Page 118 of The Love Penalty

“There I am.” Lani’s voice is small but definitive.

She points at the screen, and I lean in to study her black-and-white image. She looks gorgeous, decked out in a little black dress that’s sexy as sin, and smiling at someone. Shit, the quality of this footage is amazing.

“How much does this gear cost?” I murmur. “The quality is…”

“Yeah, it was installed last year when there was that prank war going on.” Zander scoffs and shakes his head. “I don’t know if you guys heard about it, but we had a few break-ins, and there’s only so much whipped cream and slime on the walls that you can come home to, right? So, we got the best cameras we could find, and Grady here set it all up for us.”

I nod, impressed. “You catch the bastards?”

“We did.” Zander’s smile is pure satisfaction, and Wily starts laughing.

“Oh, we got those frat boys good.” He tucks a lock of blond hair behind his ear, looking all proud, until his smile drops.

I follow his line of sight, glancing at Lani’s ashen face, then jerking my eyes back to the screen.

“That’s him,” she rasps. “See me dancing?” She points at the screen.

I watch her body gyrating on the floor and feel the earth shift beneath my feet when Harvey moves in behind her.

Fuck. She was right.

It’s him.

She shudders, her shoulders twitching.

“You don’t have to watch this,” I murmur.

“Yeah, I do.” She nods. “I need to see it.”

So we keep going. The air in the room gets sucked into oblivion, the silence ominous as we stand around the laptop, watching Lani dance, laugh, and make out with Harvey. My stomach churns at the way his hands rove her body. I hate that he touched her, that his tongue was in her mouth, that?—

“You don’t have to watch this.” Lani looks to me with a desperate frown.

I squeeze her side and mutter, “Yeah, I do.”

And so I remain by her side and watch in pure torture as they stumble off the dance floor together and head down the hallway.

They disappear off camera for a second, but then Grady clicks a few buttons and pulls up a new screen. It’s a shot of a hallway upstairs, and we get there in time to see Harvey opening a door and pulling Lani in behind him.

The door clicks shut, and we have to watch other people milling around for a while.

“How long were you in there?” Grady glances over his shoulder.

“I don’t know,” Lani whispers, her head shaking in short, jerky movements.

I pull her a little closer, and she closes her eyes—maybe reliving what happened to her? This is killing me.

Zander shifts uncomfortably, and I look at him. He’s staring at Lani with an agonized frown before his eyes dart back to the screen. “Fast-forward a little, man.”

Grady does as he’s told, and nine minutes later Harvey’s walking out of the room. He shuts the door behind him, running a hand through his hair and straightening his shirt. Moving away from the door, he walks down the hallway, raising his chin at someone off-screen. You wouldn’t know he’d just raped someone. He doesn’t even look guilty. How the fuck does he do that?

Lani squirms, and I wonder if she’s worried that the guys won’t believe her claims. This footage so far is not doing anything to help her cause.

But then the door creeps open again and she shuffles into view.

And it’s so fucking obvious, I want to break Harvey’s neck.

She looks traumatized. Even from this camera angle you can tell. Her eyes are huge, darting up and unwittingly looking straight at the camera. She’s in shock, glancing around like she’s not really seeing anything. She wobbles on her heels as she tries to walk down the hallway, almost like she’s drunk, but then she wraps her arms around herself and shrinks, shuffling toward the stairs with a desolate look on her face.

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