Giovanni
The next three days pass peacefully enough with Sienna accepting a ride to work and back. I’ve become obsessed with finding the password on the flash drive. Of locating anyone who had anything to do with those videos, including Sean Williams, who seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth.
If she’s realized the drive is missing, she hasn’t said anything.
She’s settling in a little better. Maybe it was our conversation from the night before. I don’t know, but she seems at least a little more at ease. She’s still secretive, but knowing what I know, it makes sense she would be.
I’m looking at her on the monitor in my office when the man who’s been checking on her house brings me the stack of her mail. She’s up at the pool on the rooftop.
I intend to just hand it to her. Most of it is junk anyway. But as I absently flip through, something catches my eye.
It’s the envelope addressed to Little Bitch Whore.
My eyes narrow.
It’s not stamped so it was hand-delivered.
I lean back against my seat and turn it over, then slip one finger beneath the flap and pop the seal. I take out the folded sheet of paper inside and open it to read the three hand-written words:
Been a while.
I look at the envelope again.
Little Bitch Whore.
I dig my cell phone out of my pocket and hit the button to call Axel. He answers on the first ring.
“Are you on property?”
“Yeah, downstairs.”
“Come up here.”
“On my way.”
I disconnect the call and leaf through the rest of the mail but there’s nothing out of the ordinary.
Then I think of something.
I open my desk drawer where I’d stored the thumb drive and plug it into the port on my laptop. The password screen comes up and, on a hunch, I type the words Little Bitch Whore.
And… I’m in.
So maybe this isn’t the first time she’s had mail like this.
I double-click on the single folder on the drive and inside are several documents, with several . jpg files. I open the first of those and a moment later, I’m looking at Sienna’s face, younger, maybe eleven or twelve, a kid. Her swollen lower lip has some dried blood on it and she has a bruise on her jaw. There’s also a bruise along her right temple.
The next one is zoomed in on her throat and the black and blue handprint. A big hand. And then her scrawny arms and concave belly with the worst mark. Someone punched her hard in the belly.
I open the next one. She’s older in this one. I look at the date of the file. She’d be sixteen, I guess. It’s not as bad as the last ones because her face isn’t as badly bruised. Her clothes are filthy like she’s been in them for days. Like she got splashed with muddy water and it dried on her days ago.
Sickened, I open the text files, but they look to be screenshots so I print everything out to be able to read them.
She didn’t go to the cops once. She went three times between the ages of twelve and seventeen.
Three times.
How many times did they hurt her, and she didn’t go?
My mind goes back to the other day when I belted her ass. How she’d gone almost still. I’d found it strange she hadn’t fought me like I expected her to.
Maybe that’s what she did then too. Went still and took it.
Because when the instinct to survive takes over, the decisions we make don’t always make sense to an outsider.
I wasn’t beaten, or worse, as a child. My uncle-the sick fuck-grabbed my ass exactly once and the instant he did, I left. He was a drunk and I still don’t know if he thought I was someone else, but I never went back to ask the pervert.
After a knock on my door, Axel enters.
I set the papers face-down on my desk and hold out the letter. “I think this was hand-delivered to Sienna’s house. It would have been sometime in the last three days.”
He opens it, reads it.
“I’ll have someone watching the house.”
We should have had someone there all along. “Where are we on locating Sean Williams.”
“No luck yet. He might have left town.”
I shake my head. “No.” Instinct tells me he’s not gone. “Bastard’s still here.”
In these reports, she accused him and his father of the physical abuse. She never mentioned the fact that they were raping her. That they were letting others rape her.
“When is Ciara Williams’s release?”
“No date yet.”
I shift my gaze to the security cameras. Look at the one at the pool that’s trained on Sienna. I think she’s fallen asleep out there.
“I want to find the bastard.”
Axel nods. “We will. I’ve got someone at the clinic 24/7. He hasn’t been by.” His gaze moves to the screen. “I’m guessing she doesn’t know about this.”
“No and we’re keeping it that way.”
Axel opens his mouth to reply, but my phone rings, interrupting him.
I would ignore it, normally, but because it’s sitting on my desk, my gaze naturally drifts to the screen and I read the phone number.
It’s not an American number. And although it’s not a number I have stored on my phone, I recognize the country code.
Scotland.
“You gonna get that?” Axel asks when I just watch it ring and ring.
I should.
Today’s a good day. Today, I bought that last of the shares I need of the Adams Distillery, gaining control of the family business.
Today’s the day my dear half-brother learns he lost. This should be his call to concede because I’ve won.
But something feels off.
My fingers move without my authorization and I swipe the green bar and put the phone to my ear.
It’s not Declan.
The accent is heavier than my brother’s. Too hard for many English speakers to understand. It makes something inside me ache.
As the man is talking, I remember how people looked at me when I first got here, asking me to slow down. How Mr. Lanigan got a kick out of it. How easy it was to get women into your bed when you talked nonsense to them just because of that accent.
It’s what I’m thinking when I listen to what he has to say. When those few words turn my world upside down.