The Lies of Pride Read online

  The Lies of Pride

  (The Seven Sins, #3)

  Lily Zante

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Epilogue

  Excerpt: The Price of Inertia

  Booklist

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  The Lies of Pride is the third book in The Seven Sins, a contemporary romance series of steamy, angsty and emotional stories featuring characters who are loosely connected.

  * * *

  All books in this series are STANDALONE but loosely connected.

  Underdog (FREE prequel)

  The Wrath of Eli

  The Problem with Lust

  The Lies of Pride

  The Price of Inertia

  * * *

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  Chapter One

  NINA

  * * *

  I hide in the kitchen, even though I’m aware that it is a silly thing to do, hiding in the diner at the height of the lunchtime session, but I try, anyway. I’m good at making myself invisible; it’s a skill I’ve learned and honed over the years, out of necessity. Call it a survival skill.

  I hover around at the back, pretending to look for something.

  Except that I’m starting to sweat.

  I thought I was over this.

  Palpitations pitter-patter in my chest. I remember this from before, needing to run for my life. It was flight or fight, and I couldn’t fight, not as an eight year old. It happened a lot back then in that children’s home. But I never managed to escape.

  I used to be scared back then, except I’m not scared now, just anxious; I get like that when someone pays me too much attention, too much of the wrong type of attention.

  I’m supposed to be used to this; getting hit on by customers. It should be part of the job description of a waitress. A twenty-five-year-old shouldn’t react like this just because a guy is hitting on her; and he’s a nice guy, Office Guy, we call him. Frankie and Joni tease me about him because he comes in here regularly, and he always seeks me out.

  I’m just not interested. I used to be able to handle this better, but ever since Elias’s news surfaced, ever since I discovered what happened to him, I’ve started to fall apart again.

  I pull down the cuffs of my long sleeve turtle-neck top. It’s not part of the uniform. We have a maroon waitress dress with white edging on the collar and at the ends of the short sleeves, but I told Frankie that I feel cold. She’s let me wear this long-sleeved top which is good because it covers my arms right up to the wrist.

  Joni thinks I’m doing it to get attention. I remind her that I’m not like her. She’s the queen of attention. She’s already pissed that a lot of the customers often ask who Elias Cardoza’s sister is. Ever since Elias won the boxing heavyweight title, Frankie’s Kitchen has become a famous landmark in Chicago. My brother used to be a regular and he still hangs out here most weeks. People come here hoping that they might get a glimpse of him. It’s the same story at the gym where he still trains. People hang out outside hoping they’ll catch him going in.

  It amazes me that people are that fickle.

  Still, I get good tips at the diner on account of being Elias’s sister. It makes Joni jealous. She doesn’t even try to hide it. She hates that I get more customers asking for me, and that I get bigger tips. But if people think I’m going to give up any juicy nugget of information about my brother, they’re wrong. I’m good at keeping things secret. I even hate the way people, celebrities especially, post boring facets of their lives on social media. As if anyone cares.

  “What are you doing in here?” Frankie asks. “We’ve got four tables that need waiting on. Food’s not going to come out of thin air!”

  Most of the other waitresses would be scared of her, but I’m not. She’s always got my back, and I’ve always done over and above what’s needed. I turn around. “I just need a moment,” I say, fanning my face.

  “You take a moment, then.” Frankie’s voice is soft, just like her expression which has suddenly changed. She’s never that angry with me, though, I’ve never given her any cause to be. But I’ve sensed that she’s been watching me carefully lately. It’s like she can sense that something is up even if she doesn’t know what it is.

  “Do you need to take a break?”

  I shake my head. “

  “Who are you hiding from this time? Joni’s friends again?” She puts her hands on her wide hips and looks as if she’s about to go back out there and do something about it. She’s protective of me and her staff, in the same way that I am protective of my brother. The customer is always wrong, as far as Frankie’s concerned, though she might smile sweetly to them and then curse them behind their backs once they’ve left.

  “No, they’re not even here.” Joni’s boyfriend Rhys sometimes hangs around here and sometimes he’ll come in with his friend, Scott. Apparently, the guy likes me, and Joni keeps trying to get me to go out with him. She says it would be fun for us to be a foursome. Scott’s not so bad, I don’t mind him, but I’m just not interested in him the way Joni says he’s interested in me. It’s Joni’s boyfriend I can’t stand. There something sick about him; something dark and menacing that takes me back to my childhood.

  Frankie peers closer. “You’ve not been in a good way ever since Elias won the fight.”

  I laugh off her concern, but I know what she’s getting at, even if she doesn’t. What happened to Elias shattered my heart. I don’t like talking about it and there are nights when I can’t sleep. I can’t handle facing the past. All that time, growing up together, I thought I had protected him. I believed I was saving Elias by doing what the janitor asked and finding out that this hadn’t been the case crushed me.

  I thought I had finally put this behind me, thought I had fixed myself. Not completely, but enough to be normal. Now my broken past lingers in the periphery of my mind and I can’t shift it. I don’t think I ever will be completely okay.

 
; I’m back to my old tricks again. Things I hadn’t done for a long time.

  “What’s going on in that head of yours?” Frankie looks at me as if she’s trying to X-ray into my brain. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  I shake my head, to try to indicate that I’m okay. I am. I really am. I get nervous when people want to get too close to me.

  “It’s Office Guy,” I say, in an attempt to derail her interest. I’d pulled out my pen and was about to take his order, and then he suggested we could go for a drink sometime. He’s never been that forward before. Up until he made the drink suggestion, I was handling the easy-going banter just fine, and then he went and said that, and I clammed up.

  “He’s not so bad looking,” Frankie says, a hint of a smile curving up on her lips. “He’s smartly dressed, handsome and polite too. What else are you waiting for?”

  It’s a going joke around here that I push all the interested guys away. I get asked for my number, more so since Elias won the fight, but I always say no, tell them that I’m too busy, or not looking for a relationship. The guys are easy to push away, but convincing Joni and Frankie isn’t.

  “You think you’re too good for anyone ‘cause your brother is the heavyweight champion?” Joni often comments. “What are you holding out for? A superstar?”

  I’m not holding out for anyone. I can’t handle getting close. Intimacy gives me the shakes.

  But I hate being this way. I hate falling to pieces. It’s a problem, especially with the job I have—facing customers all day long. Maybe with my latest course in interior design I might actually do something with it. I should move on from waitressing. Elias is always telling me off. He wants me to work for him. I don’t think so. I like it here. The diner might not be a great place for career advancement, but the familiarity of it all makes me feel secure. I take a long deep breath. “I’m going back out. I can handle him.”

  “It’s not him I’m worried about,” I hear Frankie say as I move towards the door and force myself to go back out into the diner serving area. With a smile plastered to my face, I sail up to the table where Office Guy is sitting and ask him what he wants to order today.

  “I didn’t mean to cross the line,” he says when I return. He seems sweet enough, the overreaction was on my part. Now that I’m back, I widen my smile—make it sweeter, make it count—the way I learned to do from way back; when I needed my little brother to know that I was fine, and that the world was a good place, and that we would be okay.

  I shrug. “What can I get you today?”

  “A cup of coffee, eggs, sausage and bacon. Maybe you sitting opposite me and keeping me company,” he adds, with a wry grin that’s enough to make me sprint back into the kitchen. But I stand my ground.

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that. I have to work. Frankie would sack me.”

  “You can always come and work for me.”

  “You don’t let up, do you?” I say, with some of my old feistiness coming back.

  “I’m a persistent guy.”

  “And I’m not interested,” I tell him with a smile he buys. I rush back into the kitchen and pin the order along with the others.

  When I come back out, I see another table that needs waiting on. The customers crane their necks in my direction and look eager to order.

  Elias’s win has almost doubled Frankie’s footfall to the extent that she’s had to take on a couple of extra waitresses for when the place gets super packed.

  I heave in a breath, and go and deal with the other customers, while keeping an eye on the food orders I’ve already placed. When his order is ready, I give Office Guy his food, thankful that I can rush off because things are so hectic. I am rushed off my feet for the next hour.

  “He seems like a nice guy,” Frankie tells me, as I pin another order to the board.

  I almost roll my eyes but manage not to. “So do psychopaths.”

  Chapter Two

  CALLUM

  * * *

  “If you play things right, and don’t mess up in your private life, this could be it—the role that catapults you to A-list glory,” Rudy’s voice comes through on my cell phone which I’ve sent to loudspeaker mode. I don’t see him often. He’s based in LA, but as my publicist he touches base with me daily.

  I stop flexing my muscles in front of the mirror and I briefly consider firing my publicist. “I am an A-lister.”

  “I mean, A-list Oscar glory,” Rudy clarifies. “This could be the role to do it.”

  I smile at myself in the mirror and imagine myself holding that coveted Oscar in my hand. I even have the first few sentences of the speech floating around in my head. I’m trying to move away from my usual action roles, and try something that’s a little darker, a little different.

  I’ve poured my heart and soul into this role. I want to be known as more than just a hunk. I want the Oscar, and accolades, and I want to be talked about for decades. I want to do what De Niro did with ‘Raging Bull’ even though ‘Death of a Legend’ isn’t as gritty and as hard-hitting as that classic, it’s a step in the right direction and away from the formulaic action-packed movies I’ve been making so far.

  I’m no De Niro yet, but that’s what I’m working towards. I’ve been studying hard for this role, and I’ve gone through rigorous physical training, and even taken part in a couple of real boxing matches. I even won one of them. It was good publicity for the film, with critics talking about how I’ve been getting into character with this role. I’ve even read up about all the boxing greats, and I feel like I kind of understand them a bit more. Most of them were guys who need to prove themselves. Needed to get a one up in life and fighting was the only way to glory.

  Most of the filming has been done, there’s a romance element to the film, and all those scenes with my co-star, Alyssa Watts, have been shot. The studio wants us to be the next romance in Tinsel Town. We have a few sexy scenes. I wish we didn’t. That shit takes away from the grittiness of the film, but the people financing this film say they need romance in it.

  Now we’re in Chicago in order to shoot some of the big boxing scenes as well shooting those scenes that women like, the ones where I’m training hard. There are plenty of shirtless scenes, and I have to say, I’m pretty pumped by my physique. I’ve never looked better.

  I puff out my chest again, posing once more like a bodybuilder so that the ridges and dips of my muscles are well defined. “I look the part.” I nod approvingly at my reflection, and an image flashes through my mind again of me in a tux, raising my Oscar as I make my speech.

  The door to my suite opens, and Dottie walks in. “Your dry-cleaned shirts,” she mouths, seeing that I’m on the phone. She sets my green and healthy smoothie down on the table near me. I would be lost without my personal assistant. She goes over to the table and sits down and starts typing away on her laptop. She’s staying at a cheaper place a few blocks from here, and we go through a few things once a day. She lets me know what interviews and meetings I’ve got, though now that I’m filming, this is where my focus is.

  “Any luck with Cardoza’s camp?” I ask Rudy.

  “I’m working on it.” That seems to be Rudy’s stock response.

  “How hard can it be?”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  I don’t understand it. Rudy doesn’t have much to do, it’s not like he’s the one getting into the ring and fighting. He’s not the one who’s had to get up at 4 AM most mornings and workout for six hours every day. “Did you speak to his manager?” All he has to do is set up one meeting with Elias Cardoza.

  Just one. I’ve been trying to get Rudy to set up a meeting with the guy, but Rudy says Cardoza is hard to get a hold of. Even his manager doesn’t seem keen. I get that the guy has a huge fight in a few months’ time, but our coming together, even for a one-off meeting, would help us both.

  “I’m having a hard time reaching him.”

  I wonder if I should put Dottie on the case. She’s clever, and quick-witted, and
thinks outside the box.

  Though this last part of filming is going to be intense, I feel prepared, but I want to have the edge. I’ve read about the boxing greats, legends like, Calzaghe, Hagler, Chavez, Ali and Tyson, and now there’s Cardoza. I want to meet with him and get inside his head. Maybe talking to him for a few hours will help get me even more into character. There’s nothing like having a real life boxing champion to talk to. This guy burst onto the scene back in the summer, dethroning Trent “The Tank” Garrison with his raw power and nimble moves. The world took notice. I read up everything I could on him. I watched the fight over at some big producer’s house. We weren’t expecting to see the fight of the century, with this unknown underdog coming out on top. From that time on, I’ve been wanting to meet the guy.

  It’s weird how we’ve ended up filming these final scenes in Chicago because Cardoza comes from these streets. This is his city. This is where he trains. It’s where he’s lived all his life. I’ve also been reading another biography on him, and I’ve found out about his terrible past. I see now why he was never going to lose, even to an opponent as formidable as Garrison. Cardoza’s past is a bonus for me. All I need to do is to get some glimpses of his life which will help me with my role. I swear to God I can almost feel that Oscar within my grasp.