Page 94 of Hold Me Under (Water, Air, Earth, Fire 1)

There’s a long silence. “If you’re not going to tell me the truth, fine, but the least you can do is stop lying to me.”

“Ethan—”

He hangs up.

The first person I contacted responds.I’m not supposed to distribute it.

What do you want? Anything.

Dick pics?

I would laugh if I wasn’t about to cry as I pull down the front of my shorts and struggle to get myself half-hard. The photos keep coming out blurry because I’m shivering so much.

I guess they’re good enough, because he says,One minute.

Ethan

I want to see it.

I look out the window at the huge, taxiing jets and the pale sky. All the overhead announcements are in Italian, flowing together into a soothing stream of syllables I can’t follow. When my phone vibrates, I don’t look at the screen. I savor the last long moment before I do something I can’t take back.

Victor

I drop my phone and the corner bounces off the asphalt, cracking the screen. I remember everything about the day they took that picture, pain and cold and dark, the hazy snatches of my nightmares. Breathing is something I used to know how to do, but now it’s a mystery.

He’s looking at it. Right now.

I put my head in my hands and scream into the asphalt.

Ethan

They can’t tell if it’s Victor, because the person’s head isn’t in the photo. Just a neck-down, rear view of a naked man. He has one hand on the wall for support, the other hanging limp.

It’s an ugly photo—stark, washed out lighting with a yellowish tinge and a blinding reflection off the gray tile on the wall, like someone took it with a flash in a dark bathroom.

Between his thighs, below his naked ass, you can see a glimpse of his balls hanging down, the tip of a flaccid cock.

There’s an ungodly bruise on his ribs, purple and sickly yellow wrapped around his side. His wrists are bruised, too, mottled dark blue. And there’s dried blood in his crack.

Another text from Nicola covers up the picture.Someone found this in the cache of an illegal porn site that got taken down years ago. The guy who found it claims the shirt on the floor is a custom jersey Victor used to wear, but I don’t know. And either way, I’m sorry.

They can’t tell if it’s Victor, because the person’s head isn’t in the photo. But I can.

It isn’t until I’m on the curb outside the airport looking for a taxi that I realize I left my duffle under my seat in the boarding area. I don’t bother going back for it.

I’ve tried Victor a dozen times, but he won’t take my calls. When my phone rings, I snatch it off the taxi seat. “Victor, I—

“Sorry, it’s Nicola.”

My stomach drops. I’m struggling to imagine how this day gets more nightmarish, but I think I’m about to find out. “What?”

“Do you remember how you asked me to contact you before information goes public?”

“Yeah. So far you’re doing a terrible job.”

She tries to offer a pity laugh, but it falls flat. “Look. Someone noticed Victor’s name in a database of old legal records and went digging. Really deep, into the kind of stuff no one’s ever supposed to find. I think everything’s about to get blown all to hell and I’d feel like crap if I didn’t give you a chance to see this first.”

“So just to clarify, this isworsethan the fake dope test and the torture porn?”

---