A Harmless Little Game (Harmless #1)(24)

I shiver.

“You cold, Ms. Bosworth? I can escort you out.” From the flared nostrils and clenched jaw on Silas, I am pretty sure he knows who Mandy is. It occurs to me that a network of people hired by Daddy have more knowledge about my own life than I do.

It’s scary.

Right now, though, it’s also deeply comforting. Mandy’s outnumbered four to one in this bar. My ex-friend can go to hell.

I haven’t even had time to digest what Mandy, Tara and Jenna did four years ago. Why they lied. What drove them to betray me. What on earth made them think it was acceptable to go to the press and say that I got drunk and high and asked those three pigs to rape and torture me. Jane’s memory of my broken cheek makes me touch it, fingertips seeking out the smooth contour of my reconstructed eye socket.

I see Drew watching me, puzzled, and then his face goes completely slack. A simmering rage is underneath, though, because he clearly understands what I’m doing. I haven’t seen him in four years and never, ever wanted to be this close to him again, and here he is, as empathic and intuitive as he was when we were together. When we were happy.

When we thought we had forever ahead of us.

He turns back to Mandy at the bar and brushes her hair away from her ear. His mouth goes toward her neck and I see his lips moving. As the words pour out, her entire back stretches up, like an invisible Puppeteer has a string attached to the top of her head and is slowly pulling it up.

Then she turns to Drew with a murderous look on her face and starts to look my way.

His hand snaps up and grabs her jaw. It’s not a rough gesture, but it’s a damn powerful one. Mandy’s bright blue eyes widen so much they look like billiard balls. Drew uses his other hand to reach into his jacket pocket and throws a twenty dollar bill on the polished bar.

Then he lets go of Mandy, stands up, grabs her forearm, and escorts her out of the bar.

I don’t watch once they’re out of my peripheral vision.

I’m sick to my stomach. Mandy was always the queen bee of the group, the ringleader, and the one you thought long and hard about pissing off. Watching her manhandled like that by Drew brings a certain kind of delicious enjoyment to a part of me.

The part that feels like I’m spinning out of control on a patch of ice in a car with no steering wheel is about to throw up.

“Drink,” Silas insists, shoving a glass of water at me. I look around, blinking, as if I’ve just teleported here. The world disappeared for a few seconds, like it was on pause. I look outside and can see through the glass windows of the bar that Drew and Mandy are having words. Mandy’s having more words than Drew, and he’s pretty much ignoring her.

Is he actually on his phone while she yells at him?

Jane takes in the scene and snorts. “Drew never was Mandy’s favorite person in the world.”

“I think Mandy is Mandy’s favorite person in the world. Always was.”

“It’s funny,” Jane says thoughtfully. “I always admired her. Thought she was so put together and pretty. And then after...you know...”

“My attack.”

“The attack—after the attack, she got up in front of all those cameras and played it up for the audience. Told the world you’d been drunk and high and reached for John, Blaine and Stellan. She said she was speaking out to save the reputation of fine men.”

I’m sick to my stomach again. No amount of water Silas can bring me will help.

“She said that?” I ask, looking at her again. She looks like a monster.

She is a monster.

“Yeah.”

“You were there, Jane.” I look at her across the table. “You know the truth. I had one or two drinks. No drugs. I never, ever asked for any of that to happen to me.”

“I know!” She seems genuinely scandalized that I might think she thought otherwise. “And I told the police the same thing, when they came to our house.”

“The police came to your house?”

She nods. “They interviewed as many people as they could find from the party. The only ones who spoke up, though, were Tara, Mandy and Jenna. And me.”

“There were twenty or thirty people there!”

“I know. Didn’t matter. The loudmouths won. Mandy got her ten minutes of fame on CNN and MSNBC as the friend of the girl who asked for it.”

Gut punch.

“Oh, hell, Lindsay, I didn’t mean it. That’s just...that’s how you were portrayed.”

“The ER did a rape kit?”

She nods.

“And they didn’t analyze it or give me an exam to...”

“Once Mandy started saying you’d been drunk and high and it was consensual, all the law enforcement stuff halted. Just...went dead.”

“Daddy,” I whisper.

Drew walks in through the front door and looks cool as a cucumber. Appearances are deceiving, though. I know he must be agitated after that incident with Mandy.

My legs start to itch, like there are nerve impulses in them begging to be released. I want to jump up and grab Mandy and beg her to tell me why she would lie like that. All my friends knew I would never, ever ask those guys to...be with three men at the same time like...sleep with them with Drew right there.

And the beating. The torture. Being defiled in every hole I possessed. It took weeks for my mouth not to taste like blood and spooge. To swallow without the metallic slime of a man’s semen at the back of my throat. My lips had cracked open and the corners had been ripped and bleeding. Every time I moved my mouth, the wound had reopened.