I felt Tristan’s hand tighten painfully in mine and I knew he was in the exact same place as me.
“Nope. Just you and me. Come on, it’ll be a nice surprise,” the man said.
“Okay.”
I heard what sounded like shuffling, but I couldn’t make out what was happening.
“Okay, Janie, lie down on your back…that’s good.”
There was more shuffling and the clear sound of fabric tearing. “No…” came Janie’s fear-clogged voice. “Mama says I’m not supposed to-”
Her words were cut off with a harsh slap and she began to cry. “Ow! That hurts!”
More fabric tore and then the man growled, “Call out to your brother, Janie!”
Sobs filled the air and I could tell they weren’t just Janie’s. I was moving forward just as Janie let out a heart-wrenching cry of pain and when I saw the video as I got closer to Memphis, I could see that the camera had been placed on a surface near a bed that likely belonged to Janie, based on the childish décor of the room. Tears flooded my eyes as I watched the man brutalizing the young woman.
“Call out to him!” the man snarled as he pinned Janie’s wrists to the bed.
I grabbed the phone from Memphis’s hand, but not before Janie screamed her brother’s name. I silenced the video before I stopped it and just as I hovered my finger over the pause button, I saw the man’s hands wrap around the young woman’s throat. Bile churned in my stomach as I blackened the screen.
I could barely see through my own tears when I looked at Memphis. His hand was covering his eyes as agonized sobs tore from his throat. Tristan had crawled across the bed and was at Memphis’s back, his arms enfolding Memphis’s shoulders and coming to rest on his chest. Tristan rested his face in the crook of Memphis’s shoulder and just clung to him. I tucked the phone in my pocket and then stepped forward until I was standing between Memphis’s legs. His arms went around me as he buried his face in my stomach and I just held on to him.
We both did.
* * *
“He was my fiancé,” Memphis whispered, his voice sounding dry and hoarse.
Tristan and I had put him between us on the bed and I had curled against his back while Tristan had pressed up to his front. I guessed we’d been in that position for nearly an hour and none of us had said a word. And while Memphis’s gut-wrenching sobs had eventually slowed, silent tears had been running down his face on and off the entire time. Even Tink had sensed her owner’s distress because she’d curled herself into a ball against his shoulder.
My stomach fell out at his words. I’d had a feeling the man who’d brutalized his sister might be connected to him, but I hadn’t been certain.
“His name was Drake. I was assigned to be his partner when I joined the DEA ten years ago. He fascinated me,” Memphis murmured. “He was older than me and so fucking beautiful, it hurt to look at him sometimes. I’d been with plenty of guys, but with Drake…I fell so hard and so fast.”
“When did he start cheating on you?” I asked.
“Pretty much right away, but he didn’t call it that. When he insisted on an open relationship, I told him no and broke up with him. I tried to get transferred to another partner, but Drake was a senior agent with a lot of pull. My transfer was denied. I was back together with him within a month. He…he knew exactly what the hell he was doing because he spent the next couple months making it only about me. So when he brought home some twink he’d met at a club, I was so deeply in love with him that I couldn’t say no. He fucked the guy while the guy blew me…I told myself it was okay because he’d included me. But he wanted the next guy to fuck me while he watched,” Memphis whispered.
I stroked my hand over Memphis’s chest as the pain made his voice crack.
“I told him no and left. I tried to end it after that, but I couldn’t. When it was just us, he was…he was perfect. He said it was just something he needed and if I loved him, I would accept it. I hated it.” Memphis said brokenly. “I kept asking him why I wasn’t enough for him…”
A fresh wave of tears hit him and I reached up to wipe them away. Tristan took over soothing him with gentle touches on his chest and shoulders.
“He proposed to me a few years later. We were working this big case in South America. The DEA had been trying to arrest this drug lord who ran a cartel down there for years, but he always evaded them. Drake and I were assigned to try to find a vulnerability…something we could exploit to draw him out. Drake was the senior agent so he went undercover while I handled the logistics and surveillance. We worked the case for almost two years.”