Bound by Rapture (20 page)

“I wouldn’t say always. My mom and Sandy favored Garrett; they always had for some reason I didn’t get. Even after I spent millions on them, he was still the favored one.” I chewed the inside of my cheek at the raw feeling it gave me. “But I went home that night and…”

Images popped into my head and I was back there again. I was walking up the front step of the big Egyptian-style mansion. Humid warmth pressed against my skin, seeming to cling to every fiber of my body. I didn’t want to be there, but Elaine had left her cell phone at the house earlier when she’d had lunch with mom. She didn’t want to drive back and get it herself. 

“You go get it, honey. Pleeeease? I’ll suck your dick when you get home.”
The blowjob wasn’t what spurned me to go. I’d already fucked an intern in my office earlier that day. I didn’t need Elaine’s blowjob to satisfy me, but I also didn’t want to listen to her gripe and whine and beg for me to go get it all night. 

I pulled out my key and unlocked the front door. It was a little after eleven, not late, but the front hallway was empty. I knew Mom wouldn’t be there; Elaine had mentioned she had plans and wouldn’t be back until the next day. 

Mom had been trying to convince me to hire a house staff which included maids and butlers, people to answer the door, a complete live-in team. I had only rolled my eyes at her. What would she need that for? She didn’t work, what else did she have to do with her free time, but clean and answer the door?

I moved quickly through the hallway and into the spacious dining room at the end. It was past the tea room and the brunch room.
What a fucking waste of space.
I liked nice things, sure. But there was a point where it was ridiculous and too much. But I had built it anyway. My mom and Sandy had seemed so excited at the prospect of the house. Of having a place that was their own, a perfect building with everything they could ever want inside. My mom’s excitement didn’t mean a whole lot to me, but Sandy’s joyous face made it all worth it, even if most of the ridiculous things were Mom’s idea. 

I didn’t see the Nokia phone anywhere in the dining room so I moved on to the tea room and brunch room. It wasn’t in either of those.
Where could it be?
I couldn’t very well call Elaine and ask where she left it, since our landline hadn’t been hooked up yet, so there was no way I could reach her. 

This is fucking ridiculous.
I wanted to be at home in bed, getting my dick sucked so I could fall asleep. I had a meeting with an investor in the morning who could potentially take the company overseas, which was just where I wanted to go. I moved down a spacious hallway that broke off from the brunch room. Big expensive paintings hung from the walls, depicting vast beautiful landscapes. This was probably the best part of the whole house. I didn’t stop to admire the pictures, though. I kept moving, heading for the smaller of the two downstairs living rooms. Mom liked to entertain in there sometimes, so Elaine’s phone was probably there. 

I could hear the TV playing behind the closed door and someone moaning. A woman. I shook my head. Garrett was a major porn addict. I couldn’t even remember how many times I’d caught him jacking off to porn in our room when I got home from football practice in the afternoon. Now that he was an adult he had subscriptions to pretty much every porn magazine in existence; I knew because I was the one who paid the fucking bill now. He’d lost his job in construction work about three years ago and had yet to get another job. He seemed content to sit at home and jack off all day. 

I pushed the door and made sure my eyes were focused on where I knew the TV was. “Okay, Garrett, put your dick up. I’m look—” But the TV wasn’t playing porn. It was playing some late-night sitcom re-run. I frowned and glanced at the couch, but the sight that greeted me wasn’t what I was expecting. I stood there blinking at it. At
them
. Garrett and Sandy. He had her bent over the arm of the couch while he pounded into her from behind. She moaned as their skin slapped together. 

“What the fuck?” I shouted, drawing their attention.

“Oh my God!” Sandy screamed and darted away from Garrett over the back of the couch. Garrett’s face showed equal shock, his mouth gaping open as he stared at me.

“Look, Cole…”

I shook my head back and forth. This wasn’t happening. My brother wasn’t fucking my baby sister. No. No.
No.

“It’s not what you think,” Garrett said, calmly holding his hands out as if warding me off. But I hadn’t moved. I stood completely frozen in the doorway. 

“Then what the fuck is it?” I glanced at Sandy who had popped her head up from behind the couch. Her curly hair was messy. Her bottom lip trembling. 

“I love her.”

I jerked my head back to Garrett. He ran a hand through his short dark hair. Even though we were brothers we hardly resembled one another. He was a little shorter than me, and leaner. He stood stark naked in the middle of the living room. Their clothes were scattered all over the place as if they had been desperate, needy, to get them off. My gut churned. 

“She’s our sister, Garrett. You’re
supposed
to love her.” I shook my head back and forth. Unbelieving. 

“I love her more than that.”

“No! Fuck!” I pressed my hand to my forehead. “No!” I shouted again. “No.”

“Yes.” 

“No!” I lunged at him, my frozen state gone. Nothing was left in me. Nothing but anger. Vicious, raw, all-consuming anger. My brother had his dick inside Sandy. Our baby sister. Our fucking
sister
. “You fucking piece of shit!” I screamed as wailed on him, raining punches down on his body. 

“No, please, Cole, no!” Sandy screeched, but I ignored her. He fought back, landing a punch right in my gut that made me double over, air whooshing from between my lips at the impact.

Garrett rolled me over and stood over me, blood trickling from the side of his mouth. “I don’t want to fight you, brother. Let’s talk about this.”

I scrambled off the floor. Sandy had come to stand at Garrett’s side. She was still naked. They both were. 

“What the hell are you doing, Sandy? What the hell is going on?” I wanted her to deny it. To tell me it wasn’t true, that the things I’d just witnessed were a figment of my imagination, that I was in the middle of a big fucking nightmare.

“He’s telling the truth, Cole.” Her voice quivered. “We love each other. We’re in love.”

“But you’re related. You…you…you’re a virgin.” I sputtered the words pathetically. I had played the role of protective older brother all my life. From the moment Sandy was born I had treasured her, especially since I was her caregiver most of the time. Mom was always out, gone for days when we were kids. Garrett was too worried about himself and his own hunger, but I was the one who’d cared for little Sandy, an infant who couldn’t care for herself. As she grew up I had helped her with her homework, guarded her. I beat up the fifth grader who called her fat one time, even though I was much older. I kept away the assholes who’d just wanted to use her when she was in high school. She hadn’t been with anyone. I only knew this because she told me. She was saving herself for the right guy. That man who would come and sweep her off her feet. That was what she’d said several years ago, and as far as I knew she hadn’t even gone on a date since then. 

She shook her head. “I lied, Cole. We didn’t want you to know what was going on.” 

Garrett wrapped a muscled arm around her shoulders. 

“But that was two years ago…you…”

“Yes, Cole. Yes,” she said.

Something inside me hardened. “How long has this been going on?”

Sandy glanced up at Garrett, and he gave a little nod. “For six years,” Sandy whispered. 

“Six years? But you’re only twenty.”

“Six years since we first had sex,” Garrett added. “We’ve been together longer than that.”

“Together,” I repeated. My gaze darted back and forth between them. Taking them in. Sandy clung to Garrett’s side, her petite hands wrapped around his stomach. His arm was around her shoulders, his fingers sliding back forth, stroking her skin. I’d seen them do things similar to this, not naked of course, but I’d seen the way they laughed together. The way he would tickle her. The way she would run to him when he came home. I always thought she just cared about him deeply. I never would’ve thought something like this might be going on. That throughout our whole lives something darker, more sinister was happening between them. I couldn’t fathom it.

“She was a child.” The words came out ragged as a memory was pushed to the front of my brain. I could remember being sixteen and walking into Sandy’s room. She was only eleven and I was shocked Garrett was in the room with her. She was pulling up her pants as I walked in. For a fleeting moment, I had thought something about it was weird, but then Sandy smiled at me, flashing her dimples. She’d started chattering about something, so I ignored it. Garrett hadn’t said anything, just rubbed his fingers back and forth over his lips as he left the room. It was a meaningless memory to me, but now it made it sense.
Everything
made sense. It all clicked together into one sickening reality. 

Rage came next. The vile sludge of it squeezed through my veins, engulfing me until there was nothing left. Until I heard the sounds. They were close, but far away. The sound of smacking, of flesh on flesh, but not the same kind I’d walked in on. No, it was far from the same sound. There was no moaning. This was the smack of fists pounding into flesh. It was the sound of wet bloody skin hitting my knuckles. 

There was screaming, too. Violent screaming and clawing, nails ripping at my skin, at my face. It was all too much. It was overwhelming, which was why I was glad it was so far away. I couldn’t see in front of me, it was like the sludge had covered everything, even my vision. I just kept moving, kept slamming my fist into him. Into the thing below me. My brother.
No. Not
my
brother. 

“Please, Cole, you’re going to kill him! Please!” Her words brought me out of it. They jerked me back to reality, clearing everything away. I looked up into her eyes. She was standing over me, looking down at me with tears pouring down her face. 

“Why are you crying, baby girl?” I studied those tears, shocked that she was so upset. I had done everything I could in my life to make sure she was okay, that she was taken care of. I had beaten the shit out of people just for looking at her wrong. I had protected her. 

“You’re killing him!” she wailed. And that’s when I glanced down at the bloody heap beneath me. Garrett sputtered, spitting blood on the pristine marble floor. And then I was reminded of why I was there, why I was angry. And I was reminded that I hadn’t protected her like I thought I had. Life had been hard for all of us with the way our mother was, but I made sure Sandy was okay, that no one ever hurt her. And yet Garrett had hurt her. Garrett had taken advantage of a little girl who loved him. 

“He took advantage of you.” The words felt like shards of glass ripped from my throat. 

“No, no, no, no, no, Cole. He loves me. He’s always loved me. I love him. Please, just please.”

She was begging for his life. Begging for the man who’d raped her. Because that’s what it was, rape. It was fucking rape. “He raped you.”

“No! Cole, no! Please, it wasn’t like that. It was never like that!”

I stood, climbing off Garrett’s body. “So that’s it, huh? You think you’re just going to ride off into the sunset with your own brother? With a guy who made you do things sexually at eleven?”

“He didn’t force me to do anything, Cole. I
wanted
it!” Snot and tears ran down her face, dripping onto her chest. 

“You wanted it?” I yelled. “At eleven you wanted it? That day when I walked in and you were pulling your pants up and he…he…” 

“I wanted it before that. Him. I’ve always wanted him.”

“You’re a fucking whore.” The words sliced my throat as I uttered them, turning away from her. I knew what I had to do. He had brainwashed her, done something to her to make her think this was okay. That they could just fuck and things would be fine. It wasn’t okay. And this couldn’t keep happening. I looked down at Garrett. 

He moaned; one of his eyes was swollen shut, his nose was bleeding profusely and very badly broken. “Cole.” I could see some of his teeth were missing. “Don’t do this, Cole. I’m your brother. Your only brother.” His voice was scratchy, wet, like it was coated in blood. 

“I don’t have a brother.”I reached into my back pocket and pulled out my pocket knife. It was new. Elaine had just bought it for me a few weeks ago as a birthday present. Sandy jumped on my back, trying to wrestle it away from me, screaming bloody murder in my ears, but I was stronger and her attempts didn’t matter. 

It wasn’t Sandy I would remember later from that moment. It wasn’t her screams or her cries. It was the look in Garrett’s eyes as he stared at me when I plunged the blade into his chest. He was terrified. Fucking scared. He didn’t want to die. I knew he didn’t. But I
wanted
to kill him. The things he had done. He had to die. It was the only way I could save her. It was the only way she could be set free from this. I could see it in her face as I had looked at her just moments before. She was lost in his bullshit lies of love. 

I knew him better than anyone else. He had been fucking all sorts of women throughout the years. All that time when Sandy was a child and he was stealing her innocence. He’d been fucking other people. I’d seen him fuck other girls at parties in high school, at parties as adults. He was a disease. A disease Sandy thought she loved. A disease my mother adored. He had to go. It was the only way Sandy would be able to see. 

Things went blank after that. After the blade sliced through Garrett’s flesh and bone. The screaming was gone. Sandy’s weight on my back gone, too. And I set to work. Slicing my knife through him. He’d claimed he loved her. My baby sister. He’d fucked her. And so I cut his heart out. It didn’t look like it was full of love when I pulled the bloody distended organ from his body.