I growled, pushing myself away from the table.

“Sign it, and you’re free,” he bit out as I backed up to the glass, my eyes burning. “You don’t have to feel guilty. I mean, what’s on those videos is only a small fraction of what they’ve done, Emory. How they’ve taken advantage of the people here. Let their money and family names save their asses time and again.”

I whipped around, staring at Will still sitting at that table. Where was his lawyer?

I won’t…I won’t hurt you. I shook with sobs. I’ll never hurt you again.

“Just think of all the women he’s had,” Martin pointed out. “All the life he’s wasted as a burden on his family, never doing or living for anything important. For anything larger than himself. He’s taken, Em. All he does is take. He fucks and screws and forgets about you.”

I closed my eyes, about to cover my ears.

“They deserve some consequences. You know I’m right. They did commit crimes.”

No. If it happened, it happened, but I wouldn’t help Martin send them to jail.

“Those videos weren’t the only ones on that phone, you know?” he pressed. “If they were poor, they would’ve been in jail a dozen times by now.”

I stopped, my pulse ringing in my ears.

Phone…

“That’s what they used to document their pranks, right?” he asked. “A cell phone?”

I looked over at him, my cheeks wet with tears.

He shrugged, feigning sympathy. “If more videos were to surface….” He tsked, continuing, “Arson, assault, robbery, grand theft auto, breaking and entering, sexual deviances… I can only imagine the videos lurking out there somewhere that haven’t been posted yet.”

My stomach sank, and I rose, standing up straight as I gaped at him. The vomit churned, and I almost dry-heaved.

No.

Pulling something off the table, he handed me one more piece of paper, and I read the check for over thirty-seven-thousand dollars made out to me.

“The balance of what’s left,” he told me. “And you have the power of attorney transferred to you. All you have to do is sign. You can take her, and we never have to see each other again. You’ll be able to pay for top-notch care. And they won’t even know it’s you in the photos. Your full face isn’t in them anyway, and it won’t be on the unofficial statement I take to them.”

I stared at the check.

He was giving me what I wanted. I could move my grandmother to somewhere close to me, pay for her care for however long she had left, and my education wouldn’t be interrupted.

I set my palm on the glass, feeling warmth where everything else was cold.

He had a point, right? I’d heard that Will was messing up. Even his last year in high school, I heard he was getting high all the time. Would he clean up his act unless he were forced to?

I just wanted to go to school and take care of my grandma. I deserved for good things to happen, I’d fought long enough, and if I didn’t give in and agree to this, he might go to jail anyway and for longer. What if Martin knew who uploaded the videos? What if he were telling the truth, and he could get them to upload more?

I clutched the thin piece of paper, everything I wanted one signature away.

One signature I’d never make.

“I want you to die,” I whispered.

He stood there quietly. “You know what life is like inside of a one-star nursing home?” he finally asked.

I closed my eyes, seeing Damon Torrance with his hand wrapped around his mother’s throat, and I could damn-near feel it.

I wanted to know what that felt like.

“Sometimes the patients will have bruises they shouldn’t have or they’ll find the elderly lying in their own waste for hours,” he went on. “She doesn’t know what the fuck is going on half the time anyway, so she won’t care.”

My blood boiled, every muscle inside of me tightening.

“You’re bluffing,” I breathed out. “Even you wouldn’t do that to her.”

I saw him turn toward me out of the corner of my eye. “She was transferred this morning,” he told me.

I whipped around to face him, and then I screamed, shoving him in the chest with both of my hands and then running in to knee him between the legs.

“Motherfucker!” I yelled.

He collapsed to the ground, and my body moved of its own accord. I couldn’t stop it. I swung my leg back to kick him, but he launched up and grabbed it as it came in and yanked me down to the floor.

Gripping the back of my head, he grabbed a fistful of the flesh at my waist and crushed it in his hand. I cried out and dove in, biting his face.

He howled, and I swung, slamming him across his jaw before he grabbed me by the collar and slapped me across the face.

I whipped around, my body crashing back to the floor, and I coughed, scrambling to my feet as the sharp sting spread across my face.

Swinging my leg back, I kicked him in the head, not hesitating a moment before I did it again. And again.

The taste of copper filled my mouth as blood sputtered from his mouth, and he tried to sit up on his knees, but he just fell over again.

You’ll never lay a hand on me again.

Unlike Damon, I knew how to really hide a dead body.

Pulling the chair out at the table, I sat down, silent tears blurring my eyes and blood coating my teeth as I reached over and grabbed the statement and then the pen.

Clicking the button at the top, I looked up, gazing at Will through the glass.

I could tell myself all sorts of things to make this okay.

If they weren’t who they were, they’d go to jail anyway.

I was saving them, actually. More videos coming to light would increase the charges.

They did commit crimes. And there were tons more no one knew about.

But the bottom line was…this was wrong.

I scribbled my name at the bottom of the statement that would convince their families to accept the charges in order to not risk more charges. I shoved it across the table, stood up, and grabbed the check and power of attorney, walking to the window as shame made me look away from my reflection in the glass.

“Some of us will always be casualties,” I whispered to him. “Rungs on a ladder that others climb.”

He looked up suddenly, and it looked like he was looking right at me. Like he could see me.

“Some people can’t stop what happens to them,” I said. “They’re just born in the wrong place, wrong time, with the wrong people.”

Will deserved his vengeance.

I’d just thrown him under the bus to buy my grandmother’s last days.

“I’ll expect you,” I whispered to him.

I felt my brother rise from the floor, sniffling and grunting.

I turned, not looking back as I walked for the door.

“Safe trip home,” Martin choked out. “You’ll never see me again.”

I threw open the door, not bothering to clean up the blood on my face as I left the room.

I’ll see you again. Will would be coming for both of us.

Will

Present

“We put Rika and Winter through what we did for nothing!” I growled. “We spent years thinking it was about the fucking videos, and it was about you! I did that to my friends. I brought you into their lives.”