Hateful Bully (Bad Bullies Book Two): A Dark Step Brother Bully Romance

by Logan Fox

  I’m not surprised. Mom never could hold onto a guy, especially once they’d gotten what they wanted from her. That’s how men are.

  When the show is over, they leave.

  They always fucking leave.

  That’s why she was looking for me.

  But I was drunk, depressed, and bleeding in the pool house. They probably had a fight while Josiah and I were playing Truth and Dare.

  My shoulders sag.

  I don’t know what’s more pathetic—that I’m actually going to miss living in this beautiful house, or that this has been the best few months of my life. Even discounting Josiah’s attitude problem, the boarding school, and Emma.

  I dry my hands on the dishcloth and head upstairs.

  Time to pack again.

  There’s a faint, far off banging sound that keeps pestering me as I fold up clothes and pack them into my suitcase.

  I try to ignore it, but it’s grating on my already tattered nerves.

  I pause my packing and head over to my bedroom window. At first, I can’t make out anything that might be causing the noise.

  Tires crunch over gravel. I stiffen for a moment, and hope to God that it’s Josiah that’s home and not his father.

  I don’t want to be alone with him in this big house.

  I shake away the thought with a bemused smile. Sure, he was acting a bit weird last night, but that’s no reason to feel uncomfortable around him.

  Except I do, and the feeling won’t go away no matter how much logic I throw at it. I hear someone coming up the stairs, and the footfalls don’t sound heavy enough to be Wayne’s.

  What if Josiah comes into my room?

  I want to talk to him, sure, but at the same time, I don’t want to be alone with him any more than I do Mr. Bale.

  I don’t trust myself around him anymore.

  Last night proves that I have absolutely zero self-control, and that I’m a slut to boot. Who else would do the things I did…would let her stepbrother do the things he did?

  It should make me sick just thinking about it…instead, it makes my insides clench.

  I breathe out a sigh of relief when I hear the footsteps ascend to the third story.

  I turn back to my packing—just toiletries left now.

  Thump.

  Thump.

  Where the hell is that noise coming from?

  I go over to my window and stick my head out, scanning the ground below. And then I hear it again. I turn and look up.

  Shit!

  Josiah’s climbing out an upstairs window a few yards above my head. “What are you doing?”

  Josiah loses his grip when he turns in my direction. For a horrific moment, I’m convinced he’s going to fall. My entire body goes rigid at the thought that I’m literally about to watch Josiah die.

  But then he grabs onto a nearby drainpipe and steadies himself. Only then does he send a glare my way. He doesn’t answer, but it was a stupid question to ask, anyway. It’s clear what he’s doing, but why?

  Thump.

  My eyes dart away from him. Several yards away, a wooden shutter bangs against its jamb as a gust of wind tugs at it.

  I try to picture where that room is, counting windows as I walk down the third-floor landing in my mind.

  Wayne’s study.

  I watch Josiah for one more second before shoving away from the window and hurrying out my room. I take the stairs two at a time, and grab the railing as I swing around and onto the third story landing.

  The study door is closed. When I rush over and grab the handle, my suspicion is confirmed.

  It’s locked.

  Has Josiah made it to the study yet?

  I stare at the master bedroom. That must be where he climbed out.

  God, he’s so OCD. Could he honestly not have waited for Wayne to get home?

  I hurry into the bedroom and then stop. I’ve never been in here before. My gaze sweeps over the tasteful furnishings.

  A gold-and-cream king-sized bed, gleaming walnut dresser, and serene paintings are all placed just so throughout the room.

  Who’d done the manor’s interior decorating? Was it Josiah’s mom, or did they hire someone? If it was her, she was very talented. Every room in this place could have belonged on the page of a magazine.

  Mr. Bale must have put on cologne just before he left; his scent hangs heavy in the air.

  I don’t know why, but I drink in that smell with a massive breath, nearly tasting it when I exhale.

  The carpet is different in here. Despite the chill, I haven’t bothered with socks or shoes yet today. There’s enough underfloor heating to keep Bale Manor’s interior warm in any weather. My toes curl against the pale carpet fibers.

  My fingers dig deep, hands spasming. My face is pressed against the floor, shifting, burning as I try to crawl away.

  I’m too heavy, too clumsy.

  Fingers close around my ankle, dragging me back with a low laugh.

  “Where are you going, Candy Cane?”

  Thump.

  My eyes fly open.

  What the fuck was that? I put a hand to my heart in case it manages to break out through my damn ribcage.

  I try not to think about the strange image that just popped into my head, do my best to ignore the sensation of my feet crushing carpet fibers, and hurry over to the open window.

  As I stick my head out, Josiah disappears into the study.

  Relief should have slowed my heart, but instead, I feel trapped here by the window. Phantom fingertips dance up my spine, and I slowly turn to study the room again. Something had caught my eye on the way over to the window, but what…?

  Instead of a flat-screen opposite the bed, there’s a painting.

  It’s a forest scene, the colors washed out like there’s a fog. Pale green and beige and just a hint of darker shadows.

  There’s a deer in that painting, her head lifted, her ears pricked as if she senses something lurking in the fog banks.

  In my mind’s eye, that fog swirls. The deer trembles. Satiny fabric rubs against my back.

  I don’t know how long I stand there, barely breathing, as the painting comes to life and plays havoc with my brain. My body is a distant, alien thing. It’s as if I’ve stepped into an alternate reality. My mind is in this one, hallucinating on that painting, but my physical body is somewhere else. Somewhere where ethereal hands are running all over my body. Where fingers pinch and grasp and caress where they shouldn’t.

  Downstairs, a door bangs. Someone’s talking, and they sound pissed off.

  Josiah’s dad.

  Josiah!

  I spin around and throw myself halfway out the window. Below, the ground capers for me. I force myself not to look, not to think about how hungry gravity is.

  Josiah’s nowhere to be seen.

  The window is still open. The shutter bangs as I watch.

  Where the hell is he? Did he trip going in and hit his head, or is he so caught up with whatever he’s decided to do to fix the window that he hasn’t realized his father’s home?

  Either way, I can’t be in here. Wayne will be furious if he catches me in his room. He’ll be furious if he finds Josiah in his study.

  It’s a sacred space to him. I don’t even think my mom was allowed in there.

  You can stall him.

  The thought barely enters my mind before I’m rushing across the room.

  Too long, Candy.

  You took too fucking long.

  Wayne’s already coming up the stairs. I can hear him on the phone.

  “…Make sure you’re there the next time they want to fucking question me.”

  I freeze. Now I’m well and truly trapped. If I go out of the room, he’ll see me, and he’ll know I was in here. He can’t know. Whatever happens, he cannot know.

  Hide.

  Padding as silently and as quickly as I can, I dart into the bedroom’s walk-in closet. His cloying scent is nauseatingly thick in here.

  “They probably t
hink I fucking killed her, that’s why!”

  My heart shrinks to a withered grape, and my stomach twists up inside me. I collapse into a little ball, scrunching my way into the first dark space I see. Fabric drapes the top of my head, my shoulders, but there’s not enough of it to cover me fully.

  “Tomorrow at eleven.” he couldn’t be further than a yard away. He sounds calmer, but the fact that he’s so close has my skin prickling with unease. “I couldn’t care if you’re in a fucking coma. You’re there to represent me, or you’ll never practice law in this state again.”

  I hold my breath, straining for the slightest sound so I can calculate how close he is. Whether he’s moving away, or toward—

  Wayne steps into the walk-in closet. He’s yanking on his tie, a grimace distorting his mouth. His gaze is fixed on nothing in particular.

  In the center of the narrow room, alongside a cabinet where cuff links and jewelry take center stage, sits a crushed velvet stool.

  My eyes are drawn to a flash of green on that cabinet before Wayne draws my eye again.

  He sits on the stool, leaning back to kick off his dress shoes. Next are his socks, tugged off with a crooked finger.

  “Probably the same they’ll be asking tomorrow,” he growls. “Where I was, where Diana was, where the kids were.”

  He shrugs off his jacket, coming to stand again. Then he walks right up to where I’m huddling. Because I was stupid enough to choose his damn suit cupboard to hide in.

  Air washes over me, filled with his unique scent; cologne, musk—but also something new.

  Cigarettes?

  He stands less than two feet away from me as he shrugs off his blazer. Keeping his phone wedged between his shoulder and his ear, a wooden hanger rattles above and to the side of where I’m cowering as he hangs it up again.

  “I told you, we were both at home. Kids were at school.” There’s the clink of metal, but he’s blocked out by the tuxedo dangling beside my shoulder. Then he turns, and I watch a sliver of him as he yanks open his belt and rips it from his suit pants.

  “No.”

  His belt drops silently to the carpet.

  “Because she’s not here anymore.”

  Mom?

  I so desperately want to breathe, but I’m too scared he’ll hear me, somehow sense the change in temperature when I exhale.

  Wayne unbuttons his shirt, fingers fast and agile as he works his way down before yanking his shirt from his pants.

  “Not by tomorrow.”

  He makes an angry sound as he rips off his shirt and lets it drop to the floor. My stomach tightens into a ball tighter than the one I’m huddled in.

  There’s a tattoo on his chest. It’s faded with age, but still legible.

  invictus maneo

  Blood turns to ice in my veins.

  “You sound just like them. It was an accident,” Wayne says. He unzips his fly and steps out of his pants. Black briefs cling to him as he turns and grabs another hanger, his suit pants going right alongside the suit jacket. “Which happened a long fucking time ago. That’s got nothing to do with this.”

  He moves to a set of shelves and takes down a pair of sweat pants. With his back to me, all I can do is watch the muscles under his skin move as he steps into the sweats and tugs them up his legs.

  Then he’s out of the closet. I hear him moving around in his bedroom.

  I should be relieved; he didn’t see me, Josiah might even be in the clear.

  But I’m not.

  Because somehow, I recognized his tattoo.

  I squeeze my eyes closed and press the heels of my palms into my sockets until bright little lights dance in the dark.

  I’ve seen those briefs before too. I recognize the brand name—America Made—sprawled all over the elastic.

  The knowledge makes me want to rip out my hair and scream until my vocal cords snap.

  Because I can’t remember when, or why, or how I could have seen Mr. Bale stripped to his underwear.

  But I did.

  And for some reason, I’d buried that memory deep, deep, deep…as if I never wanted to find it again.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Josiah

  I’m a fucking idiot. I was so focused on getting over here to fix the window, I forgot to actually bring anything with me to do the job. I pull open the bottom drawer on my father’s desk and hunt around, but there’s just a bunch of stationery in there. The middle one’s got a box of cigars and the case for his spectacles. Out of vanity, he only wears them when he’s too tired to put in his contacts.

  The top drawer is locked.

  I open the bottom one again and grab the letter opener.

  Don’t have a fucking clue if this will work, but it’s better than nothing, right? Else I’ll have to repeat this entire trip after I’ve been down to the garage and gotten hold of some proper tools.

  One of the screws has pulled out about half an inch on the shutter. Now it’s offset just enough that it can’t get back into the jamb without a heavy tug from inside.

  Well, I don’t have the luxury of pulling it closed from the inside, because then I’d be trapped in here until Dad comes home.

  But if I can tighten the screw, then I can close the window from the outside and wedge something between the shutter and the jamb to keep it closed so I don’t have the urge to take Dad’s fucking shotgun to the thing.

  The letter opener works as a flat-point screwdriver, but it’s too fat to fit into the seam once I’ve closed the shutter.

  My chest grows hot and tight when I think that I’ve done all of this for nothing. That because Dad doesn’t trust me, he locks up areas of the house like I’m a fucking criminal who’ll sell off the silver the moment he turns his back.

  I search the rest of the study, but there’s fuck all I can use.

  When I’m walking back to the window, the coffee table with its glass chess board catches my eye.

  I pause for a moment, imagining him and Candy battling it out. He probably lets her win every time. My hand trembles, and I realize I’ve got a death grip on the letter opener.

  I shouldn’t be pissed at her. I’m used to my dad using other people to manipulate me. He used to do that with Emma, too, even my mom. If I did something to piss him off, he’d shower them with love and affection, turning cold eyes to me if I made a fuss.

  Obviously, I stopped making a fuss. That was exactly what he wanted, after all.

  Sitting here all night, letting Candy drink as much as she wanted. Leaving her hungover ass for me to deal with in the mornings.

  Fuck it—I didn’t come here for nothing. There’s one place I haven’t looked, and right now, I couldn’t give two shits if I’ll get in trouble for busting it open.

  Surprisingly, it only took four kicks with the letter opener jammed into the space between the drawer and the lock for the wood to splinter and the drawer to inch open.

  I jerk it out and set the entire thing on the top of the desk. With the sky darkening outside, the study is cast in gloom, especially now that the shutter is closed. Although the fire does light up the place, the flames make the shadows dance and sway.

  Maybe I could just sit and chill in here until Dad comes home. I’d be in deep shit, but then I wouldn’t have to make that climb outside again.

  I push away the thought. I’ve got better things to do than sit here all day.

  I rifle through the things in the drawer. Something I nudge rattles. I lift out a white pill bottle. There’s no prescription sticker or anything on it, and I have no idea what Promethazine is, but I guess Dad got these when he put out his back. I hesitate, shrug, and pop open the lid. Shaking out a few of the pills, I slip them into my pocket before returning the bottle to the drawer.

  There are some unopened envelopes inside, a few pieces of paper.

  Nothing. Useless crap. Why the fuck did he bother locking this thing? Because of the pills?

  Yeah, that sounds about right.

  I lift the drawer, and it
s contents slide as I tilt it to put it back onto its rails.

  Jail—

  The fuck?

  I put the drawer back on the table. Taking out all the papers, I set them aside as I tilt my head to make out the rest of the magazine’s title.

  Jail Bait

  The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I take out the magazine. There are more beneath it, one of them still wrapped in black plastic.

  I turn the first page. Then the next. The next.

  Morbid fascination keeps me turning. My slowly hardening cock speeds up the rate at which those pages flip from right to left.

  Jesus, where do they find these girls? And honestly, that’s what they are. None of them look older than sixteen or seventeen, what with their big, makeup-free eyes, small breasts, and shaved pussies.

  “…the next time they want to fucking question me.”

  My hard-on withers.

  I turn to the door. My heart’s beating so loud I doubt I’d be able to hear the key in the lock.

  Now I know why he locked the drawer.

  He didn’t want anyone finding this.

  And, idiot that I am, I made it pretty damn obvious that someone tampered with the lock.

  There’s no time to fix it, though.

  I need to get the fuck out of here.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Candy

  Wayne’s voice fades as he leaves his bedroom. I stay where I am, caught between the need to escape and the fear that I’ll run into him on the stairs.

  I strain to make out anything—a voice, a sound—and my entire body sags when I hear a car start up a minute later.

  He’s leaving.

  Air whooshes out of me as I exhale and slowly get to my feet. Icy prickles stab into my face. I clutch the railing for dear life as a wave of dizziness envelops me.

  There’s a thump from the room.

  No, it can’t be. I heard him—

  Quietly, the bedroom door opens and closes.

  Josiah.

  We both made it.

  I head for the closet door, but then detour to the jewelry stand in the middle of the small room instead. My knees brush against the stool Wayne was sitting on just a few minutes ago.