Mael:Gabin is on his way.
I turned the TV on, ordered dinner, and turned on my other phone, from which I texted Ben.
Me:How are the breakers?
Ben:Fixed.
We were talking in code. Ben had control of all the cameras and had recorded me everywhere I’d gone since the minute I’d arrived, just in case I needed footage of myself being in the hotel during the hours I was with Mael.
I was sitting in the lobby when some lanky guy, with a face covered in a minefield of pimples, walked up to me. “You must be Tristan.” He smiled.
I got up. “Yes.”
“Je suis Gabin. Allonsy. Mael atend.”
“I thought we were meeting at midnight.”
He snickered like the rat he resembled. “Yeah. He canceled prom. I think his girl upset him. And I don’t know if you know Mael, but you don’t piss off Mael.” He looked back at me as I followed him to the front of the hotel where he’d parked his car.
“Oui. I know him.” And by that, I meant I knew how much Mael hated women or girls just like his father.
Gabin drove like a bat out of hell through the city and around the curve of the mountains before we rolled into the parking lot of some park. “What is this place?”
“It’s where we party.”
Then a girl in a blue gown ran past us at full speed into the forest. I only got to see the back of her—long, black hair, white skin, and slim. Fuck. I grabbed my phone. “What’s your phone number?”
“Why?”
“Just checking something.”
Once he gave me the number, I texted him.
Me:Hey Gabin, when are you picking me up?
“What’s that?” he asked.
“This is a cheap phone, just making sure it works. Never mind the message.” Once everyone started walking toward Mael, I took out the other phone and texted Ben.
Me:Just make sure all the wires are updated and new now.
Code for:replace the footage of the security starting now.I didn’t want to be associated with this night at all. If anything happened to Master’s scum garbage, I was never here.
The rest of the guys ran into the bushes, searching for her while I leaned on the hood of Gabin’s car with arms crossed, sometimes looking at my watch, wanting this night to be over. “I found her!” one of them yelled, then I slowly walked into the forest, finding them about a kilometer in. I leaned against a thick tall trunk, hardly paying attention as they raped her. Of course, he was raping a girl. Mael’s dream was to be his father.
The rest of his goons surrounded them while he raped her, lighting and recording it with their phones. At first, her silence haunted me. It drove me crazy that she was just lying there because of the amount of electricity they’d struck her with. Flashbacks of something I didn’t quite recognize or remembertook over my whole world.I wasn’t in the forest anymore, I was in a bedroom. Some man at the foot of bed.
Then her first scream echoed through the trees. As fast as I’d been transported to that moment, I returned. A breath burst out of me. I needed to vomit. To suppress it, I took several deep breaths. I was still shaking, and my body was covered in goosebumps. The guys were laughing at her hysteria. The slap to her face echoed and grabbed my attention. After a while, I couldn’t hear her over their talking and laughter. How hurt was she? Was she bleeding? Had he knocked out her teeth?
Sylban unbuckled his belt as Mael walked over to me. His shirt was open, showing his sweaty, naked chest. He was still out of breath from fucking her. I wanted to punch that cocky smile from his face. “Are you going to come enjoy my whore, shy boy?”
“This is why you begged for me to come here? To fuck her? You know, I actually have shit to—”
“Oh, come on.” He opened and raised his arms in the air. “I’m tired of us fighting. Truth is, you’ve done so much for me and my brother by taking it up the ass all these years from Dad so that we won’t have to.” He grinned and placed his palms together as if he were praying, then burst out laughing at me. I tried so hard not to glare at him, to keep a neutral expression, but I wasn’t sure it was working. There was no limit to how much I detested this asshole.
“I’m trying to be a nice guy. You had a whole day off, my father is off doing God only knows what in Paris, probably a five-year-old boy, and now you get to fuck some pussy. Or are you telling me you’d prefer him? Have you been that brainwashed? I mean, I see you acting like some obedient wife all the time, but I thought that was all just an act,” he said as he walked backward to them, not releasing my gaze. I knew this meant I was expected to fuck her up with him, or I would never hear the end of it from him or his father.
By the time the other idiot finished with her, her mascara had marked thick trails on her face, her hair was in disarray, and her eyes were swollen and red, still shedding tears.
