Hollow

by Yolanda Olson

  “Because you’re ‘not right in the head.’ Those are his words, not mine. He wanted me to try to seduce you and then make it look like an accidental death. That’s why I was at the bench that first time in the park. He knew you could find me there,” he said, looking up at me with serious eyes.

  “What stopped you?”

  “Ethan. He ... The day you were supposed to meet me at the shop was the day it was supposed to happen. I didn’t know if I could do and I was so thankful to see Ethan there. But then he had a different proposition for me that involved helping you and not hurting you like he knew Jeremy wanted. I didn’t know it was going to be this or I swear to God, I would’ve left the country right then and there.”

  One brother wanted me dead and the other wanted me to kill. Either way I wouldn’t have much of a life left, or any life at all. How was it possible that I was such a burden on my family even after all these years of keeping such a dark secret hidden inside of me?

  “How much did they offer you?” I asked thoughtfully.

  “Fifty thousand dollars each,” he replied uncomfortably.

  “I’ll double it if you help me with something.”

  “Look I don’t know if I wanna do anymore favors for you guys. Shit gets crazy really fast around you all,” he said, finally getting to his feet and rubbing the back of his neck.

  “Haven’t you noticed that I’m the crazy one?” I asked in amusement. “I’m the wild card you have to watch out for, not those two. They’re both doing what they think is best for me and one day, maybe one day, they’ll let me be an adult and stand on my own two feet, but for now I need your help, Adam Weaver.”

  “Will you let me go afterwards?” he asked, eyeing me wearily.

  “Yes. I won’t ask you to keep this a secret, what I’ve done to you so far. If you want to go to the police and turn me in, you have my blessing, but for now I honestly need your help seeing as though I can’t trust my brothers anymore.”

  “What do you need me to do?” he asked, with a heavy sigh.

  “I need to finish what I started here. I felt like I was getting control back of my old self until you knocked me unconscious. I need you to bring me Bobby Taylor. By any means necessary,” I said, putting my hands on my hips.

  “Bobby? Cousin Bobby?” he asked in confusion.

  “The one and only,” I confirmed. “Except I want to play a little game with him before I show him what abuse can really be like and for that I’ll need your help. Nothing incriminating, I promise. I just need you to make sure no one gets into this fucking place while I have him.”

  “And you’ll give me one hundred thousand dollars?” he asked.

  “No. I said I would double it. I’ll give you two hundred thousand dollars. Free and clear. All you have to do is catch a rat and bring him to me.”

  “Alright. Where does he live?” he asked, nodding his head in agreement.

  My phone rang at that exact moment and I knew it was Ethan. He was probably wondering if he would be walking into a bloodbath, but I had a surprise for him.

  “Hello?” I answered, cheerfully.

  “Am I going to get sick when I come in?” he asked.

  “No. As a matter of fact, I think you might be shocked. Come on in, big brother. I’ve got something to show you.”

  I slid the disconnect button and put the phone back down on the table, giving Adam a reassuring nod. I motioned for him to come stand next to me and rubbed the bruise on my thigh before crossing my arms over my chest. We stood side by side waiting patiently as Ethan struggled to open the door from the outside.

  Once he pushed it aside and stepped in I smiled. I knew he would be confused with what Adam and I were doing standing side by side, bruised, bloodied, and alive, but I didn’t care anymore. I would finally make him listen to me and see me as an adult once and for all or I would beat him to death with my new best friend, the hammer.

  I had finally reached the breaking point inside of myself that told me as long as it wasn’t me that didn’t get hurt, fuck whoever else did.

  “What the hell is going on?” he asked, stopping short just inside the door.

  “Struck a deal with Currently Single, here,” I said nodding toward Adam. “And you’re going to help him if you really want me to get better.”

  Ethan raised an eyebrow at me, but nodded in agreement. “What is it Jude?”

  “I need you both to go get Bobby and bring him to me. I need you to do it now.”

  I watched Ethan clench his jaw at the mention of Bobby’s name and his eyes darken.

  “Let’s go,” he said to Adam as he turned and walked out of the door.

  As Adam moved away from my side, I grabbed his arm and stopped him. I looked up into his green eyes for a moment, before I bit my lower lip quickly, pushed myself up on my tip toes, and kissed him softly on the lips.

  “Thank you,” I whispered when I pulled away.

  He looked down at me with a small bit of shock in his eyes that gave way to sheer determination.

  “We’ll be back soon,” he said before he quickly walked out the door to find my brother. I couldn’t understand why I kissed him. Maybe it was because he was pawn in a horrible life like I was or maybe it was because I wanted to try to keep my promise of trying to love him when this was over.

  I honestly didn’t know but when it was all said and done, when I was as normal as I could possibly be again, I would find out.

  With a sigh, I pulled myself onto the table and laid myself down again waiting for my two heroes to return with what I knew I needed most.

  Thirteen

  I gasped and opened my eyes when I heard the factory doors slide open. I hadn’t intended to fall asleep but I guess I had and the sound of the doors opening jarred me awake.

  My breathing became heavy and my heart started to beat erratically when I heard his voice. They had found him and brought him to me and I could tell by the way he joked and laughed with them he had no idea what he was walking into.

  I swung my legs over the side of the table and sat up, hands gripping the edge of the table so tightly, I was afraid my the bones in my fingers would start to snap.

  When I looked at him walking in between Ethan and Adam, I wanted nothing more than to grab the hammer, rush him, and beat him his skull in until I couldn’t swing anymore. Until the warmth of his blood covered me and he was unrecognizable, but I wouldn’t do it in front of Ethan. I wouldn’t do it in front of Adam. I would do it when we were alone and I’d do it when the time was right.

  “Bobby Taylor,” I said in a voice thick with disdain. “How nice of you to come.”

  He stopped talking in the middle of his sentence, his hands still in the air, when he heard my voice and finally realized I was there.

  “Jude?” he asked raising an eyebrow.

  A sinister smile spread across my lips. A smile that told him that this was where I would get my revenge, where everything he had done to me, had boiled over and turned into the hateful woman he now saw before him.

  “Good luck,” Adam said to him as he and Ethan ran for the door and pulled it closed behind them.

  My phone beeped almost immediately after and I looked down to see a text from my oldest brother. Call me when you need me.

  I set the phone down without answering him and locked eyes with Bobby again.

  “What the fuck is going on?” he asked in confusion.

  “Do you remember ten years ago? On a night kind of like this one, when you first let me into your room?” I asked, glancing at the almost black sky through the small windows about the huge steel entrance door.

  “Yeah. Kinda,” he replied uneasily.

  “’Kinda?’” I repeated, my eyes widening in anger. “”Kinda’? Do you remember how every night following that one you would stick your dick inside of me and fuck me until you came inside of me? Do you ‘kinda’ remember how much I would cry and ask you to not do it and how you told me that if I loved you and wanted to stay your very best f
riend I would do what you wanted? Do you remember how you ‘kinda’ lied when you said it wouldn’t be every fucking night that I was there?”

  “Jude, I was a kid. I was fucked up and did shit to you I shouldn’t have. I don’t know why you’re bringing this up now. You could’ve told Aunt Violet or Uncle Thomas and it all would’ve been taken care of then,” he said, holding up his hands.

  “Violet and Thomas were fucking worthless and you know it! Violet hated us and she never gave a shit. Thomas was more of an absentee father than I was in the goddamn bed on the nights you would steal me from it,” I screamed, slamming my fists against the table.

  Bobby sighed heavily and shoved his hands into his pockets. He eyed me cautiously from a distance and I knew that if I threw the hammer from this point, I’d miss him. I had to wait until he grew some balls and got closer, or I’d have to just go after him.

  “So now what? Is this supposed to be your revenge? Is that why I’m here?” he asked tiredly.

  “You’re much smarter than I fucking remember,” I confirmed with a nod. Leaning to my left I grabbed the hammer and hopped off of the table, shifting it to my right hand and gripping it tightly.

  “One thing you forgot, kid,” he said shaking his head.

  “I remember everything that I need too,” I replied in a steely tone.

  “Except for one thing, Jude,” he said pulling a hand out of his pocket and raising a finger.

  “What’s that?” I asked in annoyance.

  I watched as he grinned at me. Bobby Taylor had the nerve to fucking stand there and grin and it burned a fire inside of me so ferociously that I started to sweat.

  “I’m stronger than you are. Always have been and always will be, so you better make damn sure that hammer hits where it needs too, or I’ll fuck you up in ways you’ve never dreamed of little girl,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest.

  I let the hammer fall from my hand blinded by rage at his words, and ran at him screaming like a fucking banshee. At the last moment before I reached him, the grin left his face and he steeled himself for the impact of me hitting him. But like he had warned and proved again, Bobby was still much stronger than me.

  He turned my body around and pulled me tightly against him, one arm locked over both of mine.

  “See? You’re not as strong as you probably like to think you are. You’re not going to kill me Jude. You can’t even remember to bring your weapon with you,” he whispered into my ear as I struggled violently against him.

  He picked me up off of the floor and I started to kick wildly, hoping I’d be able to at least make him unsteady on his feet, but trying it was more worthless than I was in that moment.

  I closed my eyes and continued my useless struggle with everything I had inside of me while he carried me back to the table and slammed me on it so hard that I lost my breath for a moment.

  “Know what I really want to know,” he said, as he leaned his body weight against me and ripped off pieces of duct tape to bind my wrists together, “is if you’re still the sweet little girl I remember.”

  Those words were more than enough to make me panic. Tears sprang to my eyes as he reached down and bound my ankles together before using what was left of the rope to tie it around my waist and secure it under the table.

  “You know the little girl I’m talking about right?” he asked looking down at me. “The little girl that was afraid of Aunt Violet. The little girl that held onto her old brother’s pant leg like if she let girl the world would collapse around her. Are you as sweet as I remember you, Jude?”

  He’s gonna do it again. Oh God, he’s gonna fucking do it to me it again!

  I closed my eyes and began to cry as I felt the heat of Bobby’s breath as he tore my shirt from my body. He gently ran his hands over my chest, just above my breasts and chuckled.

  “No. You seem like a used up whore to me now. Am I right? Did I give you a taste for something that you couldn’t stop getting?” he asked softly.

  “Don’t fucking touch me,” I said through grit teeth.

  “Don’t like it now? I sure do you remember liking it before. So much so, that you’ve got your memories all wrong. I never went to get you night after night, Jude. You came to me and I let you in because I knew you wanted it as much as I did. Ugh!”

  Bobby suddenly pitched forward and fell on top of me. The weight of him was suffocating and I didn’t know what the hell was happening since I had my eyes closed. Slowly, carefully I let them flutter open to find Adam standing over the two of us with a look of disgust on his face.

  “Don’t get mad at me for coming back. I know you can take this guy, but god damn did I get tired of hearing him talk,” he said pulling Bobby’s limp body off of me and onto the floor.

  Adam reached forward and with every bit of strength he had, managed to rip the duct tape apart and free my wrists, then my ankles.

  “You okay?” he asked me as I sat up.

  I shook my head in response. Adam put an arm around me and pulled me against him, running his hands over the back of my hair. I don’t know why I felt safe in the arms of someone that looked so much like the man I hated. I assumed it to be because out of everyone I knew so far, he was the only one that hadn’t tried to screw me over in one way or another.

  “I think you need to end this before he wakes up. I know you wanted to take your time with this, but you know there’s more people left,” Adam said softly as he shoved the handle of the hammer into my hand.

  I sighed and nodded. He was right. Bobby was just the tip of the iceberg of betrayal that was floating through my ocean. And with as much as what Adam said was right, and with as much as I wanted to agree with him, I refused to make this easy on Bobby Taylor.

  “Do me a favor and secure this bastard in here somewhere. I’ll come back for him. I need to go talk to Jeremy before I finish this one off,” I said.

  Adam nodded and gripped Bobby underneath his arms, dragging him to the furthest wall in the factory. Moments later he came back to where I sat and gave me a grim smile.

  “Ready?”

  “I don’t have a fucking choice,” I replied as we walked out of the door into the darkness of the night.

  Fourteen

  Adam

  I still don’t know what it was about Jude that made me want to help her. Hell, she had tried to kill me and I found myself wanting to do anything to make sure that she would be okay.

  Maybe it was because she betrayed at every turn she made. Maybe it was because her family thought that money could solve everything. I didn’t know and I honestly didn’t care. I just wanted her to be okay after this.

  I had it all planned out. I spent the time on the other side of the door pacing and on my phone trying to figure out where the fuck we could go when it was over and not face extradition if the bodies were discovered. It seemed like Belarus would be the best place to go because I didn’t recognize any of the other fucking names.

  We jumped into Ethan’s car and Jude commanded him to drive to Jeremy’s home. He seemed hesitant at first but one deadly stare from Jude was all he needed to put his car in gear and head in the direction we needed.

  “Jude, why are we going to Jeremy’s?” he asked nervously.

  “Tell him what you told me,” she said.

  I sighed. Why was it always me in the middle of her messes?

  “Jeremy offered me fifty grand to kill Jude and make it look like an accident,” I confessed quietly.

  Ethan slammed on the brakes of the thankfully deserted road and put the car in park. He turned around stared at me with vicious hatred in his eyes.

  “What did you say?”

  I shifted uncomfortably in the backseat and looked out the window. I really didn’t want to repeat myself because I was sure it was like a dagger to her heart every time she heard me say it.

  “Jeremy hired him to kill me. Now drive,” Jude said, her voice flatter than the road in front of us.

  “Why would he do that?” Et
han asked, running his hands irritably through his hair.

  “Because I’m a rabid animal, big brother. How do you fix a rabid animal? You put them down,” she said in the same hollow tone.

  “Tell me why we’re going to Jeremy’s house, Jude,” Ethan demanded sternly.

  “You know why. If you don’t want to take me, you don’t have to. I won’t force you to do anything you don’t want too. You’ve helped me enough as it is.”

  Ethan began to shake his head, “I love you Jude; more than I can honestly put into words. You know that for a fact. But I ... I don’t know if I can take you to Jeremy’s house knowing what you’re going to do.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll walk,” she said, unbuckling her seatbelt and getting out of the car.

  I craned my neck to watch her disappearing from the headlights that flooded the street as she walked in just her bra and shorts, hammer swinging by her side.

  “Come on man! You can’t let her walk around like that!” I yelled at Ethan.

  “I can’t help her kill my fucking brother either!” Ethan yelled back.

  “No one is saying you have to do anything but drive! Are you gonna let your baby sister walk down the fucking street in the dark with in a bra?” I screamed, punching the back of the passenger seat.

  Ethan turned around and gripped the steering wheel tightly. It was becoming obvious what was in his mind now; he was going to have to pick between his brother and his sister and he didn’t know what to do.

  “Fuck!” he yelled as he put the car in drive and slowly started to make his way up the street.

  We caught up to Jude in no time and he rolled the car next to her. He used one of the power window buttons on his side of the car to roll the window down.

  “Get in the car, Jude,” he said through grit teeth. Jude stopped walking at the sound of his voice. She turned to face him clasping the hammer with both hands in front of her.

  “I’m just fine walking, thank you,” she replied politely.

  The vacant look in her eyes was haunting and terrifying at the same time. It was like she had left her own body and was just a shell of who she was. Almost as if she needed to be this way to do what she knew she had to do.