CHAPTER SIX
Xander
I sat in stunned silence as the story poured out of my son.
Apparently, it started with guitar lessons not long after they moved to California.
“He made me sit on his lap while he showed me how to play.”
Soon, Jet told him that they, “Could feel the vibrations of the music better if we were naked.” Later, Jet did “funny stuff,” like stroke the strings with his penis. “It was funny,” Kylian said, looking miserable. “Jet made everything funny. He joked about stuff.”
“Joked about sex?” I asked, the words like razors coming from my throat. Nothing in my life had ever prepared me for this conversation, but I instinctively knew that if I flipped my shit the way I wanted to, my son would never speak of it again. And he needed to talk about it. He needed to get it out of the cells of his body, let the secrets escape before they held him prisoner.
Kylian nodded. “He told these jokes and all these stories about when he was in the band. He let me have some of his beer and stuff.”
My mind screamed, the horror of what I was learning like pounding nails in my skull. My hands were shaking, and I pressed them down on my knees as I watched my son curl up into a ball on the floor. I tossed him a blanket when he shivered, and I longed to pull him against me, protect him now. Unlike the way I’d failed to protect him the past year.
“He gave you beer?” My voice cracked, and I cleared it. “Did he give you anything else?”
Dark eyes peered out at me from behind the veil of his long hair. “I’m not supposed to tell. He said that no one would ever believe me if I told. He said that my friends would say I was gay and they’d laugh at me if…” He hid his face behind his hands again.
I moved to the floor, wrapping my arms around my legs, coming down to his level. My vision was blacking out from the intensity of my anger and pounding heart. I needed to be on the floor in case I passed out.
“I think you’re very brave, Kylian,” I said, my voice barely escaping my throat. “This is a hard thing to talk about, and I’ve never been more proud of you in my life.”
He peeked at me through his fingers, and I forced my face to stay calm. “You’re not mad?”
Mad was a universe away from the anger boiling inside me right then. “Yes, I’m mad, but not at you. You did nothing wrong. Jet did. And I’ll make sure he’s punished.”
“How?”
I took a deep breath, pulled needed oxygen into my brain. “He needs to go to jail for what he did to you, Kylian. He’s an adult, and you’re a boy. What he did…” I shook my head, clawing my fingers down my beard. The pain was good. Needed. It helped me to focus. “We need to call the police and you need to tell them everything. Every single detail. Can you do that? Can we make sure he never hurts a kid again?”
Kylian stared at me for so long and so hard… and so fearfully… that I was certain he was going to tell me no. Then, he began to cry, and when I pulled him into my lap and began to cry too, we just held each other for the longest time.
I’d failed him.
I’d failed my son in the most miserable way possible, but I wouldn’t fail him again.
“I love you, Kyl,” I said into his hair. “Can we call the police? Get this over with?”
He looked up at me, tears and snot dripping down his face. I used the blanket to wipe it clean and pushed his hair back from his eyes. “Do I have to go back there?” he asked in a small voice.
“No!”
The word burst out of me, louder than I’d intended, but Kylian only nodded and relaxed against me, a shudder running through his slim frame. “Then it’s okay to call them.”
When the police arrived, I met them at the door, then sat in the living room while Kylian told them everything. The games they played, the ways Jet teased him into doing things that were sexual.
Then Jet wanted him to do more things. Worse things. “Things I didn’t want to do.”
“Like what?” the officer asked gently while I sat there, trying to remember how to breathe.
“He wanted me to blow on his, you know…” My son wiped his nose with his sleeve, his face growing redder. “He said it would make a noise like a trumpet.”
That was when I couldn’t take it anymore.
There was a saying about “seeing red” but I’d always thought it was only an expression until that moment. But I saw red, and my entire field of vision pulsed with it, in rhythm to my rapid heartbeat.
I pushed to my feet and headed toward the door, grabbed my keys and was gone before the officer could stop me. I drove like a madman to my ex-wife’s mansion and up through their yard, not stopping until the front of the SUV was pressed against their front steps. I pounded on the door and the glass on either side of it, using my shoulder when it wouldn’t open. Kicked at the knob.
“What the hell, man?”
The bastard was wearing only boxers, his hair like strings across his face. Blue lights coming up the drive reflected off his pale, skinny body, and he crumpled like a broken doll when my fist connected with his chin.
Vaguely, I heard Danielle screaming for me to stop as I punched and punched, then strong hands were dragging me away, cuffs chaining my hands behind my back as I spit at and cursed the bloody man at my feet.
I was ushered into the back of a police car as I watched other police cars scream to a stop in the driveway, then later, an ambulance pulled up to the door.
I was numb as I watched the bastard being wheeled out on a stretcher, an IV bag hanging over him. The bastard wasn’t dead, I knew. But his face would never be the same. Maybe I should have left it intact. I’d heard rumors that the inmates liked the pretty boys better.
It came as a surprise when I wasn’t arrested. From what the cops told me, I’d been cuffed and stuffed into the back of the car for protective reasons. “You don’t want to be the one in prison, Mr. Armstrong,” a detective told me as he removed the cuffs. Someone drove me back to my apartment… to my children, who were safe with the officer who’d stayed behind.
By some miracle, Kenzie was still asleep, but she’d always slept like she was in a coma.
When I walked back into my living room, Kylian looked at my bloody fists, then up to me. “Did you get him?”
I pulled him into my arms, kissed his hair. “Yeah, I got him.”
He hugged me tight. “Good.”
Yeah. It was good, if there was any good in this horror flick I’d found myself in.
But it wasn’t over, and it wouldn’t be over for a long time, I knew.
The next day, Jet was arrested not only for the molestation of his stepson, but for over two thousand counts of child pornography possession found on his computer. There would be more charges later, the detectives thought, but that was the initial findings. And it was enough to put him away for years, on the pornography charges alone.
The police also questioned my daughter, who answered the questions with wide eyes, but it appeared that she’d escaped the clutches of the man her mother had married. The man still in the hospital from the beating I’d given him. The same hospital we’d taken Kylian to, so that medical staff could give him a thorough physical.
It was there that Danielle had come storming into the exam room. Her reaction had been a surprise.
If she’d known about Kylian’s abuse, she refused to say, but she did what she always seemed to do… blamed others.
Instead of telling her son how sorry she was for bringing a predator into his life, she blamed Kylian. She was drunk at the time, so she might not have meant it, but when she screamed at him, calling him a “little liar,” it didn’t matter how much alcohol was in her blood.
I vowed that she’d never be alone with either of our children again.
When she was arrested for driving under the influence and public intoxication, I immediately filed for and was granted emergency protective custody.
I’d spoken to the principal of Kylian’s school and explained the situation. As there was only four days of school left before summer break, it was decided that he’d be excused. And although his grades had fallen to mostly Cs by the end of the semester, he would still be able to pass to third grade next year.
When I drove the kids back to the mansion, two officers accompanying me to gather their things, Kenzie went inside, but Kylian didn’t. “I don’t want to go in there ever again.”
I nodded. “What do you want me to get from your room?”
He met my gaze. “Nothing. I don’t want anything from there.”
So, I helped Kenzie pack her things, tried to answer her millions of questions in a way she would understand.
“Where’s Mommy?” she asked, tears spilling down her face.
“She went on a trip,” I told my little girl, knowing my ex was actually sitting in a jail cell waiting for her preliminary arraignment. “And you’re going to come live with me.”
She cocked her head to one side. “At your apartment?”
I sat down on her bed. “No, honey. Back in New York.”
She studied the stuffed elephant she was holding. “Is Mommy coming too?”
I shook my head. “Just you, me, and Kylian.”
“For how long?”
I watched her place the animal in the box. “How does forever sound?”
She frowned. “It sounds like a long time.” She studied me with those blue eyes. “Daddy?”
I held out my arms and she climbed onto my lap. “What, sweetheart?”
“What’s wrong with Kylian?”
I exhaled and tucked her head under my chin as I considered the question I knew was coming. She was only four, but she wasn’t stupid. Children had an uncanny way of picking up on the vibes around them, and my smart little girl had done just that. She knew something was wrong.
“Jet hurt Kylian, sweetheart, so that means you can’t live here anymore.”
She pulled back and looked up at me, a frown on her face. “Hurt him? When?”
It was a relief that she didn’t know. Hadn’t experienced any of it herself. “Lots of times.”
“Is that why Kylian cried?”
My heart squeezed. “Yeah, it’s why Kylian cried.”
She nodded. “Is it why Mommy cried?”
I stroked her hair. That was something I still didn’t understand. Might never be able to understand. “I don’t know why Mommy cried, honey. I was…” my throat clogged, and I cleared the emotion away, “gone. I shouldn’t have been away, but I promise not to go away again.”
I watched her search for her next question. “So, it’s Mommy’s turn to go away?”
Pressing my lips to her forehead, I nodded. I didn’t have details on that either, but if I learned that Danielle even suspected the abuse and did nothing, she’d never see these kids again.
“Can I take my tricycle?”
The tension drained from my limbs. “Yes, you can take anything you want. If we can’t take it today, we’ll have it shipped to New York.”
She placed a finger in her mouth, sucked on the tip. Then she smiled. “Can I have a puppy?”
I did something I thought I’d never do again. I grinned.
Gazing down at the little opportunist, I nodded.
“Yeah. A puppy for sure.”