Page 80 of Family Affair

Why hadn’t he told her? Why hadn't Detective Willis? He had to have seen the tape before, hadn’t he?

But of course he had.

She turned on him. If she could incinerate him with the power of her gaze, Willis would have been a pile of warm gray ash this instant.

All innocence, Willis reached for the remote in front of him.

Low, underhanded underling. Playing two sides against the middle to sow discord within the Sheffield family, to drive them apart so they’d start tattling on each other. Specifically, so that Dan started tattling on Cade out of jealousy. What an award-winning strategy.

Naïve that she was, she never expected such low manipulative practices from a police investigator.

“Tell me, Detective, was it really necessary to watch this in the roomful of people in order to confirm Cade’s alibi?” She wasn’t red in the face anymore. If anything, she imagined she was white with fury.

Willis paused the video on the image of them still in each other’s arms.

“Turn the projector off!” She raised her voice.

When Willis didn’t hurry up and do it, she reached over and plucked the remote right out of his hand. She pressed and held the power button until the screen went blissfully black.

Dan leaned forward on his forearms and spoke through clenched teeth, “No, pray turn it back on. I want to see what happens next.”

“Nothing happens next!”

“Says who? A whore?”

“Lay off her, Dan.” Cade’s scratchy voice sounded right next to her. She hadn’t even noticed him get up and round the table. “You want to take it up, take it up with me.”

Boiling with volcanic fury, Coco turned to confront him. “I don’t need you to defend me.”

“Yeah, Cade, you heard her. Your services are no longer needed.” Dan flicked off an imaginary lint from his sleeve.

Coco bristled. “There’s no need to be crude!”

“Oh, you haven’t heard crude yet, dear.” Dan suddenly grabbed the back of her chair and forcefully turned it so she faced him. He leaned closer to her and breathed right into her face. “Tell me, Coco, you have a secret perversion, is that it? Something I couldn’t give you? You like them older? With a little more mileage? A chance to compare brothers make you wet?”

“Shut it, Dan.” Cade pushed at Dan, forcing his chair to roll back and away from Coco. She stood up.

Dan also jumped to his feet, and Coco got sandwiched between two large and very irate males. She barely came up to Dan’s shoulder and Cade, thought a little shorter, had the build of a Mack truck. They could crush her between them and not notice.

Dan’s anger fully erupted. “No,youshut it. How could you? You’re my fuckingbrother! ”

“Nothing happened, get over it!” Cade shouted back.

“Nothing happened, my ass!” Dan tried to take yet another step closer to Cade and bumped into her. “Like we couldn’t tell from that video. Hell, I almost got hard just from watching you dry hump her there.” His silk tie brushed her nose.

Coco squeezed out from between them and turned to Willis, who remained quiet observing the action with sharp interest.

“I hope you accomplished your goal, whatever it might be. Keep up the good work, Detective.”

Grabbing her purse, she made a beeline for the door, but never made it past Dan. He roughly grabbed her by her upper arm and yanked her back inside the room.

“Oh, no, you don’t, bitch. No leaving.”

“Dan, man, let’s keep it professional. We’re at the police station.” Jeff intervened and gently pulled at Dan’s wrist trying to make him let go of Coco to no avail.

His grip hurt.

“Not fucki…” Dan didn’t get to finish what would undoubtedly be another foul declaration. Cade grabbed him with both hands by the scruff, like a misbehaving dog, and threw him across the room and into the opposite wall. Coco barely registered surprise at the force with which he propelled Dan, a taller man than he, the distance of some twenty feet, when she, too, was flying alongside Dan who still held on to her arm.