91. Chapter Ninety
Chapter Ninety
Xane
Watching the sunrise on the beach after a long night of self-reflection, I can’t help but wish I’d slowed down sooner, so I could have realized what I’ve been doing to myself, and my pack.
After a whole day stuck out in the middle of nowhere, I didn’t have anywhere to hide from myself, and it was impossible not to see what Riley’s been doing to himself.
I finally had to face the truth.
Neither of us have really been ourselves since that night, five years ago.
The shock of the moment passed quickly, but the day after we got rid of Larry, I got straight to work to make sure we never had to trust another stranger with anything so important again.
It’s what had to be done.
But I let that extra work consume me.
Anything I organized had to be bulletproof.
Every step I took had to be backed with careful planning.
The guilt of what Larry tried to do left a mark on everything I thought about.
I couldn’t handle knowing I’d trusted a rapist around our female fans.
I ruminated about every interaction, trying to see what I’d missed.
But if there were signs, I didn’t see them.
Larry had been hardworking and easy-going at the same time.
He was funny, and he was sociable.
I’d liked him, and Riley had, too.
That was enough for me.
It sounds stupid now, but we trusted our instincts, and they were wrong.
Both of us were fooled. And that’s when I decided the parties were done.
We’d been careful with where we got drugs and which women we allowed to our suites, but it all had to stop once Larry was gone. There was no longer any margin for error.
There never was.
That was our first mistake.
Being careful doesn’t mean much if one other person can come along and tip everything upside down with a single act.
We were lucky.
That’s all it boils down to.
We never got a bad batch of drugs or had an unusual reaction to any of them.
The women were over the age of twenty-one and gave enthusiastic consent.
No one got hurt, until that night.
We thought we saved that girl from trauma, but she was already messed up in the head.
That’s why she came back months later, to assault Riley, while the rest of us were sleeping.
She walked out after, and that’s when I saw her and knew.
Riley was in the bathroom throwing up when I found him.
He wouldn’t talk about it, but I knew.
I should have pushed him harder sooner to talk.
Instead, I upped our security measures and hired a private detective to keep tabs on her.
Whenever she was close, I knew about it.
Eight months into her surveillance, she walked right up to the detective with a letter for Riley.
She was pregnant. Almost due to give birth.
I read the letter and kept it to myself.
Riley was already struggling.
This would only make things worse.
So, I gave the detective a response for her, and I waited.
She gave him a swab the morning the kid was born.
He checked it out and I was given security footage of her doing the swab in her hospital room.
It took a few days for the tests to come back, but the kid wasn’t a match for Riley.
The girl’s plan to set herself up with a rich baby daddy had failed.
She made some threats after that, but she never followed through on any of them.
I kept the detective watching her for a while.
She went back to her boyfriend, a high school sweetheart, within a few months.
When I checked his DNA, through more covert means, he matched with the kid.
That eased my mind, and it let me forget about her.
Maybe that’s when I should have told him.
I don’t know. It didn’t feel like a good idea at the time, and it still doesn’t now.
She did one of the worst things one human can do to another, and she was prepared to take it to a whole other level with her little scam.
It makes me mad to think about it, even now.
Sighing, I get to my feet and dust off my knees.
I let go of my thoughts of the past and the emotions they stir up in me.
The time to ruminate has passed.
I could use a drink of water, and it’s about time everyone else got up.
We need to make the most of the sun and get moving while it’s light out.