by G. , Whitney
Grabbing the chips, I take it over to him just as he’s standing up from the couch.
“Took you long enough.” He scoffs, taking the glass from my hands. “Let’s play a new game of chess since reruns are on.”
It’s not a question. I don’t have a choice.
Taking my seat at the glass table, I set up the board as he takes a seat across from me.
“This is really good,” he says, taking a long sip of his drink. “I’ll have to buy more cherry coke this week. If you learn to behave like your brother, I’ll think about getting you a few cases for the basement.”
I move my pawn first, and he follows suit—talking to me in between moves as if he’s trying to distract me from what will undoubtedly be another win for me.
He’s honestly far too predictable to make this game interesting, and sometimes I’d rather not play at all than share a board with him.
By the time we’re sixteen moves in, I’m ready for a damn checkmate, but I hold back and let it drag out by making small pawn moves. He’s finished his drink and he’s sweating profusely, but he doesn’t look unusual.
“Get me a fucking Sprite.” He snaps, and I oblige—jumping up and quickly returning with a cup.
“You’ll only have about fifteen minutes to use the shower when we finish,” he says, snatching the glass from my hands. “I’d use them wisely if I were you. We’ll be having a few new visitors next week and you have a lot of—” He suddenly sucks in a loud breath and drops his glass to the floor. The bubbles hiss and fizz as they splatter on the hardwood.
His eyes go wide and he grabs his neck, as if he can stretch it wide enough to force in fresh air.
I watch as he gags, as he stumbles forward and falls onto our game, then onto the floor.
“Call fucking 9-1-1…” His face is paling. “Now.”
I pick up his cell phone and dial the 9 and the 1, but then I stop.
What the hell am I doing?
I step back and erase the numbers, then I set his phone down on the window sill.
“Michael, Michael…” He’s struggling to breathe, pleading with his eyes. “Please…”
I don’t move. I just watch as his face shifts from white to blue, as he writhes in painful agony. His gagging and gurgling sounds become more labored as the seconds pass, and then there’s silence.
Beautiful, freedom signaling silence.
I walk over and stand over his body, realizing how sad of a human being he is. How even he was scared of something bigger than himself in the end.
Or, so I thought…
He suddenly starts coughing again, managing to wheeze and let out another soft, “Help…Please.”
I’m not sure what comes over me, but I lean over him and grab his neck—gripping it as hard as I can. Using all of my frustration and pain for power, I strangle him until I can feel the last breath leave his body. I keep my fingers on him long after he’s gone, wanting to secure my future, wanting to make sure he never wakes up again.
“Uncle Avery, can I stay free for—” Trevor gasps as he steps into the kitchen, all the color leaving his face. “What the hell are you doing, Michael?”
“Getting rid of our problem,” I said. “Help me put his body in the deep freezer. Get some trash bags.”
“You killed him…” His eyes widen, and he takes a step back. “How did you…How did you even—”
“Now, Trevor.”
He hesitates for a few seconds, but then he walks over to the drawer and pulls out several black trash bags. He slices them open with a pair of scissors and spreads them onto the floor.
We take our time wrapping every part of him, and good measure, I stuff a wad of paper towels into his mouth and use duct tape to shut it. In the off chance that he magically wakes up and takes another breath, it’ll be his last.
We struggle to drag him across the living room floor and down to the basement. He’s at least one hundred eighty pounds, and the sickening sound of his head hitting each step makes Trevor vomit.
Propping his body against the metal pole, we rest for a while before lifting him up and placing him into the freezer.
The moment I shut it, I let out pained screams and feel warm tears fall down my face.
Trevor’s cries are far louder, and for what feels like forever, we sit down next to each other and let out years’ worth of hurt.
I don’t know it then, but those are some of the last tears I’ll ever cry in my life.
The adrenaline that’s rushing through my veins is clouding any bit of sympathy. All I can think about right now is the fact that the man who has ruined the past few years of my life is rightfully dead.
“Now what do we do?” Trevor asks.
“Now, we live our lives,” I say. “It’s going to take some time to figure out how we do that, though. We haven’t been enrolled in any school since tenth grade…”
He blinks. “You don’t think any of his friends are going to come looking for him in two weekends? It’ll be the monthly Poker Night.”
I hold back a sigh and think.
“We need to bury him first,” I say. “We need to make sure that he’s at least ten feet under.”
“On all the TV shows they only suggest six.”
“Exactly.” I sigh. “We need to dig deeper than that, and it’s going to take us a while…”
* * *
For a week and a half, we move out of the house at midnight—laboring under the moonlight. We cover the hole with a tarp during the daylight hours, setting the swings he never let us use back in place.
We bury him without a word about his life, without any remorse whatsoever. Without ever saying the words aloud, we both agree that this incident never happened. That as far as we know, he simply walked out of our lives one day. Just like our mother.
In between discussing our options (What the do we do now? Who can we call? How the hell do we move on after this?) , we rummage through his things and after looking through his bank statements and emails, we realize that we aren’t the only people he’s hurt. He’s a criminal of the highest degree, and he’s been siphoning millions from his own company.
Not only that, but although we knew he was the devil, we didn't know he had a second life outside of us. That he was dating a woman named Stella who lived on the other side of town (but he had several other mistresses), was a member of some type of whiskey aficionado club, and was well-revered by all of his peers.
He'd lived an amazing life while stealing ours...
“You need to tell them not to come,” Trevor says, sitting across from me as I put down a letter he sent to one of his many mistresses. “That’s the first thing.”
“I thought the first thing was figuring out how we could possibly get back into school.”
“No,” he said, holding up a few sheets of paper. “The asshole had us enrolled in school…Apparently we were gifted and we graduated a year and a half ago. We also got into Hudson College and deferred acceptance.”
“How is that even possible?”
“I think Mr. Choate was a Hudson board member or something…We can figure that out later.” He swallows, shaking his head. “Tell them not to come, Michael.”
I unlock his cell phone and scroll through the recent contacts. When I reach the end of the list, I notice that there’s a folder titled, “Poker Club.”
Opening it, I seethe at the sight of his digital black book.
He has all the names, addresses, and phone numbers of all the people who’ve abused me and Trevor. For some of them, he even has their occupations and their company names.
The men are all upstanding citizens of New York, men who hold powerful positions and own profitable businesses.
I draft a message and select all of their names, hesitate a few seconds before hitting send.
Text: Poker Club is cancelled. Indefinitely.
Relieved, I start to put it down, but then it begins buzzing against my fingertips.
Response: Are you sure?
> Response: You know I have some of the best lawyers in the state. Want to discuss this over lunch?
Response: You don’t think the boys will talk to anyone do you? I know a therapist you can take them to…He’ll report what they say to us and we can make sure the police won’t get involved.
Response: Are you still coming to the Poker Night Bill is hosting next weekend?
The responses continue to come in, and I read each and every one of them. Stunned that these men are more concerned with covering their asses than anything else.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Trevor shakes my shoulder. “Why are you looking like that?”
“Because Poker Night or not, they’ll just find a way to do what they do to someone else.”
“Makes sense,” he says. “I don’t think people like that will change overnight.”
“I think people like that deserve to die.”
He nods, picks up a few sheets of paper. “I can call the school tomorrow and see what the terms of deferment are. We’ll probably have to take some super basic classes and—”
“Did you not hear what I said?” I knock the papers out of his hands.
“Yeah. People like that deserve to die. I agreed with you.”
“I heard that part.” The phone is still buzzing with their responses. “I’m waiting for you to say that you’ll help me do it.”
His eyes widen and he’s looking at me as if I’ve grown two heads. “Michael, you’re joking, right?”
“I’m not laughing.”
“Michael, there’s so much shit running through my mind right now, so many things that I need to fucking process, and I can guarantee that one of them isn’t becoming a goddamn murderer.”
“It’s not murder if they killed you first.” I don’t feel bad saying that. “I’ll never be able to process this shit until they’re gone.”
He stands up from the table. “I’m calling social services tomorrow. I’m going to tell them that he walked away and that we need mental help. Especially you, no offense.”
“None taken.”
“Good. I’m going to try to sleep more than five hours tonight and see if it works.”
We both know that it won’t—it never will, but I give him an encouraging nod anyway.
“Wait, Trevor,” I say, before he can leave the room.
“Yeah?” He looks over his shoulder.
“If you still can’t sleep and this still haunts you after so many years, will you help me get some of them back?”
He stares at me for a long while, and then he lets out a breath. “No, I won’t help you get some of them. It’ll be all of them…”
* * *
It takes ages for us to “cope” with the so-called tragedy—we’re cycled in and out of therapists’ offices every other month. It’s not until we both enroll in graduate school that we become somewhat sane. (And by “somewhat” I mean fucking barely.)
His advanced degree is in business accounting. Mine is dual. English and Forensic Science.
He goes into the corporate world—finding numerous ways to makes millions. I slip into the darkness—finding ways to do the same.
After several years, we return to the promise we made about getting every one of those men back. Armed with enough experience in the real would, with enough knowledge to begin to build, we start with the richest client and work on a six-month plan, to get him to his grave.
I didn’t care how many more years it took. How long each job would take, who I would have to pretend to be. Since I’d never be able to rest in peace, since I was always too weak to save myself, I could spend all of my waking hours preventing them from hurting someone else.
All or nothing…
—
END OF EPISODE #2
Legacy of Lies
Michael & Meredith’s crazy story has tons more twists and turns to come in the next part of this story, Legacy of Lies! You won’t believe how much more intense this story gets! You can pre-order it now, by tapping here.
In the meantime, be sure to check out my other erotic romances, which are full-length novels: Mister Weston (Meredith’s best friend Gillian is the heroine in this story ) and Reasonable Doubt (Probably one of the sexiest alphas I’ve ever created is in this one, and his name is Andrew Hamilton.)
Speaking of erotic romance, my next full-length novel in this genre is FILTHY LAWYER, and it can be pre-ordered here.
Author’s Note
Thank you to every reader who is currently reading this note. I wrote this story for myself and it’s a true passion project, but I wanted to share it with you.
Between you and me, I spend the majority of my reading hours on thrillers and suspense, so I wanted to bring in the new year (and new decade) by writing something in that vein while still keeping the romance.
Originally, I had no plans to publish this serial. It was going to be printed and tucked away in my desk drawer where I keep a box of manuscripts labeled, “Just for Me,” but I dared myself to hit publish for this one. Perhaps doing so will give me the courage to publish the others someday. Maybe.
Anyway, if you read it and loved it, please leave a review to let others know. (If you hated it…Well, keep that shit to yourself. LOL Just kidding! Please leave a review for that as well.) If you want to personally tell me your thoughts, you can find me here: Instagram or Facebook.
Also, please sign up for my mailing list so I can keep you in the loop about my upcoming work. Or, if you’re not into that, check in with me every so often at whitneygbooks.com where I spill the “tea” on whatever I’m working on next.
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU.
F.L.Y.
(Effin love you)
Whitney G.
