Page 14 of Twisted Elites

I glowered out of the window into the distant mountains and remained silent for the rest of the journey. They were right, but it still rankled that no one had been punished for that disgusting assault. It would only encourage them to do worse to the next girl.

* * *

We stepped into Ashley’s hospital room, and I froze at the doorway, nearly gagging on the scent of antiseptic and strong urine. Her bottom lip had tripled in size, and blood glistened from the cut bisecting the swollen flesh. Both upper and lower lids protruded out from the rest of her misshapen face.

Nausea rose up my gullet, but I swallowed it down. This was the girl who wouldn’t report Bruce, no matter what he did, and wanted an innocent person punished in his place.

Sebastian cleared his throat, and she opened her eyes. Annoyance flickered through her swollen features, and she sat straighter in her hospital bed. “What do you want?”

“Why did you tell the police Prakash hit you?”

“We know he didn’t,” said Sebastian.

She leaned forward and met his eyes. “How can you be so sure?”

Sebastian swallowed but didn’t reply. Eyes narrowing, I stepped further into the room and walked to her bedside. Was Sebastian losing faith in his friend already, or had Sebastian witnessed something between Ashley and Prakash?

She leaned back onto her pillows, and her swollen lips twisted into a triumphant smirk.

“It’s not my intention to torture you with this, but you’re serving no one by lying that Prakash hurt you.” I pulled out the phone from my pocket, placed it on the over-bed table, and played the footage I had shot of Bruce’s bruised knuckles.

When the camera zoomed into his gloating face, and he said those hateful words that compared Ashley to herpes, tears ran down her mottled cheeks. “Bruce didn’t do it.”

“Why are you protecting him after what he did?” I murmured.

“He wouldn’t hurt me.” Ashley turned her head to the window. Since this side of the building overlooked the hospital courtyard, the only view she got was more of the redbrick building.

I took the phone away and lowered myself into the armchair next to her bed.

“Ashley,” Leopold snapped. “We all saw you crawling naked through the snow, dressed like an S and M pig. And we know what he got the other boys to do to you beforehand. Bruce is capable of that level of violence and more.”

“Get out,” she whispered.

“Not until you tell the truth.” Leopold planted his feet on the linoleum.

“What makes you think your friend is so innocent?” Whirling back at him, she clutched the railings of her bed. “I still have a load of evidence that says he killed Corrine Gibbons and disguised her death as a suicide.”

“You don’t.” I drummed my fingers on the chair’s wooden arms. It was time to break her illusion of having the upper hand. Whatever games she wanted to play with us wouldn’t work.

“What?” she twisted around and fixed me with a glower that looked even more malevolent with her swollen features.

“It was under your mattress protector at home.” I slipped the smartphone in my pocket.

“You searched my room?” she screeched.

“You bugged Kash’s,” said Sebastian.

“That wasn’t me.”

“Sure, it wasn’t,” drawled Leopold.

“He’s going to rot in jail.” Her eyes roved my face as though examining my expression for weakness. “And I’m going to relish taking everything from you, just like you took it from me.”

Sebastian and Leopold both turned to me with quizzical expressions. I gave them a blank look. How could I explain to Sebastian, who had come from a loving family that Ashley’s sibling rivalry had twisted into something malignant? Even Leopold’s cold-hearted mother, who was motivated by financial gain, hadn’t tried to maim or humiliate him.

Ashley was a different kind of family strife. A riddle wrapped up in a pile of festering toilet paper.

“What do you want? Money?” asked Sebastian.