Family Ties

Chapter 1

“Nancy come back to bed.”

I turned around to see Brian standing behind me in his pajamas. He was about 6’1” and built like a football player but had the brains of a nerd. I think that’s why I have been playing this on again, off again affair with him. The first time we met was when I was married to my first husband Vince Right. I was miserable in my marriage and was really only in it for the money so when Brian came along I couldn’t help but be tempted. We would fool around every once in a while but I wanted a way out of my senseless marriage so Brian and I came up with the perfect plan—fake my murder. By faking my murder, I would be out of the marriage and be rid of my stupid husband since the blame would go all on him. All I had to do was find a way for the police to convict him without needing my body as proof. Vince's brother David solved that problem for me though and after wrapping him around my little finger, the plan came together perfectly.

“I’ll be there in a minute, sweetheart,” I said.

I turned around and give him a sexy smile trying to convince him to go back in the room.

“Ok, but don’t be long. I want to get started on round two.”

After watching him walk back to the room, I turned around and walked to the backyard to make a phone call. I dialed David's phone number and waited for him to pick up. “He is going to seriously kill you for not calling sooner, Nance.” Answering on the third ring, I could hear the anger in his voice.

“Nancy, where the hell are you? You were supposed to be home hours ago. You better have a good reason for not being here.”

Putting on my nice girl voice I started to spin my usual lie, “Babe, you know that sometimes I work late depending on what case we are handling. We’ve been through this conversation before. I'm sorry I didn’t call and let you know that I was working late I just got caught up in all of the paperwork. It's not my-”

“Cut the act Nancy, there is no way that work would have you working this late every night unless you’re screwing around with someone. You better not be out there doing something that you shouldn’t be doing because I promise if I catch you cheating I will kill you. We had this conversation before too—if I can't have you nobody can. We both know that I will do whatever it takes to keep you, now get your ass home. NOW.”

The line went dead as he hung up the phone in my face.

“That bastard. Who the hell does he think he is threatening me like that and hanging up in my face like I’m his child?”

Storming in the house in a rage, I started to gather my clothes. “Well maybe I could get one last quickie before going home.” I turned and made my way towards the room where Brian was waiting. When will these stupid men learn that I am playing all of them to get what I want… and I always get what I want.

David POV

After hanging up the phone on Nancy, I needed to take a breath and cool down. You would think after all the things that I have done for her she would be treating me like a king. How many people do you know would turn their backs on their own family and frame them for murder all for a woman? I pulled a lot of strings with the police department in Florida for her in order to make the plan work. Vince never saw it coming. He was always the smug one that rubbed all of his success and money in your face.

“Where is all that success and money now, huh, little brother? I bet you wish you wasn’t so smug now.”

I don't regret framing him and I don't think I ever will. I just regret not putting Nancy on a tighter leash. After the whole “murder” incident she and I agreed that she needed to disappear for a while so I had it arranged for her to get her name changed and for her to be moved to another state. I now realized that I should’ve kept her closer to me instead. After all, I don’t know what she was doing for those 5 years of hiding. All I had to go on was her word, and her word was about as valuable as a counterfeit hundred dollar bill.

I don't know why but I had this feeling that she was involved with somebody else and thought I would be too stupid to figure it out. I may look like my brother but i'm not as dumb as him. I can figure out when someone is bluffing and if she is then she has a bullet with her name on it waiting for her. Walking to the kitchen I went to the cabinet to fix a shot of rum when something caught my eye. On the fridge was a calendar with the date May 16 circled on it.

“Now why the hell would I have that date circled?”

Just as the question left my mouth I was overcome with a feeling of dread. The day that I have been dreading for the last 15 years has finally crept its way here. My brother is being released on parole tomorrow and I will have a lot of explaining to do. I always knew this day would come, I just never thought that it would come this fast.

“And just when I was starting to enjoy my life.”

I took a quick shot of rum, walked towards the living room, and started waiting for my dear wife to walk through the door. Knowing her she will be trying to sneak in but I’m always a step ahead of her. I should have known that saying "you can’t turn a hoe into a housewife" was true. I just never thought I would be in that situation. After I ask her where the hell she has been, I’ll deliver the bad news and see how she takes the idea of Vince coming back home.

Vince POV

Staring at the ceiling of my cell I thought about the things that I would do when I finally got home. I’ve been replaying this day in my head ever since they told me that I was going to be released on parole. For 15 years I sat in this dark dingy cell and tried to figure out who would want to frame me with such a serious crime as murder. I admit that I was not always the nicest person but I wouldn’t do anything so drastic as to hurt someone. I was all talk and who ever know me knew that. So why frame me? Something in me was telling me that this is not a coincidence and could have been done by someone close to me. A lot of people, mainly females, had issues with Nancy but murdering her was just a little drastic. I know she wasn’t always the kindest person and was a little money hungry but she was still my wife. There were days that she would push me so far with the nagging and stupidity that I would smack her and later say I'm sorry but throughout the years I would feel that our marriage was fake. I noticed about 5 years into my marriage that she was cheating but didn't want to confront her, afraid that I would not be able to handle the truth and do something irrational.

That woman may have been sexy on the outside but she was cold as hell on the inside so cheating was something I could see her doing. I just never thought that it would be with someone so close to me. She really didn't have a limit so maybe her murder wasn't such a bad thing. The world has one less evil, cold hearted, crazy, money hungry bitch to worry about really. The image of catching her with him in our bed ran through my mind and I could feel myself getting mad. I wasn’t so mad at her cheating, it was more of who she was cheating on me with that made my blood boil. Shaking that memory out of my mind, I tried to think of more positive things, like starting over. Of course as the condition of my parole, I would have to find a job and see my parole officer at least twice a month, but I didn’t mind doing that. I just wanted my life back and I know that it is going to be hard to adjust to the outside world again after being in prison for so long.

The first thing I'm going to do is find my brother and ask if I can stay with him. I know we never saw eye to eye and after that messed up incident we didn't talk anymore, but I just want to mend the relationship that we once had. Since childhood I have always been looking out for my brother and trying to do what was best for the both of us even though he was the older one. He was always the slacker and the spoiled one. That’s why I felt that if I didn’t make something of myself he wouldn’t have anyone that would help him if he needed it. I always said to myself, I am the only one that cares for him, forget everyone else. But after that day everything changed and I was confused about our relationship. I always thought family was everything but David seemed to have proved me wrong in so many ways throughout our lives. It went from constantly beating me up when we were little to always trying to mess up anything good that ever came my way. I was lucky to have even gotten through Med school with the way that he was always mooching off of our parents. They could barely pay for anything after he was through with them and I had to get two jobs to get by until I graduated. Our childhood wasn’t the best but we are still brothers so I’m hoping after all of this time he grew up and would help me get my life back on track.

“Vince Right, it’s time.”

I could feel the butterflies in my stomach when I got up to walk out of the cell. This is it, I'm finally going to leave this cell and go back out into the real world. No more someone telling when to wake up or when to eat, sleep, or shower. I make my own decisions now. First things first, I need to find out who put me in this hell hole.

David POV

“Oh, crap...”

I woke up to see Nancy trying to sneak into the house tripping over the shoes that I left in front of the door. Her clothes were wrinkled as if she had rushed to put them on and her hair looked as if she just ran her finger through it and put it in a ponytail. She looked like someone who just got done rolling around in bed after having a couple of rounds of sex. Yeah she has a lot of explaining to do. I wonder what lie she’s going to come up with now.

“Really, Nancy? You’re going to sneak in here at 3 o’clock in the morning like a teenager trying to avoid their dad?”

I took a deep breath and tried to calm down.

“Where were you, Nance? And don't try to feed me that working late bull because I'm not stupid.”

She rolled her eyes while taking her shoes off. Here comes the attitude.

“Don’t talk to me like I’m a child, David. I’m a grown woman and don’t worry about where I was. If you don’t believe that I was at work that’s your problem. I don't have time for this. I’m going to bed.”

She tried walk past me and I snapped. Before I could figure out what was going on, I slammed her against the wall and put my hands around her throat.

“I don’t know why you think that you run this relationship. I'm going to tell you this one time only, Nancy, I run this. You have no say in anything that goes on. If I find out that you have been messing around, I will put a bullet between your eyes and never look back. After all, I am the one that got you the life that you have now anyways, remember?”

She grabbed my hands, trying to fight back and pull them off of her neck. Tears started to come to her eyes as she tried to let out a scream. I tightened my grip on her throat and started to laugh.

“What was that, Nance? Were you trying to say something?”

I let go of her throat, shoved her out of my way and headed towards the stairs.

“Oh and by the way, your dear ex- husband is being released on parole tomorrow. What a great family reunion that would be, huh? Oh yeah I forgot, you’re supposed to be dead. Make sure you don’t be stupid and let him see you. I don’t think even you can come up with a good enough lie for that situation.”

I know that I will be the first person that my brother comes looking for and I want to be fully prepared for that reunion. It’s a good thing that he doesn’t know that I had something to do with his imprisonment and that I married his supposed to be dead wife. All I have to do is figure out how I'm going to come at him when we finally meet up again. Going up the stairs, I could hear Nancy crying. Normally, I would care, but she pushed me to my limit. When we first came up with this plan we were two people in love that just wanted to be together and had the same person in our way. We were tired of the sneaking around and the lies and I thought that after we got rid of my brother we would live happily, have a couple of kids, and that would be it. We didn't expect him to be let out on parole and didn't really think we would need a plan for this situation.

“Good thing I'm good at thinking on my feet, unlike Nancy.”

I'm always the one getting us out of bad situations. I let her have a little bit of freedom and all hell breaks loose. Now it seems like everything's falling apart, Nancy is acting like she doesn't have any sense and like a freaking 16-year-old, the money that we got from selling most of Vince's belongings is almost gone, and now Vince is about to be back in the picture.

“Yeah, tomorrow is going to fun.”

Nancy

Trying to catch my breath, I started to break down and cry on the floor. I have never seen David so upset in my life. Normally it's just a little threat here and there but he has never put his hands on me. That was one of the reasons I was attracted to him in the first place. He and Vince are so different. Where Vince is more successful, quiet, and smart, David is the street type that would do whatever to get what he wants. He may not be as smart as Vince but I always thought he was calmer than Vince when it came to me. David would snap on everyone but me and Vince would always get mad when I asked him for some money or when I would want to go out. He had a quick temper and a bad side and apparently so does his brother. I slowly tried to get up as I rubbed my throat. I walked to the mirror in the hallway and started to examine my neck. It was a little bruised up but nothing that makeup couldn’t fix. I was about to walk up the stairs to follow David when what he said finally hit me. Vince was being released on parole tomorrow. Damn and just when I was getting comfortable with my life, I have to go back to hiding and being careful. I have to come up with a plan to keep the little happiness that I have left in my life without being seen. That's going to be kind of hard with the kind of neighbors I have though. Mr. Tate was one of the nosiest neighbors I have ever had and would be the main person I would have to worry about giving away my secret. Even though he knows me as Nancy Martin I'm still not safe if he has a conversation with Vince and brings me up since Vince knows me by this name too. I know Mr. Tate doesn't mean any harm but that man really talks too much. Ever since his wife passed away he’s been really lonely and has his two adult kids come over every night. Thinking about his relationship with his kids reminded me of my relationship with my dad. Well, the relationship that I used to have with my dad. I haven't talked to him in 10 years because of the incident. Not talking to him was the only thing I regretted about faking my murder. I’ve been tempted to call him a couple of times but couldn't bring myself to do it. A feeling of loneliness crept over me as I walked to the bathroom to take a quick shower. I miss my dad but now is not the time to get lost in old memories. I needed to figure out what I was going to do about Vince coming back tomorrow.