A look comes over Beck’s face, one filled with anguish and fatigue. He pulls one hand out from under mine and scrubs it over his face. His eyes dart to the right and he takes a deep breath, and when they slide back my way, what he tells me next causes my world to tilt.
“Sela . . . JT is my brother.”
“What?” I gasp in astonishment as I rear backward.
“It fucking kills me to even claim we share the same blood, but yeah . . . he’s my brother. Half brother to be exact.”
“I don’t understand,” I whisper, not able to even fathom this revelation. “I never read anything about that. You’ve never said anything.”
“No one knows,” he says bitterly. “JT doesn’t even know. Only my father and his mother. And me, of course.”
“I . . . I . . .” Fuck, I’m speechless.
Beck leans forward, places his hands on my shoulders. His face comes near mine and his eyes pin me in place. “I’m not telling you that to elicit any sympathy for his cause. The fact we share blood isn’t going to save him from me. I’m going to make him pay, but you need to know why I really kept giving him chances. I’d all but given up on him as a friend and business partner. That blood tie was the last thin straw that was causing me to give him that one final chance. And yeah . . . I was fucking taken in by him at dinner that night. He snowed me, apparently, and knowing we share the same blood made it easier for me to fall into it. But not anymore. He’s fucking dead to me and I swear I’m going to make him pay.”
Warmth flushes through me over his heated vow. While I definitely want to know more about this blood tie he shares with JT, I’m more interested to know how complicit Beck will become in my plans. I have an avenging angel on my side now, and together we can rid JT from our existence.
“Will you help me kill him?” I whisper.
The blood drains from Beck’s face, and now he’s the one that jerks backward. “Christ, Sela. No, we can’t fucking kill JT. We have to go to the police.”
“But you said—”
He rolls right over me. “I said I’d make him pay. I might beat him senseless first, but then we’re going to the police. He’s going down for this but we’re letting the legal system handle it.”
I try to tamp down the rage that swelters hot within me and I push up from coffee table until I’m standing over Beck on the couch. “He raped me with two of his buddies. Took away my innocence, held me down while some faceless monster tore my ass up, and then made fun of me when the jizz I didn’t swallow was dried to a crust in my hair. He put me in a cab, without a care in the world that he’d be caught, and then he went back inside to party with his friends. I’m sure the only thought that man has given me in the past ten years is to jack off to the memory of what he did to me, and you don’t think he deserves to die?”
“Yes, he deserves to die,” Beck says with a hard edge to his voice. “But not at the risk of you getting caught.”
“But we could come up with a plan—”
“For fuck’s sake, Sela,” Beck bellows as he stands up from the couch and gets in my face. He’s furious, and for the first time during this discussion, it’s at me and not himself or JT. “We cannot plot to murder someone. It won’t work. We’ll get caught.”
I know he’s right, and because he’s right and killing my dream of revenge with his practicality, I get just as pissed, so I yell back at him, “Then just how in the hell are you going to make him pay, Beck? Huh? What grand scheme do you have that could possibly make up for what he did to me?”
“I don’t know,” he says tiredly, stepping to the side and around me. I turn my body, keeping my eyes on him as he paces over to the window. He shoves his hands back inside his pockets and his shoulder sag with the weight of what I just placed on him.