Pretty Lies

  Pretty Lies

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright 2018 © Kitty Thomas

  All rights reserved.

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or shared. If you did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Respecting the hard work of this author makes new books possible.

  Publisher’s Note:

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Neither the publisher nor the author endorses any behavior carried out by any character in this work of fiction or any other.

  V4

  For M.

  Dear Readers,

  This story occurs in the Guilty Pleasures world and will be the last story from this world. The other books in this world are: Guilty Pleasures, Broken Dolls, and Surrender. These are all stand alones that can be read in any order. However if you wish to read them in the order they were published you should read them: Guilty Pleasures, Broken Dolls, Surrender, this one.

  This is Anton and Annette’s origins story, and as such, might be considered a “prequel” since they are already together in all the other books. Although you can definitely read this one first since it occurs first chronologically, it still might be ideal to read them in publishing order. I have several Easter eggs in this one that readers will only “get” and appreciate if they’ve read the other books first.

  Thank you for reading and supporting my work!

  Kitty ^.^

  p.s. As in most of my work, we basically have to pretend STDs are not a thing because this is a FANTASY. It’s not real. And condoms just aren’t sexy. They are a reality of life, but they aren’t sexy, and I don’t feel compelled to give a sex-ed class to grown adults in my books. So please suspend your disbelief and understand we are operating in a purely fantasy world here.

  Prologue

  The elevator door opened with a sharp ding, delivering Anton Volikov back to the mansion’s entryway. This was his second tour of the property.

  Empty, the place echoed at an almost painful volume. It was five floors if you counted the two underground basement areas which could easily be turned into dungeons.

  There were two towers: one on the west side and one on the east. Just beyond the entry hall was a large dining area and industrial kitchen. The site had a pool and space for a large gym, as well as a place that could be turned into a spa. And there was a library. And offices on the first floor. And play rooms—or rooms they would turn into play rooms. The possibilities were staggering.

  He smoothed his dark suit and pivoted toward the only other person in the cavernous space. “And how many rooms did you say the house has, Phyllis?”

  The real estate agent blushed every time he spoke her name. It was the accent.

  Phyllis appeared to be in her fifties and was dressed in a suit the color of raspberry sorbet. She pushed a set of reading glasses up her nose as she consulted her clipboard again. She should have had it memorized by now for all the times she’d nervously glanced at it. “Forty-three, but not all of them are bedrooms.”

  “Does that count the bathrooms?” Anton asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “And how many of the bedrooms have private bathrooms?”

  “Nearly all of them, though many of the bathrooms are rather small, I’m afraid.”

  “What did the previous owner use the place for?” He couldn’t imagine it was the same sordid use he and his friends had for it. At the same time, he couldn’t imagine any other use for it so far off the beaten path.

  Phyllis lowered her voice as if there might be listening devices. And there would be—once Brian got his surveillance equipment set up.

  “The previous owner was this eccentric billionaire. He built the place to be a murder mystery party hotel, where all the guests played the game. That’s why it was so out of the way—to add to the creepiness.”

  It was out of the way all right. Anton hadn’t believed it when Lindsay had told him about this place. It had seemed almost too good to be true. The large white house sat on two hundred acres of land. It was surrounded by trees. A very long, private road led up to the house. The guys had planned to buy land and build, but here it was, all wrapped up for them already. Why fix what hadn’t been broken? Or build what already somehow miraculously existed?

  “What happened? I don’t remember a murder mystery hotel.” They may be a few hours outside the city, but surely he would have heard about something like this.

  “The owner died just before it was finished. That was the part I wanted to tell you. There are a few rooms on the fifth floor as well as the towers that, unfortunately, aren’t completed yet, but they don’t need much work. I’m sorry, what did you say you were you planning to use the property for?”

  He hadn’t said.

  “I like my space and privacy. And the price is right. I was told you would be discreet.”

  “Oh, yes, sir, of course,” she said. “It’s been impossible to move. Nobody has the same vision for it or any vision for it. It just has no appeal to the right buyers, and the family is desperate to unload it and get whatever they can.”

  She was babbling. She was desperate to unload it, too, which worked for him. But Anton still wasn’t sure if she’d be a loose end. Maybe it would be better to build. Safer. Quieter. No. Phyllis was independent—no agency. And from what Brian had dug up on her, she’d done deals with several unsavory characters in the past.

  “Is the family local to the area?” Anton asked. Brian would wire them up with heavy surveillance spanning all edges of the property, and they’d put up an invisible perimeter fence, but it would still be best if no one remained close by who might get curious and want to spy on the new eccentric owner. It helped that it was so far from anything. Even before one reached the impossibly long private road that led to the house, it was still in the middle of nowhere.

  “The family is on the other side of the country. They thought this place was a crackpot idea from the start and wanted nothing to do with it. Between you and me, I think they just want to forget it was ever built,” Phyllis said. “They’re old money. It’s embarrassing to them.”

  “Who else knows about this place? I don’t want nosy locals showing up at my gate.”

  “Well, he was pretty hush hush about the project. He didn’t want anyone to know about it until he was ready to open. Obviously, there were builders and such, but beyond that he was very secretive. He was a very weird guy. The family said he wouldn’t let anybody know the location and forced workers to sign non-disclosure agreements. Some say he even blindfolded them before driving them in.”

  Anton rolled his eyes. “Now you’re just screwing with me. I’ve been in this country since I was sixteen. I may still have the accent but I’m as American as you. I’m not that easy to fool.” He hated how even speaking like the locals, the accent made some treat him as if he didn’t understand things.

  “No, I swear it’s true! Hand to God,” Phyllis insisted. Then she started to babble again, no doubt afraid she’d lose her only hope of a sale. “So anyway, nobody really knows about it, and the few who might, have forgotten and don’t know how exactly to get here anyway. The family was so embarrassed by the project that they wouldn’t go through an agency. It’s been off the books while I worked on a list of people to approach. You weren’t on the list, so how did you find out about it?”

  “I have some interesting connections,” Anton said.

  “Clearly.”

  He was sure Phyllis wo
uld have questioned him further if she wasn’t so eager for the nice fat commission check that would come with the unlikely sale of the isolated mansion.

  “Is it going to be a problem that I’m putting the purchase through my corporation?” Anton asked. Just another layer of privacy. It wasn’t as if they could completely wipe the house off the map, but he could make it as hard as possible for people to find out anything about the buyer. He would be using a separate corporation the guys had set up—unconnected to the spa he owned in the city.

  “Oh, no problem at all. I’ve handled a lot of large estate purchases bought through corporations,” she said.

  Anton nodded. Black and White Industries had been the most nondescript and innocuous name they could all come up with. They’d hidden their own identities behind multiple layers of contacts—many nonexistent in reality. And nobody’s real name was on anything. It had taken some doing, but then, Anton knew a lot of interesting people. As far as Phyllis knew, Anton’s name was Alexander Aristov. And that was what he would sign on the paperwork.

  He took another look around the entry hall. He had a good feeling about this place. “Get the papers together. I’m ready to move on this.”

  Phyllis’s face broke into a huge smile. “Fantastic.”

  Chapter One

  One Week Later

  The truth was a malleable and ever-changing thing to Annette Waincott. She couldn’t help it really. It wasn’t malicious. She’d just always been this way. It was so much nicer to tell a beautiful lie than a disappointing truth. The tendency had started in childhood, and when she kept getting away with it, she kept going. She had a sweet, innocent face and long, fair hair that made it hard to believe there was even one deceitful bone in her body.

  The morning of July eighth had dawned much the same as any other morning, except for the pounding headache.

  The alcohol had flowed too freely the night before. And the hangover...God, the hangover. Annette was never drinking again.

  Possibly another lie—they blended together after a while.

  She wasn’t sure if it had been vodka goggles, but the man at the club had been incredibly hot. And Jesus, that accent. He could probably kill her with that gorgeous lilting Russian accent. She hadn’t told him her name, and so he’d called her kiska, which he claimed was a term of endearment. She wasn’t sure she believed that. For all she knew he’d been calling her a slut or a bitch all night. But it had sounded so lovely rolling off his tongue either way.

  She was half-surprised he wasn’t in bed with her now, but then puking on a man’s shoes wasn’t exactly foreplay. Annette sighed. Too bad she’d never been able to hold her liquor. She didn’t know his name, either. And she was quite sure she’d never see him again to learn it.

  Annette stumbled out of bed and pulled all the blinds closed. Darkness. She needed darkness. And silence. And coffee.

  Halfway through a bagel and a cup of coffee, the previous night began to come into sharper focus. Maybe too-sharp focus. She’d been in fine form, stringing the hot Russian along with all her kinky fantasies. If only he’d been paying for all that dirty talk in more than just drinks.

  The only trouble was, she didn’t have kinky fantasies. When it came to her fantasy life, she was a blank slate for other people to write on. Where would she find the space to discover her own pleasure when everything about her was such a carefully crafted lie?

  The business line rang. Was he early? Annette glanced at the clock on the wall. Nope. She was late. Ten thirty on the dot. Always so punctual. The high-rolling business suits always were. She’d no doubt been penciled in like all his other meetings. Annette imagined he locked his office door and shut the blinds for these calls while his hand slipped into his pants to touch himself to the story she spun around him like a warm, sultry cocoon.

  Annette sat on a bar stool and answered, fighting past the hangover to put a sexy purr in her voice “Hello, Stan.”

  “Jessica, I missed you.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly. It’s only been two days.”

  “Why can’t we meet?”

  She sighed. It was going to be a banner day if the wheedling was already starting.

  Clients always wanted this. To meet. She shouldn’t complain. After all, the phone sex business wasn’t what it used to be. She was lucky to have the clients she had. Men wanted cam girls now, but the game was a man always wanted more. If you gave him voice, he wanted your pussy on cam. If you gave him that, he wanted your face. And almost always they wanted to meet and fuck you for real. But she wasn’t a prostitute. Phone sex was just a fantasy. Just another beautiful lie—one she was good at. She’d always believed one should go with their strengths.

  “Stan...”

  “Take your panties off,” he said, his voice gruff.

  Okay, that was more like it. Maybe she wouldn’t have to have the same tired argument after all. Annette took out a bottle of dark red polish and began painting her nails—not exactly the best smell to go with a hangover, but she had to do something to pass the time.

  “Are they off?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said, making her voice more breathy while she painted her pinky with the dark red color. “I’ve been wet all morning thinking about you, waiting to talk to you.” She let out a theatric whimper. Then her voice turned conspiratorial. “I found a cucumber in the fridge. Do you want me to fuck myself with it?”

  A chuckle. “You dirty little slut. Yes. Fuck yourself hard. Hold the phone down there so I can hear how wet you are.”

  Annette put the lid back on the bottle of polish and pressed a button on the CD player at the edge of the counter, skipping to track three. She held the phone next to the speaker. Who knew if that girl was fucking herself with something or if she was faking, too. Either way, it sounded real. As did the moaning.

  She let Stan have about a minute of this before she turned the CD player off and put the phone back to her ear.

  “Come on, Jessica. Meet me. I make a lot of money. I could make you comfortable and happy. And I’d give you all the dick-shaped produce you wanted to pound that sweet little pussy with.”

  Annette made a few fake sex noises, trying to distract him and get the call back on course. She would have dragged it out with a much longer tease to make more money if she hadn’t needed to get him away from the meeting-in-person talk. The company she worked for preferred they keep the callers on as long as possible. Girls who met and exceeded time quotas regularly got end-of-the-month bonuses. Those bonus checks really helped pay the bills.

  “Please,” he said. His breath had gone deeper, heavier. She might not really be doing anything she told him she was doing, but Stan was. He was about to come. “I need to meet you.”

  “You know I don’t meet clients.”

  “It’s because you’re fat and ugly,” he barked suddenly.

  Well. Normally it took longer for a client to escalate to that level of bitterness. Mrs. Stan must not be giving him anything at home. Not Annette’s problem.

  She disconnected the call without a word of reply. About twenty percent of her clients ended this way. They were all worked up with nothing warm and wet to stick it inside. The tease who refused to make good on her dirty phone sex promises was an easy target.

  Annette opened her laptop to log into the company site. The one benefit to not being fully independent was that no one had her real number. She sent Sherry an email request to remove Stan from the client list and not to patch another call from him through.

  That sucked. He’d been a regular. Normally longish calls, too.

  A few minutes later the phone rang again. Her next appointment wasn’t until the afternoon. She stared at it for three rings. It was probably him again. Sherry wouldn’t have had a chance to get the email. The phone girls weren’t supposed to answer calls from clients who were harassing them, but Annette had never had the best self-control.

  “Listen to me, you fucking prick. I am not fat or ugly. You’d fucking cream your pant
s if you got a glimpse of me, but I don’t need creepers like you knowing what I look like so you can stalk me after business hours.”

  “Nice sales pitch, sis.”

  Annette let out a long breath. “Jan.” Her twin. Janette was the exact opposite from her except for looks—honest to a fault with the sweetness to match that face. Annette’s face.

  “Sorry,” Janette said, “you must have your personal phone on silent. Isn’t that the second guy this week to do this?”

  “What can I say? I give good talk. The poor fools get attached. Are we still meeting later this afternoon to go shopping?”

  “I can’t. I finally decided to take you up on the massage therapy suggestion. Pre-med is kicking my ass, and I need to unwind in a way more involved than shopping.”

  “You going to that girl I suggested?” Annette asked.

  “No, actually, a friend gave me a gift card. I’m going to a place called...” There was paper shuffling in the background. “Dome. Ever hear of it?”

  “Is it that new fancy place downtown with the glass roof and all the plants?”

  “That’s the one. They have a restaurant; I could meet you there for a late lunch afterward,” Janette said.

  “Sorry, can’t. I have a call.”

  “You always have a call.”

  “Hey, don’t bitch. It pays our rent and keeps you in the expensive sugary cereal.”

  Janette laughed. “You take such good care of me.”

  “What are big sisters for?”

  “You’re only five minutes older. Don’t let it go to your head.”

  “Too late. Later,” Annette said.