I opened my mouth and prepared for my earth to be rocked. “Mitch Morris!”
“As in Senator Mitch Morris?” Law asked.
My fist was clenched at my side and my other hand felt empty. My .22 was about a foot away, nestled in the purse I’d dropped angrily to the ground. I wanted to lunge for it, but that would be too obvious. Still, I felt so exposed and helpless. I’d laid all my cards on the table and now I was without any extra chips. I really didn’t know what to expect from Law.
I was sure he was working for Morris. Sure that Morris had hired him to do something with me. Kill me? Maybe. At least Morris wanted me silenced, of that I was pretty certain. Still, I wasn’t sure how much Morris had told Law. Perhaps Law had no idea what Morris had done to me.
I nodded in response to Law’s question, waiting for the incredulity and hate to flow. Six months before, when the rape was still fresh and I was still naive enough to think people would believe me, I had learned the hard way that most didn’t respond well to finding out their beloved senator and prominent church leader was a rapist. Instead they chose to believe I was a whore. A slut. A liar.
“Wait…” Law took a step away from me. I was used to that too. It was as if after finding out what had happened to me, I became tainted. Plagued. Like my terrible “lies” would spread to them too. “A couple of months ago there was a news story—”
“About an intern who tried to smear Morris. Called him a rapist but turned out she was an alcoholic whore? A slut. A liar. Yeah. That’s me. Nami DeGrace.” Only it wasn’t me. After the rape kit, I went to the media. They laughed in my face.
I thought that would be the worst of it, but then the police reported me to Morris. I woke up the next morning to a fleet of news reporters on my lawn. I guessed I had gotten what I wanted. They reported my story, but it wasn’t mine. It was twisted, tawdry, and it annihilated me.
What the police did was completely illegal of course, but who was I going to call? The police?
The news reporters wouldn’t leave. They were calling me the new Monica Lewinsky (and those were the nice reporters). Others called me whore, slut, and liar.
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I got hate mail. I got death threats.
I couldn’t go to class.
I dropped out of school.
I didn’t leave my house for months. I lived off the small inheritance I had from my parent’s death until it ran out. Then I applied for nightshift jobs until someone hired me. It was simpler to work at night, under the cover of darkness where I wasn’t easily recognized.
Like I was a vampire or some shit.
While the lab wasn’t my own, it felt like it. I was the only one who worked the graveyard shift. I had my own key, an entire facility to myself, and I left before anyone on the morning shift arrived. It was peaceful and uncomplicated.
The only time I went out in the day was to occasionally spy on Morris. Or to get a coffee…but look how that turned out.
“There are no words to describe that douche hole. Maybe cock knob.” Law paused as if thinking seriously and then said, “Perhaps Satan’s twat.” Law shook his head. “Still not right.”
I coughed. “Excuse me?”
Law rounded me. Despite numerous self pep talks and online rape recovery groups, I still crumbled when a tall figure came at me. I flinched, expecting to be beat up. Law probably thought I was lying, just like everyone else, and was going to teach me a lesson. I’d received numerous letters and emails delineating what people were going to do to me…but Law just passed me and went into my kitchen. The breath I was holding released.
“Where are you going?” I asked, my voice still shaking a bit.
Law opened my fridge. “You got a beer?” Raskol bounded in after him, because any time someone was in the kitchen it meant something was in it for him.
“Uh… I have whiskey,” I replied, hoping the confusion I felt wasn’t obvious.
Closing the fridge, Law turned his assault on my cabinets. “Even better.”
Returning with a bottle of whiskey in tow and Raskol hot on his heels, Law sat down on my coffee table and took a swig. “Tell me everything.”
It felt like ice had been poured over my head. I stared at Law, unblinking, for what seemed like hours. He took slow slips of my whiskey (my good whiskey), and watched me carefully. The realization of what was happening didn’t occur quickly. It came slowly, like the tide rising over the sands of my own mind.
“What? No.” I raised my hands, shaking them as I tried to regain some control. Tell him everything? The last people I had told everything to were the police, and that had backfired tremendously. I still had no reason to trust Law. The fact was I knew nothing about Law other than he worked for Morris in some capacity. I was already being an idiot letting him inside my home. And letting him drink my only good whiskey!
“I can help,” Law said.
I kicked my heel against the back of the couch, the pain clearing my mind. “By reporting me to Morris? Look, you can tell him I’m done, okay? I won’t do anything any more. He’s made his point.” And he had. Clearly I was in over my head. I just wanted justice, but this wasn’t some comic book. When people like me try to get justice, people like Morris send Law. If I kept going, I would probably end up dead.