Page 15 of Rent Free

Most of the time, I assumed, the men she was seeing—that she was abusing—grew tired of being the punching bag and snapped.

Some would leave—but they were the kind of men that Sage didn’t want anyway, so she didn’t pursue them. She wanted the ones who would get angry. She wanted the ones who would react.

She wanted the ones who would fight back, so she could eventually use that to her advantage.

Hell, I was fairly sure blackmailing a guy who hit her had been how she’d paid for her first car.

Expecting her attack, and expertly defending myself against it, I let her momentum roll with her and used it against her.

See, Sage was only fueled by anger and a mental disorder.

Me, on the other hand?

The first day I was well enough to go to a class after she’d beaten the hell out of me, I’d started taking Jiu Jitsu.

I’d learned how to protect myself against her.

Since then, I’d started taking multiple other kinds of martial arts, and deflecting her blows was easy.

“Would you just stop,” I said after the fourth time she ran at me. “Be an adult about this, Sage.”

“Fuck you!” she snarled, reaching into her purse.

Hopefully she didn’t have a gun in there.

But she came back out with a knife, making me roll my eyes.

“I’m gonna go,” I said. “But if you want to talk it over like two adults, I’ll be at the fancy hotel off the interstate that’s all black. That’s where I’m staying for the time being.”

I didn’t tell her about where I worked.

She didn’t need to know that.

Though, I had no doubt she’d figure it out.

She was a super sleuther.

She also slept with people to get what she wanted.

Oh, and had the sexually transmitted disease to prove it.

Not that she shared that information with the partners she sex-tortioned.

Again, another sparkly facet of my sister’s personality.

She was a real gem, wasn’t she?

“Fuck you!” she cried.

I walked out of her apartment.

I’d gotten the information about where she was living from a friend of a friend who was good with computers.

I didn’t have to resort to sleeping with people for information like my sister did.

I hoofed it down the stairs, and headed to my car, my phone already in my hand.

“How did it go?” Everest asked when he answered.

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