Page 14 of Wrangled
“Hell no. I don’t care who hires me. I don’t abuse the client’s privileges with anyone. Besides, I haven’t worked for him since you were sentenced.”
“Wait, really? Why?”
“Same reason you were suspicious. He made me feel the same way. I couldn’t find a shred of evidence that Austin knewyou or had any kind of relationship with you, especially not one that would warrant him paying a huge sum to have someone like me represent you. So I dug further. I found out you and his younger brother had issues. It made me ask myself: what would motivate a man like Austin to pay that kind of money to a stranger? And all I could come up with was that he either owed you or felt guilty. I couldn’t figure out what he could be guilty of until I remembered the part of your report that the defense kept trying to skate over, the condition you were in when you were arrested.”
I swallow and look away, not wanting her to see too much.
“Did Austin rape you, Calliope?”
“I…I’m.”
“Shit. It was the brother, wasn’t it? He raped you, and Austin covered it up.”
“I don’t know who it was. Maybe it was Austin, but maybe not. It could have been Andy?—”
“I don’t understand.”
“It was Austin who drugged me,” I admit.
She sucks in a sharp breath. “You’re sure?”
I nod.
“You wouldn’t talk about it, just that you’d been assaulted and you refused to name them. I think some people assumed your lack of wanting to say it out loud meant it was your father who did it.”
“And yet people cheered when I was convicted of killing him. It’s a strange world we live in.”
“Calliope…”
I sigh. “My father had beaten me. I was heading to the clinic in town when Andy knocked me flying. Austin was with him and carried me to the clinic. He defended me, was mad on my behalf, and when I was done, he drove me to his house, knowing I didn’t want to go home.”
I pull my hands into my sleeves, feeling chilled. “He made me a sandwich. How fucking stupid is it to lower your guard around someone just because they do something basic like that?” I shake my head before leaning it against the glass. “He told me to take a break afterward, to watch a movie or something while he did some work in his office. I didn’t know the iced tea he brought me was drugged until I woke up with someone on top of me, tearing my underwear away, all while I couldn’t move an inch to stop them.”
“Oh, Calliope.”
“So you see,” I carry on, not able to bear her pity. “I don’t know which of the two brothers raped me, but I do know which one drugged me. The same one who whispered to me that he was sorry. He either raped me himself, or?—”
“Or he set you up for his brother. That motherfucker.”
“Yeah, that about sums it up.”
“I’m usually better at reading people. Fuck.”
“I don’t know what he’s like now, but he was smooth. Charming almost. I felt no danger from him, and given what my home life was like, I thought I had good instincts. But I was wrong.”
“Why didn’t you say something back then?”
“I already had a town full of enemies. What was the point of adding another? No way Austin would have gone down quietly. He’d have discredited me and twisted it until I was the perpetrator instead of the victim. And then that would have likely had a knock-on effect. Instead of sitting beside you right now, I’d see out the rest of my days in prison.”
I sense she wants to argue, but she knows I’m right. She might not be a witch, but she wove her own kind of magic, getting my charges dropped down to a lesser offense than the one I initially faced.
“People suck.”
I look over and smile. “Not all people, Jen.”
“Behave. You won’t make me cry.”
I bite my lip to hide my chuckle as a thought occurs to me. “What would have happened to my inheritance if I’d died?”
