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Thousands of miles away.
His eyes land on me with a mixture of confusion and terror.
“Did you… did you kidnap him from the U.S. and bring him here?” I ask.
“Yes, malishka. For you.”
What the fuck?
He’s out of his goddamned mind.
I try to speak, but a million questions race through my mind, all begging to be asked at once.
Alek senses my struggle because he kneels in front of me on the floor, stroking my hand. “He is the one responsible for filming and uploading the video.”
I stare at Alek, then at Chad, while the gears in my mind churn at full speed. “Why?”
“That is an excellent question,” Alek says. “Let’s ask him, shall we?”
Rising to his feet, he places one last kiss on my hand before releasing me. He stalks over to Chad, who is on his knees and shaking like a leaf. Alek rips the tape from his mouth, which wrenches a pained cry from him.
Alek reaches into his pocket to pull out a switchblade—the same one I’m intimately familiar with. He grabs a fistful of Chad’s thick hair and yanks his head back, which gives him access to press the knife to his throat.
“She asked you a question,” Alek says. His voice is level, but it leaves no room for negotiation. “I suggest you answer with the truth.”
Blood beads at his neck as Alek applies more pressure with the blade. Chad closes his eyes, and a tear slips down his cheek.
“I-I’m sorry!” he cries. “I didn’t mean to!”
“You didn’t intend to film my girlfriend having sex and upload it to a porn website?” Alek asks. His voice is dangerous.
Chad doesn’t respond. Instead, frightened tears gush forth, and a moment later, a dark circle on the front of his jeans appears as he wets himself.
I watch the scene unfold before me as a casual bystander, despite being at the center of it. Anyone else would be moved by Chad’s emotion and feel sorry for him.
But I don’t. I can’t muster any pity for him.
I stand up, slowly, and make my way over to them. Grabbing his face, my fingers dig into his cheeks as I force him to look up.
Chad looks away and shakes his head, but only with subtle motions to avoid slicing himself on the knife at his throat. His bottom lip trembles.
“Just tell me why,” I ask. “What did I do to make you blast that all over the internet?”
“It had nothing to do with you!” he cries. “I swear! I just wanted to humiliate Tyler and the rest of the team. They’ve been picking on me ever since I fumbled the ball at the championship game, and I thought… I don’t know.”
“Say it,” Alek hisses, tightening his grip on Chad’s hair.
He cries out again. “I thought it would humiliate them the way I was humiliated, but it didn’t work, because they got more popular after the video. Their girlfriends didn’t even break up with them. They just forgave them for cheating, and—”
“Shut up.”
Chad’s eyes fly open to stare wide-eyed at me. “Willow, I’m so sorry, please forgive—”
I slap my hand over his mouth, and it takes me back to that night in his truck. “You never know when to shut the fuck up, do you?”
I wasn’t the target. I was just collateral damage in some stupid high school drama.
That video damn near made me throw myself off a cliff, and I was just collateral damage.
