Benevolent (17 page)

“I don’t need to hear about your crappy life as if it’s somehow going to make this story any less fucked-up,” I growled out at her.

She took in a deep breath and continued. “I finally asked her one night what was going on with her. It took her a little bit, but she finally told me. She said Todd came into her room one night and…” Marie couldn’t finish her sentence. I didn’t need her to finish it.

I stood up and flung a chair across the room before moving right in her face. “She told you what he did and you didn’t do anything about it?”

“What could I do?” she cried, tears running down her face.

“Call the god damn police! Shoot him. Cut off his fucking dick!”

“And go back to the shelter?”

I couldn’t believe what I heard come out of her mouth. “That’s what you were so fucking worried about? Going back to the fucking shelter?” I couldn’t get enough oxygen to my lungs and I started to feel lightheaded. The anger had consumed me and I had to sit down. My entire body was shaking uncontrollably. “You allowed your daughter to get raped at the age of fifteen by a twenty-three-year-old and all you worried about was where you would live. You fucking disgust me.”

“It’s not like I didn’t do anything. I asked Todd about it and he said it wasn’t true. I thought maybe Gabriella was making it all up because she didn’t want to live there anymore. I didn’t want to leave and be homeless again if it wasn’t true.”

“Did you think he would just admit to it? Did you really think that if you asked him if he raped your daughter he would just say yes?”

She waited to continue. It was the longest seconds of my life. “I didn’t know what else to do. She never said anything else about it so I thought she made it up.”

“When did you know she was telling the truth?” I barely got the question out. I didn’t want to ask it, nor did I want the answer. But I had heard this much, I needed to know the rest. I couldn’t continue to live with only part of the truth.

“Just after she turned seventeen she came to me and told me she was pregnant.”

I thought back. We were dating when she turned seventeen. We had been having sex, but I always wore a condom back then. I felt as if I were holding my breath waiting for her to keep talking. So many thoughts were going through my head I couldn’t keep any of them straight. When was she pregnant? Why didn’t she tell me? Was it mine? Could it have been mine?

“I thought my life was falling apart. I never wanted my daughter to end up like me, pregnant in high school. I told her that you needed to step up and do the right thing, whatever that may have been. But she told me it wasn’t yours. I thought she was saying she cheated on you and that’s why she came to me about it. I wasn’t expecting her to tell me it was Todd’s. I didn’t believe her at first. But then she said it had been going on since the first time she told me. I wanted to kill him, I honestly did. But instead, I went to Peter. I told him what had happened. He demanded she get an abortion. I didn’t question it. I didn’t think anything of it. I just figured it was in the best interest of Gabriella if she got one.”

“You’re a fucking idiot. He wanted it aborted so there wouldn’t be any evidence of rape. How did you not see that? How could you be so fucking blind?” My rage took over again and I was back in her face.

She began to cry harder. “I didn’t know what to do. Part of me thought she might have still been lying about it. I mean, she never said anything else about it after the first time.”

“Why do you think that is, Marie? You didn’t do anything to fucking protect her!”

I was getting really loud by that point and people started to stop in, trying to calm the situation. There was a woman waiting in a chair in the corner that wasn’t there when I first walked in. I had no idea how long she had been sitting there or what she had overheard. I didn’t much give a shit, though.

“I thought if I told Peter, he would figure it out. But all he told me was to get her an abortion. So I did. He said he’d deal with Todd. I didn’t know what he was going to do, but he talked to him and told me he took care of it. Things were fine for a few weeks so again, I thought it was all a lie. I thought you were the one that got her pregnant but she lied because she didn’t want to get you in trouble. It wasn’t until…” She didn’t finish what she was saying.

I had no patience by that point. My voice couldn’t be calmed and my anger couldn’t have been controlled. I felt like a mad man on the loose. My hands were shaking by my sides as I tried to keep from balling them up. I wanted to throttle the bitch. I hated her. I hated her for what she did to Gabi, what she did to the innocent man that went to jail, and ultimately, what she did to me. She was a fucking monster and I suddenly realized why Gabi had stayed away for so long. I just wished Gabi had told me the truth sooner. None of what had happened over the last ten years would have taken place had I known.

“Until what, Marie. Spit it the fuck out already!”

People began to gather around me, trying to pull me away from the distraught woman. Little did they know, I was the least of her worries. They tried to get me away from her as if I was going to hit her or something, which I wanted to so badly. If there were ever a moment to hit a woman, it would be then. For allowing her own daughter to be raped over and over again without ever doing a damn thing to protect her. But I just shrugged them off until they backed away. Most of them left, threatening to call security if we didn’t break it up. Marie told them she was okay and there was nothing to worry about. She said we were just both so emotionally distraught over our loved one’s condition. They seemed to believe it and eventually left.

“The night when she was taken to the hospital,” she finally finished her sentence.

I remembered that. Well, I remembered the next day. I had no idea what was going on that night. It wasn’t until the next day that I knew something was wrong. Gabi never told me exactly what had happened, nor did I need the details. But for some reason, I needed it that time. I needed to hear what had really happened to her. The whole damn thing seemed like a fucking nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. First thinking she lied to me, to finding out the truth was much more heinous than the lie I had believed for ten years.

“He… Todd… he um, was extremely angry over the whole thing. He was pissed that his dad found out, and even more pissed that Gabriella got pregnant. He was on something that night, not really sure what. We were in bed when he came home and then I was woken by the screams. I didn’t get there in time. He was already gone by time she started screaming.

“I found her in the bathroom on the floor. There was a lot of blood everywhere.” Her voice grew really quiet and I had to get closer to hear her. I wanted to make sure I didn’t misunderstand anything. “He decided that he would punish her in a way she would never be able to get pregnant from. Oh God, Dane. There was blood everywhere. And she was just curled up on the floor with it smeared all over the backs of her legs and butt.” She began to cry so hard her words were almost incoherent. “Peter was there. I begged him to call the paramedics while I sat with her. He finally did. It was Peter that told the cops it was the neighbor kid. It wasn’t me or Gabriella that did that. It was Peter. We just had to go along with it.”

“No you didn’t.” I wanted to yell. I wanted to scream. But I couldn’t. My chest was so tight I couldn’t get a deep enough breath to even raise my voice to a shout. “You didn’t have to go along with him. You could’ve told the truth. You could have shown Gabi how to stand up for herself. You didn’t have to ruin a young man’s life. And in the end, you’ve ruined your daughter’s life. She’s lived with this for years. You were too damn scared to be homeless, and in the end, the bastard gave everything to his son anyway. In the end, you ended up alone and homeless regardless of what you did or didn’t do. You sold your own flesh and blood out for nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing!”

“I know. Don’t you think I know what I’ve done? Don’t you think I’m paying for it and that I regret it every single day? My daughter is in a room with bandages on her wrists from where she cut herself open to end it all. Don’t you think I feel that blame? I felt it the first time she was here, on this floor, when she swallowed all of those pills—”

“And you weren’t here with her then. I was! I was the one in this waiting room, making sure she knew someone cared. Letting her know someone was there for her and loved her. It was me, not you. So don’t act like you care now, because you certainly didn’t give a shit then.”

“Yeah, well it was me that came this time. Not you. You couldn’t even bother to answer your damn phone,” she fought back.

That was when my own guilt set in. Gabi begged for me to give her a chance to explain, but I didn’t let her. I walked away without ever asking her why she lied. If I had taken one second over the last eleven years to even think about the first time we had sex, I probably would have known. I would have been able to at least guess that she wasn’t a virgin when she said she was. There was no blood and she wasn’t overly tight. She was incredibly nervous, as was I, but I just assumed that was because it was her virginity. But it wasn’t. She hadn’t been a virgin when we first had sex. She had been raped repeatedly for a year by that point, and I had no clue. I didn’t see it in her eyes when we were intimate, but thinking back on those early days, it became clear. She acted the same during sex before and after she was hospitalized for being brutally raped. The fear in her eyes was the same. The shakiness that I assumed was nerves were the same before and after. I was the blind one. I was the one that let her down, and I continued to let her down. All those years I thought I was the one protecting her, I wasn’t. I was never able to protect her the way she needed someone to. But I would. I would make sure she knew someone was looking out for her.

I turned around and walked away. Leaving Marie and her fucked up life behind me while I went to take care of something that should have been taken care of twelve years earlier.

As soon as I drove away from the hospital, I called Janette, my PR person. She handled everything for me, and was always on top of things. I knew something was about to happen and things could get very ugly for me. I called her to give her a heads up.

“What are you doing, Dane? You’re starting to scare me.”

“Listen, I can’t really explain right now, but something happened at the hospital and it involved me. People were around and in the event something gets reported to the press, I just need you to have my back. That’s all I need from you. I will call you if I need more. Just please answer if I call.” I gave her the best answer I could without telling her much.

Since starting Kauffmann, I had never been in the news in a negative way. It was something I was very proud of. If Kauffmann Investments was ever mentioned, it was always for something positive. For my donations to various charities, balls I’ve attended for fundraisers, what I’ve done for struggling businesses, and things like that. Never anything bad, not even a rumor. But even I knew I wouldn’t be able to get away without something like this hitting the newsstands. Janette was paid well for what she did, and this would definitely test her PR skills.

“Dane Kauffmann, listen to me. Don’t do anything stupid. Just come back to the office and we’ll handle it in house. We’ll get legal together and figure out whatever it is. Just please, don’t do something you’ll regret.”

“Trust me, Janette, I won’t ever regret this,” I said and then ended the call.

My foot felt like lead on the gas pedal as I raced across town. I didn’t know exactly where I was headed, but I knew I’d figure it out. It had been so long since I had been on that side of town. The last time I was there was when I moved away for college and helped Gabi pack all of her things to go with me.

Nothing looked the same as I drove down the old street, although I had a sense of nostalgia as I made my way to her old house. I could remember driving there after school to pick her up. She never allowed me in her house, though. I just always thought she was embarrassed about it since my house was so much bigger. It never bothered me, though, and I never thought twice about it until then. Until I found myself driving down the same street nine years later with the knowledge of what truly happened in that house. It did nothing but fill me with more rage.

Before I even made it to the driveway, I saw him outside. He was under the hood of a car. I slammed my car in park on the side of road and found myself running in his direction. He was so fucking stupid he never even heard me coming up on him. My knuckles slammed against the back of his skull and I could literally hear his forehead bounce off the engine of the car.

The motherfucker spun around and faced me. He took one look at me before cocking his arm back to take a swing. He didn’t get anywhere near me before my fist connected with his jaw, knocking him back into the car. I didn’t stop there. He fell to the driveway and I continued to pummel his fucking face in.

I felt a pop and crack as my fist met his nose. Another crack as it came down on his cheekbone, and then blood flowed from his mouth when it smashed against his teeth. I felt my hand slice open with that blow. I was sure one of his teeth cut through my skin, but that didn’t stop me. I continued to rain my fists down on his face, his head, his chest, and as he tried to turn around, the sides of his stomach. There was so much blood I couldn’t even tell it was him anymore.

“You fucking motherfucker!” I shouted at him as I threw punch after punch. “Fucking rapist. Fucking touch little girls, you asshole! I hope you die and rot in hell, bastard.” The only thing that saved him from being sent straight there were the men that came running to his aid.

They pulled me off him, but it wasn’t easy. I didn’t get off him easily. There were two of them, and they were rather scrawny. I elbowed one in the face to get him off me, and he left immediately. The other backed away as I stared him down. I’m sure I looked like a crazed lunatic.

As soon as they were gone, I went back to my attack on Todd. I straddled his body, watching him gag and cough on his own blood, and pulled him by the front of his shirt. He could barely open his eyes, but I made sure he could hear every word I spit at him.

“You’re a fucking piece of shit. You don’t deserve to live after what you did to her.”

“You can’t prove anything,” he muttered between his gasps for air.

I clocked him again, that time in his temple and then ground his head against the concrete. I held him there with my hand and got close to his ear so he would hear everything I had to say.

“When I’m finished with you, you will be begging the law to take you away. You will be praying that they lock you up. But you’re right, the cops can’t do anything about it now. So you have nothing to protect you from me.” I looked around and noticed the metal pipe for his hydraulic carjack laying on the ground. I moved away from him and picked it up.

He began to cry like the little fucking pussy boy that he was. Yeah, nothing was going to save him.

“Did Gabi cry like this when you’d come into her room and rape her? Did she beg you to stop? Because that’s what you’re going to do now. You’re going to beg me. But I’m not going to listen. I’m going to shove this pipe in your ass so hard you’ll bleed out on the driveway. I’m going to make you feel what you made Gabi feel. I’m going to shove this in your ass so hard it’ll come out of your throat.” My voice was thick and strained as I growled in his ear, swiping the pipe along his jaw.

He cried harder and actually began to beg. The little bitch cried and begged me not to. I wondered if he was thinking about Gabi. About how much she probably begged him to stop just before he shoved his cock in her ass. I wondered if the images of her bleeding all over the bathroom floor flooded his mind at the thought of me doing the same to him.

The rage was so consuming all I could think about was degrading him, violating him the way he had done to an innocent girl. And then, I thought about beating the life out of him with the same pipe I’d use to tear his ass hole wide open. I wanted him dead. I wanted him to know exactly how it felt for Gabi, and then I wanted to kill him. He didn’t deserve to live after what he had done.

“I was a kid. I was fucked up on shit. Please, don’t do this,” he pleaded.

“
She
was a kid, motherfucker!”

“I’ve had to live with it. I’ve regretted it since it happened. I was fucked-up.”

I held him by his throat, cutting off his windpipe. “She’s had to live with it. She had to have an abortion because of you. She was hospitalized because you ripped her ass open and left her to bleed all over herself. You don’t deserve mercy. You don’t even deserve death, but that’s what you’re going to get.”

Before I could do anything else, sirens grew closer and closer, followed by the screeching of tires. I didn’t move off him until there were four men, all aiming their guns directly at me.

“Put down the weapon,” one ordered.

“You’re fucking lucky,” I whispered to him as I threw the pipe to the side, away from me.

Within seconds, I was tackled and cuffed. They patted me down, but didn’t find anything else on me. Paramedics arrived just as I was being lifted from the ground and I couldn’t help the prayer I sent out that he wouldn’t live. I didn’t care if I’d be in jail for murdering the son of a bitch. I’d serve a life sentence for that. None of it mattered at that time. All that mattered was justice finally being served to that scum.

The officers that escorted me to the back of the police car asked me questions, but I didn’t answer any of them. I was still in a rage-filled haze and couldn’t think straight. Once I was seated in the back of the cruiser, I looked down and noticed the blood that covered my shirt. I had never seen so much blood before. I had never even thrown a punch before. It was a little scary at how mad I went while attacking him. I didn’t regret it, though. It was just a scary thought that I could do something like that with my bare hands.

The drive to the station went by in seconds. I knew it had to have been longer than that, but it felt like I blinked and was there. Already, cameras were outside, snapping pictures through the car window. Local TV crews were set up along the sidewalk as we made our way through the chain link fence to the back of the building. I knew Janette would have already gotten wind of what happened, and waited until I could call her.

I wasn’t a celebrity by any means, but since my company was there, and I did work all over the country, the name Kauffmann was very much heard of. I had grown up there and even bailed out a few local businesses. I also was really big into not only national charities, but many local ones as well. It wasn’t that I was noticed much, other than the people that knew me, but the name and the company was a big deal. I knew it wouldn’t take long before the local news stations picked it up. At least I didn’t have to worry about national news. I was no Steve fucking Jobs by any means. Just a small town boy with a really successful company.

Everything after that happened in a blur. I was fingerprinted. They took my mug shot as I stood in front of a lined wall. I was led to a holding cell with other criminals. I had no idea in what order it all took place in; all I knew was that my life had just taken another turn and I had no idea where I was headed.

I was finally brought back to a room where a detective started interrogating me. I immediately told him I wanted a lawyer, and was given a phone to call for one. I didn’t call a lawyer. I called Janette.

“What the hell did you do?” she asked in a tone I had never heard before.

“Just get someone from legal here. Please.” My monotone was unfamiliar as well.

The call ended and I waited for my lawyer to show up. He finally did and told me not to speak. I let him answer everything, which he pretty much answered nothing. It was just a bunch of legal jargon that made no sense to me had I actually been listening to it. Instead, I thought of Eden.

I wanted to explain to her what had happened. I feared she had already heard and wouldn’t give me the chance to talk. I hadn’t thought about her during the entire thing. Not once. All I thought about was the rage that filled me and the hate that ran through my veins. I should have thought about her, but I didn’t. I just hoped it wasn’t too late to explain.

The rest of the day went by in a blur. I didn’t know what was going on, nor did I pay attention to anything. My mind wandered back and forth between Gabi and Eden. I contemplated what I should do once I got out. I had to wait for arraignment the following morning before I could do anything. But that didn’t stop my mind from bouncing around from thought to thought. I had so much time to think about what I would do once I got out.

I knew I wanted to be with Eden, but I also knew I didn’t want Gabi to be with her mother. Not after what she told me in the hospital. She allowed vicious and horrible things to happen to her own daughter, and should not be trusted with a second chance. But Gabi didn’t have anywhere else to go, and that worried me, too. There was no right thing to do. Eden wouldn’t understand my need to protect Gabi, and Gabi wouldn’t understand my feelings for Eden. I was fucked no matter what I did or didn’t do.

I hated myself and the guilt ate at me all night while I waited. Gabi had begged me to listen to her, but I didn’t. I walked out on her and left her on the floor in a broken mess. I was too busy focusing on the betrayal that I felt, that I never thought about the betrayal that I was giving her.

I had always prided myself on being the only one there for her, but I never was. I should have seen it from the start. Her shyness and timid behavior at school. The way she never wanted to show her body off around people. How long it took before she finally let me take her out. She never wanted me in her house or around her family, and she never talked about Todd. There were times I tried mentioning him and she would avoid it every single time. I hated myself for not noticing the signs, especially when we first started having sex. It was easy at that age to overlook it all, but I had grown up since then. As I got older, I should have recognized it. Why the fuck didn’t I see it?

When she told me that she lied about Sean, I should have given it some more thought. I was too busy focusing on her confession that I completely overlooked the fact that she was hospitalized. I should have known she wasn’t lying about the rape. I should have given her a chance to explain, but instead, I turned my back on her. Just like everyone else in her life had done. I was no better than anyone else that just let it happen.