Page 312 of Sticks and Stones
“If any of them get out, Corbin, I’ll handle it. Trust me. I’ll make sure they are taken care of for what they did to you.”
That helped him to know they wouldn’t just show up at his home and do this again.
“And the bad news?” Corbin asked.
He glanced at Ethan.
“I can’t do it. I can’t break the Corby.”
The man didn’t know why Gene couldn’t tell him something. It had to be really bad.
Ethan told him.
“When we wrangled all of the men, they were in possession of a video. It was your assault. They recorded the whole thing like you believed they did.”
He tensed.
Tears filled his eyes.
Gene expected him to break down, but somehow, Corbin held on.
“How long did they do it to me?” he asked. “It felt like forever.”
Ethan had seen the time on the video, so he told him.
“Four and a half hours,” he said.
There was absolute silence. Corbin didn’t say a thing, and neither did either man. They were waiting to see if he was okay.
“How many people saw it?”
Unfortunately, they’d never know.
Ethan was honest.
“We have their phones. They didn’t send it out, but they could have showed it to their biker buddies.”
That hung there.
“Okay,” Corbin whispered. He was staring into Gene’s eyes, and he needed to know. “Did you guys see it?” he asked.
Gene put his hand on Corbin’s thigh, and was honest. The man needed his family to protect him, and they would.
“Some of it.”
Ethan held him, his back against his chest.
“We couldn’t watch it all. It was horrifying. I’m sorry they did that to you,” he admitted.
Not as sorry as Corbin was.
“Can you destroy it?” he whispered. “I can’t run into that one day. If I get blindsided with that, I’ll not be okay. I won’t survive.”
Gene grabbed the bag of phones from inside his duffel. Then, he sat on the side of the bed.
“If we delete them, if you ever change your mind about court…”
He stopped him.
