“Hey!” Adam started forward, but Nate moved in front of him now, shoving him back. Adam took a breath, staring at Nate for a second before looking past him to Logan. He turned to me. “What are you going to do?”
“I made you a promise a long time ago.”
Did he remember?
“I promised that if you fucked with me, Sam, or anyone I loved, I’d end you. I’d take away everything you hold close.” I gestured around the room. “I’d take your home. I’d take your girl. I’d take your money. And I’d take your reputation. Then I’d leave you alone, but not before I ruined you. We’ve decided it’s time to follow through.”
Adam started to laugh. “What? What can you do to me now?”
“You’re going to watch.” I nodded to Logan. He knew what to do, and he took off.
“Wha—” Adam pressed against Nate. “Is he looking for something?”
“What do you think? I just told you what we’re going to do. Think, Adam! Guess what we’re doing.” And as he frowned and pulled back from Nate, I looked to my best friend. “Mind taking one for the team? For a while anyway?”
Nate cocked his head to the side, then groaned. “Are you serious?”
He knew.
I nodded. “Sam said you liked Becky.”
He groaned again, letting his head fall back. “Seriously, Mason? I don’t want to date Becky Sallaway.”
“What?” Adam’s eyes locked on us. “What did you say?!”
He surged toward us, but Nate and I both lifted a lazy hand. We pushed him back, and he fell to a couch behind him.
I dropped my voice. “Just for a little bit. You want to date that other chick right now, anyway? This could get messy.”
“Sam’s going to know.”
“Sam doesn’t have to find out right away. And yes, Becky will know, but she’s not going to care.”
We turned as one toward Adam, who was shaking his head, his hands in his hair.
“I have a feeling she’ll take you up on a date,” I told Nate. “Maybe more than a couple times even.”
“Okay.” Nate pulled out his phone and dialed. “It’s late, but maybe she’s awake. I think Sam called her from my phone once. Let’s see if she still wants to talk to us.”
“Be—” Adam surged to his feet, yelling for Becky.
I rounded on him, my hand cocked, and hit him in the face. He fell back to the couch almost in the same motion as standing, like he was jerked back by the couch itself. I knocked him out.
Nate turned and grinned at me, his eyes on Adam. He ended the call. “What he doesn’t know, right?”
I grunted, heading into the bedroom Adam used. Logan found me a few minutes later. I was sitting on the edge of Adam’s bed.
“All the security footage is destroyed. We’re covered.” He nodded to the camera I had in my hand. “What’s that?”
I handed it over to him. “Push Play.”
He did, and a girl’s moans came from the machine.
Logan’s eyes widened. “Holy shit. Is this . . . ?” He pressed Pause. I stood as he zoomed in on the naked girl on Adam’s bed. She was spread-eagle, her tits and everything showing as he bent over, kissing between her legs. She had a blindfold on, and her arms were handcuffed to the bedposts. “Yeah, that’s Sullivan.”
He didn’t mean Adam’s ex-girlfriend either.
“I know,” I told him.
“Fuck.” He went to the next video. It was Tate again, and another. He kept going. There was a new girl in the tenth video. “Isn’t that—is that Miranda? No wait, it’s the other chick that was in the Fallen Crest Elite group. Amelia or something?”
I took the camera back from him. “Sam told me Becky was worried about some other girls, but she couldn’t find anything that showed Quinn was cheating on her.”
“But her gut said otherwise?”
Always trust your gut.
“Shit.” Logan shook his head. “House, rep, money, and girl. That’s what you take from someone if you want to cripple him.”
I scowled. I didn’t want to cripple Quinn. I wanted to destroy him. “You think I’m going too far?”
He laughed. “When you say you, you mean us, right? You’re not doing this alone.”
“I’ll take the blame.”
“For what? We’re not going to get blamed for this.”
“Sam’s going to be furious with me.” Sam wanted me to stop making decisions for her. She wanted to be included on these things.
He grew somber. “We’re not excluding her. We’re shielding her from the bad shit we do sometimes.”
He was right, but she’d still be mad. I rose, heading back into the living room after grabbing Adam’s laptop. I hadn’t found anything else in his room, just the camera, his computer, and some dirty magazines. I’d show Sam the camera. She could decide then.
Nate looked up from his phone. “It’s been fun, but . . .” He let his sentence hang in the air, and I got his drift.
We’d come in half-drunk, but we were real sober now. Seeing Adam on his porch, stepping inside and finding the camera in his bedroom, I knew I was changing.
“You know, there was a time when I would’ve burned this place down,” I murmured.
“We still can,” Logan said.
I shook my head. “No.” We were better than that. I gestured to the camera. “We have enough to destroy him. If he does anything, we release those videos. It’ll destroy anything Quinn tries to build over the years.”
“What videos?”
I tossed the camera over, and Nate caught it. He began looking through the videos and swore under his breath.
After a minute he handed it back over. “If you release those videos, you have to crop out the girls. Their identities have to be protected.”
I nodded. They would be. “I will. I gotta show this to Sam too.”
They both nodded.
A moment of silence passed as the three of us looked at each other. This was it. Nate would take the girl—or so Adam thought. I would take his reputation. The money would be worked out later. But there was one thing left.
Logan looked around the room. “So, just to be perfectly sure about this, we’re not torching the house. Right? Because we could. I’d be up for that.”
I laughed. “We can’t.”
I wanted to. The old Mason would’ve, and he was still inside of me, but I had changed. I was becoming better. Slightly.
I held up the camera. “This is enough.”
“You’re sure?”
I gave my brother a look. I heard the hopeful tone in his voice. I shook my head. “Apparently I have that STD called maturity too.”
Logan cursed. “That’s the worst of them. Such a shame.” He smiled, though.
Nate laughed. “Let’s get going in case Quinn tripped some alarm. You never know with him.”
Adam was still unconscious, and we left him where he was. We were in the vehicle and leaving the driveway when Nate hit the brakes.
“Wha—” I looked up to see why he’d stopped.
Sam and Taylor stared back at us.
SAMANTHA
Logan leaped from Nate’s car and hurried over to ours.
He flung my door open. “Let’s switch. I’ll go back with Taylor.”
I was slow to release my seatbelt. “What did you guys do?” I asked as I stood.
“Nothing really.” He cast a worried glance over my shoulder, to the road. “But we gotta go in case any alarms were tripped. It’s not good if we’re seen here.”
He took my seat, and I jumped in next to Mason, who moved over behind Nate. Taylor reversed her car, and we pulled out after them.
I waited a few minutes before asking, “Do I want to know what happened?”
Nate’s eyes flicked up and met Mason’s in the rearview mirror. Mason’s jaw clenched, but he handed over a camera from on the floor by his seat. “You can see for yourself.”
The first video disgusted me.
The second had my stomach churning, but the third actually made me retch. I grabbed for the door handle, but Mason was there. He caught my hands and pulled me back to his chest.