“What do you want, Tori?” My voice is almost vicious. If Drew’s safety depended on me physically fighting her, she’d be down in point five seconds.
She gives me a startled look. “I already told you. All I want is for you to break up with him.”
“No.”
The word rips from me like an animal’s cry.
Tori puts on a disappointed face, her head tilting with weary patience. “Now, Evie. You know I only want what’s best for you. How can I let you keep seeing someone who’s so depraved, so unethical, he’d not only steal, but steal fromme?”She flicks a palm toward her chest. “Me. Your own sister.”
Angry tears blur my vision. “He didn’t steal from you. You’re just trying to hurt me.”
Tori slowly shakes her head. “No, my love. And I’m sure the police, not to mention Mom and Dad, will see that.” Her soft voice feels like razor wire to me now.
Razor wire. Like the kind that tops prison fences.
Oh God.
If she filed a police report — if there was an investigation with evidence — who would believe Drew? Who would believe us? If I told the police that Tori had staged all of this, would they even listen? Would Mom and Dad?
Tori seems to be reading my mind. “In the end, I can only hope a jury would serve justice, but now that you need a unanimous guilty verdict, it’s hard to say,” Tori says, still speaking like she’s reciting a nursery rhyme. “But that might take… oh, I don’t know… a year or more in the courts. And with Mr. Moroux’s history, he probably wouldn’t make bail, so he’d be in j—”
“Shut up.” I turn away from her, unable to listen anymore.
But I know she’s right. I know it in my bones. If she so much as files a report, Drew’s freedom will be in jeopardy. And I have no doubt Tori will press charges. Even if he isn’t convicted, Drew’s life will be derailed once again.
Because of me.
I need to warn him. I need to tell him what she’s done.
“You’d better not be thinking about leaving.” For the first time since I walked inside, Tori sounds like herself. Angry. Biting. Vicious. I wheel around to face her. Tori’s mouth is set in nasty scowl. I see at once the last thing she wants is for me to walk away. To deny her this victory.
I should just leave. Run across the street and tell Janine exactly what’s going on. Maybe we could call the police together. Stop Tori before she can do anything.
“You walk out that door, and I pick up the phone. The police will be here in minutes.” Threat is now clear in her voice. She’s practically snarling.
So much for bolting across the street.
“You have one chance to protect your boyfriend, Evie. You will call him over here right now,” she growls through gritted teeth. “You will break up with him here. In this room where I can hear you.”
My mouth falls open at this, but before I can protest she talks over me.
”And then you will write an email to Mom and Dad telling them you’ve broken up with him. That you’re coming home, and that you want to take them up on their offer to travel as soon as possible.”
“Tori, that’s ridi—”
“I don’t give a fuck where you go, but you will leave the country for no less than two months or I will turn him in.”
“What?!”She’s lost her mind. My sister has lost her mind. “You’re telling me if I don’t break up with my boyfriend, quit my job, andleave the country,you’ll frame him?”
A glimmer of conscience ripples across her face, and for just a moment she looks startled to hear all of this out loud. But the look is gone just as quickly as it appeared. Smugness takes its place.
“I guess that depends on how much he means to you.”
Everything.
Drew means everything to me.
But this is madness. Surely, I couldn’t go through with this. And why does she want me to leave for two months?
