Page 71 of The Club

How I must have liked getting fucked by all those men at the Island.

How it obviously didn’t fix me.

How I need a real lesson.

“Dominic—”

I wheel and punch Rafael in the face. He crashes into a table then hits the floor.

Noah helps him up then holds him back. Noah’s eyes are on me like he knows I’m freaking the fuck out right now. He doesn’t fuck with me, doesn’t say anything at all until I stop pacing and stand there with my chest heaving.

Then he says in a quiet, firm voice, “Everything is okay.”

My breath hitches. I don’t think anyone has ever said that to me in my life. I know what he said isn’t true, thatnothingis okay. I know I should shout and throw the words back at him. But I just stand there with my throat so tight I can hardly breathe.

Rafael scrapes his hair back. “Silva had a hidden camera. I missed it. I fucked up.”

My brain is slow to process that, but when the implications hit me, I’m relieved to feel my anger surge back in and drown out everything else for a second.

I snap at Rafael, “So you killed him in hishome? That’s a fuck up all on its own.”

“I couldn’t get to him easily.”

“So you wait. You watch. You learn his movements. For fuck’s sake, Rafael, how have you never been caught? With a high profile target, it takes months to safely—”

“I know that!” Rafael loses it abruptly, flipping a table. It crashes down a short set of steps. “But it’s alreadybeenmonths, and I had to fucking know!”

“Knowwhat? What the fuck is going on?”

Rafael wheels away and goes stalking off.

That’s not fucking happening. I start after him, but Noah intercepts me. He knows better than to touch me, but he holds up a hand.

I could shove it away. I could go grab Rafael. I want to. Violence is absolutely churning inside me. But somehow, I stop myself. For some fucking reason, I let Noah deal with this.

“And?” Noah calls after Rafael, like he knows perfectly well what all this is about.

Rafael answers with a terse nod.

Noah pulls out his phone. “I’m calling Dante.”

That has Rafael spinning toward him. “Jesus Christ, Noah, don’t fucking call him.”

Noah only gives him a look and walks off with his phone.

Rafael scrubs a hand across his face then throws himself into the nearest banquette. His head thumps onto the back of it.

“What the hell is with you and Dante anyway?” I demand.

I don’t recall them being close at the Island. But then, nobody really was. The house managers didn’t allow it. Everything was monitored, every moment controlled, every boy handled differently.

Besides, I didn’t see much of anyone. I wasn’t at the dinners. I was mostly isolated, as my father had ordered.

But I was out of my room some, enough to recall how silent Dante always was, how he’d withdraw to a corner wheneverhe could, how his eyes tracked everything. I also recall how pampered I thought Rafael was, how he knew exactly how to please the men, how much he seemed to relish their attention.

But I recall, too, how they barely stopped him from hanging himself one night.

I know that Noah got Dante, Rafael, and a lot of other boys off the Island after my father had already retrieved me. I don’t know exactly how the three of them fit together after that. I wasn’t part of any of it.

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