV, and press play on the DVD player.” Maria shrugged and turned away from me. “He goes to his study every day and watches that video to remind himself of who he was and what he lost.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Are you scared, little girl?” She laughed hysterically and then turned around abruptly. I watched as she left the room and the house. I stood there in shock. What was she talking about? I’d never heard of a Denise before in my life. I thought back to the last few weeks and everything that had happened. It had seemed like Brandon had been deliberately trying to humiliate me and hurt me. How did I know if he really truly loved me or if this was just a game to him?

I walked to the study slowly, ashamed of myself for believing Maria’s lies. I just need to know that it’s a lie, I told myself as I entered the study and turned on the TV. It took me a few minutes to find the DVD player. it was hidden behind some books. I pressed play and waited.

The screen flashed on and I blinked. It was Brandon’s bedroom in his apartment that I was looking at—the apartment I had shared with him. I stared at the screen and watched as Brandon walked in with two girls. My heart started thudding as I watched him undressing one while the other one undressed him. I felt like I couldn’t breathe when they all fell to the bed together. One girl started kissing him while the other went down on him. I stumbled back until I fell into a chair, but my eyes didn’t move from the screen. I watched as he played with both girls and teased them. Then one of the women left the room and it was just him and a tall blonde. A beautiful, voluptuous blonde. She sat on top of him, teasing him, and he was groaning as he played with her breasts.

“Fuck me, Denise,” he groaned. “Fuck me now.” She whispered something to him and he groaned again. “You know it’s always been you, Denise. I don’t want anyone else but you. Please, just f**k me.” His hands reached to her h*ps and I watched as she sank down on him and rode him hard. Brandon’s eyes were closed and he muttered something incomprehensible.

“Katie, where are you?” I heard Brandon’s voice calling out to me from the hallway, but I couldn’t speak. My tears were streaming down my face too quickly. A sob escaped from my mouth and I heard Brandon’s footsteps walking towards the study.

“Katie?” He opened the door slowly. “What’s wrong?”

His eyes widened in concern as he stared at me. I pointed to the TV screen as I couldn’t make eye contact with him, and I heard him gasp.

“What the fuck?” He walked over to the screen and frowned as he turned it off. “How did you find this?”

“Maria told me to come in and watch it,” I gulped.

“Maria was here?” He sighed and walked up to me. “That was an old video, Katie. Please don’t cry. Denise was someone I knew before I met you.”

“She was the love of your life.” I tried not to let him see how much I was breaking inside. “You told her you wanted her and that she was the one.”

“Katie, you have to believe me when I say that Denise was never the one.” He shook his head angry. “I could kill Matt.”

“Matt?” I looked at him and frowned.

“He must have given Maria the video.” He sighed. “He’s the only one with access to it, now that his father is dead.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Katie,” he sighed. “I didn’t want to go into this. But before I met you, I dated a girl called Denise. She was beautiful and sexually adventurous. She liked to have a good time and so did I.”

“You guys had threesomes?” I stared at him with accusing eyes and he nodded.

“I told you when I met you, Katie. I wasn’t a saint. I’m a virile man. I like sex.” He shrugged. “It was all before you.” He sighed and then continued. “Anyways, it turned out that Denise was a high-class escort and she had targeted me with some of her colleagues. They tried to blackmail me for twenty million dollars. They were going to go to a newspaper and write a tell-all about all the kinky prostitute sex I liked.” My eyes widened as he told his story and he looked at me with a sad expression. “I mean, it was true. The only part that would have been omitted was that I knew they were prostitutes. But no one would have believed me.” He crouched down and grabbed my hands. “So I hired a private detective to investigate them. That was how I met Will. When I met you, I really liked you, but I didn’t know if I could trust my gut instincts, so I had Will follow you too. In fact, I had him follow both of us. I wanted to know what you did when you were with me and when you weren’t with me, so I could be sure that you were genuine.”

“I never knew that.” My eyes widened, but my tears had dried up.

“I didn’t want you to know.” He stood up and pulled me up next to him. “You passed with flying colors. Will loved you. He thought you were perfect. His report told me you were the furthest thing from a gold digger he’d seen.” He smiled at me gently. “He had just confirmed what I had already known in my heart, Katie. I’m sorry I did it. But you have to know that you are the only one I’ve truly loved, not Denise. Never Denise. She’s nothing to me.”

“Liar.” We both jumped as Maria walked back into the room with an evil smile. “You’re a liar, Brandon Hastings.”

“Get out of here.” Brandon’s face was red with anger. “After all I’ve done for your family, you try and ruin my life.”

“You’re a liar, Brandon,” Maria hissed as she walked up the TV and turned it on again. She rewound the DVD and pressed play. I cringed as I watched Brandon on the screen moaning in ecstasy with Denise on top of him. “Look carefully, Katie.” She pointed at the screen. “For just one moment, stop thinking about your little girl pain and Brandon f**king another woman. Look at the room, Katie. What do you see?”

I tried to ignore her words, but I couldn’t. I looked at the room more carefully to see what she was talking about. And then I gasped. I stared at Brandon, angry and hurt. He had lied to me. Everything had been a lie. One great big lie.

“You lied,” I whispered, horrified and heartbroken. He stared back at me with an ashen face and I knew then that he knew he had been caught. I turned back to the screen and watched as Brandon made love to another woman with the photograph we’d taken together at the museum staring down at him from the night table next to the bed.

Chapter 6

Brandon

I stared at Katie in dread. She’d caught me in a lie. A big lie. A lie that was more harmful than the lie she’d told me. A lie that meant I’d have to reveal everything if I was to stand a chance of gaining her total trust and love again.

“Nothing to say, Brandon?” Maria’s voice was catty and delighted, and I knew that she had deliberately set this whole thing up to hurt me for ending the fake engagement.

“You need to leave. Now.” I turned toward her with murder in my eyes.

“I think someone needs to protect poor, innocent Katie. Don’t you, Brandon?” She laughed. “We wouldn’t want her thinking this was all her fault, would we?” Her eyes narrowed at me and I grabbed her arm.

“You are to leave and never come back.” I looked down at her and whispered, “If I ever see you again, I will ruin your brother’s life. I will make sure he is fired from the Wall Street Journal and is never employed by another newspaper in New York again.”

“You wouldn’t do that.” Her face paled at my words. I knew I had hit a sore spot. She loved her brother Matt more than anyone in the world.

“Don’t test me.” I pushed her toward the door. “Leave now.”

“What about Harry?” She looked at me with big eyes. “He’ll miss me.”

“You will never see him again.” I clenched my fists as I thought about all the times I’d left him alone with her. I wanted to punch myself for being so blind as to how crazy she was.

“But you love me, Brandon,” she whimpered. “You wanted to marry me.”

“Maria.” My voice rose and she ran out of the room. I followed her out and watched as she exited before slowly going back into the room. “I guess I’ll have to change the locks,” I joked as I re-entered the study, but Katie didn’t smile.

I stood there, not knowing what to say or where to start.

“I guess we should talk.” I cleared my throat and stared at her. I was surprised to see that she wasn’t crying. “I’m sorry for lying.”

“One lie begets another lie, I suppose.” Her face was expressionless, and my heart froze at the lack of emotion in her tone. I could have dealt with angry, jealousy, or hurt, but her lack of caring scared me.

“I didn’t mean to lie.” I sighed. “I really didn’t want her. I never loved her.”

“You slept with her while you were with me?” Katie looked at me curiously. “So you cheated on me?”

“Never.” I shook my head vehemently. “It was after.”

“After what?”

“We broke up.” I took a deep breath. “It was the day you gave Harry up.”

“What?” She frowned at me. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“The day you gave Harry up was the day I realized you were never coming back to me. It was the day I realized you hated me so much that you would have our child and give him up for adoption and never even tell me that I had a son.” I stared at her through bleak eyes. “I hated you so much on that day. I hated you and I hated me and I resorted to something I’m not proud of.”

“But she blackmailed you.” She looked at me with a dazed confession. “Why would you sleep with her?

“Because I hated her as much as I hated myself.” I shrugged. “I just needed a body—bodies. I just needed to be out of myself. To forget you and what we’d had. I needed to be with someone and use their body without care for their feelings.”

“You did that to me as well.” Her voice was soft.

“Never, Katie. I’ve never used you.” I shook my head. “I love you.”

“You don’t know the meaning of love.” She shook her head and closed her eyes. “All these years, I’ve been berating myself for doing something so stupid, for lying and losing the love of my life, but I think I should have been congratulating myself. I wasn’t dumb. I was smart. You’re crazy. You’re self-obsessed. You only care about yourself. You’re not capable of love.”

“I love Harry, Katie. I’m a good father.” My voice was terse.

“Yes.” She nodded slowly. “You’re a good father. A very good father.”

“Can you forgive me, Katie?”

“There’s nothing to forgive.” She shrugged. “We both made mistakes. I think it’s time we moved on. I want to be in Harry’s life if you let me. I want him to know me as his mother.”

“You’re not going to run away?” I looked at her consideringly. “Now that you know everything, you’re not going to leave and never look back like you did seven years ago?”

“No.” She looked at me with clear eyes and smiled weakly. “I love my son. I won’t ever leave him again. I’m not going to back down this time. I’m not going anywhere.”

I fell back against the wall and burst into tears. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that everything was working out the way I had dreamed it would. Katie stared at me in shock, and I walked over to her and pulled her into my arms, kissing the top of her head.

“What are you doing?” She pulled away from me. “Stop it. What’s going on, Brandon?”

I walked back to the TV and turned it on again. “Look at the screen,” I told her. “Look very carefully.”

She looked at me in shock, and I pointed at the image of me.

“Look at the face. Look carefully, Katie.” She stared at the screen for a few minutes and gasped.

“That’s not you.” Her face turned ashen as she realized the truth. “What is going on? That’s not you!”

“Matt helped me put this video together.” I walked over to her and grabbed her hand. “Let’s go upstairs.” We walked upstairs to my bedroom and I took her to sit down on the bed. “Maria went crazy when I ended things with her. He called me to warn me that he thought she was going to do something crazy. We have this video because, when I refused to pay Denise a dime, she hired someone who was my lookalike to pretend he was me. She took him to my apartment when I was out of town and set up a secret camera to record it. This was going to be her proof to the world.” I shook my head. “I told you, she was crazy.”