Total pages in book: 238
Estimated words: 231781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1159(@200wpm)___ 927(@250wpm)___ 773(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 231781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1159(@200wpm)___ 927(@250wpm)___ 773(@300wpm)
He burned down my gazebo.
He hated me. He didn’t want to have to look at me anywhere in this town.
My eyes watered, but before I hardly had a chance to notice, Martin shoved an envelope at me.
I took it. “What is this?”
I opened it up and pulled out the document.
“I can’t handle it anymore,” he said. “She’s yours now. You want to be free, you’re free. Take her.”
What? I skimmed the paperwork—my grandmother’s power of attorney transferred to me, and all I had to do was sign.
This was the one thing he still had to hold over me. The only thing that kept me in his life. Why would he turn her over?
“Then give me my money, too,” I told him.
I couldn’t care for her without it.
But he just smirked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I shook my head. Her nursing home was over seven grand a month. Even if I quit school and worked three jobs, I’d never be able to pay that and support myself.
And I didn’t have the money to take him to court. God knows where he could’ve hidden the rest he hadn’t used. It was gone.
Walking over to the table, he picked up another envelope, this one white. He ripped it open and pulled out whatever was inside, tossing it onto the table. Pictures spilled, fanning out, and I recognized the Polaroids instantly.
“Found your stash behind the coffee table books.”
He raised his eyes, meeting mine, and I stood there, squeezing the docs in my hand, because I couldn’t squeeze his neck.
He picked up a photo of me, the one with the bruises on my ribs from when he’d kicked me when I was fifteen. “You know, it does make me feel a little badly,” he said. “Looking at all of this together like this makes it look like you really went through hell.”
I’d thought about taking the pictures with my phone. Indestructible with the cloud and easy to send and receive digitally.
But he checked my phone, so I documented the abuse for a rainy day with an old Polaroid camera for a while. In the beginning when I thought I was smart and I could use it if I had to run for my life.
I’d stopped keeping evidence by the time I was seventeen. By then, I just held on with every thread I could muster.
“I was aggravated at first…when I found these.” He circled the table, picking up another and studying it. “But everything is an opportunity, isn’t it?”
I narrowed my eyes, the papers crinkling in my fist.
“I’m not going to take your advice,” he said, throwing the pic on the table and sliding his hands into his pockets. “They’ll be charged, but the DA will suggest a plea bargain.”
“Fuck you!” I gritted out. “They won’t plea shit. They’ll always win.”
“I almost think you want them to.”
Against him? Hell, yes. Whatever they did beyond that was none of my concern. I was leaving town tonight.
I wouldn’t be able to keep Grand-Mère at Asprey Lodge, but I’d work hard enough to afford something decent in San Francisco. All that mattered was that we were free.
Martin approached me, pulling his phone out of his pocket and tapping a few buttons.
Then he handed it over, but I didn’t take it as I looked down and watched someone in a white mask with a red stripe—Will—rear his arm back and launch a bottle of liquor affixed with a burning rag at my gazebo.
The camera shook, but I heard the glass break and then flames burst everywhere, the zoom coming back out to take in the whole scene as my work was consumed in fire.
I turned my eyes away, looking at Will through the glass.
“It’s over,” Martin said. “The end of an era. They’ll plea. They won’t fight the charges. And you’re going to help me make sure they don’t.”
I shook my head. That would never happen.
“They’ll go away for a couple years,” he continued. “Just long enough for me and my associates to get a hold on this town, and then they can come home.”
“And what makes you think they won’t fight this?” I pressed, turning my gaze back on him. “You’re fucking insane.”
“Because if they do,’ he told me, inching in, “I’ll be forced to air a much darker scandal. They victimized women in high school. Assaulted them. Beat on them. Forced them into the catacombs to satisfy their deviant desires. They’re not boys. They’re devils.”
I laughed under my breath. He was insane. I’d be the first to admit they abused their power, but after helping one of them hide a body, I knew now that people were more complicated than that.
Everything used to be black and white until I realized that was just my perspective. I judged, because thinking was too hard.
They weren’t evil.
“Not all the girls will come forward, but we have one on record.” He walked to the table and spread out my selfies as if it were evidence. “And I’m confident more will follow.”