#Heart (Hashtag #6) (33 page)

Ivy

I made her ride with me.

There was no way in hell I was going to trust she would actually get into her car and follow along behind me like a loyal and faithful friend.

It made for an awkward car ride, especially since I wasn’t about to make small talk or entertain any of her tries.

It wasn’t hard to find his address, and once I did, it was just a matter of following the GPS on my phone. When we pulled up the driveway and I saw the unmistakable green Hellcat, I wanted to laugh out loud.

Of course he was here.

I should have known better than to underestimate my family.

“What’s he doing here?” Missy worried. Her anxiety level rocketed as she stared at the car.

“Guess we’ll find out.”

I parked right behind his car and looked at Missy. “You’re doing this.”

It wasn’t a question. I didn’t want reassurance. I wanted her to know she wasn’t getting out of this.

“Maybe once I do, it will prove to you that I really am sorry for all the stuff that happened between us.”

You mean all the stuff you did to me?
I thought. I didn’t say it out loud because I wasn’t about to antagonize her right now. I needed something from her.

“Come on,” I said and got out of my Toyota.

My stomach growled and felt queasy at the same time. I’d been feeling morning sickness for a while now. At first, I just brushed it off, sometimes I ignored it, but I couldn’t do that anymore, not now that I knew the cause.

I should have eaten this morning. Sick or not, my baby needed nourishment.

Not that I expected to be standing on this porch, either.

Just as I was about to knock, the door flew open, and Robert was yelling at Romeo inside. Romeo didn’t seem concerned at all.

Typical Romeo.

But I didn’t like the things he was saying. If Romeo hadn’t been able to get through to Robert, then what hope did I have?

You have the BuzzBoss.

God help me, it was a comforting thought.

It didn’t matter.

It didn’t matter that Romeo was getting nowhere. It didn’t matter that looking at Robert reminded me of the hell I went through with Zach. It didn’t even matter my old best friend was standing behind me and I was using her as my secret weapon.

I was doing this.

I wasn’t leaving here until I got what I wanted.

After I slammed the door, Robert stood staring at us like he couldn’t believe I’d just invited myself into this mausoleum he called a home.

“He calls you princess?” Missy asked, gawking between Romeo and me.

To reply, Romeo walked to my side and draped his arm across my shoulders. Missy stared as he leaned down and kissed the top of my head. “I texted,” he growled. “You didn’t answer.”

“I was busy.”

“So I see.”

Missy continued to openly gape. I hadn’t been this close to Romeo before. It happened naturally over the course of time, time Missy was no longer a part of.

“Don’t let it happen again.”

I rolled my eyes and poked him in the ribs. He tightened his arm around me.

“I don’t know what’s going on here, but if you don’t leave, I’ll be calling the police.”

“No, you won’t,” I said and pulled away from Romeo.

He let me go but stayed close.

“And how do you know that?” Robert scoffed.

“Because you’ve made it clear you want your son’s name to not be ruined any more than it already is.”

“If it’s ruined at all, it’s because of the lies you’re spreading about him.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with the attack on Rimmel and Romeo,” I countered.

He started to argue with me, and I held up my hand. “I’m not here to debate anything with you. Or even argue. We’re never going to see eye to eye on this. It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that you understand what will happen if you go after Braeden.”

I walked into the over-decorated formal sitting room just off the entryway and pointed to the wood coffee table and then at Missy.

Missy dropped to her knees beside the table, pulled the laptop out of her bag, and opened it up. As the laptop booted up, she laid the bag she’d brought with her beside it on the table.

“What is this?” Robert demanded, stopping in the center of the room to stare at Missy and me.

“It’s the only chance you’re going to get,” I said, flat.

Romeo stood nearby, arms crossed, watching the unfolding scene.

“I understand you loved your son, Mr. Bettinger. No one is here to dispute that. But I know you have to be aware your son wasn’t always the nicest guy. He did things. A lot of things that were unsavory.”

“If this about the alleged rape—”

“It’s not alleged!” I snapped. How dare he try and make it out like I was pretending? It was the single most horrible thing to ever happen to me, and I would
not
stand here and allow him to make light of it. “Your son drugged me. He used my room key and took me into my own room, into my own bed, and he
raped
me.” I dragged in a breath. “He said horrible things to me that night, things I wish I could forget. I have to live with that. I have to live with his voice taunting me as he violated me.”

Robert paled and took a step forward. His eyes were angry, and it scared me.

But I held my ground.

Romeo noticed him moving, and he stepped forward and dropped a hand on his shoulder. “Stay back,” he warned.

It wasn’t a friendly warning.

“I have proof.” I kept going. “Proof that he raped me. I have an entire folder of pictures that make it very clear about what happened to me that night. Your son took pictures because he was proud of what he did. And then he sent them to the school BuzzBoss in hopes that his conquest would get out and humiliate me even more.”

Robert made a strangled sound. “I don’t believe you.”

“Believe it,” Missy said. “And those aren’t the only photos he sent the BuzzBoss.”

“What is a
BuzzBoss
?” he asked, his voice becoming a little nervous.

“Think of it as a direct hotline to every single student on the Alpha U campus. Kind of like a chain email but way faster and more accessible.”

“I can’t believe the dean would allow such a thing.”

“He doesn’t,” Missy said. “BuzzBoss got taken down. But that’s the thing about the web. Alpha U doesn’t own it all.”

“And how do you know what this BuzzBoss has on my son?”

Missy stood. “Because you’re looking at him.” As if to prove a point, she pulled out her phone, did a few things, and then slid it back into her pocket.

Seconds later, both Romeo’s and my phone went off. Romeo pulled his out of his back pocket and lit up his screen.

“Well. Would you look at that?” Romeo scoffed and read the buzz out loud. “
Standing in front of the biggest story of the year. #BuzzBoss knows all. Stay tuned.”

He held the phone out so Robert could see the notification. I dug out my phone, pulled it up, and did the same.

The challenge left his eyes, and beneath Romeo’s hand, his shoulder sagged.

“What do you have on him?”

Missy made a sound and dropped in front of the laptop. Within seconds, she had file after file of photos pulled up.

“Here he is the beginning of last year, hazing one of the dropouts from the Omega fraternity.”

She turned the screen around to show a picture of Zach holding down a young-looking student and pouring what looked like vodka in his mouth. You can tell by the picture the kid was already drunk and was choking on the liquid being forced on him. He also had a black eye and a bloody nose.

“Here he is shoplifting from a local business, something I have pictures from twenty different days of him doing. I would imagine he’d stolen quite a lot in twenty plus trips.” Missy clocked through several images in which he was clearly stealing.

“Here he is vandalizing one of the professor’s cars a few semesters ago. I heard that spray paint had been impossible to get off and the teacher had to pay to have his car entirely repainted.”

Another picture.

“Here he is assaulting a girl from a campus sorority.”

That image was particularly difficult to look at, but I couldn’t not look. She was tied to a bed, hands and feet. She was completely naked, and Zach was, umm… doing things to her with a beer bottle.

I must have made a sound because Romeo was suddenly beside me, gently turning my face away from the screen. “Change it,” he roughly ordered.

Another click brought up another. And another. And another.

Each picture seemed to get worse than the last. I was horrified that I wasn’t the first and only woman he assaulted. In fact, some of them he was so horrible to, it made me feel guilty for being in so much pain about what he did to me.

I ended up burying my face in Romeo’s chest as Missy went through more than a dozen photos, going over them in graphic detail. I was going to have to add an extra therapy session to my schedule for this. This whole time I’d been so ashamed, so adamant that no one know what happened to me. I was embarrassed and didn’t want people to look at me as a victim.

Was that how all these girls felt, too?

Were they ashamed, afraid, and alone?

Maybe if I had said something, it would have helped another one of his victims.

I started to tremble, and Romeo swore lightly under his breath. “I think he gets the point,” he said over my head to Missy.

I heard the snap of her computer lid, and I took another moment to compose myself.

“Rest assured, I have more of the same. All of those are backed up on a hard drive that only I know the location of,” Missy intoned. I heard the rustling of the bag she’d brought along, and I looked up.

“About Braeden…” She began, clutching the bag. “I know for a fact that Zach had intent to kill him. He told me.”

“He didn’t,” Robert said, his voice small and shaky.

“He was obsessed with me before he died. He thought we were going to be together.” She dumped out the contents of the bag on the table. “These are gifts he sent to me. Each has a handwritten note.” She picked up one small card and took it across the room, handing it to Robert. “Recognize the handwriting?”

He stared down at the card. My heart broke for him when he started to cry.

Missy snatched the card away as if she were afraid he might try to destroy it. “He stole this dress from the place where Ivy works. The night he kidnapped Ivy, he left it on my door with a note. He wanted me to wear it to celebrate the next night after he killed B and Ivy. The note makes his intentions quite clear.”

Romeo sucked in a breath, and I pulled back to look at Missy gratefully.

But she wasn’t done.

“You can check the log at the hospital he was in upstate. He had a visitor before he was released. It was me. I signed in under the false name Blair Brien. I’m sure if the staff were called to testify, they could identify me as that woman.”

“My son.” Robert’s voice broke.

“Your son was very sick,” Romeo said gently, kindly. Like he was talking down a man from a ledge. “You already told me that. I believe you. We all believe you. Maybe the things he did were symptoms of that illness. Right now, it isn’t public knowledge the kind of things he did. Yes, the accident details and how he kidnapped Ivy are public record, but I think you and I can both agree that’s nothing compared to things Missy has on him.”

Robert was utterly defeated in a way I’d never seen before. He practically slinked over to the leather club chair and sank into the cushions. “You would release all that information? Use it to completely ruin my son’s name.”

“And your reputation,” Romeo intoned.

“My wife would never agree to come back, then. Never.” His voice was empty.

I’d feel bad if I wasn’t doing this for Braeden.

“Oh, I would use it.” Missy’s voice was almost chilling and dark with promise. “The BuzzBoss doesn’t hold back. It’s cost me a lot.” She looked at me but then back at Robert. “But it would cost you way more.”