“My brother’s been fucking up my life for so long that I don’t know how to fix anything anymore.” He paused, finally turning to look at me. “I became a doctor just to spite him because he said I couldn’t do it. My brother’s spent his entire life making sure mine was a living hell, and the moment that he finally left me alone to live my life, I did. I went to school, worked my ass off and became a doctor. Luckily during some of that time, he went to jail, otherwise, I don’t think he’d have given me as much time away from his influence as he had, and I might not have graduated. I…”
The metal door had something slammed against it.
“My brother doesn’t like when he’s told no.” He flinched again when it was hit again. “God, I hate him.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
I hated him, too.
But I had a feeling this man in front of me had more of a reason to hate him than I did, despite the fact that Tantor had practically ruined my life in one fell swoop.
He definitely knew the easiest way to get to me that was for sure.
The bad thing was, I had no clue whether anything was actually done to me or not.
Sure, there was a video and multiple pictures of us together, but each agonizing minute I’d sat looking through those pictures, and watching the short clip that was uploaded, nothing but touching on top of my clothes had ever happened.
Hell, in all honesty, I’d had my eyes closed and my mouth wide open because that was just straight up how I slept.
Which should’ve been the first indication that I hadn’t been there willingly, seeing as when one was enjoying what a woman was doing to him, they didn’t have their hands slack at their sides, and their mouth wide open with drool coming out of the corner of their mouth.
And hell, my clothes had still been on for the most part.
The way she’d positioned herself, she’d been blocking my lower half from the camera that she’d set up, but if you looked closely at my thigh, you could just make out the very edge of my black boxer briefs.
“You told my brother no, didn’t you?” he asked.
I looked over at him in confusion.
“What?”
“You told my brother no,” he said. “That’s why he had my sister help him do what he did.”
I frowned. “How do you know that your sister helped?”
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and pulled up a picture, then turned it around and showed me.
“Not that I really needed to see the tattoo or anything because it looks exactly like Tara, but that confirms it to everyone else,” he explained. “That long hair is hard to miss. It’s too distinctive.”
I looked at the hair, and the tattoo, and finally realized that I knew the woman from somewhere.
“I don’t understand,” I finally said, leaning my back against the wall. “Are you going to help me?”
Tyson pushed his phone back into his pocket and nodded once. “It’s time that I start fixing what he’s breaking.” He lifted his eyes to meet mine for the first time. “And if you blame anyone out of all this mess, blame my brother. Tara? She was probably forced into it just as surely as you were. He and my father have such a stranglehold on her that it’s not even funny.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, and if I was getting the man’s help to take down his brother, I definitely wasn’t going to quibble and risk pissing him off. Instead, I shrugged and hoped that it was a good enough answer to appease him.
But, if push came to shove, the girl was going down.
What she did was wrong, and I didn’t care how hard she was pushed. You didn’t do shit like that and get away with it.Chapter 18Stop destroying the Earth. It’s where I get my tacos.
-T-shirt
Linc
“That’s Tara, my ex.” Rome narrowed his eyes and stared at the picture for a long few seconds, and then stiffened. “God, she’s really good at fucking up lives, that’s for sure.”
It’d taken me a long time to come up with it with the way my head was so fucked up, but it’d finally come to me how I knew her, and I’d just had my suspicions confirmed.
“That’s Tara all right,” Liner muttered. “Looks a little different, though. Skinnier. A lot skinnier. Unhealthy skinny.”
I’d thought the same thing, too.
I hadn’t remembered it until he’d said it, but the memory of looking into the woman’s pale, sunken eyes had been one that I was surprised I forgot.
She looked like skin and bones.
Hell, on the plane, I hadn’t given her more than a few stray looks because of the way she looked.