“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, his 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 like 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 AEO, 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?”
“Let’s go,” I whispered, pushing against my stepbrother’s nearly frozen body. Slowly I felt him giving against my efforts until finally he moved back a step and turned. Richard didn’t say a single word, his jaw clenched shut the entire way out of the AEO house and out onto the street.
The silence was almost unnerving as I fell into step behind Richard, unsure exactly where either of us were going at first.
“You’re kinda scaring me, Richard,” I said, swallowing hard around the still present lump in my throat. “Are you going to tell me where we’re going?”
“My dorm,” he grunted, though he never turned his gaze back toward me as he walked.
“Why there?” I asked, my brow furrowing as I hurried to keep pace with him.
“We need to regroup and come up with some kind of plan.”
Chapter 16
Dick
“What now?” I groaned. “If we don’t get those pictures then we’re going to have that bastard looming over our heads for the rest of our time here. Those pictures are going to ruin us… especially if mom and dad find out.”
“I know,?
? she sighed, her head in head hands. “We are completely fucked.”
The two of us had gone back to my dorm after the confrontation with Michael at the fraternity to figure out what our next move would be. As it stood, Michael had the upper hand on us. The pictures themselves didn’t technically exist outside of his phone, though with the way things worked now, that meant that the pictures were also floating around in the Cloud, able to be retrieved regardless of whether that bastard’s phone was smashed. The only way to save ourselves was to find a way to delete those pictures from existence and hope Michael hadn’t been smart enough to make backups.
“There’s no way we can get those pictures,” I said, running a hand through my hair in frustration. “Not unless we suddenly learn how to hack into Michael’s phone. And I’m not sure if you noticed, but none of us are that good with computers.”
“I know that, Richard,” Jessica said, frowning at how upset I was getting. If these pictures got out, it would be the end of my football career, and I hardly believed that my dad would fund his son’s college if he knew what his step-daughter and I had been up to while we were away from home. “I probably know that just as well as you do.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, resting my face against my hands. “I’m just worried, that’s all. I don’t like being threatened, and I especially don’t like you being threatened, either. I just wish I had a solution, something that I could actually do to make all of this go away. But like I said, neither of us are that good with computers.”
I looked up from my hands just in time to see Jessica sit up suddenly, her eyebrows raised. It was like a light bulb had gone off over her head.
“What about Greg?”
“Greg?” I asked, frowning. “This is all Greg’s fault! Why would he help us?”
“I think we’re going to make him help us,” Jessica said, a smile creeping onto her lips. “Greg is a Computer Science major, and from what Becky kept saying about him, he’s like a Steve Wozniak-level genius. If we can convince him to help us, then we’ll be one step closer to being in the clear.”