Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 94546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
“I tried!”
“Bull-fucking-shit. You did nothing but shift the focus off you by putting it on me.”
“Because you couldn’t please him like the rest of us. You didn’t have what it takes.” For the first time in almost two decades, regret fills his eyes. “I also didn’t expect him to do what he did. I didn’t know he’d take it that far.”
“You’re a liar.” The fury roaring through my veins burns like hell. It scorches through me, making not only my words hot when I shout, “It was your idea for him to whip me with his thurible,” but my skin as well. “You even suggested for him to put it next to the fire so not only did it bruise me, but it would burn me as well. Inside and out.”
I remember that we’re not alone when my underhanded confession I was sexually abused with instruments sees Octavia take a stumbling step backward. Since her hands are covering her mouth, no doubt struggling to hold back the vomit racing up her food pipe, she trips on the turned-up corner of the rug, landing harshly on her knees.
“What the fuck are you doing, Jackson?” Silas’s roar rumbles through my chest when I bend down to assist Octavia up. “Let the bitch bleed.”
When he spits at her feet, blackened fury beats through me. I rear up in an instant and shove Silas so hard, his thump into the entryway table breaks the cornice away from the drywall behind it.
“Are you fucking kidding me? You’re taking her side?” Silas straightens his shirt as if he’s still wearing his tuxedo before saying with a sneer, “That little bitch deserves everything I plan to do to her.” He locks his eyes to mine. They’re as black as death. “What was Priest M’s favorite punishment for you when your dick wouldn’t rise to the occasion? Rosary beads up the ass or the pointy end of his personalized thurible?” He shuffles from foot to foot while rubbing his hands together. “Maybe I should force both up her virginal hole at once. I bet she’d like that. Wouldn’t you, Octavia Maskretti?”
My mind is spiraling, but it won’t stop me from saying, “Shut your mouth, Silas.” I’m not solely reeling from him sharing secrets he legally cannot share, but I’m also stunned by Octavia’s lack of rebuttal to him referencing her as Priest Maskretti’s family. “Shut your fucking mouth before I shut it for you.”
“You don’t believe me, Jackson? After everything we’ve been through, do you really think I’d lie to you about this?”
Everything we’ve been through? He’s acting as if we survived an afternoon thunderstorm, not a sexual predator who had over forty victims during his priesthood at the number one orthodox church of New Jersey.
“It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve lied, Silas.”
He scoffs off my claims with a wave of his hand and a pfft before he drops his eyes to Octavia huddled at my feet. “Tell him… or I’ll tell him how you kept the spark alive by scouring his sealed records the instant you left his bed.”
“That’s not what happened,” Octavia breathes out, equally shocked and determined.
“Oh, that’s right,” Silas pushes out with a chuckle. “You left him in your bed before having a giggle about his ‘issues’ while he was sleeping from ‘supposed’ sexual exhaustion.” He air quotes ‘supposed.’
I don’t know what shocks me more, Octavia’s lack of denial again or the sheer confirmation in her voice when she snarls, “You’ve been watching me?”
Silas bites out a chuckle. “Not you, sweetheart. Him.” He nudges his head to me during his last word. “Have been for years.” My anger gets a second wind when he strays his eyes to mine. “It’s what happens when you’re scrooged out of two hundred million dollars.”
“Money you didn’t earn.”
“That money is a trust for victims of Priest Maskretti!” he yells, his face reddening with anger. “You weren’t the only one he fiddled with, Jack. I was swallowing his cum for years before you turned up.” I almost feel sorry for him before he says, “So that money is as much mine as it is yours.”
“It was as much yours as it was mine until you used your status to force yourself onto someone. That was my only term, Silas. You can’t be like him. You broke the only term, and you lost because of it.”
My settlement was one of the highest ever received. It was so substantial, the judge didn’t feel right handing that amount of money to an angry eighteen-year-old who just endured years of court testimonies, media scrutiny, and belittlement from my peers, so he set up a trust fund instead. I could use the money to set up a business or buy a house, but I couldn’t squander it away like Silas did his first few years under the trust.