Revenge at Raleigh High Read online

  I’m done jerking off. I haven’t touched myself since before I went and found Silver up at the cabin. All right, well…I may have been feeling a little sorry for myself in the hospital after having major surgery to remove the bullet that was lodged in my chest. I might have jerked off then, just the once, but I figure that didn’t count since I’d nearly just fucking died and all. Fucking sue me. Apart from that, I haven’t made myself come.

  I’ve been saving all of my pent-up sexual energy for Silver, and holy fuck has it been worth it. At this point, I’m a professional at delaying my own orgasm; I can hold off forever if needs be, and I take great pleasure in doing just that. I’ve waited for her. Cultivated the patience of a fucking saint. I’ve kept my hands to myself and I’ve played it cool. It hasn’t been fucking easy holding back, but there’s something truly bitter sweet about denying myself and making sure it’s Silver who comes to me for attention.

  That way, the release is so much fucking greater when it comes, but I’m also never second guessing myself. If we have sex, it’s because she’s wanted it. There’s never been any doubt. She’s made the first move. She’s crawled for it on her hands and her knees because she’s wanted it so fucking bad, and I know without a shadow of a doubt I haven’t coerced her into anything simply because I’m fucking horny.

  Fog plumes on my breath, clouding above my head as I lie in bed, staring up at the bedroom ceiling. I contemplate getting up so I can turn on the heating and get a fire going in the wood burner, but the prospect of throwing back the covers is just too much to fucking handle right now, so I remain bundled up, trying to convince myself that I’m a good guy and I should not text Silver.

  My phone buzzes against my chest underneath the blankets less than a second later, and the salacious, hungry part of me crows with delight: it’s from Silver. Who else would be messaging me at this time in the morning? And if she’s awake…then would it really be so bad if I suggested she drive her fine ass over here immediately?

  I bite my bottom lip, riddled with anticipation as I check the screen of my cell phone…and then I see the name at the top of the text and curse like a fucking sailor. It isn’t from her after all.

  Monty: You still got the bag?

  I’d barely made it home the other night. The roads were hazardous, and the driving snow ended up blowing directly into the Camaro’s windshield, making it almost impossible to see where the fuck I was going. It came down so thick and fast, I couldn’t even see the road after a while. It’s a miracle I didn’t wind up wrapped around a street lamp, but the St. Christopher around my neck must have been working overtime or something because I made it back to meet Silver in one piece. Monty called just as I’d arrived home later, wanting me to wait to hand off the bag, so I’d been spared the need to go out into the cold for a second time in the early hours of the morning and I’d gone straight to bed. I didn’t see him at the Rock during my shift last night, so I’ve been sitting on the thing ever since.

  Me: Yeah, it’s in the trunk of my car.

  Monty: I’ll send someone over for it this afternoon.

  Me: Copy that.

  He was sweating the night he’d told me I had to go out to Bellingham. The bag had seemed vitally important. Now he’s not planning on retrieving it until this afternoon? Doesn’t make much sense, but whatever. Not my business. I’m just glad he didn’t say he needs me to drive it over there right now.

  It's almost time to throw my ass in the shower and get ready for school. I’m going to have to get up in a minute anyway, but for now the warm cocoon of my bed is demanding that I sta—

  My thoughts grind to a halt at the sound—a clicking, scraping sound, off to the right, in the living room. A metallic grating noise that doesn’t belong in the silence of the early winter morning inside of my trailer. It’s a quiet sound at first but grows increasingly louder as I slowly get up out of bed and pick up the handle of the woodcutter’s axe I keep beside the bed.

  My chest and my feet are bare, but there’s no time to find socks and a shirt. Someone’s trying to bust the lock on the trailer door, and I’m about to give them an epic fucking headache. Poor, stupid son of a bitch. Should have done a little research before deciding to pick my trailer to break into. The blinds at the windows in the living room are drawn; outside, dawn is breaking over Raleigh, but the weak morning light is barely enough to lighten the gloom, and I almost crack my shin on the corner of the coffee table as I tiptoe around it.

  Pausing, I wait by the door, axe held high over my head, waiting…

  The brass handle slowly turns…

  I rip the door open, already swinging, teeth bared, anger firing in my veins. But when I see who’s standing there on my front doorstep, eyes wide in horror, it takes every ounce of strength I possess to angle the axe’s blade to the side, driving the honed metal into the door frame.

  Silver’s father opens his mouth, eyes locked on the axe now buried in the door jamb next to his head. He inhales a long, seemingly endless breath. When he’s let it out, he turns to look at me and arches an eyebrow. “And a good morning to you, too, Moretti.”

  Oh…fucking shit.

  I wrench at the axe handle, ripping it from the doorframe, not knowing if my weak ass smile should be nervous, awkward, sheepish, or all three. “Mr. Parisi. Morning.”

  He folds his arms across his chest, huffing down his nose. “Is this how you greet everyone who pays you a visit, or just the fathers of the girls you’re sleeping with?”

  Okaaay. Not too sure how to respond to that one. “It’s how I greet people who appear to be breaking into my place?” I offer, my voice trailing up at the end into a question. Much safer to just avoid the comment about me fucking his daughter. Acknowledging that comment can only lead to disaster.

  Now it’s Daddy Parisi’s turn to look a little awkward. “Yeah, well, I knocked but there was no answer, so…”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “If I heard you shuffling around out here, screwing around with the lock, you don’t think I’d have heard you actually trying to get my attention?”

  He stares at me, dark eyes boring into mine. A moment later, he shrugs, shoving his gloved hands into the pockets of his thick down jacket. “Okay. Fine. You’re right. I didn’t knock. I was trying to break in. I just figured…”

  I’m paying attention. Like, really paying attention. I’ve met Mr. Parisi a number of times since the night I sat down next to Silver and she told her parents that she was raped. I’ve been polite, respectful and I’ve made damn sure I never let things get too far with Silver under his roof. It would have been pretty fucking shitty to have had him walk in when I was balls deep in his pride and joy. All in all, I’ve been a model boyfriend, and he’s been…well, he’s been Mr. Parisi. Quick with the self-effacing jokes. Smart. Quiet, as a rule. Observant—I know when I’m being watched.

  I haven’t really been able to get a solid read on the guy, to figure out who he really is, but never in a million years did I suspect he was the type of guy to break and enter. This is a new, highly interesting version of Mr. Parisi that I’m keen on meeting face-to-face.

  He grimaces, kicking the toe of his rubber boot against the concrete step. “I wanted to see for myself what kind of shit you’ve got going on, Moretti. Silver…she’s serious about you. And I know how things are for a guy like you. I wanted to see if there was a stripper in your bed. I wanted to see if there were needles sitting on your counter tops. I didn’t want to give you any time to hide anything that might be damning.”

  Okay. Fair enough. So, I might not appreciate the judgement, or the mistrust, or the invasion of my fucking privacy, but I respect his motives. He’s here looking out for Silver. He’s doing his job as a father. Letting my head drop back, I narrow my eyes, studying the guy. He’s nothing like any of the bastards I’ve found myself stuck with in the past. I don’t get alarm bells with Mr. Parisi. If anything, I think he’s pretty cool, which is weird since
I decided a long time ago that parenthood, with immediate effect, turns people into raging assholes.

  Taking a step back, I hold the door open, jerking my head inside. “Come on, then. Take a look. I’ll make sure to keep my hands where you can see ’em.”

  He looks unsure, slightly annoyed and tired. Poor fucker probably hasn’t been sleeping much. I guess insomnia’s a reasonable side effect of infidelity and rape. “You think I won’t call your bluff?” he asks flatly.

  “I’m not bluffing. Come in. I’m three seconds away from dying of hypothermia.” It’s fucking true, too. I don’t have a clue what the official word on the weather is, but it’s still snowing—at least another fifteen inches must have come down overnight and from the grey, ominous, brooding morning that’s breaking now, it doesn’t look like it’s gonna stop snowing any time soon, either. Definitely not the kind of temperatures you want to stand around in, not wearing a shirt.

  Mr. Parisi grunts as he climbs up the step and enters the trailer. I grab the t-shirt I was wearing last night from the back of the couch, quickly throwing it on, pretty pleased that I’ve been able to cover and tidy up a little at the same time. The trailer’s by no means spotless, but I keep if fairly clean and in order. Gary, fucking psycho that he was, would try and knock out a couple of teeth if he found my corner of the basement in disarray. When I first moved in here, into my own space, where I could do whatever the fuck I wanted without consequence, I trashed the place on purpose. It felt like I’d won some sort of war every time I walked in through the door and had to step over mountains of dirty clothes and empty beer bottles in order to reach the couch. Wasn’t long before I was back in the habit of tidying up after myself, though. As it turned out, living in filth and chaos is pretty miserable.

  Mr. Parisi casts a dark look around, taking everything in. His expression is blank, concealing his thoughts as he walks around the perimeter of the living room, scanning the book shelves, the side table where I keep the record player, the coffee table, and the little end tables by the couch that I snagged from a yard sale last summer.

  “No ashtrays. You don’t smoke?” Mr. Parisi asks.

  I prop myself up against the wall, raising my eyebrows. “Occasionally. Only when I’ve had a beer or two. Never around Silver.”

  “So, you drink, then.”

  I give him a wry look. “I’m seventeen. I work at a bar. Yes, I drink.”

  He flares his nostrils. “Around Silver?”

  “Yes. But never in excess. Never so I can’t take care of her properly.”

  “Does she drink?”

  I laugh softly under my breath. “I think I’m holding up pretty well under this impromptu inspection, but I’m not going to narc on your daughter. You know Silver. You know who she is, right?”

  He glares at me, jaw working. “Of course I do. She’s a good girl. I trust her.”

  “Then you don’t need to be asking me questions like that. You know she drinks, but you also know she’s smart. She doesn’t get herself into dangerous situations or do shit you need to worry about. Not after what happened…”

  An anguished flicker of pain flares in the man’s eyes. I see my own feelings reflected in his face as he pivots to face me; it’s all there, the fury, the anger, the fiery need for vengeance. “She still won’t tell me who hurt her, y’know. She won’t give me their names,” he says quietly.

  “Yeah. I—I guess she’s just handling it the only way she feels she can.”

  “But you know who did it, don’t you?”

  “Mr. Parisi…”

  “Why would she tell you and not me?”

  I open my mouth, relying on the fact that I usually know what to say in most situations, but this time I don’t. I grasp for an answer to give to him, one that makes sense and might even make him feel better, but that answer just isn’t there. “I honestly don’t know. Maybe…she’s just worried about you. Your family’s been through a lot of shit lately, right?”

  He blows out a hard breath, grinding his teeth together. “That doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter what’s going on in our lives. She should know that she can count on me to be there for her no matter what.”

  I have zero experience dealing with parents who actually care about their kids. Honestly, seeing the raw emotion on Mr. Parisi’s face is freaking me the fuck out; I have no idea how to react to it. I doubt he’d be stoked if I waltzed up to him and gave him a hug, so I do the only thing I can think of and pretend I haven’t noticed the way his eyes are shining a little too brightly. “She knows you care about her. She knows you’re there for her. She came to you in the end, when she was ready. She’ll give you the missing pieces of the story, too. You just need to be patient with her.”

  Mr. Parisi seems to think on this. I’m stunned when the guy sighs heavily and collapses down onto my sofa. I’ve been waiting for him to charge through the rest of the trailer, continuing on his mission to track down all of my illusive hookers and blow, but it appears that mission has been abandoned for the time being.

  “You love her,” he says. A statement.

  I set my jaw, lifting my chin. “Yes.”

  Mr. Parisi glances at me out of the corner of his eye and laughs bitterly under his breath. “No need for the posturing, Moretti. I’m not here to tell you to stay away from her. I do want to know one thing, though.”

  “All right. Ask.”

  “If you love her, then…” His voice cracks. He has to take a second before he can finish his sentence. “What did you do to those motherfuckers when you found out what they’d done to her?”

  Fuck.

  It feels like he’s just landed a right hook right to my gut.

  I growl, banging the back of my head against the wall behind me. “Nothing. I didn’t do a single thing.”

  “What?” Silver’s father looks like he’s about to leap up from the sofa and fasten his hands around my throat. I wouldn’t blame him, either. “She trusted you with that information…and you did nothing? How the hell can you say you love her if—”

  “She made me promise.”

  “I don’t give a shit! If you care about someone—”

  “If you care about someone and you make them a promise, you keep it no matter what. How many promises have you made to Silver? And how many of them have you broken? Because I’ve only made the one so far, and I don’t intend on breaking it. Not Ever. She made me swear to her that I wouldn’t use violence against them or break the law. She tied my fucking hands. Right now, all I can do is bide my time. There will be justice for the people who hurt her, believe me. I’m not going to just let them get away with it. But I’ve earned your daughter’s trust. It’s the most valuable fucking thing in the world to me, and there’s no way in hell I’m breaking it.”

  The poor fucker’s taken his gloves off, and his hands are balled into fists on the tops of his knees. I can see it written all over him: this man needs to hit something. Or someone. He’s been through hell and back recently and he’s had no fucking release from any of it. If he doesn’t hit me right here and now, then it’ll only be a matter of time. At some point, he’s going to snap, he’s going to hit something, and when he does there are going to be some real fucking fireworks.

  He’s a tall guy, the same height as me. I doubt he’s really worked out in a long time, but he’s fit. In relatively good shape. I’m sure I’d be able to take him in a fight, but it’s a really bad fucking idea. I can’t let things get that far. Silver would be devastated if I ended up trading blows with her old man, but more than that, I bear him no ill will. Fighting with him wouldn’t do anyone any real favors, even if it did help him temporarily blow off some steam.

  Time to enter peacemaker mode, then.

  I sigh, pushing away from the wall and crossing the living room to join him on the couch. He flinches when I sink down next to him, as if I’ve suddenly jarred him from a waking nightmare that had taken him over and clouded his mind. His fists unclench reflexively.

  “Whe
n I was ten, I was staying at this group home for boys. It was bad there,” I tell him. “We slept in dorms. I can’t really remember how many kids were in my dorm but there was a pretty big group of us. Must have been between fifteen and twenty kids or something. I can’t remember when it started, but there was this guy who used to come into the dorm at night and take one of the kids away with him. The boy had been dropped off at the home when he was six. Hadn’t even known his own name, so one of the nicer female attendants decided to call him George. This one guy, Mr. Clayton? He took a shine to George. At one in the morning, nearly every morning, George would take Mr. Clayton’s hand as he pulled him out of his bed, and he would pad barefoot with him in silence out of the dorm—”

  “I don’t think I want to hear this story, Alex.”

  Unblinking, I stare at the clock by the television, waiting for the bright, glowing number five on the end of the digital display to change to a six. “You’re right. I don’t need to go into details,” I mutter. “We both know what was happening to George. I knew back then, too. I convinced myself I didn’t. Told myself George was being shown special treatment. That Mr. Clayton preferred George to all of us other boys, and he was sneaking him out in the middle of the night to give him candy and let him watch T.V. in his private apartment instead of in the drafty, damp home room where the rest of us were sometimes allowed to hang out. I’ve felt guilty about that for years. That I didn’t stand up and say something that might have stopped Mr. Clayton creeping into our dorm like some sinister fucking shadow after midnight.”

  “You were a child, Alex.”

  “I was afraid is what I was. I’m not afraid anymore, though. I’m not hiding under my bedsheets, pretending to be asleep now, okay? I swear to you that I’m not gonna let those pieces of shit get away with what they did to your girl. The wheels are already turning. It might take a little while, but a day of reckoning is coming, I can promise you that.”