Trying To Endure

Chapter Sixty

SONG: Kaleo - Way Down We Go (slowed)

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Derek Matthews

My family — except my brothers —, Hamilton, Ersoy, Simko, Cox and a couple of our Security crowded the booth. I sit opposite Aunt Marlene and Uncle Thomas on a tuxedo sofa.

Aunt Marlene ignores him, her gaze seething of wrath. "Disturbing a celebration without an invitation? Incredibly rude, girls."

Aasvhi and Camila absorb our personnel. Destiny, on the other hand, forces a dreadfully-sweet smile. "Sorry, Marlene. I just want to talk to Derek."

"Dios mío," I mutter. When is she going to take the hint?

"Vuoi parlare con lei?" inquires Uncle Thomas in Italian. Do you want to talk to her? I shake my head. To her sister in French, "Nous devrions les garder ici jusqu'à ce que le problème soit résolu." We should keep them here until it is solved.

"Oui." Aunt Marlene graciously smiles at the girls. "How about you enjoy yourselves a bit more? I think the main course is being served."

Our omnipotent strategy the Security picked up — watch the girls, be ready to distrain.

Destiny averts to me. "I'll talk to you later," I say. 

I won't.

The girls ramble their gratitude, relieved as if they believed they were going to get in trouble, like caught toddlers. Truthfully, they are frightened of my aunt. Any person should be.

Once Hamilton assures us they are out of an eavesdropping distance, Lin pats his intercom and orders, "Keep an eye on them."

My aunt smooths the crinkles of her opulent blue dress. "Are you sure, Derek?"

"Yes," I say firmly. "I saw it."

Her defined eyebrows furrow in contemplation, in bewilderment. "You were drunk and high, Derek."

"It was not a hallucination. I have done enough drugs to know what is real and what is not."

"You simply cannot state that."

"Lin, I saw it with my very own eyes. I heard a loud noise, stumbled into a room, and saw Aashvi and Camila raping Bodie Banks."

I enlightened them about what happened in the bathroom with Elias Banks, his statement that those two girls and my ex-girlfriend sexually violated his brother. "I could not tell you what Elias did. I had to understand the circumstances first. A lot happened on the day of Ines's party, I must have forgotten. But Aasvhi has white butterfly earrings. They were cues."

Uncle Thomas checks his watch. "They do not know that you know?"

"No."

Aunt Marlene sighed. "If these girls are accountable, your statement—"

"Is enough," I argue. "It is enough to get them in jail."

"You cannot use your position."

"I will if it is necessary."

If it happens twice, it is enough for the jury and judge to affirm it is behaviour.

"In that case ..." Thomas sits his wine glass on the desk. "Miss Mahmoud."

An Egyptian woman, in all-black and in her fifties, a part of Aunt Marlene's Seraphim, steps forward from the hellish dark veil. "I overheard Miss Levesque talking to the blonde girl."