The Sex Tape, page 23
“You were recording me! Recording us!” she spat, her voice frantic as she carried on trying to destroy the cell.
“Recording?” Blake countered, his voice blurry with sleep. “Recording what?”
Lennox shoved him in the side as Blake attempted to sit up straighter. We had fallen asleep strewn about Briar’s bed like discarded teddy bears, wet spot be damned, but now, we were all sitting upright and trying to understand what the fuck our woman was doing.
Because, yeah, crazy as shit or not, she was ours.
No more beating around the bush, none of that prevaricating shit. Just the truth.
And the crappy truth?
She thought we’d betrayed her. Again.
Fucking ACP.
Okay, no. Sure, ACP were bastards, but it was time I stopped blaming them. We’d been the one to decide the sex tape was a good option. I’d been the one to go to my dad with the idea, and he’d pushed it ahead. Green lighting it. But only because I’d gone to him with the suggestion in the first place.
This was on me, one-hundred-percent, and now, Briar didn’t trust us.
Couldn’t trust us.
And who the fuck could blame her?
What a complete and utter clusterfuck.
I ran a hand over my face as Blake entreated, “Baby, we’re not recording you. We wouldn’t do that. Not after…”
Briar’s lip was trembling as she whispered, “The screen was on. I was looking into the fucking camera when I woke up, Blake. Explain that! Is this going onto the website? Is everyone going to think you’re studs and I’m more of a slut than before?”
I frowned at Lennox. “The fuck is she talking about? Recording? Is that even possible?” Not a single part of me believed that one of us had turned on the camera. But automatic overrides existed for a reason, and the fraternity had given us those damn phones.
I didn’t, and never had, had any trust in ACP, and I was well aware of the duplicity they were capable of. Even though I’d been behind the sex tape idea, that they’d gone ahead with it told me just how dishonorable an organization it was. And yeah, I knew I sounded like a hypocrite. But fuck, even hypocrites learned.
Lennox rubbed at his eyes again, but though he yawned and looked pretty bored, I could tell he wasn’t. He was thinking.
“Remote access is always a possibility,” he drawled slowly, his words interspersed with the cracking sound of glass smashing as Briar panted away with the force of her efforts while she tried to destroy Blake’s phone.
I cut her a look and felt my fucking heart break when she finally stopped, then dropped the phone like it was a steaming hot pile of shit—truer words had never been spoken—and staggered over to the wall so she could lean back against it. When she sank down until her butt hit the ground, and pressed her face into her knees, I felt like crying too.
Jesus.
We’d done this to her.
Us.
God, how could we ever get past this?
Lennox’s voice was almost toneless as he stated, “The only people who’d be able to… or who’d even want to remote access any of our gear is—”
“Yeah.” My mouth tightened, already knowing where he was going with this without having to say another word—it didn’t take a fucking rocket scientist, did it? “Still, if they caught a shot of us all together, then my father won’t let that go public. Not when I’m involved.”
A sob escaped Briar and it tore at me, made me clamber out of bed with none of the grace that had gotten me onto the Gildermann Academy basketball team, and had me stumbling over to her so I could sink beside her and hopefully offer some comfort. Well, if there was any comfort to give when I was one of the major reasons she was tormented now.
“I’m sorry, baby,” I whispered, curving my arm over her shoulder and tucking her close. That she let me get close to her at all should have boded well, but I didn’t think so. It was more like she didn’t have the energy to pull away, and that just broke my heart even more. She was tense with distress and I couldn’t blame her.
After what she’d been through, I knew she’d be traumatized for life. And that was on us, that was something we had to work on. Her trust issues were bound to present themselves from time to time, and at the start of a fledging relationship as we were, I knew that would be more of an issue than anything else.
“Why did you have to do this to me?” Her voice was broken and it killed me. Truly killed me, because this wasn’t Briar.
Before we’d gotten involved, she’d been strong, confident, and capable. Now, here she was, vulnerable, and huddled against the wall like a frightened animal.
There were many times in my life when I’d hated myself. Being a Brennan, I’d come to believe that self-hatred came with the name. We had too much power, too much influence, and none of it was used for the greater good.
Part of me had tried to con myself, tried to believe that the family’s foothold in ACP was for a good cause. Sometimes, maybe it was. None of the Gildermanns deserved to be in the White House, so ACP was working for the greater good in that instance. But I highly doubted that the greater good was their sole intention. Somewhere, hidden in the wings, there’d be a business decision behind it. A decision that the Gildermanns were against, that ACP couldn’t manipulate them out of.
That was the trouble with families like theirs. They had their own ranks, their own systems. And where ACP was concerned, that was something they couldn’t tolerate. The only way to combat that at all was complete annihilation. Which was what was going down with the Gildermanns, they just didn’t know it yet. Well, except for one Gildermann, that is.
“I have no answer that will justify what we did,” I told her, brushing a kiss against her temple. She tensed at the touch, but how could I be insulted after what we’d done? “All I can say, baby, is that we will never do anything like that ever again.”
It wasn’t much of a promise, but it was better than nothing. At least, I hoped.
Blake, who’d joined me on the floor with Briar, reached out and pressed a hand to her knee. His fingers were large against her delicate bones, and he squeezed gently as he whispered, “None of us will. And we’ll all spend the rest of our lives trying to make up for what we’ve done to you, Briar.”
His words should have terrified me. He’d just spoken for the three of us, spoken on a subject that dealt with not just his, but all of our futures. But I wasn’t scared. Maybe it was crazy, but I wanted Briar. Wanted her for me. And there was the difference.
All my life, I’d been doing what my father wanted, and if not him, then what my grandfather wanted. Even if I’d tried to rebel, my grandmother had made me promise to tie my future to ACP, so it had never truly been mine to do with as I willed. But this, here, now? The time was mine to make decisions for myself.
This entire situation had shone a light on my world, and now, I was finding it more tarnished than I appreciated.
If I didn’t appreciate it, then I couldn’t remain a part of it. I was no longer my family’s puppet. They could no longer pull on my strings, and this woman was the reason for my rebellion, the reason behind me breaking free of the chokehold my family had on me. She was, did she but know it, my liberation and incarceration at the same time.
“You can’t make promises like that,” she whispered, her voice still so broken that it tore me apart with guilt and shame.
“He can,” I told her softly, pressing her into my side like my proximity could infuse the words with the genuineness in them.
“We can’t just carry on like this,” she argued. “This is something that society, hell, our families won’t…”
“Fuck our families,” Lennox growled from his position on the bed.
When I glanced at him, I saw his shoulders were hunched over as he worked. His attention appeared to be on the expensive bit of kit, with his elbows on his knees and his head bowed as he studied Blake’s cell, but I knew him.
Knew how his strange brain worked.
Tech was his thing, matters of the heart not so much, and that he was as invested in this situation as Blake and me, told me everything.
For some crazy reason, we were all in.
Mutual attraction, guilt, whatever, we all wanted her, and none of us were willing to give her up, so that meant we had to share her, and honestly, I wasn’t averse to sharing. It wouldn’t be the first time. Hell, Lennox and I had enjoyed the same maid one summer at my family’s home in the Hamptons. That was when we were thirteen.
The thought had me rubbing a hand over my face in shame. Especially when I remembered my father throwing that back in my face a few years after. Consuela had been bought and paid for by him. Lennox and I had half been in love with the girl, but she’d been nothing more than a hooker, one my father had purchased to rid me of my virginity. Dad of the year alert, or what?
“It isn’t as easy as that,” she mumbled, her head rocking as she pushed her face against her knees. Blake moved his hand slightly, then ran it over the crown of her head until he could cup the back of her neck.
“We can do whatever the fuck we want to do,” he whispered, using a tone that would invite the Archangel Gabriel himself to sin.
“You know that’s bullshit!” For some reason, his words were the last straw. But as much as I hated to see her vulnerable, I didn’t like seeing her enraged either. Although I guessed, of the two evils, this was the lesser.
She flung her head back to glower at us, her body suddenly vibrating with outrage. Where before she’d been meek, now she throbbed with anger. She was a living, breathing hard-on, but I pushed my arousal to the side because this was important. This conversation mattered, she mattered, and it was time we showed her that.
“Is it?” I retorted, twisting so I could look at her. “Is it really bullshit? If it’s something we all want?”
“You have obligations to your families,” she sneered. “And even though mine thinks they can treat me like a whore for their cause, I’m still under their thumb too.”
“Then it’s time we liberate ourselves, don’t you think?” Lennox challenged, his attention finally on us and not on the cell phone. When we turned his way, he raised the cell, shook it in his hand, then did more damage than Briar had in her frenzy—threw it against the wall.
The sudden burst of violence had Briar flinching, then gaping at him. But Lennox ignored her. Instead, he coolly got to his feet, nakedness be damned, and folded his arms over his chest as he said, “We all wanted you from the start, Briar. All of us. Our families are stains on society, and for too long, we’ve allowed ourselves to be brought into the bullshit, dragged into their cesspool of lies.
“Well, after what we’ve had to do to get to this point, not just with you, but with the induction into ACP itself, I’m fucking sick of it. And this extra crap is just…” He shook his head. “No more.” As he moved his arm, it trembled with strain as he sliced it in front of him, punctuating his words. “No. More.”
I knew I wasn’t the only one to sense that something was wrong. Something more than the surface revealed.
Blake was almost frozen as he bit out, “What did you find on there?”
Lennox’s jaw was like stone. “It doesn’t matter. The second I get to my computer, I’ll deal with it. You don’t need to worry about it…”
“That you need to deal with anything at all tells me it does matter,” I argued. “Spill, Lennox. What the fuck did you find on there?”
“Shit I wouldn’t have bothered looking for if it weren’t for this situation,” he replied angrily, scrubbing at his forehead like he could erase whatever the hell it was he’d seen on there. “Shit I know Blake would never have downloaded.”
“Stop speaking so cryptically,” Blake growled. “What did you find on there?”
But from the thunder on Lennox’s features, I had a feeling I already knew. I shook my head, not wanting to believe that my own father had done this. But I’d heard about it before. Heard about another brother who had tried to defect, and ACP had used incriminating evidence that he’d apparently ‘downloaded’ to tie him to the fraternity for fear of risking jail.
Because I sensed Lennox wouldn’t say it out loud, not when Briar was here, I knew that I had to say it. We couldn’t keep things from Briar if we wanted her to trust us, and this was the smartest way to bring her into the fold.
If I was right, then this would show her ACP’s true colors, and then she would slowly begin to understand why we were willing to break free of such an organization.
“Child porn?” I asked quietly.
Blake reared back. “What?” he exploded, and I couldn’t fucking blame him. This shit felt like something the Russians would pull, not our own kind.
Lennox gave a single nod, but his jaw was tense. “Like I said, when I get to my computer, I can deal with it, as well as whatever shit you and I have on our cells, Flynn, but if that wasn’t enough for us to break ties with ACP, then I don’t know what is.”
Briar blinked, then breathed out, “Do you mean to tell me that the people you work for, the people who you call brothers, have downloaded child porn onto your cell so that they can use it to blackmail you?”
Blake flinched then spat, “Briar, if you think I’ve downloaded—”
“Don’t be stupid,” she snarled, her hand connecting with his shoulder to push him, her irritation with him evident. And while this subject wasn’t exactly heartwarming, I was relieved to see that the frailty of before had been replaced with the Briar I knew and, I had to admit, loved—fuck me. “I’d never think that,” she growled at him. “I’m just trying to make sure that I understand all the facts.”
“Well, we’re on the same page now,” Lennox said dully.
Briar blinked at him, then after rubbing a hand over her face, surged to her feet in an explosive movement. “I think it’s time I told you something,” she stated. “Something that might change everything—”
Lennox raised a hand. “Wait.”
I could tell she wanted to argue, but she tilted her head to the side and watched him as he collected the phone he’d just thrown across the room. Then, he rounded the bed and picked up the cell phones we’d dumped on the nightstand this afternoon after we’d made our way into her bedroom, before he headed into the bathroom. It didn’t take much to anticipate his next move, and when the toilet flushed, I knew he’d shoved them down there.
It wasn’t enough to destroy them, not something so expensive, but it would fuck with the mics for a while.
When he returned, he motioned with his hands to continue.
“Mathieu… His car crash, well, it wasn’t an accident.”
I got to my feet. “What the fuck are you saying?”
She turned her head to look at me over her shoulder. “Did he fall or was he pushed?” She cocked a brow at me. “If you think I’d ever let somebody get away with doing what he did to me with no recriminations, then you’re stupid.”
For a second, I gaped at her, and then a sense of dread filled me. “But we did that to you as well?” I made it a question, because, fuck, it was.
“Yeah, I should chop off your dicks for it too.” Her jaw worked for a second. “Consider yourselves lucky that I like them attached to your bodies.”
For some reason, those words didn’t exactly make me feel warm and cozy inside.
❖
Briar
Well, I wasn’t sure what I expected when I told them I tried to kill one of their friends, but it wasn’t the silence.
I mean, sure, I expected a minute or so of it when I first dropped this bombshell, but I didn’t expect more than five minutes of complete and utter silence from the three of them.
Maybe I hadn’t told them enough yet?
Or maybe I needed to leave the room and give them some space to process and talk amongst themselves? I wish I knew what to do, but it wasn’t like there was a How to Confess You Tried to Murder your Boyfriend guidebook.
Deciding that the best way was to put everything out there, I took a deep breath then mumbled, “Look, I know you might not want to hear it, but it’s the truth. I did try to kill Mat. When I went to confront him about the tape, he was in the middle of fucking another girl and he just laughed at me without even pulling out of her.
“He stood there, balls deep in some slut, and just laughed at me like I was the biggest joke ever. When I rushed out of there, he sauntered out after I heard him climax, and like he was the king of the world, told me he had only been fucking me because of who I was, a fancy name to add to his bedpost. He said he’d taken the video on a dare because he wanted to rip out the pedestal from under me.
“The truth is, I thought I was in love with him. I thought he loved me too or I’d never have slept with him. I mean, girls don’t exactly get the same pass as guys do when it comes to one-night stands, and I could never do that in case my family found out, but Mat was different, or at least I thought so.”
When I was done talking, and they were still just gaping at me, I grabbed a robe from the back of the door, turned and left the room, giving them space to think, to talk, without me there.
With nothing else to do until the guys decided how much they hated me, and rather than worry over the fact I’d just told the truth to three guys who’d proved I couldn’t trust them… I started making something to eat. It wasn’t even early evening yet but I knew Winston would be back shortly from ACP HQ where he’d told me he had meetings all day.
Because breakfast for dinner sounded quite tasty, I snagged the gallon freezer bag that was full of waffles and started reheating them just as the instructions on the bag indicated. Then, I added some bacon and eggs as well so that it wasn’t just sugar for dinner. I was also hoping that the smell of the food would draw the guys out from my bedroom.
