Chapter 27
Twenty-Seven
Brandon
Anton’s house overlooks a manmade lake where Mallard ducks float gracefully across the water in tight groups.
I take a sip from my coffee cup. My stomach is still a bit unsettled, but a pill took care of the pain from last night’s alcohol binge.
Still, my reflection looks pale in the floor to ceiling windows facing the water.
Devin’s wife is sitting perpendicular to me, her eyes locked on the screen where a video shows her husband’s hand on her daughter’s leg while he speaks soothingly to her.
I don’t look at it, and from the expression of horror on Tanisha’s bloodless face, she wishes she didn’t have to either.
The video plays on for entirely too long.
I stand up halfway through, using the excuse of needing to pee to get out of there.
I have only glanced at the screen throughout, but the sounds are disturbing enough, especially the ones announcing Devin’s enjoyment.
They make me want to scrub myself with bleach.
I can’t stand to see Deja’s vacant little face, reduced by the drug to nothing more than a flesh doll for that monster’s use.
I splash water on my face and remind myself why I’m here. It’s for Deja. I only have to hear what was done to her. She had to live through it.
My surroundings are lavish. The powder room is large and brightly lit, the gray slate floor and marble counters creating a cool and spacious feel.
I dry my face, trying to ignore the dark circles under my eyes.
Yesterday I was dressed like a knock off Rourke; today I’m wearing a black long-sleeved button-down shirt rolled up at the sleeves and gray wool slacks.
I look like one of Anton’s “associates.” All I’m missing is the shoulder holster, but that’s fine because the gun he’s given me is safely stowed in my duffle bag in the guest room.
Getting in this deep was never my plan, but what do they say about best laid plans and good intentions?
When I hear the video stop, I return to the living room.
Tanisha looks like she’s been hit by a truck.
She turns her head towards me as she hears me approach and flinches when she sees my face.
She doesn’t ask if this is real like she did when the video started.
I guess there were details you can’t fake.
She moves her focus to Anton, who’s sitting in the other armchair, lips pursed, an imposing sight in his impeccably tailored suit.
“No, I didn’t know,” Tanisha says, quietly. She squeezes her eyes shut. Maybe she’s feeling the same skin crawling disgust I do, finally knowing who she’s connected to.
“But you knew about my mother,” I accuse, the words bursting out of me before I can stop them.
She doesn’t look at me, but she gives a slight nod.
“I knew they roofied her, obviously,” she confesses, “but I never knew positively what they did with her after I left the room. That first night, when David took her upstairs to clean her up and she came back with the front of her dress wet, I got an inkling of where it was going so I left.”
“You didn’t try to stop them?”
“I disliked your mother, but that’s not an excuse.
I just tried not to think about it, and over time Devin convinced me that they didn’t do anything too awful that night and they had only drugged her one other time.
He told me David never actually touched her.
Devin told me he and your mother had been sleeping together, so when she came onto him, he didn’t resist.”
They hadn’t, though. My mother had never viewed Devin as anything but her employer.
I want to challenge Tanisha. I don’t believe she really thinks that someone who acts the way my mom acted when Tanisha was in the room could turn around and become a seductress once she left.
Or that they could have raped my mother in Tanisha’s basement repeatedly without her knowing.
But then, she was blind to what happened to her own daughter.
I want to ask her why they did those things to my mother, why she cackled like a witch while my mother was being tortured and humiliated, but that’s not why we’re here.
“Do you know why we’re showing you this?” Anton asks.
“To make me hate him?”
“As rewarding as that outcome would be, my goals are much more concrete. Your husband has been holding on to an item that has great personal value to me and using it as leverage to make me finance his lifestyle.”
Tanisha looks at Anton askance.
“Why would my husband need to do that? He makes a lot of money.”
“You know I wondered that as well. I met your husband over ten years ago when I worked at a strip club my uncle owned.”
“Devin doesn’t go to strip clubs.”
“Oh, he definitely does, and back then…”
“I can confirm he used to come home all the time smelling of perfume with glitter on his suit,” I tell her.
Tanisha still looks as if she doesn’t believe us, but I remember the day when it all clicked, and I figured it out. I was eleven.
“He hired me to do a job and he paid me well. It was my first time doing something like that and I was a bit sloppy. Your husband helped me clean up, but in the process ended up in possession of something that could put me in prison for a long time.
“For years I didn’t think about it. I assumed he’d disposed of it. Then he contacted me about a year ago demanding money. Like you, I didn’t understand why he needed the money. What I eventually learned is that your husband was one of the investors in Liberty Legacy.”
“The Ponzi scheme?”
“Yes. He lost half a million dollars of borrowed money, which he’s been paying back by stealing from your mutual employer. Plus, I assume a little extra spending money here and there.”
“How could you know this when I don’t? I’m the controller of the company.”
“My organization employs some very skilled hackers.” Anton smiles, though the effect of it is like a shark baring its hundreds of teeth.
“I don’t know what you want me to do,” Tanisha says with an exhausted sigh. She rubs the top of her head, mussing her carefully styled straight hair. A single lock sticks up like a wood staple from her crown.
“Are you aware of any safety deposit boxes owned by your husband?”
“Yes,” she says. “He has two, I think.”
“Based on our investigation he has four. Do any of these look familiar?”
He hands her a piece of paper, and she nods. “I recognize three of these as banks where we have accounts. The fourth, I’m not familiar with.”
“Your name is on all four boxes. We’d like you to go to this fourth bank and retrieve the contents of the safety deposit box.”
“And if I don’t?” she asks.
“Of course you don’t have to,” Anton says. “We’ll drop you off at home this evening and you can climb in bed with the man who drugged and raped your child. Also, you might want to know that the job Devin had me do was the murder of your first husband.”
“I need to talk to you,” Anton says after Tanisha leaves with two of his men.
I’m tired and sick to my stomach. It’s not his fault, but after watching the video of Deja’s abuse, just being in this house makes my skin crawl.
I need to get out of there. But I follow him into his home office.
He offers me a chair and closes the door.
“I watched the tape labeled L&D and I want to give you a choice before I tell you what’s on it.”
“L&D is Lindsey and Deja, isn’t it?”
“Does my mom…?” I can’t bring myself to say the words poisoning my brain.
“Nothing like that,” Anton says, “but it’s very upsetting and knowing won’t really change what we do. I’ll still make sure Devin pays for what he’s done.”
“If you’re even asking me this, it has to be bad.
” Is there any virtue in not knowing? I’ve decided not to tell Deja what Devin did to her.
Sure, she has a right to know, but it won’t help anything.
I put myself in her shoes and the horror I’d feel if I knew that I had been raped without my knowledge is significant.
As far as she knows it never happened, and so she’s avoided the trauma for the most part.
I’d be doing her a disservice if I told her about it.
Could this be similar? Something that it’s better for me not to know?
But it’s not someone else deciding what’s best for me.
I already know this information exists, and I don’t know if I could live with not knowing.
It concerns the two people who are most important to me in the world. I have to know.
“Tell me.”
Anton seems disappointed, but he doesn’t drag it out or make excuses.
“The video has your mom on it with the usual happening. David’s there as well, but he gets a call and leaves. Maybe ten minutes later Deja comes down the stairs. Devin tells your mother to sit in a chair and he gives Deja a drink. You understand what that means, right?”
“I do. So this is what happened the first time.”
“Possibly he drugged her because she had seen him assaulting your mother, but I don’t think she understood what she was seeing. Once she was drugged, well…”
“So that’s it?” Anton shakes his head.
“While Devin is doing what he’s doing, Lindsey seems to wake up or at least she becomes aware enough to tell him to stop what he’s doing and curse at him, so he forces more of the drug on her until she becomes almost dazed. Then she stops breathing.”
“What are you saying?”
“This is probably how your mother’s brain injury occurred. He gives her a shot and then calls Deja’s father. You see him dress Deja and carry her upstairs and the video keeps recording until the disk is full.”
“A few weeks later, he calls me and says he needs me to clean something up for him. That something was David.”
“So you think he had David killed because he knew about what happened to my mother?”
“Or possibly,” Anton says, “because David noticed his daughter had been drugged. If he’d examined, her he would have been able to tell she’d been assaulted.”
I don’t even want to know what that means. Deja was eight years old. What the fuck?