Chapter 26 #2
I’ve hidden this truth from him for so long. He killed Tommy for something he didn't do, and I know it will destroy him to find out the truth. But knowing the Medicis like I do, I’m certain they’ll find that video. He’s going to find out anyway. May as well rip that band aid off now.
I shake my head. “No, not Tommy. Ethan.”
“Ethan? His brother Ethan?”
My stomach rolls and acrid bile surges up in my throat. I swallow it down, balking at the bitter aftertaste, and then I nod, incapable of words.
His eyes blow wide, his mouth hanging open as he processes what I just told him. “You fucked Ethan?”
It seems like the whole world stops spinning on its axis.
Particles of red dust freeze in the air.
The sun stops setting. Every single ounce of guilt, regret, shame, sadness, and the rage of millennia of women who have been held down and humiliated by men rushes up inside me, burning so hot and fiercely in my chest that I sway with the strength of it.
“I did not fuck anyone, Enzo. He raped me!” I scream the words, letting the universe herself bear witness to the secret I’ve carried for far too long.
The shame I have carried with me—a load that was never mine to bear.
He reels backward, like the words themselves are living entities that have punched him square in the jaw. He sucks in deep breaths, his usually tanned skin ashen and his eyes wild. For an eternity, he says nothing. He just stares.
His body vibrates with the effort of holding himself together.
His jaw clenches so hard I hear his teeth grind.
One hand lifts toward me, then stops halfway, fingers curling into a fist before he lets it fall uselessly to his side.
Like he wants to reach for me but he knows he has no right.
Then his beautiful dark eyes fill with tears, and I can’t stand to see his pain when mine is still spilling out onto the ground between us.
I don’t want him to make any too-late apologies, or say the words he should have spoken six years ago, so I look away.
He doesn’t offer me any apologies though, nor false platitudes. “Please tell me what happened.”
I look down at the ground. “I can’t.”
“Rayne,” his voice cracks and so does my resolve. “Please.”
Can I trust him with this? Can I carry this weight around with me anymore, or do I finally need to let it go? I deserve to let it go. So I take a breath and pour out my heart.
I tell him everything. How I got a message that Ethan was on his way with important information for Enzo.
How he turned up at our house a short while later and how I stupidly let him in even though I never really trusted him.
How Oscar Bertelli contacted me a little over three weeks ago and told me he’d come into possession of the recording of Ethan raping me.
Not whatever carefully edited image Enzo was sent where Ethan’s face wasn’t shown, nor my puffy red eyes.
The pictures that were made to look like Tommy and me having sex.
No, not that, but the full forty-seven-minute video of me being violated.
Of me kicking and scratching until I realized it only made him more vicious and cruel, until all I could do was lie there and scream inside my own head.
“I screamed for you,” I tell him. “I prayed that you would come home and make him stop.”
His eyes fill with tears again and he quickly blinks them away. His jaw is clenched so tight I think he might grind his teeth to stumps. I can see the effort he’s making to rein in his temper and try to give me what I need right now. “Go on,” he says gently.
“Ethan left. And then I tried to call you, but I couldn’t find my cell phone.
And then Tommy showed up. Ethan must have left the door open.
He saw what happened and…” A tear runs down my cheek.
“He did what you should have done, Enzo. He comforted me. That’s all you saw.
Nothing more than him being our friend.”
He visibly recoils, like he’s winded. His breath leaving him in a brutal rush. After all of those years protecting him from the truth, now he knows. He murdered his best friend simply for being a good man. “Did Tommy know something had happened? Why was he even there?”
“I have no idea. I was in no state to think clearly, and before I could ask him to call you, well, you turned up and…” I don’t need to finish that sentence. He knows what happened next as well as I do.
My heart splinters at the sight of the now broken man in front of me. This is what I’ve been trying to protect him from, why I never came back and told him the truth. Him thinking the worst of me is less painful for me than him knowing the truth of what he did.
Enzo screws his eyes closed, pinching the bridge of his nose like he’s in physical pain. “So the pictures I was sent. They were…”
“They were of Ethan raping me.” I remember him snapping photographs on his phone. Sick, twisted son of a bitch.
Enzo reels backward, looking like he’s about to throw up, but he quickly rights himself, takes another deep breath. “If Ethan took the pictures, who sent them to me?”
“I wish I knew. There was nobody else there. Ethan must have sent them to someone. His accomplice? Probably the same person who recorded the video.”