Dick: A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance (12 page)

Chapter
15

Jessica

“What is this even going to
accomplish?” I asked, doing my best to keep pace with my stepbrother as we made
our way across campus. “Do you know how many of them are in there? They’ve got
you outnumbered, Richard! We need to be smart about this!”

“I’m not in the mood for
smart, Jess,” he said, “and you shouldn’t be here to see this.”

“Why? Because of my
delicate, feminine sensibilities?” I scoffed. “I’m not some innocent little
girl.”

“No, innocent is certainly
not a word to describe you, babe,” he grumbled. “Just stay behind me.”

The fact that my brother
still saw me as some damsel was more than enough to get my blood boiling. He
knew I wasn’t some delicate flower, and more than that he knew I was smart as
hell. But when Richard was upset there wasn’t much I could do to really reason
with him.

Once we’d found out that
Michael was the one behind the pictures, my brother made it a point to head
straight over to the Alpha Epsilon Omega house, despite my protests. Richard
was just one man, but how he expected to face an entire fraternity of men was
completely beyond me. If anything happened, someone needed to be there to make
sure he got out safe—and apparently, that someone was going to be me.

“I hope you know what
you’re doing,” I said as the frat house came into view. The closer we got the
more my sense of dread seemed to grow until my stomach was a knot of worry. Out
on the lawn, the brothers of AEΩ were loitering, the grass strewn with the
remnants of a kegger they’d had the night before.

“Not a clue,” he said
before walking up the walkway toward the front door.

The moment Richard stepped
on the lawn, the brothers of AEΩ took notice, their heads turning and someone
calling out for the rest to watch. Somehow I had gotten the idea that they’d
been expecting the two of us.

“Halt!” came a voice from
behind us, though it carried all the sneer and none of the seriousness of an
actual command. “Who goes there?”

“Go fuck yourself,” Richard
growled, reaching out to grab the doorknob.

Before he could even touch
the brass knob, a hand reached out and grabbed Richard’s wrist. I watched, and
in that moment I wasn’t sure who I should have been more concerned for, Richard,
or the frat brother.

“None shall—” the frat boy
began, smirking for a few moments before he realized that Richard had turned,
taking the boy’s arm and twisting it hard behind his shoulder in an arm lock.
The AEΩ goon screamed out, his deep, throaty voice suddenly reaching a falsetto
pitch. “Fuck!”

Before we knew it, three
other members of the fraternity were on top of us, two of them going for Richard
while the remaining member took hold of my wrist and pulled me away from my stepbrother.
I struggled against the frat boy holding my arm, his grip stronger than I had
been expecting from some half-drunk rich boy. I heard him chuckle, a look in
his eyes that I knew all too well.

Before he could pull me any
closer to him, I stepped down hard onto his toes, driving the heel of my foot
hard against his at the same moment as I yanked my arm away from his grip. The
frat boy yowled, stepping backward in surprise. He stumbled back a few steps before
falling right onto his ass on the porch.

I looked up just in time to
see Richard punching one of the other AEΩ brothers right in the jaw, another
doubled over and grabbing at his stomach. Out of anyone I knew that my brother
could handle himself, but as I watched him do away with two of his attackers, I
saw four more making their way up the stairs, a dark expression on their faces.

“Richard, we should go,” I
called, backing away from the closing brothers and closer to my stepbrother.

“Go? But you only just
arrived.”

I turned my head to quickly
I might have given myself whiplash, taking another step closer to Richard as
Michael stepped through the front door, a wicked smirk on his face. I felt like
I was going to be sick, my mind unsure of whether to be afraid or enraged at
what that monster had done to my best friend.

I heard Richard roar in
anger, moving past my like a wild animal, his fist raised. But before he could
even get close to Michael, four pairs of hands grabbed him and threw him to the
ground.

“I wouldn’t, if I were
you,” Michael said in his smug, cocky voice. “You’re a guest in our house, and
assaulting your hosts is just
so
rude.”

Michael’s frat brothers
laughed in a dim-witted chorus. My stomach turned as I watched him bask in
their sheep-like admiration. This was the kind of thing that Michael loved,
being the mastermind, the leader of “lesser men” as he called them. It made me
sick just watching it.

“You know why we’re here,
Michael,” I said. “We want the pictures back.”

“Pictures?” he asked,
feigning innocence. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

“Cut the bullshit,” Richard
snarled, slowly getting to his feet under the watch of four muscled college
students. “You know what picture’s we’re talking about.”

Michael made a pleased
sound in his throat, his smile only widening like some psychotic Cheshire cat.
That smile made my skin crawl.

“We should discuss business
inside,” Michael said, motioning for his henchmen to step back. “It’s far too
crowded out here, I think.”

Richard and I begrudgingly
followed Michael into the house, a troop of brothers following behind, their
faces taking on a menacing expression. I didn’t like the way they looked at me,
hungry like a pack of wild animals. Was that the look they’d given Becky before
they’d raped her? I wanted to vomit at the thought.

We were lead into was
appeared to be some kind of sitting room, a set of leather armchairs set right
in front of a roaring fire. The entire room was lined with bookshelves, and it
gave off a definite air of sophistication and class. If this room had been in
any other place on Earth I might have honestly been in heaven.

“Close the doors,
gentlemen,” Michael called to them, his tone almost patronizing. “We’d like
some privacy.”

We heard the soft click of
the double doors closing behind us as Michael began to pace leisurely in front
of the fireplace.

“So, little Miss Becky told
you about our little party the other night,” he said. “She’s such a naughty
little slut. But not as naughty as the two of you, I think.”

He casually drew out his
smartphone and began to swipe his thumb across the screen, moving it from left
to right as he gave a sinister chuckle.

“The things you two have
done to one another,” he said, shaking his head and clucking his tongue. “Most
people wouldn’t dream of seeing things like this…. And to your own stepbrother
no less, Jessica? It seems like you’re twice the slut Becky is.”

“Don’t you dare talk about her
like that!” I said, clenching my fists. “You’re lucky I don’t report you for
what you did to her.”

“Luck had nothing to do
with it, Jessica,” he said, smiling so smugly as he turned his phone toward Richard
and I, a picture of Becky on the screen, his hair a mess, her eyes half open.
With a touch of his finger, the video began to play and Michael’s recorded
voice rang out clearly.

“
You want this, don’t you? Tell me you want to fuck me. Say it right to
the camera
,” Michael said over the speaker.

Becky’s eyes turned toward
the camera, confusion plastered across her face.

“
I want it
,” she mumbled, blinking slowly.

“And there you have it,”
Michael said, shutting off his phone. “I believe they call that consent.”

“You drugged her,” Richard
growled. “That doesn’t count as consent.”

“Where’s your proof?” he
asked, looking around as though it might be in the room with us. “Did little
Miss Becky get herself tested? A rape kit? Drug screening?”

My stomach tightened. Becky
had been too scared to step forward, afraid of the judgement and the
persecution that came with being a victim of sexual assault. She didn’t want to
be another statistic, another “slut.”

“And in regard to
our
business,” Michael laughed, “I’m
going to be keeping these pictures right here on my phone where they’re nice
and safe… and if I ever need you to do something, then I’ve got everything I
need to make sure that you do it. After all, you wouldn’t want Mommy and Daddy
finding out their precious little stepchildren are getting nasty together at
college, do you?

“And I don’t think the
coach will be too thrilled to find out that his star freshman quarterback like
to stick it to his family members, do you? Bad for publicity.”

I felt bile rising in my
throat as the reality of Michael’s threat hit me like a ton of bricks. If he
released those pictures—if our parents found out what the two of us were doing
together—our lives would be ruined.

“Why shouldn’t I just take
that fucking phone from you right now?” Richard asked, taking a step forward
threateningly. Michael only let out another laugh.

“Because,
Richard
, those pictures aren’t just on
my
phone… they’re up there!” he said,
pointing into the air above him. “Up in the Cloud, where they can be nice and
safe in case something silly might happen to my phone. Isn’t technology grand?”

“You son of a bitch,” Richard
growled.

“I can’t deny that,”
Michael chuckled, “my mother
is
an
enormous bitch. But that’s not the point here, is it? No, the point is that
I’ve got proof of something that you don’t want the world to know about, and
for the low, low price of whatever I want, it’ll stay that way—tucked away in
my little corner of the internet, never to be seen again.”

“And if we say no you’ll
release the pictures all over the internet,” I said, a crushing feeling of
defeat crashing over me like a ton of bricks.

“Still as smart as ever,”
Michael sneered, his tone mocking as he slipped his phone back into his pants
pocket.

I turned toward Richard,
hoping that he might have an answer to what was happening, some kind of clever
trick he might be able to pull out on Michael that would save us both from both
embarrassment and possible disownment from our parents. Richard’s life would be
ruined and his college football career over before it even had a chance to
really start.

“What do we do?” I asked,
my voice low, though I knew Michael could hear every word. I could practically
feel him gloating over both of our misfortune. He had us right under his
thumb—exactly where he wanted us with no foreseeable way out that didn’t ruin
our lives.

“I don’t know, Jess,” he
said, his eyes staring into the back of a high backed leather chair that Michael
had taken to leaning on heavily. “I really don’t know.”

“Well, for starters, the
two of you could get out,” Michael said, his voice filled with mocking cheer.
“This is a house for the brothers of AEΩ, which neither one of you belong to.
We pride ourselves on keeping out the garbage… though I could make an exception,
if sweet little Jessica were willing to spread her legs a bit.”

Richard moved forward like
a tiger about to jump in for the kill, his face a deep, dark red, his
expression filled with rage. I barely had enough time to reach out and pull his
arm back, stopping his just shy of slugging Michael right in the jaw.

“Don’t!” I shouted, looking
right into Michael’s smirking face. “That’s what he wants.”

Richard’s body was so
tense, each of his muscles ready to spring at a moment’s notice.

“He wants an excuse to leak
those pictures,” I whispered, putting myself between the two of them. “We can’t
give him a reason.”

“You are just so smart,
Jessica,” Michael said, false admiration filling his voice. “You really should
take her advice, Richard. After all, who knows how long something like fucking
your own sister is going to follow you through life?”

“Let’s go,” I whispered,
pushing against my stepbrother’s nearly frozen body. Slowly I felt him giving
against my efforts until finally he moved back a step and turned. Richard
didn’t say a single word, his jaw clenched shut the entire way out of the AEΩ
house and out onto the street.

The silence was almost
unnerving as I fell into step behind Richard, unsure exactly where either of us
were going at first.

“You’re kinda scaring me, Richard,”
I said, swallowing hard around the still present lump in my throat. “Are you
going to tell me where we’re going?”

“My dorm,” he grunted,
though he never turned his gaze back toward me as he walked.

“Why there?” I asked, my
brow furrowing as I hurried to keep pace with him.

“We need to regroup and
come up with some kind of plan.”

Chapter
16

Dick

“What
now?” I groaned. “If we don’t get those pictures then we’re going to have that
bastard looming over our heads for the rest of our time here. Those pictures
are going to ruin us… especially if mom and dad find out.”

“I know,” she sighed, her head in head
hands. “We are completely fucked.”

The two of us had gone back to my dorm
after the confrontation with Michael at the fraternity to figure out what our
next move would be. As it stood, Michael had the upper hand on us. The pictures
themselves didn’t technically exist outside of his phone, though with the way
things worked now, that meant that the pictures were also floating around in
the Cloud, able to be retrieved regardless of whether that bastard’s phone was
smashed. The only way to save ourselves was to find a way to delete those
pictures from existence and hope Michael hadn’t been smart enough to make
backups.

“There’s no way we can get those
pictures,” I said, running a hand through my hair in frustration. “Not unless
we suddenly learn how to hack into Michael’s phone. And I’m not sure if you
noticed, but none of us are
that
good
with computers.”

“I know that, Richard,” Jessica said,
frowning at how upset I was getting. If these pictures got out, it would be the
end of my football career, and I hardly believed that my dad would fund his
son’s college if he knew what his step-daughter and I had been up to while we
were away from home. “I probably know that just as well as you do.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, resting my face
against my hands. “I’m just worried, that’s all. I don’t like being threatened,
and I especially don’t like
you
being
threatened, either. I just wish I had a solution, something that I could
actually do to make all of this go away. But like I said, neither of us are
that good with computers.”

I looked up from my hands just in time
to see Jessica sit up suddenly, her eyebrows raised. It was like a light bulb
had gone off over her head.

“What about Greg?”

“Greg?” I asked, frowning. “This is all
Greg’s fault! Why would he help us?”

“I think we’re going to
make
him help us,” Jessica said, a smile
creeping onto her lips. “Greg is a Computer Science major, and from what Becky
kept saying about him, he’s like a Steve Wozniak-level genius. If we can
convince him to help us, then we’ll be one step closer to being in the clear.”

“But the question is whether he will or
not,” I pointed out again. “After what he’s already done? To us
and
to Becky? He’ll be lucky if I don’t
beat the shit out of him when I see him.”

“You’ll just have to curb your violent
nature,” Jess said as she pulled out her phone. “Becky ought to know what class
he’s in right now. Once we know that, we can head straight over and
persuade
him.”

According to Becky, Greg would be held
up in class for at least another hour, which gave us the time we needed to get
ready and head all the way across campus and stake out the entrance to the
building. It was late in the afternoon, the sun slowly sinking down toward the
horizon when the time came for students to start streaming out from the doors
the head off to who-knows-where.

I glanced down at Jessica’s phone to
get another look at Greg’s picture. He was a mousy guy from what I could tell,
with the typical nerdy look that I’d seen so many times back in high school. It
was surprising a guy like that even had the balls to do what he did to Jessica
and I. But that still left the matter of what had happened to Becky unattended.

“He should have been out here by now,”
I said, arms crossed as the two of us sat on a bench near the computer science
building’s double doors. “What if he didn’t go to class today?”

“We’ll stay for a little while longer, Richard,”
she said exasperatedly, “then we can go look for him at his dorm. Becky was
sure
that he’d be here today.”

My impatience was beginning to wear on
her, and I certainly didn’t blame her. I hated to wait on anything. I was the
kind of person who needed to be moving and doing something to feel like I was
making a difference, and sitting on a park bench sure as hell didn’t feel like
I was getting anything done.

“I can go in and look for him,” I said,
clenching and unclenching my fists anxiously. “Bring him outside and then we
can talk to him more privately.”

“No,” Jessica said, waving the idea
away, “we don’t want to start a scene in there. Let’s do this a little more
subtly. If campus security sees you hassling some guy then you can kiss playing
in the game goodbye.”

“Fine,” I muttered, turning my gaze
back toward the entrance to the computer science building. “What if he runs?”

“Then we chase after him, obviously,”
She said, glancing over at me as she took a drink from a bottle of water she’d
stashed in her bag. “I don’t think that he’s going to put up much of a fight,
especially by the looks of him. Becky said she he was a bit of a wimp.”

I nodded, glancing down at Greg’s
picture again on my phone. Jessica was right, the guy barely looked like he
could support his own weight, much less throw a punch. But I wasn’t sure that
would stop me from making him regret drawing Becky into Michael’s clutches.

“I think that’s him,” Jessica said
suddenly, drawing me out of my thoughts.

I looked up, scanning a crowd of
students as they began flooding from the double doors. Class must have just let
out and with the evening drawing closer it looked like everyone was eager to
head back to their dorms. I almost didn’t see Greg at first among all of the
passing faces, but it wasn’t until Jessica pointed him out that I finally
locked my sights onto him. He had a dark red baseball cap on, pulled down over
one side of his face, almost like he was trying to not be recognized, but doing
a poor job of it.

“Let’s go,” I said, helping Jessica to
her feet as we made our way after Becky’s boyfriend.

Greg didn’t seem to know we were
following behind him at first, his pace casual as he headed in the direction of
the Student Union. I motioned for Jessica to get out in front of him while I
stayed behind, hoping to catch him between the two of us, corner him before he
got to someplace crowded.

Before long the crowd thinned and soon
Greg was meandering along on the sidewalk, the street lamps flickering to life
as he turned toward one of the on-campus dorms. This was going to be one of the
only chances we’d have to get him alone. Jessica glanced back at me from in
front of Greg, hoping for a signal—but only succeeded in drawing Greg’s
attention behind him.

He might not have recognized Jessica
from the back, but he certainly recognized me almost immediately. All at once
his face flashed with both recognition and panic, freezing in place like a deer
caught in headlights.

“Greg,” I called out, my hands out to
the sides in a gesture that I wasn’t going to hurt him—not right away, anyway.

“I—” he stammered, taking a step away
from me, his hands going up above his head. “I didn’t!”

“You didn’t what?” I began, but before
I knew, it he was taking off in the opposite direction heading right for
Jessica. I started to head after him, my footfalls slapping against the
concrete like drumbeats. I knew that I could catch him, in fact he’d hardly
gone ten feet before I was halfway to him. But just as I was about to take him
down to noticed he’d already started to topple over.

I stopped just in time to watch Greg
fall into the low bushes that lined the sidewalk, my stepsister standing over
him. She turned her gaze toward me, a smile half-cocked on her face as she gave
me a shrug.

“What’d you do?” I asked as I took
another few steps closer, closing the distance between the three of us while
Greg recovered himself from the tangling grasp of the shrubs.

“Me?” she asked, eyebrows raised and
her hands raised in a show of mock surrender. “I didn’t touch him. He just
turned around and saw me running toward him and panicked. I didn’t have to lay
a hand on him—he sort of just did it himself.”

“You startled me!” Greg said, trying to
defend himself as he got to his feet.

I shook my head before grabbing Greg by
the front of his witty T-shirt, pulling him up nice and close to my face. I
could practically smell the fear on him, his face dripping with sweat as I
stared right into his eyes, my jaw set. I even threw in a growl for good
measure.

“Why did you take the pictures for
Michael?” I asked, drawing myself up over him as much as I could, trying to
seem more intimidating. I’d been the bully during my last few years of middle
school the anger of my mother’s death finding its way out onto others before I
found football. I knew how to make guys like Greg wet themselves.

“I’m sorry!” he said, throwing his arms
over his face to save himself from whatever punishment he imagined that I would
give him. “They said they’d pay me to get the pictures. I’m barely able to
afford to go here as it is! I figured that it wouldn’t do much harm. Getting a
picture of some guy and his girlfriend doing it? I figured Michael was just
being a pervert.”

“He didn’t tell you why he needed
them?” I asked, almost lifting him off the ground. I hoped to god no one came
around the corner and saw this, or this whole thing would have been for
nothing.

“No!” he exclaimed, turning his face
away from me in fear.

He was just a stooge
, I thought, shoving him
away from me hard. Greg didn’t know what Michael wanted with the pictures for
or even that Jessica and I were step-siblings. That, probably among other
things, meant that Greg probably had no clue how Michael was storing the
pictures or where any copies were.

“And what about Becky?” Jessica asked,
her voice quivering with anger. Before I could stop her, I heard the sound of
her hand meeting Greg’s face. “Did it
make
sense
when you threw her to those bastards? When you let her get
raped
in the bedroom at some
frat-house?”

Once again Greg was on the defensive,
her arms raised over his head as Jessica swung her bag at him. Her face was red
with anger as she forced him right back into the bushes. I’d never seen her so
mad in my life, all the fury of seeing what Michael and his friend had done to
Becky, of what Greg had let them do to her, it all poured out of her at once in
a violent torrent of rage.

“You let them violate my best friend!
You son of a bitch!” she cried out, forcing Greg onto the ground with another
swing of her bag. “You lead her right to them, and they chewed her up and spit
her out like she was garbage!”

“I didn’t know what they were going to
do!” he whimpered, curling up into a ball on the concrete. “I swear to God, I
didn’t know they were going to touch Becky!”

Jessica stopped, her chest rising and
falling rapidly, her face still red. It was taking everything that she had to
keep from swinging that bag again. I knew I’d have to step in if my stepsister
couldn’t control herself, but would I want to?

“They told me that they’d give me the
money at the party,” he continued after the assault had abated, lowering his
guard so that he could look up at Jessica. “When I handed Michael the pictures,
I noticed that something was wrong. Becky wasn’t acting right; she looked
drowsy and confused. And when I asked them for the money, they just laughed.

“Michael’s guys pulled Becky off the
couch and told me that they were going to show her a good time,” Greg’s eyes
started to well up with tears. “I tried so hard to get them to stop. I tried to
bring her back. I ended up getting my ass kicked and thrown out of the house.”

“Why didn’t you call the cops?” I
asked, my brow furrowed.

“I did!” he shouted, his own anger
rising in his voice. “And by the time they got there, the party was over. And
besides, half the cops on campus were
in
AEΩ. They’d never have done anything to their brothers.”

Jessica took a step back, her hands
covering her mouth as she dropped her bag to the ground. She turned her eyes
toward me and I watched them begin to fill with tears. I knew that look, that
hopeless frustration. She and I knew exactly what the other was thinking—if the
campus police were on Michael’s side, then we were going to some damn hard
evidence if we even wanted to think about getting justice for Becky.

“You’re going to help us get those
pictures back, Greg,” I said, glaring down at him. “Jessica and I aren’t about
to let Michael get away with this, or with what he did to Becky.”

“You don’t understand,” he whimpered,
looking up at me in fear. “They’ll kill me. If they find out that I’m helping
you, then I’m a dead man! No, I won’t do it!”

Before I could move to grab him, Greg
was scrambling away between me and Jess, sprinting down the sidewalk at
breakneck speeds. I started to run after her, but the feeling of Jessica’s hand
on my chest kept me from giving chase.

“Let him go,” she whispered, her eyes
still downcast. “We’ll just have to find another way.”