Page 116 of Sugar Coated Secrets

I hold her hand. “I have a problem.”

Chris gurgles on a laugh.

Danny’s hand is shaking, but he doesn’t loosen his grip on the gun. “I can’t,” he says.

Silence. I look at Trent, and he gives me a signal with his eyes.

“You bastard,” Dulce finally says.

“I’m sorry,” Danny says in defeat, closing his eyes.

I move swiftly and tackle Danny to the ground. I take the gun from his hand and point it at his head. He raises his hands in surrender.

“Get up,” I demand.

He gets up, and I motion with the gun for him to move toward Chris.

Chris’s head is rolling to the side. He’s lost a lot of blood and will bleed out soon enough.

“What do you plan on doing, Ford? You’ll end your career. And for what, a girl from Airy,” Danny taunts. “You could have any woman on the planet. Why her?”

“Shut up and kneel,” I demand in a hard tone, pointing the gun at his head.

“He laughs. You’ll end up in jail, and her business won’t last a month. How do you think she’s stayed in business this long? She pays the least amount in rent.”

“You never wanted her to leave for fear she would remember and tell the truth about what Chris did,” I point out, piecing everything together.

He needed help.

“We couldn’t tell,” Trent says, standing behind him.

“The nice guy act is a ruse. It was so they would adopt him and get the money we needed to survive. I became a cop, but the pay sucks. I needed more,” Danny adds.

“But why Dulce?”

“We all hated you, Ford. Hell, I hated you. There was something about the way you looked at her.” Chris turns to Dulce. “Do you know he is sick, Dulce?”

Dulce glances at me with a confused expression, wiping her mouth.

“We all wanted to fuck you,” Chris says, above a whisper. “I did, and that makes me your first. You never forget your first, Dulce. We could have been good together— better than Ford. He’s crazy. Obsessed. He knew where you lived, what you ate. He made sure you stayed a virgin.”

“Could you just die already?” Trent cuts in. “You always talked too much.”

I hesitate for a moment, not knowing what is going through her head right now.

“I wasn’t the only one there that night,” Chris says.

Hot fury burns in my gut. I press the tip of the gun to Danny’s forehead. “Speak!”

“I-I was there,” Danny stammers, earning a look of betrayal from Dulce. “I helped him rape her,” Danny confesses.

I pull the trigger. Dulce screams, and Danny slumps over. I wipe my prints off the gun and hand it to Trent. “Take care of it.”

Dulce watches stunned at Danny’s body lying on the thick leaves. His blank eyes open.

“Get her out of here,” Trent calls out as he walks closer to Chris.

I grab her hand. She is shaking uncontrollably. Most likely from the shock. “Shh,” I say in a hushed tone. “I got you. No one will ever hurt you again, but I wanted you to see for yourself.”

---