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“A chance to what?” he replies, feigning amusement.

“I saw you. You looked me in the eyes while my father pounded your ass like a ten-dollar whore. The details are irrelevant. Madison, I liked you. I almost…fuck, I almost fell for you. It’s a good thing this happened now, though.

I’ve been thinking about it, actually. And yeah, it’s good.

It’s great. I definitely dodged a bullet with your skanky ass. ”

My eyes sting, hot with tears.

If I tell him the truth, he might not even believe me.

If I tell him the truth, he will confront Julian, at least. He’ll mention it, maybe.

Should he believe me, he will absolutely start a war with his father over this—or worse, Julian will convince him that I wasn’t worth anything more than that ten-minute rape.

That was all it took Julian to destroy me. Ten fucking minutes.

If I tell Rhue the truth, my father will be ruined. Whatever chance I have at a life will quickly follow down the drain, too. I am no match for this family. I have nothing to fight them with. My honor is dead. My strength, withered. I have nothing.

“I’m…I’m sorry,” I blurt out and then my feet are moving, carrying me away from him. Away from this place.

I burst through the study door and nearly knock Roxanne down with my full body weight. She cries out, and I manage to hold her up and stop her from falling over. Funny enough, I’m sobbing like a little girl while trying to keep Julian’s wife upright. What the hell did I ever do to deserve this?

“I am so sorry,” I manage, then move to get out of this wretched house forever.

But Roxanne catches my wrist and holds me back, genuinely alarmed. “Madison, honey! What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t lie to me, Madison. There is absolutely nothing about you that says you’re okay,” Roxanne replies, lowering her voice as she briefly glances around, making sure no one sees or hears us. “Come with me. Let’s talk.”

“No, really, there’s nothing wrong. I’m fine, I just… I have to––” A knot tightens in the back of my throat.

I hate the way she’s looking at me. The pity in her eyes. The way it makes me feel like she can see right through me and down to the truth. But she can’t. Because if she saw the things that plagued me, she’d have the same look in her eyes that I do.

“Please,” she insists.

I’m too weak to make another scene. Too weak to keep fighting this fucking nightmare.

Maybe I should tell her. Someone should know.

A thousand scenarios dart through my head, each more ominous than the other.

Few end with me and my dad surviving this.

But there is a beacon of hope, a delicate smile on Roxanne’s face.

She brushes a hand over my cheek, alerting me to the fact that it’s wet with tears. “Let’s talk, Madison.”

The knowledge that she is a brilliant and highly respected psychologist, a woman of honor and great repute, would mean that there’s no better person to talk to.

She’s probably helped girls just like me.

She’d know how I can fix the ache in my chest, know what steps I should take to heal, to move on, to be stronger.

But if I lay this burden on her, who’s going to take her burden?

“Talk to me, Madison,” she says and I don’t know what it is this time, but I fold, allowing her to guide me into the kitchen.

She asks the maids to leave us alone. To close the door behind them. I hear myself thanking her but can’t remember opening my mouth to say the words.

She leans against the kitchen counter, her hands pressed atop its surface. “Talk to me, Madison. Something happened. Something awful. It’s written all over your face.”

When I say nothing, Roxanne walks over to the fridge and grabs a jug of water, pouring me a glass.

She adds ice and a squeeze of lemon, then brings the glass to me.

I take it with shaking hands but manage to hold and drink from it.

The cool liquid reaches my stomach too fast, the cool liquid stirring uncomfortably.

“Madison, please,” she insists, tucking a lock of hair behind my ear.

“The pain in your eyes, it’s so raw. So heavy.

Talk to me. Tell me what happened. I cannot, in good conscience, let you leave here in this condition.

” I sit on a barstool, my legs no longer able to hold me. “Was it Rhue? Did he hurt you?”

“What? No. Oh, god, no. He would never.” I say. “No. This has nothing to do with Rhue, I promise.”

“But someone did hurt you.”

I nod once. “I…Yes. I… Maybe…” God, how do I say this? Do I want to say this? Can I say it?

Roxanne takes my hand in hers, smoothing her thumb over my skin. “Breathe, Madison?” she says and I listen immediately, sucking a heap of air into my lungs.

I can feel her eyes. I can feel the sorrow in them, the fear, the care. It makes me hate Julian even more.

“Did someone…” she starts and I don’t want her to finish. I don’t want her to finish because she can’t tell me my own story. She can’t say the word and make it real. She can’t.

“Raped,” I say and I’m not sure how I find the strength, but the word is out there. The word is out there, and Roxanne is saying nothing.

She is horrified. Her big black eyes are round and glassy as tears work their way up. She feels this deeply. Oddly enough, I’m the one broken, yet she is the one expressing emotions I’ve been trying so hard to keep down and tightly bottled.

“You should go to the police,” she says.

“No. I can’t. it’s not an option.”

“You need to. Madison, you were raped. It’s the course of action that is taken when something like this happens. It’s the course of action you need to take –– for you, for the other women this man might have hurt, for the other women he might hurt.”

I give her a bitter half-smile. “I can’t.”

“You have to. Good grief, does your family know?”

I shake my head. “My mom is out of the picture. Left us when I was fifteen. And Dad…no, I can’t tell him. It would destroy him.”

“If you give me the guy’s name, I can at least run it by Julian. You know us well enough to understand how well connected my husband is, he could—”

“No!” That came out too strongly, and I have absolutely no control over myself. I drop the glass. It shatters onto the marble floor, forcing Roxanne to take a few steps back. The water splashes all over my boots, and tears roll down my cheeks. I cannot hold any of this back.

Oh, god, I am so fucking broken.

“Please. Let’s not get him involved,” I say, trying to keep whatever is left of me together. “Please.”

“Madison…” Roxanne stares at me in disbelief. It isn’t astonishment that mars her otherwise beautiful, sharp features. It’s fury. Fuck me. She knows. She doesn’t have to say anything. I can see it in her eyes. She could tell from my reaction.

A minute goes by. Slowly. Heavily. Painfully.

It feels like forever.

The way she’s looking at me says a million more words than anything she could say.

“I wasn’t his first, was I?” Every inch of me is crawling. My heart squeezed, harder than it’s ever done before. Roxanne exhales deeply. She seems disappointed. Nauseated. Disgusted. Not with me. With Julian. “He can’t know. You can’t tell him. He’ll destroy me. My dad. You can’t. Please.”

She takes my hands in hers. They feel cold and sticky with sweat. I can only imagine what’s going through her head.

“Madison, I understand.”

I give her a confused look, swallowing hard against the lump in my throat.

“He hurt you. He hurt you in ways none of us could ever repair or undo or even make up for,” she says, her brows slightly furrowed as her voice echoes sympathy.

“You have suffered so much, and, yes, I know my husband. He is petty and vengeful when crossed. That being said, I will promise you one thing. You keep this to yourself, Madison, you stop this from infecting my family, and I will make sure he will never do it to anyone else, ever again.”

I am shuddering and crying again. It’s too much. It doesn’t make any sense. I feel so lost. So alone.

“Julian will get what’s coming to him,” she says firmly. Too firmly. “Your name will not come up, I promise. But I need to protect my son and my daughter. They don’t deserve to share in your shame and your pain. You understand, right? I have to protect my family.”

I stare at Roxanne in sheer disbelief as I realize what’s going on here.

Not only am I clearly not Julian’s first “slip,” I am not even the first to cross paths with her afterwards.

She has asked others before me to keep quiet.

I wonder how many of the women I read about, those accusing Julian of sexual harassment, I wonder how many had this same talk with Roxanne Spaulding-Echeveria.

Were they raped, too? How many did she talk out of reporting Julian’s misdeeds.

How many did she convince to move on with their lives…

or else? Did she know, right from the get-go, that it was Julian who hurt me?

Is that why she reeled me into this conversation?

Not to help me, but to see how much I’d reveal, to remind me of just how powerful her husband is, if I dared to tell her the truth?

And is she lying when she says Julian will get what’s coming to him? Maybe. Maybe it’s all a lie. Her concern, her sympathy, even in the midst of begging for my silence. Maybe it’s the same lie she promised all those other girls.

I don’t know whether to be furious or…I don’t even know.

“I won’t tell anyone,” I say, raising my chin. “You won’t have to worry about your family. Not because of me.”

I’m disgusted. And disappointed. Though I’m not sure why.

This is how they deal with things in this family.

The kids are oblivious. Rhue gets to look down on me and treat me like a fucking monster, and Julian gets a scolding.

That fucker deserves to have his balls cut off. But what am I going to do about it?

I’m fucking helpless and worthless.

“Madison, I will stop him. I promise you that,” Roxanne says.

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep. I’ll be gone and out of your lives. Let’s just leave it at that,” I reply and walk out.

Roxanne won’t come after me. I know it. She knows what she has to do, and I…

What the hell am I going to do?

Rhue is convinced I willingly gave myself to his father. Julian Echeveria is a disgusting monster, and I fear that his wife has done nothing but enable his sick behavior. I wonder how many messes of this kind she has swept right under the rug.

Outside the mansion, I feel like I can breathe again. Not freely, not easily, but there’s more air in my lungs outside here than there was when I was in there.

I slip through the service gate and realize I’m falling apart. Every part of me aches. I can’t stop crying. I can’t erase those moments from my mind. That rape is a page in my history, now. Indelible. I don’t want it to define me, yet I don’t know what I’m going to do with it, either.