Chapter 8 Pandora #2
“Your parents are cool, but I don’t need any of this getting back to my parents,” I say. “Bad enough Kratos and Ares know as much as they do.” Our parents are on friendly terms, which is saying something considering Papa manages to piss off most of the people he meets.
We have that in common.
I point to Anastasia’s guitar case. “What about the band stuff? Or did you bring the guitar just for fun?”
“I knew I’d need it to wind down after hanging out with you for a few hours,” she says sweetly, but then she shakes her head. “Nah, my cousin goes here. We’re planning on playing together, seeing if our styles can mesh or if he knows someone who can.”
Her cousin? I try to remember her family tree, but her family is even bigger than mine. I know she’s got way more cousins than I do.
“Yeah, all right.” I try to think of something else to ask her when the laptop pings. I grin. “Oh, look, it didn’t take all night!”
She gives me an exasperated look, but then she clicks around on the screen.
The first file she opens looks like a regular-ass spreadsheet, with all the member dues for the year.
She closes it and moves on to another file, which has a list of pledges.
Then we find the fraternity oath, and their song—they’ve got a song? —as well as other tedious crap.
I growl in frustration. “There’s no fucking way they went through all that effort just to protect these few files.”
Anastasia clicks over to another part of the computer. “Yeah, no, this hard drive is almost full. There’s something we’re not seeing. Hang on. My mom built this nifty program a few years ago that should get me right in.”
She opens up some black menu with white text, and she types more things. I have no clue what she’s doing, but she’s got a look of concentration on her face. A bunch of text does start scrolling then, but when it’s done, Anastasia grins.
“There we go.” She clicks back to the folder screen, and this time, there’s an extra folder visible we hadn’t seen before.
Research.
We open that, and there are hundreds of folders inside it, each one with a year. Anastasia clicks on the current year, and reveals a bunch of video files. She opens a random one.
A video begins to play. There are mattresses and sleeping bags on the floor, and a bunch of guys sitting around. I don’t recognize the space at first, not until I see the hallway with the bookshelf.
That’s the basement to the frat house.
Several guys with paddles step into the frame.
“All of you fuckfaces, strip down to your underwear,” one of the guys says. “Anybody who refuses is out.”
Anastasia and I watch as most of the guys strip down to their underwear. My eyes land on one of them in the corner of the screen.
He only has four fingers on his hand.
I reach into my pocket, only of course I don’t have the charm, they stole it from me, they took this piece of River that belongs to me.
“What is this?” Anastasia asks.
I don’t answer, and we watch as the video continues. The ones with paddles ask questions, and whenever the answer is deemed wrong, they paddle the offender.
River gets all the questions right, until… until Asch asks him about his finger.
I watch as River bends over, and Blaze paddles him hard. Asch holds him down for it, and they take the paddle to his ass again and again.
The empty void in my chest thumps harder and harder. My face heats up, and I don’t know if I’m angry or turned on.
It’s so hot.
But they aren’t allowed to do this to River.
“Try a different vid,” my voice says.
Anastasia looks at me. “There’s only a few more—”
“Turn it off!” I yell, then I reach over to yank the laptop away from her. She doesn’t get to see this. This isn’t for her.
“Hey,” she says, and her voice is careful, though there’s an edge to it. “You asked me for help. I’m doing the best I can, but you don’t get to shout at me. Got it?”
“Well, you got the files. I can access these on my tablet now?” I grin at her.
“Then you don’t need to see what else is on here.
” My hand shakes as I look at the other files available.
Will I find Blaze and Asch’s hazing? Will I see somebody taking a paddle to their asses? Who else do I need to kill?
“Yeah, the drive’s encryption is cracked. You should have access to everything.” Anastasia stares at me for a long moment. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Pandora.”
“Yeah, I do.” I yank the cord to the hard drive out of her laptop. “Her room is still yours. Didn’t mean to yell. You know how I am. Don’t worry, Kratos isn’t like me at all! Good thing he’s the one who likes you and not me.” I giggle, even though I don’t think I’m supposed to.
Shit.
I take the drive into my own room, shutting and locking the door. I connect it to my tablet and start clicking through the files.
There are a lot of videos of the Kappa Alpha brothers. Not videos that would be posted online. Confessions.
Secrets.
“I once cut off a man’s hand.”
“I raped my sister.”
“I helped my father bury my mother’s body.”
“My parents kept a slave.”
I grin as I click through video after video. So much information, all for me to use and exploit.
Then I get to Blaze’s video. It’s dated right before the end of last school year.
“My family’s business is selling people,” Blaze says, his eyes directly on the camera. “But you already know that.”
“Yeah, I do,” the guy on the other end answers.
I don’t recognize the voice, but he sounds older.
“Guess I’ll tell you about the time I asked my dad to kill a classmate. No real reason; the guy was pissing me off.” Blaze grins. “Dude was gone within the week. The whole school sobbed and held a whole moment of silence for him.”
There’s a pause, then the guy says, “No real reason? You have to be completely honest or it doesn’t count.”
Blaze grows irritated, and I see that familiar flash of anger, that desire to hurt.
“Fine. Because the guy was being a dick to Asch. He didn’t stop even after I threatened him. So there was no other option.”
I reach into my jeans and start rubbing my clit. Fuck. Of course he’d do something like that for Asch. Blaze is loyal and protective and so fucking perfect.
I use my free hand to click over to the next video. This time it’s Asch, and I smile, ready to hear his dark and dirty secret.
Asch runs a hand through his hair, tousling it. His eyes flick from the camera to what I assume is the person behind it —same guy still, probably — and he finally speaks after almost a full minute. “I… drugged Blaze last year,” he says quietly.
Holy shit. I rub my clit harder, my mouth open and my breathing ragged, as I imagine Blaze passed out because Asch had the nerve to do something to him.
I watch in anticipation, wanting to know exactly what that is.
“I didn’t do anything,” he hurries to add. “I mean. I guess I did. I took out his cock, and I… That’s enough, right? I mean, I admitted to drugging Blaze Bouchard.”
“No, go on,” the man says. “What else did you do?”
“Fuck,” Asch mutters. “I touched him until he came all over my hand. Then I cleaned it up and pretended nothing ever happened.”
Oh my god. I close my eyes and imagine it. It would have been so fucking hot. Can I convince him to do it again? If I get him on my side, if I destroy the friendship between them, maybe we can drug and fuck Blaze together.
My breathing is ragged, and my cunt is throbbing so hard that I want to turn it off to close my eyes and picture it in its entirety, but I force myself to keep watching.
“Did you get off on it?” the guy asks.
“I already told you my secret,” Asch snaps. “Unless you want details to jack off to, you don’t need to know anything else.”
I want details to jack off to! “Don’t be such a spoilsport, Asch,” I mutter.
Asch looks straight at the camera. “He’s never going to find out, right?”
“As long as you don’t reveal anything about your brothers to anyone else, he won’t find out. Mutually assured destruction.” The man lets out a nasty little laugh. “Not bad, scholarship boy.”
I see Asch’s defiant glare just before the video ends.
Fuck.
I rub my clit harder, imagining the situation all over again. Blaze, all soft and pliant, while Asch strokes him to hardness. If I’d been there, I could have ridden Blaze, and Asch and I could have kissed, all while Blaze had no fucking clue what we were doing.
Our little secret.
I let out a soft moan as pleasure washes over me. It’s a kind of lackluster orgasm, but that’s because I’m on my own. It’ll be better when I do all these things for real.
I smile at the tablet. I still have a lot of videos and files to go through.
What a treasure trove of information they handed to me.