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“I’m going to kill him,” I mutter through clenched teeth.
“Didn’t you learn not to go around saying things like that?”
“I mean it this time,” I tell her. “Allyson, did he—”
“Don’t say it,” she begs. “Please, don’t say it.”
“You need to tell the police, Allyson. And the nurse—you need to have them do a…rape kit.”
“No,” she cries. “No, I don’t want to. I just want to leave. If it didn’t hurt to move, I’d run right now. It won’t matter, Devon. If you love me, please don’t make me.”
“Has this happened before?”
She nods. “This is the third time. The first time was…right before my seventeenth birthday. I told Grace, and…that was the first time she hit me. She called me disgusting. She said it was my fault.”
Tears sting my eyes, threatening to spill over, and I swallow hard. “I lied about the money, Ally. I didn’t use it to pay my lawyer—I still have it. It’s under my bed. I’ll give it back. You can go.”
She looks at me like she’s ready to fight me—like she wants to be angry about it but simply doesn’t have the energy for it. I’d deserve it. She said everything that happens to her in that house is my fault now because I took her money and wrecked her plans. So…this is my fault, too.
“Okay,” is all she whispers.
And after she goes…I think I really will kill him. Because Ally is right—it wouldn’t matter. And if that’s the case, then what’s the point of any of this? Jack gets to try and kill me and my mom, and then he gets to spend all the time he wants with Ivy. Mark gets to rape his underaged niece and be a congressman. Ally’s mom sits in prison because she was desperate and had no one to help her. Whoever really killed Darci will probably never pay for it, and our parents suffer every minute of every day for it.
It’s not fucking fair. And I think maybe I should level the playing field a bit. And Icoulddo it. Maybe I wouldn’t have been able to a year ago—maybe I wasn’t a violent personthen—but like I told Ally, I’m different now.
A radiology tech comes into the room and tells Ally they’re ready for her upstairs. I start to get up to follow, but she tells me I’m not allowed to go with her. I watch her go and pace the room, nervously waiting for what feels like an eternity for her to return.
The nurse steps back inside with a police officer behind her.
“Did you ask to speak to an officer?” he asks.
“Yeah, I did,” I tell him. “My girlfriend was attacked by her uncle. She probably won’t talk to you, but I want to file a report.”
He sits down in the chair in the corner, a clipboard and pen in hand.
He asks for some basic information about Ally, the date and nature of the attack, and then he asks the question I’ve been waiting for.
“And what is the name of the attacker?”
“Mark Harris.”
His brows furrow, and he looks up at me. “Mark Harris? The congressman?”
I nod. “Yes, that’s the one.”
“Wait a minute, aren’t you…”
“Yeah, I am. Devon West, the one you guys falsely arrested for my sister’s murder.”
When they bring Ally back, she refuses to say much to the police officer, only nods. She’s angry with me—I can tell—but she’s also too tired from being in too much pain for too long to care. She falls asleep, and a few hours later, the doctor comes into the room and tells us that Ally’s lungs appear to be intact and there is not any internal bleeding. They send us home with a prescription for pain pills and tell us there’s nothing more they can do with fractured ribs; she just needs to rest and wait for them to heal.
I pull the car up, and the MA wheels her out the front door and helps her inside.
“I’ll take you to my house,” I tell her. “We can pick up your pills on the way. I’ll stay with you, and then when you can walk better again, we’ll get you out of here, okay?”
“What if they come for me?” she asks. “We went through the door. They’ll know that I’m with you.”
Then they’ll get what they deserve.
