Becca XXX - Hard Time Ch. 05

"In what way?" I quizzed.

"Let's just say I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. My life back home wasn't exactly normal, but it was still a hell of a lot better than being gang-raped once a week," she replied as though it had left a bad taste in her mouth.

"Were you part of a criminal network?" I asked. "What are you in for?"

"You heard Melody's wrap sheet at the orgy," she replied. "You know why she's in here."

It was strange that she suddenly referred to herself in the third person. She hadn't done it until that point, but I guessed she was trying to distance herself from her crimes as though someone else had done them.

"Murder, theft, assault and burglary?" I repeated what the governor had said a few nights before.

She nodded.

"That's quite a list for a twenty-three-year-old. You don't seem the type," I laughed.

"I'm not."

Naomi looked at me as though she was waiting for me to figure something out.

"So, are you implying that you're innocent?" I replied as more of a statement than a question.

"Melody Thomas is guilty as hell..." she replied, using the third person again.

I was beginning to think that she was schizophrenic or had some sort of split personality. But then she continued.

"... but I'm not Melody Thomas," she smiled.

"What?"

"I stole her identity. Melody's dead."

"What? Did you kill her?" I gasped.

"No, she died in a car accident."

"I told you that not everyone in Bronzefield is who you think they are," Arrow piped up.

I stood there open mouthed with nothing but confusion running through my head. I asked the most obvious question without even thinking.

"Who the fuck are you then?"

"Someone trying to escape from a terrible life," she said. "It's a long story. You'd better sit down."

I perched myself on the edge of Arrow's bunk and leaned forward intently. She had my full attention now. Naomi raised her eyebrows at me as if to say 'hold on for a shocking ride'.

"So, you're not Melody Thomas?" was all I could come up with.

"Well duh," said Arrow.

"Shut up, Arrow," Naomi snapped at her.

"As far as everyone in Bronzefield is concerned I am, but Melody Thomas died in a car crash two years ago. I was in the car with her when it happened. I was running away from my over-bearing father," she gave a visible shudder like Arrow did whenever sex was mentioned. "I was born into a wealthy family. A ridiculously wealthy family to be honest. My mother died giving birth to me. I didn't see much of my father as he was too busy doing business overseas. I was brought up by nanny's and teachers at boarding schools until I became more interesting to my father."

She said it all as though she hated the way she'd been brought up. With no mother and a father who didn't seem to care about her, I'd have felt the same way.

"My father always resented me and blamed me for the death of my mother. I know that he loved her to pieces and that it almost destroyed him when she died. He said that if I hadn't been born, she'd still be alive."

"He sounds like a great role model," I said. "How the fuck could it have been your fault? It was just one of those things."

"Exactly. We never really got along as father and daughter. After boarding school, he sent me off to college to learn computer programming and business studies. I did well at it and I built a good life for myself away from him. I wasn't exactly the model student and I hung around with some bad people, but I guess that was just to piss him off. He'd shown no interest in my life until I turned eighteen. Then Daddy wanted me to join the family business and said it was time I earned my keep. I was more interested in boys and parties," she laughed.

"What sort of business was it?" I quizzed.

"Pretty much anything and everything. Import, export, commodities, goods, if it could be traded for profit, he was involved in it."

"Was it all legal?" I asked.

"I assumed so until I started working for him. Most of it was done through shell companies which made me suspicious from the start. He was trading under different names and different companies. The money was so washed by the time it got to him that there was no way of knowing where it had come from or how legal it was."

"And that didn't sit well with you?"

"I didn't give a fuck to be honest. I found it boring and I knew he was only using me. I was too busy spending his money and having fun with my friends. I was out partying every night and he hated it. He told me it was time I grew up and stopped hanging about with low-life losers as he called them."

"Were they low-life losers?"

"Some of them were. But the way I saw it, if it was ok for daddy to get involved with criminals, it was ok for me to hang around with them too. It was just another fuck-you to him. The people I got in with were into all sorts of stuff, but mainly causing havoc by crashing large corporation's computer systems. I met some of them at college and we hacked all kinds of systems. Some of them were even my fathers."

She paused for a drink of water like it punctuated her story. It was the end of one chapter and she was moving on to another.

"That's where I met Melody. She was great fun, but she was as wild as they come. She was wanted by the police for assault, car theft, burglary, cybercrime, the lot, but I found it exciting. We hung around together all the time until my father put a stop to it."

"He had her killed?" I asked.

"Fuck no. She died in a car crash, weren't you listening?"

"Sorry, yes. Carry on," I apologised.

"Anyway, the bastard said I couldn't see her anymore. He said he needed me by his side to help run his company," she continued. "He threatened to have Melody hunted down and arrested, so I had to play along."

"How would he have her arrested?" I asked. "If the police couldn't find her, what chance did your father have?"

"You don't understand how powerful he is. He knows a lot of people in high places. If he wanted to get to Melody, he would. I had to do as he said for her sake."

"So, you stopped seeing her."

She gave a slow sad nod with a distant look on her face. I didn't know what her relationship was like with Melody, but she obviously missed her.

"I stopped seeing her and did my father's bidding. He started being unusually nice to me, which is when things started to get really weird," she went wide-eyed as she said it.

"Weird how?"

"He started taking me to his meetings and showing me off to his friends at dinner parties and stuff like that. Or he'd sit up late at night and tell me how much I reminded him of my mother."

I didn't like the sound of where this was heading.

"He said I looked exactly the same as her when they'd first met. He was right - I'd seen photos of her when she was my age and I did look a lot like her. I was the spitting image of her in fact. We had the same hair and the same eyes and she had a smoking hot body before she got pregnant with me."

She went silent for a moment as though the next part was going to be distressing for her.

"Anyway, things got weirder with him the longer it went on. It started with lingering kisses. He'd kiss me in a way that felt wrong. No father should kiss his daughter like that."

She shuddered at the thought of it.

"Then he moved on to inappropriate touching or walking in on me when I was getting undressed. He'd pass comment that I had the same body as my mother and he'd say how much he missed her. He'd stare at me as though he was staring at her. It felt wrong, but in a way, I was flattered."

"For fucks sake," I sighed sympathetically.

"I finally plucked up enough courage to confront him about it, to make him stop. We were getting on really well, but I didn't want my own father thinking about me in that way," she said.

"And how did that go?"

"It just encouraged him even more. He told me that he missed having sex with my mother and that he wanted to relive the life he had with her. The next thing I know he's kissing me on the couch and slipping his hand up my skirt."

She stopped to take a breath.

"It's ok, babe," Naomi put her hand on her shoulder to comfort her. "I think Becca can figure out the rest."

"He raped you?" I guessed, in a sympathetic voice.

"I don't like to call it rape, but yes, he fucked me."

"For fucks sake," I gasped.

"Before I knew what was happening, he was fucking me seven nights a week. He said it was natural progression for a father to have intimacy with his daughter after his wife had died. I was her replacement."

She took another gulp of water. She was building up to something else and I could see this was just the tip of the iceberg.

"What's even weirder is that I got used to it," she uttered, looking at her feet. "It became normal that he'd come home from a business trip and kiss me like I was his wife. In some ways I liked it. I felt needed, but I knew it wasn't right. I was so isolated from everyone else that I just blocked out what was happening and just got on with it."

I began to see why she had acted the way she had in the basement. Having men force themselves onto her must have brought back the memories of her father.

"After several months, he said that we should take our relationship to the next level. He said he should make an honest woman out of me."

"Holy shit. No fucking way," I cried out in astonishment. "He didn't..."

"Yep. The cunt put a ring on my finger."

"He proposed to you?" I gasped.

"No, it was nothing as romantic as that. He told me that as I was responsible for the death of his wife, I owed him my life in exchange for hers. He said it was only right that I replaced her. He even gave me her old engagement ring and told me that if I ever took it off or told anyone about what we got up to, I'd never be heard from again."

"Jesus fucking Christ," I said under my breath.

"I told you she had a hell of a story to tell," said Naomi. "It's fucking unreal, isn't it?"

In my world, it wasn't as unreal as she thought. I'd spent the last few years dealing with assholes, rapists and incestuous perverts hell bent on enjoying themselves while others suffered.

"He'd fuck me most nights. Sometimes he even called me by my mother's name. It was sick and twisted, but I couldn't see any way out. He was so high up in business that the police would never believe me if I reported it. I only had one option."

"You ran."

"For my fucking life. I wasn't going to put up with an absent father who now wanted to bury his cock inside me every night and marry me. What was next? Children? Fuck that."

She paused again as a realisation began to wash over me. An inkling of an idea as to who Melody really was sparkled into my brain. It seemed too far fetched for me to even contemplate it, but I couldn't see any other answer. The facts were closing in on me like an approaching storm and they were impossible to ignore.

"I ran away with Melody. I called her and she came straight over and picked me up. She was in a stolen car and got me out of there, pronto. She might have been a fucking criminal, but she always had my back. I hadn't spoken to her in almost a year, but she was right beside me when I needed her. The problem was, she'd been drinking that night and she was driving like a lunatic to get me away from my father. It was all very exciting like the movies until she lost control of the car and smashed into a tree at high speed," she paused for a brief moment as though she was reliving it.

"I had my seatbelt on, but she didn't. She always was a rebel who liked to live dangerously. The car was an older model and didn't even have air bags. She always said it was best to steal an older car because they were easier to steal due to the lack of security fitted to them."

I knew that from my training. Older vehicles weren't fitted with alarms or immobilisers. You could practically start them with a screwdriver hammered into the ignition barrel.

"Melody hit the windscreen and bounced back into the driver's seat. I'd got off relatively unscathed, but Melody was unconscious and her head was badly damaged. I tried to wake her up but she wasn't responding. I could smell petrol and I knew we had to get out of the vehicle before it went up in flames. The doors were jammed shut so I ended up kicking the windscreen out and crawling out onto the bonnet. I check Melody for a pulse, but I knew she was gone. Her eyes were vacant and lifeless."

She had a sadness to her voice now and rightly so. The person who'd saved her from her nightmare was now dead. She paused for a moment as she relived it. She must have had Melody's dead eyes etched into her soul forever. I'd seen enough dead people to know how she felt.

"Despite my sadness over her death, I suddenly saw an opportunity. One that I'd probably never get again. Fumes filled the air and a small fire had started under the car. There was no way I could drag her body free from the wreckage. She was trapped and she was dead anyway," she explained. "I took my mother's engagement ring off and slipped it onto Melody's ring finger."

Her head dropped as she told me how she watched the car go up in a fireball with her friend still inside.

"It would look like I was dead when the police found the body. My father would identify the burnt remains thanks to the engagement ring. Finally, I was free," she exclaimed.

"Fuck me. I'm so sorry you had to go through that," I sighed, sympathetically.

"It was horrendous to leave my life behind, but I couldn't see any other way out. I was now dead as far as the world was concerned so I just needed a new identity. The most obvious choice was for me to become Melody Thomas," she shrugged.

"How did you switch your identity with hers?" I asked.

"I'm a hacker. It was relatively simple once I got to an Internet café. I hacked the police data base like I had so many times before. All I had to do was then change my file photo and finger prints for Melody's."

"Fuck me, Melody," I gasped. "Or whatever your name is. You switched your identity for your dead friends and faked your own death?"

"Pretty much."

"And now here we are," I said.

"And now here we are," she repeated.

"Jesus fucking Christ, that really is a hell of a story," I sat back on the bottom bunk with a look of disbelief on my face.

"I told you," smiled Naomi. "She could write a book about it."

"But then everyone would know who she really is," frowned Arrow. "That doesn't sound like a very good idea."

"It's a figure of speech, Arrow," sighed Naomi.

"Oh... right... yeah... I knew that," she lied.

"Ok. I understand that you switched identities with Melody, but that doesn't explain how you ended up in prison," I said. "What went wrong?"

"It was a bizarre twist of fate," she replied. "I guess if you're going to switch identities with someone, you should make sure they're not wanted by the police with a wrap sheet as long as your arm."

"Oh shit. You got arrested as Melody?" I gasped.

"She did," said Naomi. "She was arrested after a bar fight and her finger prints were taken."

If the police arrested her and checked her identity through finger prints, they'd find a match for Melody's criminal record. That really was just bad luck.

"It was a minor offence, but once they figured out who I was, they threw the book at me. I had no idea that Melody had killed someone or about her other crimes which were on her record. I couldn't tell them who I really was for fear of my father finding out. Prison seemed to be the lesser of two evils."

Being locked up for someone else's crimes must have been a hard pill to swallow. The poor girl had escaped one nightmare only to be thrown into another which was nothing to do with her. She was in Bronzefield for Melody's crimes, not her own.

Silence filled the room as I let it all sink in. She must have been in a very bad place with her father if prison was a better option than living with him. The approaching storm in my head was about to erupt as I processed all this new data.

I had been thrown into prison as a deep cover agent. I was here to find Charles Hamilton. Now I'd met a girl who was supposed to be dead. She wasn't who she said she was by a long shot. Somehow this was linked.

She was the daughter of a rich and powerful businessman with some desire for incest and twisted sex. As my tiny brain raced to its conclusion, a new memory flashed up in my mind.

I was standing in an outbuilding on a dark winter's night with an MP7 sub machine gun in my hand. It was pointed at Douglas Shaw's head as he held Natalie hostage at the end of my last mission. We'd tracked him down to prevent his terror attack using dirty bombs and this was a pivotal moment before his head had exploded thanks to a sniper round from Ethan's rifle.

Shaw had been about to tell me the names of some of The Generals who were in high-ranking jobs, but Ethan had killed him before he could tell me. The scene before me was playing out a few seconds before Ethan had taken that shot.

"I can give you Hamilton," said Shaw.

"Where is he?" I asked. "How do we find him?"

"You need me alive to find him," he replied. "He won't meet with anyone he doesn't know."

I saw the scene as plain as day in my head and I realised the significance of it right away. Hamilton was so cautious that no one would ever find him, Shaw had reinforced that fact. It would have to be the other way around. Hamilton would have to find you.

If Melody was who I thought she was then Charles Hamilton would move heaven and earth to meet her.

I snapped back to reality and looked Melody in the eye. I needed her to answer one simple question for me.

"If you're names not Melody Thomas, who the fuck are you?" I asked.

She stared back at me as though she was ashamed of her true identity.

"Sasha..." she replied. "... My name is Sasha. Louise. Hamilton."