RICHARD (A BAD BOY ROMANCE) (13 page)

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FIFTEEN
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Jessica

“What is this even going to
accomplish?” I asked, doing my best to keep pace with my stepbrother as we made
our way across campus. “Do you know how many of them are in there? They’ve got
you outnumbered, Richard! We need to be smart about this!”

“I’m not in the mood for
smart, Jess,” he said, “and you shouldn’t be here to see this.”

“Why? Because of my
delicate, feminine sensibilities?” I scoffed. “I’m not some innocent little
girl.”

“No, innocent is certainly
not a word to describe you, babe,” he grumbled. “Just stay behind me.”

The fact that my brother
still saw me as some damsel was more than enough to get my blood boiling. He
knew I wasn’t some delicate flower, and more than that he knew I was smart as
hell. But when Richard was upset there wasn’t much I could do to really reason
with him.

Once we’d found out that
Michael was the one behind the pictures, my brother made it a point to head
straight over to the Alpha Epsilon Omega house, despite my protests. Richard
was just one man, but how he expected to face an entire fraternity of men was
completely beyond me. If anything happened, someone needed to be there to make
sure he got out safe—and apparently, that someone was going to be me.

“I hope you know what
you’re doing,” I said as the frat house came into view. The closer we got the
more my sense of dread seemed to grow until my stomach was a knot of worry. Out
on the lawn, the brothers of AEΩ were loitering, the grass strewn with the
remnants of a
kegger
they’d had the night before.

“Not a clue,” he said
before walking up the walkway toward the front door.

The moment Richard stepped
on the lawn, the brothers of AEΩ took notice, their heads turning and someone
calling out for the rest to watch. Somehow I had gotten the idea that they’d
been expecting the two of us.

“Halt!” came a voice from
behind us, though it carried all the sneer and none of the seriousness of an
actual command. “Who goes there?”

“Go fuck yourself,” Richard
growled, reaching out to grab the doorknob.

Before he could even touch
the brass knob, a hand reached out and grabbed Richard’s wrist. I watched, and
in that moment I wasn’t sure who I should have been more concerned for, Richard,
or the frat brother.

“None shall—” the frat boy
began, smirking for a few moments before he realized that Richard had turned,
taking the boy’s arm and twisting it hard behind his shoulder in an arm lock.
The AEΩ goon screamed out, his deep, throaty voice suddenly reaching a falsetto
pitch. “Fuck!”

Before we knew it, three
other members of the fraternity were on top of us, two of them going for Richard
while the remaining member took hold of my wrist and pulled me away from my stepbrother.
I struggled against the frat boy holding my arm, his grip stronger than I had
been expecting from some half-drunk rich boy. I heard him chuckle, a look in
his eyes that I knew all too well.

Before he could pull me any
closer to him, I stepped down hard onto his toes, driving the heel of my foot
hard against his at the same moment as I yanked my arm away from his grip. The
frat boy yowled, stepping backward in surprise. He stumbled back a few steps
before falling right onto his ass on the porch.

I looked up just in time to
see Richard punching one of the other AEΩ brothers right in the jaw, another
doubled over and grabbing at his stomach. Out of anyone I knew that my brother
could handle himself, but as I watched him do away with two of his attackers, I
saw four more making their way up the stairs, a dark expression on their faces.

“Richard, we should go,” I
called, backing away from the closing brothers and closer to my stepbrother.

“Go? But you only just
arrived.”

I turned my head to quickly
I might have given myself whiplash, taking another step closer to Richard as
Michael stepped through the front door, a wicked smirk on his face. I felt like
I was going to be sick, my mind unsure of whether to be afraid or enraged at
what that monster had done to my best friend.

I heard Richard roar in
anger, moving past
my
like a wild animal, his fist
raised. But before he could even get close to Michael, four pairs of hands
grabbed him and threw him to the ground.

“I wouldn’t, if I were
you,” Michael said in his smug, cocky voice. “You’re a guest in our house, and
assaulting your hosts is just
so
rude.”

Michael’s frat brothers
laughed in a dim-witted chorus. My stomach turned as I watched him bask in
their sheep-like admiration. This was the kind of thing that Michael loved,
being the mastermind, the leader of “lesser men” as he called them. It made me
sick just watching it.

“You know why we’re here,
Michael,” I said. “We want the pictures back.”

“Pictures?” he asked,
feigning innocence. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

“Cut the bullshit,” Richard
snarled, slowly getting to his feet under the watch of four muscled college
students. “You know what picture’s we’re talking about.”

Michael made a pleased
sound in his throat, his smile only widening like some psychotic Cheshire cat.
That smile made my skin crawl.

“We should discuss business
inside,” Michael said, motioning for his henchmen to step back. “It’s far too
crowded out here, I think.”

Richard and I begrudgingly
followed Michael into the house, a troop of brothers following behind, their
faces taking on a menacing expression. I didn’t like the way they looked at me,
hungry like a pack of wild animals. Was that the look they’d given Becky before
they’d raped her? I wanted to vomit at the thought.

We were lead into what
appeared to be some kind of sitting room, a set of leather armchairs set right
in front of a roaring fire. The entire room was lined with bookshelves, and it
gave off a definite air of sophistication and class. If this room had been in
any other place on
Earth
I might have honestly been in
heaven.

“Close the doors,
gentlemen,” Michael called to them, his tone almost patronizing. “We’d like
some privacy.”

We heard the soft click of
the double doors closing behind us as Michael began to pace leisurely in front
of the fireplace.

“So, little Miss Becky told
you about our little party the other night,” he said. “She’s such a naughty
little slut. But not as naughty as the two of you, I think.”

He casually drew out his
smartphone and began to swipe his thumb across the screen, moving it from left
to right as he gave a sinister chuckle.

“The things you two have
done to one another,” he said, shaking his head and clucking his tongue. “Most
people wouldn’t dream of seeing things like this…. And to your own stepbrother
no less, Jessica? It seems like you’re twice the slut Becky is.”

“Don’t you dare talk about her
like that!” I said, clenching my fists. “You’re lucky I don’t report you for
what you did to her.”

“Luck had nothing to do
with it, Jessica,” he said, smiling so smugly as he turned his phone toward Richard
and I, a picture of Becky on the screen, her hair a mess, her eyes half open.
With a touch of his finger, the video began to play and Michael’s recorded
voice rang out clearly.

“
You want this, don’t you? Tell me you want to fuck me. Say it right to
the camera
,” Michael said over the speaker.

Becky’s eyes turned toward
the camera, confusion plastered across her face.

“
I want it
,” she mumbled, blinking slowly.

“And there you have it,”
Michael said, shutting off his phone. “I believe they call that consent.”

“You drugged her,” Richard
growled. “That doesn’t count as consent.”

“Where’s your proof?” he
asked, looking around as though it might be in the room with us. “Did little
Miss Becky get herself tested? A rape kit? Drug screening?”

My stomach tightened. Becky
had been too scared to step forward, afraid of the
judgement
and the persecution that came with being a victim of sexual assault. She didn’t
want to be another statistic, another “slut.”

“And in regard to
our
business,” Michael laughed, “I’m
going to be keeping these pictures right here on my phone where they’re nice
and safe… and if I ever need you to do something, then I’ve got everything I
need to make sure that you do it. After all, you wouldn’t want Mommy and Daddy
finding out their precious little stepchildren are getting nasty together at
college, do you?

“And I don’t think the
coach will be too thrilled to find out that his star freshman quarterback likes
to stick it to his family members, do you? Bad for publicity.”

I felt bile rising in my
throat as the reality of Michael’s threat hit me like a ton of bricks. If he
released those pictures—if our parents found out what the two of us were doing
together—our lives would be ruined.

“Why shouldn’t I just take
that fucking phone from you right now?” Richard asked, taking a step forward
threateningly. Michael only let out another laugh.

“Because,
Richard
, those pictures aren’t just on
my
phone… they’re up there!” he said,
pointing into the air above him. “Up in the Cloud, where they can be nice and
safe in case something silly might happen to my phone. Isn’t technology grand?”

“
You
son of a bitch,” Richard growled.

“I can’t deny that,”
Michael chuckled, “my mother
is
an
enormous bitch. But that’s not the point here, is it? No, the point is that
I’ve got proof of something that you don’t want the world to know about, and
for the low, low price of whatever I want, it’ll stay that way—tucked away in
my little corner of the internet, never to be seen again.”

“And if we say no you’ll
release the pictures all over the internet,” I said, a crushing feeling of
defeat crashing over me like a ton of bricks.

“Still as smart as ever,”
Michael sneered, his tone mocking as he slipped his phone back into his pants
pocket.

I turned toward Richard,
hoping that he might have an answer to what was happening, some kind of clever
trick he might be able to pull out on Michael that would save us both from both
embarrassment and possible disownment from our parents. Richard’s life would be
ruined and his college football career over before it even had a chance to
really start.

“What do we do?” I asked,
my voice low, though I knew Michael could hear every word. I could practically
feel him gloating over both of our misfortune. He had us right under his
thumb—exactly where he wanted us with no foreseeable way out that didn’t ruin
our lives.

“I don’t know, Jess,” he
said, his eyes staring into the back of a high backed leather chair that Michael
had taken to leaning on heavily. “I really don’t know.”

“Well, for starters, the
two of you could get out,” Michael said, his voice filled with mocking cheer.
“This is a house for the brothers of AEΩ, which neither one of you belong to.
We pride ourselves on keeping out the garbage… though I could make an exception,
if sweet little Jessica were willing to spread her legs a bit.”

Richard moved forward like
a tiger about to jump in for the kill, his face a deep, dark red, his
expression filled with rage. I barely had enough time to reach out and pull his
arm back, stopping his just shy of slugging Michael right in the jaw.

“Don’t!” I shouted, looking
right into Michael’s smirking face. “That’s what he wants.”

Richard’s body was so
tense, each of his muscles ready to spring at a moment’s notice.

“He wants an excuse to leak
those pictures,” I whispered, putting myself between the two of them. “We can’t
give him a reason.”

“You are just so smart,
Jessica,” Michael said, false admiration filling his voice. “You really should
take her advice, Richard. After all, who knows how long something like fucking
your own sister is going to follow you through life?”