Blindsided - A Stepbrother Romance Novel (2 page)

His free hand was on her waist and she felt him slide it up toward her breasts. This wasn’t the first time he’d tried to molest her but at that moment Samantha was determined that it was going to be the last. She quickly reached out and grabbed a crow bar off the bench next to the car, swinging her body around at the same time. Darren saw it coming and ducked, but it still clipped him on the side of the head.

“You bitch!” A spray of blood covered the hood of the car from the gash in his temple. Sam was already on the move. She jumped into the Mustang and fired it up. Darren pressed his palms into the hood and glared at her through the windshield. He had murder in his eyes and she knew she would pay for what she’d done sooner or later. She seriously considered running him down. He must have seen it in her eyes and he stepped aside just before she tamped down on the accelerator and spun out the wheels on the classic car before hauling ass out of the driveway.

“Sammy! Are you there?” She’d been at the “track” for about an hour before she got the call from Aaron. It was almost time for her race and now as she held the phone to her ear and listened to the sounds of his frantic voice telling her that their mother was dead she wished she could just get into the car and drive as fast and far away from this life as she could get. Once again, if not for Aaron, she probably would.

“Yes, I’m here, Aaron. Where’s Darren?”

“He’s not here. I don’t know. When I got home I thought no one was here. I walked by and saw Mom on the couch. She has foamy stuff around her mouth Sammy! She’s not breathing! She’s got a needle in her arm.”

“Shit! Don’t touch anything. Call 911 Aaron, I’m on my way, okay?”

“It’s not okay, Sammy! She’s dead!”

“Aaron, listen to me! Call 911, I’ll be right there.”

She could hear her brother breathing heavily. He sounded like he was about to hyperventilate. Finally he said, “Hurry,” and then the line went dead.

Samantha couldn’t help but think that the preacher standing in front of her mother’s coffin spoke like he was being paid by the hour. He seemed to be dragging out every word. She couldn’t believe that she was even thinking that phrase…
standing in front of her mother’s coffin
. Less than two weeks ago she had a mother and so did Aaron. Now all they have is each other…and the monster that still lives in their home. She glanced over at Aaron and her heart lurched. He’s only sixteen and he’s had nothing but shit for a life and it just kept getting worse. Mothers are not supposed to die at forty-four. She looked at Darren who stood next to him trying to look as bereaved as everyone else. He’d worn a big bandage over the gash she’d put in the side of his head with the tire iron right up until the funeral. The police had asked him what happened and he’d made up a story about falling off the ladder in the garage. It was in no way to protect her and she knew it. He was afraid if he told them she did it, she’d tell them why. So far he’d gotten lucky and the only time she’d called the cops on him was when he was taking it way too far with her mother or Aaron and she couldn’t stop him. She didn’t need police to handle things between him and her, she would handle that herself. Samantha knew that Darren wasn’t going to just let her off the hook for what happened that night. With her mother’s death they just hadn’t had time to visit whatever wrath he had in store for her, but she knew him well enough to know it was coming.

Sam wondered if he ever really loved her mother.
Was he at all sad that she was dead?
She doubted it, but if he had loved her it wasn’t the kind of love that saved your soul. His brand of love was what had put her mother in an early grave. Sam knew her mother loved him and the pressure of living with an abusive drunk was what had sent Lacey into her own downward spiral with drugs and alcohol. Sam felt like Darren was as much to blame for her mother’s death as if he’d put that needle in her arm.

She stood underneath the blaring Arizona sun and wondered if her life would have been different had she known sooner that her biological father wanted to reach her. Would she have responded to him, or would she have hung onto the anger towards him that ate away at her very soul? She realized she was still looking at Darren and the sight of him suddenly made her sick. She looked back at her brother, anything to keep from staring at the box in front of them that held her mother’s lifeless body. She could tell that Aaron was trying hard not to cry. Her chest ached again and she knew at once no matter how things had gone between her and her father she couldn’t have ever left her brother. Aaron was the reason she put up with her mother’s addictions, Darren’s abuse and constant advances and her overall miserable life. Aaron had one person in this world that he could depend on and that person was Samantha. Until he was eighteen and no longer subjected to Darren’s anger and hateful whims, Samantha would be there to protect him.

The preacher finally stopped talking and Darren, Aaron and Samantha each walked up and laid the rose they carried on top of the coffin. They stood there awkwardly, none of them really knowing what to do next before the coffin was lowered into the baked earth. There were only a handful of people at the service. Lacey didn’t have very many friends mostly thanks to Darren. He went out of his way to isolate her and the kids. It was a classic abuser move. A few of Darren’s co-workers and some of their neighbors showed up, and way in the back stood the two detectives that came and interviewed them all the day that Lacey died. As the group began disbursing and walking toward their cars, the detectives approached Darren.

“Mr. Stern?”

“Yeah?” Darren acted like he didn’t know who they were. He acted like such a disrespectful pig that sometimes it was all Sam could do to keep from socking him in his arrogant face.

“I’m Detective Brandt and this is Detective Lamont,” the detectives introduced themselves as if they’d never met before. Sam supposed they were used to dealing with creeps like Darren. “We were wondering if you might be able to join us down at the station. We have a few questions for you regarding your wife’s death.”

Darren scowled. “What’s to question? She overdosed. She was a drunk and an addict so it’s no big surprise to anyone.”

“There are some questions that the autopsy raised. We’d rather do this at the station, but if you insist we can do it here.”

“I’m not going to the fucking police station.”

“Okay then, maybe you can tell us how long your wife has been using heroin.”

“Mom never used hard drugs. She was terrified of needles.” Aaron was mumbling under his breath. Sam wished that he would shut-up. It was just going to net him a beating when they got home. Darren glared down at his son and said,

“She’s been an addict since I met her sixteen years ago. Sometimes she went weeks without using and other times she used something every day.”

“What was her drug of choice?”

“It used to be weed and occasionally cocaine, but I found her with some OxyContin about a month ago…and now the heroin. I guess she passed through the gateway.” Darren chuckled like he’d made a joke. Sam’s stomach was turning.

“The medical examiner said there were no tracks on her body anywhere, so it’s a safe bet to assume she wasn’t a regular user. Do you know who her dealer was?”

“Nope, I have no idea,” he said. Aaron and Sam looked at each other but neither of them spoke. Sam noticed one of the detectives watching them so she tore her eyes away from her brother’s and looked back down at the ground.

“What about life insurance?”

“What about it?”

“Did your wife have any?”

“Sure, we both did, gotta look out for the kiddos.” Sam seriously thought she might throw up. He didn’t give a shit about “the kiddos.” If he had life insurance it was something he could borrow against while he was still alive.

“So you were aware that in the instance of her death you will receive two million dollars from the insurance company?” Sam started choking on her own spit, Aaron gasped, and Darren didn’t look surprised or ruffled at all.

“Yes, I’m aware of that. What are these questions leading up to, detective? Wasn’t my wife’s death ruled an “accidental overdose” by your medical examiner?”

“That’s what the paperwork says. My gut however is telling me something else. The heroin that killed your wife was not the usual kind we find on the streets here in Arizona. This heroin came from Mexico, it’s called “Black Tar” and it’s some dangerous shit. It’s cheap and that’s why most hard-core druggies choose to use it but since we’ve found no evidence that your wife was a regular user…”

“She didn’t inject it, but she used it. She used to crush it up with Tylenol and snort it.”

The detective raised his eyebrows and said, “Interesting that you didn’t think to tell us that before.”

Darren narrowed his eyes and said, “I’m not trying to ruin my dead wife’s reputation. Now if that’s all, I’d like to get these kids home.”

The detective looked at Sam. “Did your mother sleep a lot?”

“No, not unless she got so drunk she passed out.”

“Did you ever see her smoking something that smelled like Teriyaki?”

It was Sam’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “No, what she smoked always smelled like skunk.”

“What about a kit…it would have had a silver spoon and…”

“That’s enough! These kids just buried their mother. I won’t have you harassing them,” Darren said. He’d rather take us home and do that himself, Sam thought.

“I’m not a kid and if it helps find out exactly what happened to my mother, I’d like to answer the detective’s questions,” Sam said. Darren glowered at her. She knew she’d have to be ready to fight hard tonight. If she wasn’t worried about Aaron she’d just stay at the track and not go home. Sam does her best to distract Darren when he gets started on Aaron. Sometimes she takes the blows for him while he gets out of the way and sometimes she gets the upper hand and knocks Darren the fuck out. That’s what she would love to do today, if only because of his attitude.

“Thank you,” the detective said. “Do you know where your mother got her drugs?”

Samantha knew this was one of those pivotal moments in her life where she could choose to do the right thing and face the consequences, or she could stick her head in the sand. Sam rarely

chose to stick her head in the sand, if ever. Occasionally she chose not to rattle Darren’s cage, but this was about her mother and in spite of their dysfunctions family was the most important thing to her.

“She gets them from her husband…”

**

Sam was pounding the steak on the counter with a tenderizing hammer while Aaron yelled at her over the noise and vibrations. “I can’t fucking believe you gave him up!”

“Watch your mouth,” she said, not missing a beat on the steak. Her brother wasn’t angry that she’d given up his father, he was grinning from ear to ear. “You won’t be smiling like that if he makes bail.”

The grin fell off of Aaron’s face and he said, “Do you think he killed her?”

Sam stopped banging the steak. The thought hadn’t crossed her mind until today. Her mother and Darren had a shitty relationship, but it had been shitty for as long as Sam could remember and he’d never tried to kill her before. Until she heard the detectives say there was a two million dollar policy on her mother’s life today she may not have even believed it. Darren wasn’t a heavy thinker. He was a heavy drinker and a heavy pot smoker, but he usually left the thinking to others. When he was angry he beat the shit out of someone, usually Aaron, sometimes her mother or Sam. When he was horny he made passes at his step-daughter, sometimes more, or he took her mother in the bedroom and for a half an hour it would sound like rutting pigs in the house. He watched NASCAR and Breaking Bad on television and as far as she knew he had very limited knowledge of what was going on in the world. If Darren bought that insurance and the heroin to inject into her mother with the intentions of killing her, he had the ability for more thought than she had ever given him credit for.

“I don’t know Aaron,” she finally said, “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

“What happens to us?”

“You mean if he goes to prison?”

“Yeah…will they put me in foster care?”

That was another thing on Sam’s mind. When she’d pointed the finger at Darren earlier she’d been doing what she knew was right and needed to be done, but at that moment she hadn’t thought about her brother. It was rare that she didn’t consider what would happen to Aaron. Every time she gets pulled over for speeding or reckless driving the first thought that goes through her head is what would happen to Aaron if she was out of the house.

“No, I won’t let that happen,” she said. “But you need to keep your ass out of trouble. If you’re getting arrested or even cited for stupid shit, they will take you out of here and put you in a group home or something.” Aaron’s not a bad kid, just a frustrated, angry one. As far as Sam is concerned he has every right to be angry. His life has sucked from day one. She felt the same kind of anger and frustration but she mostly handles hers on the track and speaking of which she had a race she needed to get to. She’d already had to blow two off since her mother died. If they kept Darren in jail they were going to need some cash and racing was the only way she had to make any at this point. “After I finish dinner I’m going to be at the track for a while. You need to do your homework and get to bed at a decent time.”