Sweet Deception. Rochelle Alers

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СКАЧАТЬ two weeks before her wedding and she would walk down the aisle with a new life growing inside her. It wasn’t how she’d planned to start married life.

      Discarding the pregnancy kit in the wastebasket, Zabrina washed her hands. She walked out of the bathroom, stopping when she heard voices coming from the living room. She recognized her father’s voice and another that was vaguely familiar. A third voice, this one deeper than the others stopped her mid-stride. This voice she knew. It belonged to Thomas Cooper, her father’s protégé. Alarmed, she made her way into the living room.

      “What’s going on here?”

      Isaac Mixon turned when he heard his daughter’s voice. “When did you get home?”

      Zabrina’s gaze shifted from her father to the other two men. It was obvious they’d thought they were alone. “I got here about twenty minutes ago.” She glared at City Council President Thomas Cooper, who, it was widely rumored, had aspirations to become Philadelphia’s next mayor. “Were you threatening my father?”

      Thomas Cooper flashed a smile, the one he’d perfected for the media and his constituents. “Zabrina, please come and sit down.”

      Zabrina’s eyebrows lifted. “You’re inviting me to sit down in my own home?”

      The practiced smile vanished quickly. “Mixon, I think you’d better convince your daughter to listen to what we have to tell her, or she’ll read about your arrest in tomorrow’s Philly Inquirer.”

      Isaac crossed the room and cradled his daughter to his chest. “Please, Brina, let me handle this.”

      Light brown eyes flecked with hints of green studied the face of the man who’d protected her since her mother had died the year Zabrina had celebrated her seventh birthday. Isaac Mixon had become father and mother, refusing to remarry because he claimed he didn’t want to subject her to a dreadful stepmother. She knew he dated women, but he’d never brought one home.

      She nodded. “Okay, Daddy.” Isaac pulled out a straight-back chair for Zabrina to sit in, and she watched as her father walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows to peer out at the Philadelphia skyline.

      It was the third man in the room who spoke first. “Miss Mixon, your father has been misappropriating monies from Councilman Cooper’s campaign contributions.”

      A heavy silence filled the room as four pairs of eyes exchanged glances, and Zabrina wondered how many more shocks she would have to endure in one day. First there was the news that she was carrying a child, and now the threat that her father was facing arrest for stealing money from the man whose political career he’d shepherded from political analyst to city council member and now city council president.

      She didn’t believe it, she couldn’t possibly believe it. Her father didn’t have financial problems. In fact, she knew for certain that he was solvent. It was she who reconciled his bank statements because Isaac Mixon didn’t want to have anything to do with money. He was an ideas person, not a numbers guy. In fact, he was a political genius when it came to political campaign strategies.

      “I don’t believe you,” she told the well-dressed man with a sallow pockmarked complexion. It was almost impossible to discern the color of his eyes behind a pair of thick lenses perched on a short nose that gave him a porcine appearance.

      “Perhaps Councilman Cooper and I should leave you alone with your father for a few moments so he can bare his soul. Perhaps then you’ll believe me.”

      Thomas nodded to Zabrina. “Mr. Davidson and I will be in your father’s study. Please, don’t get up. I know where it is.”

      Zabrina felt her throat closing as a wave of rage held her captive, not permitting her to draw a normal breath. It was the second time the arrogant politician had usurped her in her home. Once she’d reached sixteen she’d thought of the three-bedroom condo as hers. It was then that she’d assumed the responsibility of mistress of the house when standing in as hostess for Isaac Mixon’s many political confabs and soirées.

      She drew in a breath and closed her eyes. When she opened them and stared at her father he seemed to have aged within a matter of seconds. “What’s going on, Daddy?”

      Isaac Mixon knew whatever he’d been instructed to tell his daughter was going to destroy her. But either he had to lie or go to jail for a crime he did not commit. And disclosing what he knew meant his chances of survival were slim to none. Thomas Cooper had too many connections in and out of prison.

      He walked across the living room and sank down on a love seat. “I’m sorry, baby girl, I—”

      “You’re sorry, Daddy!” Zabrina hadn’t realized she was screaming, and at her father no less. “You’re sorry for what?”

      “I did divert some of Tom’s campaign funds.”

      “Divert or steal, Daddy?”

      Isaac saw fire in his daughter’s eyes, the same fire that had burned so brightly in her mother’s eyes before a debilitating disease had stolen her spirit and will to live. Zabrina had inherited Jacinta’s palomino-gold coloring, inky-black hair and hazel eyes that always reminded him of semi-precious jewels. He hadn’t celebrated his tenth wedding anniversary when he lost his wife, but fate hadn’t taken everything from him because Jacinta lived on in the image of their daughter.

      “I took the money,” he lied smoothly.

      “But why did you do it? You have money.”

      Isaac lowered his salt-and-pepper head, focusing his attention on the thick pile of the carpet under his feet. He knew if he met his daughter’s eyes he wouldn’t be able to continue to lie to her. “I…I’ve been gambling—”

      “But you never gamble!”

      “But I do now!” he spat out in a nasty tone. “I bet on everything: cards, ponies and even illegal numbers.”

      Zabrina’s eyelids fluttered as she tried processing what her father was telling her. “Why didn’t you use your own money?”

      He glared at her. “I didn’t want you to know about my nasty little addiction.”

      “How much did you take?”

      “Eighty-three,” Isaac admitted.

      “Eighty-three…eighty-three hundred,” Zabrina repeated over and over. “I have more than that in my savings account. I’ll go to the bank tomorrow and get a bank check payable to Thomas Cooper—”

      “Stop, Brina! It’s not eighty-three hundred but eighty-three thousand—money Tom gave me to pay off loan sharks who’d threatened to kill me.” Tears filled Isaac Mixon’s eyes as his face crumpled like an accordion. “I took twenty thousand from the campaign fund and borrowed the rest from a loan shark. “Right now I owe Thomas Cooper more than one hundred thousand dollars.”

      “What about the money in your 401K?” she asked.

      “I’ll have to pay it back,” Isaac said.

      “How about selling the condo?”

      Isaac shook his head. “That would take too long.”

      Zabrina’s СКАЧАТЬ