By the time the officer has the cuffs locked around his wrists, Scott is crying out for his friends to help him, begging someone to come explain that there’s been a horrible mistake. But the rest of the Sigma Beta Epsilon frat keep their distance, watching their brother get arrested with expressions ranging from shock to amusement to the boredom peculiar to the very rich and poorly brought up.
Scott is at the bottom of the Greek social structure, a legacy whose father donated too much money to Sterling University’s SBE house for his son to be denied membership. Scott is tolerated by his brothers, allowed to fawn and flatter and to do the jobs the others don’t have time for. He’s the one who organized the cleaning for the house and made sure the kegs were picked up in time for the parties. He’s the one who kept records on the pledges and filled out paperwork for the Greek council. He’s the type of guy who can’t say no, whether it’s signing on for another thankless job or stepping in to take his turn raping a girl pinned to a pool table because his frat president told him to.
He’s pathetic, and if circumstances were different, I might feel sorry for him. He will never be man enough to be anything other than bottom dog, a cowering, self-hating omega begging for scraps from monsters he believes are his betters.
But I remember the way he whimpered as he shoved inside the already wounded place between my legs, grunting like a pig as he found release to the cheers of his brothers. I remember watching him stumble away to collapse on the floor against the wall, tucking himself back into his pants with shaking hands, looking like he was the one who had just lived through something unspeakable. He’d kept his gaze on the floor and his chin tucked to his chest, refusing to look up or meet the eyes of the person he’d violated.
Because I remember, because I will never forget, no matter how much time passes or how much distance I get from that night, I turn my back on Scott and walk away.
And with every step I take toward the parking lot, I feel a little freer.
I lift a hand, holding my straw hat firmly onto my head as I step out of the baggage claim into the breezy afternoon, one less shadow following me into the sun.
Chapter Nine
Danny
“If you’ve never eaten while crying,
you don’t know what life tastes like.”
-Goethe
* * *
It took an insane amount of self-control to keep from busting into the stall where Scott was taking a dump and beating him bloody.
I wanted to see his pasty face slack with fear.
Then I wanted to listen to him scream as I shoved the kilo of cocaine up his ass.
I knew when I boarded the plane to Costa Rica that seeing the men who hurt Sam wasn’t going to be easy, but I hadn’t counted on the overwhelming instinct to destroy. It was like the need to inhale after too long underwater, painful to resist and so wrong feeling that the primitive part of my mind howled at being denied its right to deliver pain.
Scott deserves to hurt. The hurt should flow from my fists to his body, until he feels, in a visceral way, all the misery and trauma he’s inflicted.
I wanted to extract my vengeance from his flesh so badly I had to bite down on the inside of my cheek to keep from climbing over the stall divider and going after him. Instead, I walked calmly into the stall next to his, set the briefcase down on the floor between his stall and mine, and took a piss. When I finished, I flushed, unlocked the door behind me, and let it bang open, hoping the sound would draw Scott’s attention away from the ground as I reached down and grabbed the handle of the wrong bag.
His bag.
I was headed to the exit, but at the last minute reversed direction, walking softly to the back of the long bathroom, where I locked myself in the handicapped stall and stepped up on top of the closed toilet seat. There, I disposed of all Scott’s personal effects—laptop, spiral notepad, pens, three different kinds of gum, ear buds, and a crumpled boarding pass—in the garbage and waited to see what he would do next.
If he realized he had the wrong briefcase, I was guessing he would rush out into the baggage claim area to find the man who had taken it. He wouldn’t imagine that I was still in the bathroom, a fact I’d take advantage of to emerge quietly behind him and disappear in the opposite direction while he wasn’t looking.
Holding my breath, I listened as the bastard finished shitting and rolled his suitcase out of the stall. He stopped to wash his hands, seemingly not in any hurry to leave the bathroom.