Page 35 of Dark Secret

“I’d like a necklace please.” I told him as I came up to shake his hand. “Something in platinum, if you have it.”

“Of course, sir, this way please.” He showed me to a well-lit case, full of beaming metal and sparkling gems. “What is that dark stone, there in the heart-shaped pendant?”

“Ah, that is alexandrite, sir. A very good choice as it’s very popular with the ladies now.” He took the necklace out to show me how it changed color from red to green, and I had him set that one to one side. With the diamonds around the outer heart later, it was a bit showy.

Stephanie had started to wear brighter colors, and she had come out of her shell a bit since I’d first met her. She didn’t wear flashy jewelry, but what she wore was always expensive and tasteful. The alexandrite would be for those days when she felt like showing off.

A few minutes later he pulled out a double heart necklace, formed from one piece of metal that intertwined around itself to form the two hearts and a lover’s knot, as he called it. Just a piece of metal twisted into an intricate knot pattern, but still they both caught my eye. “I’ll take both”

“Certainly, sir. All very good choices, anything else?” The man was on a roll, but I was finished with looking at jewelry. I wanted to get home and get the place ready for her. It wasn’t Valentine’s or an anniversary, but I did want the place to be romantic when she got there.

I stopped at a florist, picked up a variety of pink, white, and red roses, bought some candles that they hand handy, and went home. The cleaner had been in, although there was very little for her to do except dust and wipe down the surfaces. I didn’t know what time Stephanie planned to be back, so I went to work right away.

I placed the candles throughout the house and decided I’d light them around five. She knew I was usually finished for the day around that time, so I figured she’d come back around then. The rose petals I sprinkled throughout the apartment and on the bed. A little cliché, perhaps, but I thought it was a nice touch.

After I finished that, I went into the kitchen and started to prepare some dinner. She liked paella, so I started to prepare the ingredients for the traditional Spanish paella that she liked the most. She wasn’t always a fan of seafood, so I changed the recipe I’d learned and left those out.

It would take around an hour to prepare it all properly, so I turned the small television on in the kitchen to a music channel that actually played music, and started. I chopped up all the vegetables and the sausage, as well as some prosciutto, by the time a news report came on. I wasn’t really paying attention to it, it was just news about the music industry, and I was more concerned about which step of the preparation I was on than who’d put out a new album.

I turned to the island just behind the gas stove to pick up the tomatoes and glanced at the television. The woman on the screen was reporting about a new album from one of Stephanie’s favorite singers, a woman who called herself Ember. The reporter went on to talk about how Ember was married to the hotel tycoon, Kevin Thompson, Trent Thompson’s brother, and my blood went cold. That bastard again. I was about to turn away, but the pictures changed, and I stopped dead in my tracks. It couldn’t be?

A picture had flashed on the screen, and I’d stepped closer, but the screen was too small. I went into the living room, the paella forgotten.

I turned on the television, punched in the number of the channel, and then backed up the program with the remote. I paused it when I saw the picture on the screen all over again. It was Stephanie. A slightly younger version of Stephanie, but there she was, holding a baby while Kevin and Ember embraced for the camera.

She stood just behind the couple, Stephanie’s face beamed as happily as the other two and I just … I just couldn’t believe it. She knew Trent Thompson? How? My stomach was tight, and I felt slightly sick. The smell of the food didn’t help, so I went into the kitchen and turned the stove off before I went to grab my laptop from the office.

When I sat on the couch in the living room, my eyes automatically went to the picture still paused on the screen. Now that I was looking, I could see a resemblance between Trent and Stephanie, and that made the muscles around my heart contract, until I let a very real pain in my chest. Surely it couldn’t be?

A woman from a family like that had shown up at a strip club, looking for a dom? I thought about the observations I’d made in the past few weeks. How I’d thought that Stephanie was from a wealthy family, that she was obviously from a different class than most of the women who showed up at Elmo’s, the club where we’d met. She’d always been so regal, I supposed was the right word. An air that one usually only gained when you came from money and had spent some time at a private school, or even boarding school.

My mind just couldn’t process it all, and I looked down at my laptop. The thought struck that I could find out quite easily if Trent Thompson had a sister or not. His sister-in-law’s hard-luck story told me that Stephanie wasn’t her sister, but, maybe...

There was one way to find out.

I opened the laptop and clicked on the browser. I typed in Trent’s name, the word family, and found a Wikipedia page, along with a slew of news reports and magazine articles about the man. It would seem women across the globe found the man irresistible, but that wasn’t what I was looking for. I clicked the Wikipedia link. No, Wikipedia wasn’t exactly the height of academic accuracy, but it was a place to start.

It was also the place that shattered my heart and the fragile bond of trust I’d given to Stephanie. Or, Emily, as it would seem her real name was.

Emily Thompson, aged twenty-six, was the youngest sibling of the Thompson brothers and youngest child of their father. There in black and white was all the evidence, the secrets she’d kept, and the instrument of my doom.

I’d been fucking a Thompson. Which could only mean she’d been sent to me to spy. Or that was what I thought when my brain finally started to function again. I went through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and a few other social media sites, and found pictures of her, always in the background. She was always pictured with a child in her arms once the Thompson brothers started to reproduce.

I scanned the images with eyes that wanted to find some difference, a mole that wasn’t there in the pictures, or a change in eye color that would say that Emily wasn’t Stephanie, that the woman I’d thought I was falling in love with wasn’t a conniving bitch. The face changed, and sadness took over where the happiness had once shone. I didn’t really notice that, though. I just noticed how Stephanie was undoubtedly Emily.

I sat there, stunned, unable to move. I couldn’t see her wall on Facebook, she had that locked down, and her other social media had kind of tapered off more than a year ago, but I could tell it was her. There was rarely any conversation from her posts, and most of the time, there were no likes, shares, retweets, whatever people called that stuff. It wasn’t something I was interested in.

It was obvious she’d had nobody to talk to, and that she’d been posting to a world that didn’t care that she existed. Even when she spoke about one of her nieces or nephews, she rarely got a comment or a like for it. No wonder she’d seemed so lonely.

The question now was, had she been lonely enough to give so much to me to spy on me? I could see Trent, that fucking bastard, ordering his sister to do whatever it took to get information out of me. I still couldn’t understand his dislike of me, but if my suspicions were true then it was more than dislike. The man wanted to do whatever it took to keep me out of his playground. That was hatred.

I didn’t understand it. I hadn’t done anything to him, and a little competition could be healthy, but yet, the man still couldn’t stand me. Which made me wonder how he could send his sister off to fuck the secrets out of a man like me. He obviously didn’t care about her, or he wouldn’t have used her like that.

I couldn’t move after a while. I just stared between the television screen and the laptop screen. My Stephanie was actually Emily. A woman whose own family seemed to care little for her. My brain whirled, and remembered little snippets of thoughts. There’d been very few articles about her, and even her Wikipedia page was just a branch of Trent Thompson’s page.

Daughter of, sister of, no marriages or education to report. Not that I doubted Step … I meant Emily was educated. She obviously was, but there’d been no interest in her life, so there’d been no need to fill in her details.

My thoughts warred with each other in my head. One side of me pitied the woman who had been so ignored by her own family, while the other was filled with rage. I’d been had, there was no doubt about it. Truly, totally had by the Thompson family.