Read Online See No Evil by Allison Brennan - Free Book Online Page A

by six p.m. And on Wednesdays my mother is out late and Victor is home early…”
    Her voice trailed off and Julia knew what she was going to say. Her stomach dropped and her fists clenched. “That bastard!” She almost hit the window, but Connor’s hand shot out and grabbed her fist. Held it. His hand was hot and dry.
    Emily’s lip quivered and Dillon asked quietly but firmly, “When Victor and you were alone at the house, what happened?”
    “He—” She stopped, cleared her throat, her eyes rimmed with tears. “He made me give him oral sex.” Her voice was flat.
    “Did you tell anyone?”
    She shook her head, averting her eyes. “I was scared.”
    “That’s why you ran away three years ago?” Dillon asked.
    “Y-yes.”
    “It’s been going on for over three years?”
    She nodded.
    Dillon’s voice was soothing. “What did your stepfather do to you?”
    She didn’t look at Dillon, but Julia knew she was telling the truth. Her cheeks were red from embarrassment, humiliation. Her hands twisted in the bed-sheets. “Six months after he and Mother got married I saw him watching me swim. It freaked me out, but he went away. Then it happened again. And again. And I couldn’t go in the pool anymore unless I knew for sure he wasn’t at home.
    “One day a couple months later, I was in the pool house showering. I thought I was alone, completely alone because it was a Wednesday and the servants had the day off. I opened the shower door to grab a towel and he was there. Naked. I screamed and he slapped me. He raped me. Right there on the bathroom floor.”
    Next to Julia, Connor squeezed her hand, his own anger radiating from his tight body. “I’d have killed him,” he said, his voice a low, vicious rasp. “He deserved what he got.”
    Julia couldn’t disagree, though she was the last person who believed that anyone should take justice into their own hands. She wondered what she would have done had she known Victor raped her niece.
    Julia would have turned him in. Had Victor Montgomery prosecuted and thrown in prison, where maybe he would see what it was like to be raped. Three years ago, Emily had been under fourteen, which meant special circumstance sexual assault. Montgomery would have been locked up in maximum for ten-to-twenty and required to register as a sex offender.
    But Julia knew what the victims went through. They were scared, true, but more than that they were deeply humiliated. The hurt didn’t end with the physical pain. They suffered emotionally for the rest of their lives. On top of that, Emily would have had to talk to a judge, possibly take the stand and testify. Her word against a respected jurist. And now, three years later, any physical evidence was gone. No proof. Even a mediocre attorney could rip Emily’s story apart.
    “Why didn’t you tell someone?” Dillon asked Emily quietly.
    “I don’t know. Who’d believe me? And…I tried to forget. I didn’t want to think about it. Ever. And then, a month later, he was there, outside my bedroom when I was leaving for school. He told me I was a good girl because I kept my mouth shut, and so he knew I’d liked it.” Tears streamed down Emily’s face. “He said he’d have a surprise for me when I got home from school and not to be late. That’s when I ran away.”
    Dillon said, “When you came home after you ran away, when did your stepfather start hurting you again?”
    “He didn’t touch me, not like that. Instead he”—she drank more water, coughed—“he made me give him a blow job every Wednesday afternoon. I started drinking to get rid of the taste.”
    She had no more tears, her voice was a monotone.
    “And one day I read a newspaper article about a rapist he put in prison. He was quoted. ‘When a woman says no, she means no.’ And I realized then, I’d never said no. I just did what he told me. It was all my fault. And I got drunk and spray-painted the courthouse.”
    Dillon tried to reassure Emily. “It