The next morning Chase was gone and he stayed gone the entire day not returning until the wee hours of the night. We were laying in bed when he got back not quite asleep. He startled us a bit when he came into the room unannounced.
"Get up, you are going to show me what the hell your father was hiding right now!" he shouted.
Max sat up and looked at him a little shocked.
"Where have you been all day?"
"With my father trying to figure out exactly what we are into and what my role is before he bolts and we are left holding the bag. A few more days and he is out of here."
He had my attention and I sat up too.
"Alright, I'll show you," Max said as he stood up and I followed him.
"Lead the way!" Chase demanded.
We went through the series of fail-safes his father had set up and wound up back in the creepy room. I thought Chase would have more to say but he remained eerily quiet. Whatever his father told him had clearly shaken him.
Max took the box marked "Confidential" off of the shelf and walked over the threshold into the empty room. He sat it on the desk and rested his hands on the edge of the table just staring at it. There was so much weight on him that you could practically feel it in the air.
"We have clearly underestimated what we are dealing with Max. Our fathers have been knee-deep in secrets for a long time and have made some enemies along the way. Those enemies are now our enemies. I knew this was serious but shit, they were running a freaking crime syndicate on black market information," Chase said.
Max looked up at him as he began to slowly lift the lid off of the box. He took the items out one by one and sat them on the table. The first was an old recorder followed by large black and white photos and a handwritten letter. We walked a little closer to the table so we could get a better look.
"What is this stuff?" Chase asked.
Max picked up the recorder and pressed the button. We could tell that it was thirty or forty years old at least. The quality was poor but we listened as a woman's voice filled the room.
She was a movie star who was having an affair with not one but two famous brothers in the political arena. They had a very powerful father who was involved in the mob and was preparing to bankroll a presidential bid for one of them.
Both men had apparently fallen for her. The younger one was very protective of his brother's future presidency. When he found out she was having an affair with both of them, he started talking about what a liability she was for his brother's career.
She recounted how she had begun to fear for her life. The person holding the recorder was a trusted confidant of hers. It seemed she was trying to create an insurance policy of sorts, just in case something happened to her.
One of the brothers was paying her a visit later that night and she was worried about it. Actually, she sounded scared out of her mind. She was worried that perhaps she had become too much of a liability.
I picked up the photos on the desk and gasped as I realized what they were. Even though they were in black and white, it wasn't hard to figure out the story they were telling. Someone had taken them from outside of her apartment and had the camera trained on her balcony.
Through the sheer fabric of her balcony windows, you could see several men surrounding her. They were wearing dark suits and looked very intimidating.
The next photo was of one of them with his hand over her mouth while the others looked on. It was followed by one of the men throwing her over the balcony toward a pool waiting below.
We were all in shock when we realized that the man she was talking had eventually become president. His family had become a mainstay in American politics and they were peppered throughout every single branch of it. A scandal like that would have brought the entire family to its knees. The truth was, it probably still could.
"Max, this is bad, it's really bad," I said with a shaky voice.
"I know," he said as Chase remained eerily silent.
He had picked up the handwritten note and began reading it out loud. It was a love note to her which was a scandal in itself considering he was a married man at the time.
In it, he professed his love for her and referenced how good she made him feel when they were "together". He finished it off with his very own signature which was written proof of the affair. We were all stunned as the realization of what we had gotten involved with sank in.
"I don't want any part of this!" Chase insisted.
"Neither do I but we don't really have a choice. How do you think she feels?" Max said motioning toward me.
"Well, at least we know why we live in a mansion with a lethal security team," I said very matter of factly.
"How do we get out of this?" Chase asked.
"We can't, it's part of us, of our entire freaking legacy," Max said.
After a few minutes of trying to shake off our fear, Max began carefully placing all of the items back in the box. He placed it on the shelf and locked the door behind him. We all walked silently back through the house. No one knew what to say, we just knew we were in deep.
Max stopped in the dining room and poured us all a glass of liquor. When we all had one in hand he held his up in the air. There was a somber mood as we held ours up to his.
"To getting out of this alive," he said as the sound of the glasses clinking filled the room.
***********
A/N
Well? I am dying to hear your thoughts. Is that what you imagined the secret information would be?
A big shout out to @anjaniii19 for your continued support. I really appreciate all of your feedback. Ya'll check her out if you have a moment.