26

26

KADE

Iblink against the bright light someone is shining in my face, my hands and ankles cuffed to a metal chair in the middle of my living room.

“Don’t dose him with so much next time,” Bernadette scolds someone. “We’ve already lost six hours.” Then her heels click closer to me, and I lift my eyes to her. “I hope your night was worth it, because it’s the last crumb of freedom you’ll have for a while.”

“Ask him,” Cassie demands. “Ask him who she is to him.”

“What?”

Bernadette hums, flipping through a folder. “Stacey Rhodes. About to turn twenty-two. Impressive dancer and aerialist. Instructor and choreographer. Her mother died when she was young. Dad remarried when she was fourteen to Nora Fields, and they moved in together. He died nearly three years ago.”

I feel every drop of blood in my body turn to ice, but I try not to show it. “Never heard of her.”

Bernie grins through her anger. “Don’t lie to me.”

“Pulling random names from your ass should be your talent. It’s the only thing you’re good at.”

Her jaw tenses. “Careful, Kade. I control you, remember?”

“So you keep reminding me. Nevertheless, the name Stacey Rhodes means nothing to me.”

Taking a deep breath, she slowly takes her glasses off, snapping them into her case and handing it to one of her guards. “A girl named Stacey Rhodes tried to report an assault not too long ago. She claimed her stepbrother beat her up in the back roads before killing someone in front of her.”

My jaw ticks. “I don’t fucking know who she is.”

The front door of my apartment opens and closes, and I roll my eyes as Archie swaggers in with his shitty moustache and far-too-tight shirt that shows off that he’s only skin and bones.

“Awesome,” I mutter under my breath, but when a sting hits my cheek, I grit my teeth and count to three. No, ten, until I look up at the wanker who just slapped me. “One day, I’m going to rip that moustache off and scrub the ground with your fucking face.”

“Keep threatening me and you’ll see what happens.”

I spit at his feet.

Archie tries to come for me but his wife puts her hand out – him being the little bitch he is, he halts and scowls at me as he hands Bernie a few folders. “Your days are numbered, kid.”

She shakes her head. “Enough. Both of you.”

I’d snap him with one hand if he wasn’t such a threat. I wouldn’t even need to open my eyes while I dislocated his spinal cord from his fucking brain, ripped the spine out and shoved it down his wife’s throat until she choked and died.

The image in my head is a dream.

Bernie stares at me. Cassie looks on the verge of a mental breakdown.

“I don’t know what you want me to say. Congrats on getting that info, but it still means nothing to me.”

With narrowing eyes, Bernie gently opens the first folder and tosses the contents one by one to the floor at my feet. “Someone by the name of Christopher Fields tried to hack into our systems, and my team backfired it and downloaded some of his files. Pictures, videos, you name it. Very incriminating.”

I look down, and my lungs stop working. In front of me, there are images of Stacey. Some of her sleeping in bed, eating at the dining table, scowling at the camera as she pulls down her underwear. There are also some of her out in a club, sitting on a guy’s lap.

He seems familiar, but the pictures aren’t clear enough.

She doesn’t look happy in any of them, and once Bernie opens the second folder, I try not to burst out of my cuffs and wreck the place.

Screengrabs from CCTV footage show the guy punching her across the face, both her hands up to try to protect herself. She’s wearing a Guns N’ Roses top she used to wear when we were together, and her hair is a lot shorter.

Another is him slamming a car door on her arm, then one of him yelling at her in public and gripping her hand so hard she’s wincing in the picture.

Pictures of her everywhere.

Swimming in their pool. Sunbathing. Crying. Covered in blood. Practising her dance routine in their ballroom.

There are images of the guy forcing pills into her mouth. Drinks. And making her dance in the club for him. And as my eyes land on the last picture, him gripping her face in a close-up, her nose bleeding and eye swollen, I notice him.

I pull so hard at my cuffs, my skin splits.

He’s the one that tried to get her out of the manor months ago. He was sparkled at my gate and told her to go home. The same fucking prick who was at the party – he sold her to those guys and slipped her the blade.

He’s her stepbrother. He’s Christopher Fields.

She tried to tell me about him, and I walked away.

“This isn’t half of the stuff we found between the two.”

My throat tightens. “There’s more?” I shouldn’t be asking, or even conversing with Bernadette, but I need to know more. It seems that after we split up, Stacey’s abuse escalated.

Bernie smirks at my anger, but I grit out, “Fucking tell me.”

“Stacey Rhodes was your girlfriend. She was the one you were with in America. She was the one you fucked behind the club and then again on the bike. She was the one you rushed out of the country. She cheated on you, am I right? From the information I’ve gathered, that’s why you split up.”

I pale.

She chuckles.

“I don’t find this fucking funny.”

I need Stacey to get the fuck out of town – and fast. If I wasn’t cuffed, I’d stab Bernadette in the eye with a pen and take her gun to shoot my way out of here.

“Seeing you get so worked up over a useless slut is funny. Want to know something funnier? A specific video was pulled from Christopher Fields’ computer.”

I slouch in the chair as I tug at the cuffs. If she mentions the video I was sent, I’ll fucking explode.

“In fact, shall we watch it?”

I frown as Archie slaps his legs with a grin and gets to his feet, messing about with my flatscreen until the picture changes. Cassie is already out of the room.

The local nightclub comes into view. The date is from nearly three years ago.

I glare as her wanker of a stepbrother drags her from the booth, and Jason stops them, shoving a finger in his face as he pulls Stacey behind him – protecting her. Christopher raises both hands and laughs, backing away from them. Jason says something to her. I think he’s asking if she’s okay, and the clip ends.

Frowning, I try to remain calm.

My breaths come out in short bursts as the next clip starts. A camera is sitting in the corner of Jason’s room, where three guys and Stacey’s stepbrother make the bed and carry a barely conscious Jason in, sitting him against the wall opposite the bed.

He’s wearing the top he borrowed from me. This is the same night.

One guy slaps his face, waking him, but his spit drips from his mouth, his eyes rolling.

The fuck?

At that point, Jason didn’t do drugs. He hated them – hated smoking too. Fuck, he barely drank. Seeing my big brother in this state makes me physically ill.

My teeth clench as they inject him with something. He attempts to push them away, but he’s too weak, and I want to smash their jaws off. He grips someone’s top before taking a fist to the face.

My heart stops as they bring Stacey in, both arms over their shoulders – three of them I recognise right away. Stacey killed them at the hotel.

Her head drops to the side. “No,” she slurs. “P… please, Chris.”

I yank at my cuffs as Chris slides down her dress, her breasts falling out. One of the guys he’s with twists her hair around his fist while the other slips off her shoes.

Bernie tilts her head. “This seems like the same setting as the clip you were sent. Doesn’t it, Kade?”

I don’t reply. I can’t. They strip her and lie her on the bed as I watch. As her brother tells them each touch will cost them, I feel my stomach flip.

The big ginger one, the one Stacey stabbed, slaps notes into Chris’s palm and unbuckles his belt.

I close my burning eyes as she begs him to stop.

He doesn’t stop, and neither does the next one while Chris films it on his phone – as he tells her he decides when she feels pleasure, when she can sleep with someone else and that when she comes, she better scream his name.

“N-No,” Stacey slurs, trying to scratch the guy’s face, but he swears and headbutts her. Stacey goes limp instantly.

My knuckles turn the whitest shade of white. My heart is shattering.

You prefer them older, don’t you?

You’re fucking dead to me.

Stop fucking crying, Stacey. It’s pathetic.

Please don’t leave me.

No matter how many times we fuck, I will never ever fucking forgive you.

I’m so, so sorry, Freckles.

The first hour drags in. It’s torture to watch. I know what it feels like to have your consent stripped away; to be used and fucked while you barely have a grip on reality. I know how it feels to want them to stop, to try to fight them off. I remember my own voice being like Stacey’s – haunting me as she wakes and pleads. Cries. Even trying to hit back before being tied to the bedpost.

Tears soak her face, a bruise already forming on her cheek, her lip cut. “Please let me go home.” Red stains her chin as crimson mixes with spit. “Please.”

Her brother vanishes from the room, leaving her with Jason barely able to open his eyes on the floor and the other guy on top of her.

Chris comes back and tells everyone to get out as he strips himself. I’ll kill him – I’ll make it slow, and fucking make sure he feels every single bone I’m going to snap. I want him to be awake while I peel off all his skin and light him on fire.

Jason pushes to his hands and knees but falls down. I can’t really understand what he’s saying, but it sounds like he’s telling him to get off her, that he’s a sick fuck.

I agree, brother.

The brother I cut off and abandoned.

The brother who keeps trying to get to Chris as he forces open Stacey’s legs, spits between her thighs and slaps her hard enough that she screams in pain.

He grips her face and kisses her, then says, “Do I get a big brother’s discount, you filthy slut?”

When he enters her, she tries to kick her legs out.

My rage meets new heights, and blood trickles down my hands as I pull harder at the cuffs, both temples throbbing. Pain – I want to feel pain. I deserve to feel pain after what I put her through. What I put them both through.

Stacey stops fighting, and her body goes still, her eyes on the ceiling as her stepbrother keeps going. She isn’t conscious – she’s falling into a state where she’s neither awake nor asleep. She’s there, but she isn’t.

A trauma response I’ve fallen into a few times. And now I’m watching my ex go through the same.

I should have listened to her. I should have heard her out.

I’m a fucking idiot.

Stacey was everything to me, and instead of being a good boyfriend, I walked away. I fucking ran. Right into Bernadette’s corrupted grasp. I don’t deserve her forgiveness. I don’t deserve to even look in her direction.

My skin splits more at my wrists as the metal cuts into my flesh, my teeth close to cracking with how hard I’m crushing them together, especially when he speaks.

“Next time you fall pregnant, sweetheart, it’ll be me who fathers your child. Do you understand? You’re lucky I found that ultrasound picture and dealt with the issue, so you wouldn’t have a little bastard strapped to you.”

My eyes widen in shock. She had two broken ribs here from apparently falling down the stairs, and bad bruising on her lower back, yet these sick fucks… I can’t even say it. There are seven of them. Three are already dead. I’m going to fucking destroy the rest.

But how did they send me the clip of her and Jason…?

Before I can finish my thought, he pulls out and releases on her, then slaps her tit, grabbing her chin. “This is what happens when you try to fuck other people, Stacey. Bad things happen to bad girls. You are mine. You have been since you were fourteen. No more boyfriends. Got it?”

She stays still, her unseeing eyes on the ceiling, blank, her chest barely rising or falling.

Bernie decides to say, “She has a nice pussy at least. It’s a shame we can’t use her as a pet.”

“Shut your fucking mouth. Turn this off.”

“But the best part is about to start,” she says. “Keep watching or I’ll have your sister as my next pet.”

I gulp down the lump threatening to strangle me, trying not to show emotion as Chris throws Jason on the bed, telling him his fiancée needs attention. He pulls his phone out again, sits on a chair in the corner of the room and watches.

Jason wraps his arms around her, and the part that was edited out is Stacey sobbing and saying with broken words, “K… Kade? Is that y-you?” She’s touching his face, as if she’s blind, then feels his shirt. My shirt. “I’m so… so sca-scared.”

Jason grunts, unable to speak properly, and doesn’t stop her as she breaks down into his chest, heaving and begging him to make it stop – the dream is too real, and she needs to wake up. Her words are incoherent, but that’s what I pick up. She begs him to distract her.

“I’ve got you, baby,” he whispers.

They kiss – I close my eyes again. I can hear everything happening, but I try to drown it out. A lot of the footage was removed, to make it seem like she wanted to sleep with Jason, but that’s not the case. She’s drugged up, far too high to realise that she isn’t in my bed and he’s on the same level.

“Watch. The. Footage.” Bernadette slams her fist on the table with each word.

So I do. I watch – listening as she speaks to him like he’s me, the sounds so clear as she weeps through the kissing, through him on her and inside her, to her on him, telling him she can’t see straight, that the room is spinning. She feels weird. She thinks she’s dying.

Chris is hard in the corner, stroking himself until he releases once again, and as he glances up at the camera, he fucking smiles before vanishing from the room.

He’ll be at the Fields’ manor. I’m going to burn it to the ground.

Sweat covers them both as skin slaps together, and I want to gouge my eyeballs out and stuff candle wax in my ears.

She keeps saying my name. Moaning it.

“I love you, Giana.”

Stacey’s eyes are glazed, slobber rolling down her chin from the amount of drugs she was given. “I love you, Kade.”

I can’t stop the vomit. It’s out and down me before she can say it again, and I can’t avoid seeing the smile he gives her, his eyes red raw.

The smile that I thought was for my girlfriend.

Bernie hums. “Interesting. Archie, go get the car ready.”

“Fuck that. Can’t we use his room?”

I pay them no attention – all I can do is watch the screen as they pass out and the footage skips to the morning.

The sound is off, but they’re yelling at each other in double time as she covers herself, sobbing into her palm. He grabs his hair and paces, then gives her a change of clothes to cover her nakedness.

She keeps mouthing sorry.

Sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s my brother. He’s a monster. I thought you were Kade.

And Jason mutters a fuck and storms out of the room.

My body feels exhausted from watching all of this and the truth it holds, so I don’t notice anyone has approached me until someone stabs something into my arm. My brain goes cold just as the footage skips one last time – to Stacey standing on the Erskine Bridge with tears pouring down her face, wearing what she had on when I told her to get the fuck out of my life.

My brother is trying to get her down.

Stacey was suicidal for something that wasn’t her fault.

No.