Temptations - The Complete Series Read online

  Now, if only Slade and I could also be so happy….

  “Something smells awesome,” Luke said as he walked through the door.

  “It’s vegan enchiladas. Vegan cheese enchiladas.”

  “Vegan cheese enchiladas? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “Luke, vegan cheese is sometimes made with soy, but the best kind is made with cashews,” Dalilah helpfully told him. As her parents were both vegan, she was well-versed on the subject. “It’s really quite delicious. I had vegan nachos at this place one time, and, oh boy, they were the best nachos I’ve ever eaten. Ever.”

  I put my hand on Dalilah’s shoulder and squeezed. This girl got me more than anyone ever had, with the possible exception of Slade. “Dalilah’s right, and just wait until you taste my reuben made with jack fruit. You would swear that it’s the real thing. Honestly.”

  Luke shrugged. “I’m game for anything, especially since Dalilah has been talking about becoming a vegan herself. She told me that she wants to set an example for Olivia that animals are not for consumption because they have feelings just like the rest of us. As much as I like a good burger, I have to admit that Dalilah has a point.”

  I went into the kitchen and brought out the food and a bottle of white wine. I poured Luke and myself a glass, and Dalilah waved it off. “Breast feeding,” she said with a smile. “As much as I would love to indulge in that with you guys. But this food smells amazing and I can’t wait to dig into it.”

  I served everyone, and we all dug in. Luke’s face said it all. “Good lord, Serena, these are delicious. How did I not know about this vegan cheese?”

  “It’s not something that you can buy everywhere, although I’ll bet you can at the Whole Foods.”

  Everyone was enjoying their food, and Olivia was sleeping in her little bassinet by the table. Dalilah kept looking over at her as if she was mesmerized. “I just can’t believe my good fortune,” she said as she looked over at the baby. “There was a time when I not only wished that she didn’t exist, but I actively wanted to…” She shook her head. “I still can’t believe how close I was to going to that clinic. Talk about being desperate.”

  I knew what she was talking about. Nottingham was married to Dalilah, and he was a vicious and underhanded man. When she conceived Luke’s baby while she was still married to Nottingham, there was always a distinct possibility that he would attempt to gain custody of the unborn child. Dalilah and her father managed to put a kibosh on that by hacking into Nottingham’s computer and producing proof that he was involved with insider trading, and had been doing so quite prolifically.

  This was what I wanted to talk to Dalilah about - her own hacking skills.

  I cleared my throat. “I remember that time. Boy, that man was a piece of work, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Dalilah said. “But that’s all in the past now.”

  I narrowed my eyes and drank some more wine and took a deep breath. “Okay. So…” I didn’t quite know how to ask Dalilah what I needed to ask her, but I knew that it had to be done. Hacking was illegal, of course, and who knew how Slade was going to react? Or Charlotte? Luke and Dalilah owed me a favor because I went with Luke to an underground club to prove that the devious Nottingham faked injuries that he tried to pin on Luke, but I didn’t think about that. I did that out of the goodness of my heart and because I really wanted Luke and I to become close again. Or close for the very first time – it all depended on how you looked at it.

  “What’s on your mind, Serena?” Luke asked me.

  “Dalilah,” I began, addressing her. “You’re a computer hacker, aren’t you?” I asked her that question, but I already knew the answer. She was brilliant, absolutely brilliant, and she had taught herself to hack when she was a young teenager. She had mastered that skill apparently, because she was able to hack her father’s computer and she found some incriminating evidence that her father’s best friend did something that was clearly immoral but not necessarily illegal.

  She smiled. “Well, I wouldn’t say that. I know my way around a computer, but I haven’t hacked in years. I was really good at it, though. But when I came across that video of Nick forcing the suicide of that awful pedophile, I decided to give it up. I didn’t want to invade people’s privacy like that anymore.”

  She was referring to the video she found of Nick, her father Ryan’s best friend, going to the apartment of Paul Lucas, who repeatedly raped Scotty, Nick’s wife, and hundreds of other girls. Nick then forced the pervert to kill himself. It was all captured on videotape, because they wanted insurance in case the man didn’t decide to do that on his own.

  I closed my eyes and shook my head. I wished that she didn’t say that about not wanting to invade privacy, because there wasn’t any way that I could back down now. I had to ask her to do this, and she was going to be uncomfortable with it, to say the very least. I really hoped that she wouldn’t get into trouble.

  “Why do you ask?” Dalilah inquired as she bit into some more enchilada. “By the way, Luke is absolutely right. These enchiladas are phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal. I’ll have to get your recipe sometime. You could open up a restaurant with this recipe alone. You’d have them lined up at your door.”

  “Well…” I was hesitant, but I had to push through. “As you know, I’m defending Slade Bridgewell. Or my team is, although whether or not Malcolm, who’s the lead attorney on this case, is defending him is open to interpretation. I think it’s more like Malcolm is throwing Slade under the bus.”

  I then told them the entire story, although Luke looked skeptical when I told him about how the spirit had contacted me and had told me everything. Dalilah didn’t, though. She looked like she understood completely.

  After I told them everything, they were quiet. Finally, Luke was the first one to say something. “Serena, I love you. I do. But you got this information from a ghost. Or so you say. Isn’t it probable that you hallucinated that whole thing? You said that you were in a desperate situation without food or water for days and days. Believe me, your brain was deprived of what it needed, and it was going haywire. In that situation, I don’t necessarily know if I would trust what you think you saw.”

  “I know, but Luke, Slade confirmed it for me that Malcolm did it. I guess you didn’t listen to that part.”

  “Alright, so it was a lucky guess.”

  I rolled my eyes when he said that. Luke was always saying things like that and it pissed me off. “It wasn’t a lucky guess, but that’s neither here nor there.”

  Dalilah was studying me and she opened her mouth. “Okay, I’ll do it.”

  Luke gave her a look. “You’ll do what?”

  “Whatever Serena needs me to do.”

  I smiled. Dalilah was the smartest person I had ever met, and her intuition was spot-on. I hadn’t yet asked her for what I wanted her to do, but she gathered it from my story and the fact that I had asked her if she was still hacking computers.

  “And what does Serena want you to do?” Luke asked. “She didn’t ask you to do anything yet.”

  “No, she hasn’t asked, but I know what she needs.” She turned to me. “You need me to hack Slade’s computer, don’t you? You need me to hack it and see if I can’t find his copy of the complete video that shows that this Malcolm person actually killed Jordan.”

  “Yes,” I said after a long pause. “That’s exactly what I need for you to do.”

  At that, Luke looked like he was about to blow a gasket. “Oh, no. No. Dalilah, you can’t do that, I forbid you to do that. It’s dangerous and you could go to prison. Prison, Dalilah. You’ll miss our daughter’s formative years.” He crossed his arms for emphasis. “No.”

  She raised a single eyebrow at him. “Forbid me? Forbid me? You did not just say that.”

  Uh oh. I not only was now possibly putting her at risk, but I was causing tension between her and my brother. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything and tried to find a computer hacker on my own. “Listen, Dalilah, forget
I said anything at all. The last thing I want is for this to be a problem for you and Luke.”

  But Dalilah wasn’t listening to me. She was giving the evil side-eye to Luke, who looked like he was about to explode. That wasn’t like him at all, because he had always been so even-tempered.

  “I did just say that, and I mean it,” Luke said. “Dalilah, I’m serious. After all we’ve gone through, you’re willing to just throw it all away? Seriously? You might think that nothing is going to happen, but I’m here to tell you that you’re probably wrong about that. Some of the best computer hackers get caught. What makes you think that you’ll be any different?”

  I cleared the table. “Do you guys want dessert now or later?”

  “Now,” Dalilah said.

  “Later,” Luke said at the same time.

  “Luke, I’ve never allowed you to tell me what to do, and I’m certainly not going to start now. If I decide to do this, then I’ll do it. I won’t have you or anyone else telling me that I can’t.”

  I bustled in the kitchen, bracing myself for World War III in the dining room. Why, oh why, did I decide to ask her this? She was going to do it, I knew that, but what was going to be the cost? If something happened and she got into trouble, Luke would never, ever forgive me. I just got him back. He and I were approaching the point where we were not just brother and sister but friends. And I decided to do something that could possibly put an end to our tentative relationship.

  I came back out with the dessert I had made, which was an apple crisp made with soy butter. “Here it is, apples and nuts, just the way you like it, Luke. See, I remembered that this is your favorite. It’s mom’s recipe, but I modified it just a tad, because I know that she used lots and lots of real butter in hers.”

  Luke wasn’t hearing me, and he didn’t look at me or the dessert. I put it down in front of him and one for Dalilah, and I sat down and stared at the apple crisp. “Oh, I know what this is missing. I have some coconut milk ice cream in the freezer. Wait right here, I’ll go get it and scoop some on both of your plates. You can’t have apple pie or apple crisp without ice cream, right?”

  “Sit down, Serena,” Luke said in a voice that I didn’t recognize. “This apple crisp is fine on its own. What isn’t fine is the fact that you’re actually asking my fiancée to do something that might send her to prison.”

  I sat back down and stared at the apple crisp, my hands folded in front of me. And, for a long time, nobody said a word. Luke and Dalilah were glaring at one another, I was staring at that apple crisp as if I expected it to grow legs and walk away, and Olivia was still sleeping in her bassinet. The dogs came to the table and begged and whined, and I wanted to bring one of the dogs on my lap, which was what I often did when I felt the need to be comforted, but I knew that most people would find that gross, so I didn’t.

  After what seemed like an eternity, Dalilah piped up. “I’m going to do it, Luke, and you can’t stop me. Serena needs help trying to nail this Malcolm asshole, and that won’t be easy to do at all without that video. As she said, there weren’t any fingerprints in that lab except Slade’s and Jordan’s. Malcolm cannot be a suspect, because nobody even knows that he’s tied to Jordan, and maybe Charlotte can become a suspect because of her obsession with Slade, but Malcolm is probably in the clear. If you can kindly give us another way of bringing Malcolm down, I would like to hear it. If you don’t have another way, then kindly shut the fuck up.”

  Luke bit his lip, and I knew what he was thinking. I closed my eyes and I felt the extreme anger emanating from every single pore. I shook off those feelings after I opened my eyes. I was surprised that laid-back Luke had such anger inside of him, although I probably shouldn’t have been. At least not in this case – after all he and Dalilah had gone through, I was now asking her to do something that would cause him to lose her again. Me, the sister that he had hated for so many years. We were on good terms now, but the festering anger with my behavior over the past years was still there with him, I realized. It was just below the surface. As much as Luke was trying to be civil and trying to love me, there was still a ton of water under the bridge that caused him to not quite bond with me in the way that I wanted.

  I was correct about the true reason why Luke was so adamant that Dalilah wasn’t to help me. “After all Serena has done over the years,” Luke said with measured tones that belied his white-hot anger, “she doesn’t deserve for you to put your neck out for her like that.”

  Dalilah’s eyes got wide and I saw that she was just as angry as Luke, and when I closed my eyes, I felt her anger even worse than his. This woman had a temper, I could tell. She was about to go Defcon One on Luke’s ass. “Oh my god. Oh my god. Luke, you would be in prison yourself if it weren’t for your sister. Seriously? You’re going to play the ‘poor me, my sister was mean to me for years’ card? After what she did for you? If I can recall, Serena put her own neck on the line for you. She didn’t have to go with you to those underground clubs and act like she was a detective. If anybody would have had any suspicions about either of you, you both would have gone to jail for impersonating an officer. And if she didn’t pull that off for you, you would have been hard-pressed to prove that Nottingham framed you for beating him. You would probably be in prison right now instead of being an up-and-coming hot artist. So don’t even tell me that Serena isn’t worth my sticking my neck out now. I credit her for keeping you out of prison, and you should too.”

  Luke took a sip of his wine, and I could tell that he was trying very hard to be calm. “Her helping me is the least she could have done after how she treated me and our entire family over the years. I felt that maybe the score had been evened when she did that for me, not that it was something that should be repaid in kind. That just got her up to baseline level.”

  He was talking about me as if I wasn’t even there at the table, and it stung. I knew that there was still some leftover resentment towards me, but I didn’t necessarily know that it was still so strong. I guessed that I should have seen it coming, and I probably did see it coming, but wanted to turn a blind eye towards it. I wanted to believe that Luke and I were okay, but clearly, we still weren’t.

  “Goddamnit, Luke, how can you still be so petty? This is your sister. Your sister. She’s made a lot of mistakes over the years, but she’s clearly shown that she’s a good person. She’s always been a good person, but you just refuse to see it. She needs our help, and I’m in the position to give it to her. And, quite frankly, I’m eager to do it. I hate that I’m going to be this stay-at-home mother whose only role is Olivia’s mom and your fiancée. Dammit, I was somebody when I was younger, and now I’m nobody. I have this chance to really make a difference to your sister, and I’m going to take it.”

  There it was - the resentment that underscored their relationship. Dalilah was an artist too, a very good one. When she was younger, she was phenomenal. She was on the cover of magazines and her work was shown around the world. I knew that she had mental blocks that kept her from again realizing her potential as an artist, but I thought she was overcoming them. After all, she was a part of Luke’s artist co-op. I had wondered if she was still having problems with creating. After what she just said to Luke, I knew that was probably the case.

  “And what is wrong with you being Olivia’s mom and my fiancée, soon to be wife?” Luke said with gritted teeth. “I’m so sorry that you feel that’s not good enough.” His voice dripped with sarcasm and I cringed.

  Dalilah then started to cry. It was just tears that were moistening her eyes, as opposed to her sobbing and throwing her napkin, but still, it broke my heart. “Nothing is wrong with that, but I want to be more. I just don’t know why I still can’t produce the way that I want to, but something is holding me back. But that’s neither here nor there. If I can’t produce art the way that I want to, the least that I can do is give back to those who have helped me in the past. And Serena has been a god-send to me.” She took her napkin and twisted it, her delicate hands
gripping the fabric tightly.

  I closed my eyes and I felt that Luke’s anger had drained away, and, in its place, was sorrow. Deep sorrow. “Honey, I know that you’ve been having problems with your creativity and your voice,” he said, putting his arm around her back. “But you have to know that I just cannot lose you again. Not this way. We’ve gone through too much for me to see you go to prison and leave me again.”

  I realized that I was also crying. I bit my lower lip so hard that I drew a bit of blood, and I put my napkin to my mouth. There was a small red stain on the white cloth.

  The two of them then sat there in their chairs, and they were whispering to one another. I couldn’t hear them very well, but I thought I heard snippets of their conversation. They were in their own world, and I wasn’t in their bubble, and neither was Olivia. Nothing penetrated their little world right at that moment. I felt uncomfortable and knew they could use some privacy, so I got up and took the dogs into the sun room with me and sat on the chair. The dogs came up on my lap, and I petted them absent-mindedly.

  I never wanted this. I never wanted my request to cause tension between my brother and Dalilah. And I certainly never wanted to be privy to their dysfunction. It was so uncomfortable being at that table and watching them battle it out and listening to them talking about me as if I wasn’t even there. It was hurtful to know that Luke still resented me so much, and it brought me a great deal of pain to know that Dalilah was still struggling.

  They seemed to have it all – a new baby, a tight and loving bond with one another, and Luke had wild success. But, like everyone else, if you peel back the curtain for just a second, you can always see the cracks. Look closer into anyone’s relationships and you can see the fissures and fault lines that divide them. Sometimes I found it amazing that anyone stayed together.

  After about a half hour, Dalilah came to find me. “We cleared the table and put the dishes in the dishwasher,” she said, sitting down in the chair that was cater-corner to my own. “Luke is changing Olivia’s diaper, and I wanted to come in here and talk with you.”