Page 86 of Resilience

Athena’s reaction was swift and violent. She balled her fists and slammed them on the corner of the desk. “NO!” she signed. “It’s MY call! I’m the one he raped!”

The word ‘rape’ hit Apollo with obvious force. Anger fully reclaimed his expression, even as he spoke to his daughter. “And I’m your father! I am not putting you at any more risk! If this goes wrong—and you don’t know half the ways it might—I want you far, far away from it.”

Athena shook her head. “Then no. Don’t do anything, if you’re going to ice me out. Leave him alone.”

“Absolutely not. That piece of shit hurt my child. He doesn’t keep breathing after that.”

Athena whipped around and stared at Sam, her eyes wide and fierce. She wanted him to take a side, and it was extremely clear what side he needed to be on, should he wish things between them to continue harmoniously.

But he was on her father’s side. He understood why Athena was so insistent, why she felt so passionately that this was her justice to take. He agreed on that point. He saw that his impulse to go after Hunter the second he’d known what he’d done was the same as Apollo’s impulse now—righteous and yet still wrong. It took agency from Athena, and maybe that was the greatest offense of rape, the way it took power from the victim. He understood all that, but he still didn’t want Athena anywhere near the scene where Hunter met his consequences.

Actually, that should be her choice, too, shouldn’t it? She wasn’t a child.

Knowing full well he was about to piss off an already very angry father, Sam told him, “It’s not about us. Athena should decide.”

The way Apollo looked at him, Sam hoped the beatdown he was so clearly going to get didn’t open up his neck again. But Athena threw her arms around that neck and hung on, offering him full-body gratitude. The beatdown would be worth it.

Athena’s reaction seemed to cool her father a degree or two. He considered them quietly for a long moment before he sighed again, reached over, and tapped her leg. When he had her attention, he signed, “Your mother is going to kill me. You understand? She will peel me like a fucking grape.”

Sam could actually feel the tension leave Athena’s body.

“Mom will understand. I will make sure she does. And thank you, Dad.”

“You understand that I intend to kill this fucker, right? And I mean to make him hurt first. Do you really want to be there for that?”

That she took some time to consider the question surprised Sam. When Athena made up her mind about something, she pretty much locked that door and melted the key down for scrap.

“I told you that I don’t want him killed,” she began. “I want him to hurt. But I understand why you say you can’t hurt him and let him live. I wish it could be different, but ... it’s burning me up from the inside that he’s just walking around without any damage except a lost job. The stuff Mom can do doesn’t help. I thought she could fuck him up that way, but it’s all ... paperwork. It isn’t enough.”

She paused. Both Sam and Apollo let the pause go until Athena was ready to fill it. They understood that she was working herself toward an answer she needed to find on her own.

“It makes me crazy that he doesn’t even think he raped me. He thinks because he was my boyfriend, he was entitled to do what he did.”

“What?” Apollo cut in. “He said that?”

Athena nodded. Her father started to sign something more, but he dropped his hands and shook his head. Sam noticed that the tendons in his neck had gone taut.

When Athena didn’t pick up her thread, Apollo eventually asked, “Has he reached out to you since that night?”

“I told him I wouldn’t tell the club unless he tried to contact me. I think he believed that, and I know he’s afraid of you. But then I blocked all his contacts, so I don’t know for sure if he ever tried. I didn’t tell anybody, by the way. Even to him, I didn’t lie. You guys all just figured it out because I apparently suck as a liar.”

“That’s not a character flaw, starlight,” her father assured her. Then he asked, “You blocked all his contacts? Social media, too?”

When she nodded, Apollo spun his fancy chair and faced his main computer. He went online, googled Hunter’s name, didn’t like his results there, typed something else and pulled up a different hit list that looked a lot like Google but was not. There, he found hits for various social media sites. The first hit was TikTok.

Sam had never followed that asswipe on any social media. They’d never tried to be friends. But Athena had told him that Hunter had a healthy TikTok following, where he did videos about Deaf culture and ASL.

Athena rapped on the desk to get her father’s attention. When she had it, she asked, “What are you doing?”

“I want to see if he talks about you, or anything else relevant. I want to know what he’s been doing for the past few weeks.”

Hunter posted a lot, at least once a day most days. They sat there for a good twenty minutes, starting each video, watching long enough to understand the topic, then moving on to the next.

Two days after the party at the lake, Hunter posted one with the caption, ‘It’s hard to be a nice guy when women are the way they are.’

They all exchanged a glance before Apollo started that one.

The video was simply Hunter, in his usual position, showing himself from the chest up, obviously sitting at his kitchen table. While most of his videos showed him smiling, looking like the pretty-boy thirst trap the people of TikTok had declared him to be, in this one, he was somber.

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