He stood there quietly. “You know what life is like inside of a one-star nursing home?” he finally asked.
I closed my eyes, seeing Damon Torrance with his hand wrapped around his mother’s throat, and I could damn-near feel it.
I wanted to know what that felt like.
“Sometimes the patients will have bruises they shouldn’t have or they’ll find the elderly lying in their own waste for hours,” he went on. “She doesn’t know what the fuck is going on half the time anyway, so she won’t care.”
My blood boiled, every muscle inside of me tightening.
“You’re bluffing,” I breathed out. “Even you wouldn’t do that to her.”
I saw him turn toward me out of the corner of my eye. “She was transferred this morning,” he told me.
I whipped around to face him, and then I screamed, shoving him in the chest with both of my hands and then running in to knee him between the legs.
“Motherfucker!” I yelled.
He collapsed to the ground, and my body moved of its own accord. I couldn’t stop it. I swung my leg back to kick him, but he launched up and grabbed it as it came in and yanked me down to the floor.
Gripping the back of my head, he grabbed a fistful of the flesh at my waist and crushed it in his hand. I cried out and dove in, biting his face.
He howled, and I swung, slamming him across his jaw before he grabbed me by the collar and slapped me across the face.
I whipped around, my body crashing back to the floor, and I coughed, scrambling to my feet as the sharp sting spread across my face.
Swinging my leg back, I kicked him in the head, not hesitating a moment before I did it again. And again.
The taste of copper filled my mouth as blood sputtered from his mouth, and he tried to sit up on his knees, but he just fell over again.
You’ll never lay a hand on me again.
Unlike Damon, I knew how to really hide a dead body.
Pulling the chair out at the table, I sat down, silent tears blurring my eyes and blood coating my teeth as I reached over and grabbed the statement and then the pen.
Clicking the button at the top, I looked up, gazing at Will through the glass.
I could tell myself all sorts of things to make this okay.
If they weren’t who they were, they’d go to jail anyway.
I was saving them, actually. More videos coming to light would increase the charges.
They did commit crimes. And there were tons more no one knew about.
But the bottom line was…this was wrong.
I scribbled my name at the bottom of the statement that would convince their families to accept the charges in order to not risk more charges. I shoved it across the table, stood up, and grabbed the check and power of attorney, walking to the window as shame made me look away from my reflection in the glass.
“Some of us will always be casualties,” I whispered to him. “Rungs on a ladder that others climb.”
He looked up suddenly, and it looked like he was looking right at me. Like he could see me.
“Some people can’t stop what happens to them,” I said. “They’re just born in the wrong place, wrong time, with the wrong people.”
Will deserved his vengeance.
I’d just thrown him under the bus to buy my grandmother’s last days.