Bad Enough For You// Anthony Ladao Fanfiction

Chapter 20

“I don’t understand what you mean,” I shook my head and looked down at my lap. I was lying though; I knew exactly what he meant. I heard Anthony get up from his swing and I felt his hands on my knees. I couldn’t look at him though.

“Do you want this guy to pay for taking advantage of your friend?” Anthony asked me, squeezing my knees.

“I don’t… I don’t know…” I shook my head and bit my bottom lip.

“Chari,” Anthony consoled, cupping my chin in his hand. “What Stephan did, what he’s doing, isn’t good. He’s taking advantage of your friend’s love for him, and her low self-esteem.”

“Yeah I guess,” I finally made eye contact with him. “But you shouldn’t hurt him.”

“What? The way he was about to hurt your friend in the most brutal way possible? Charity, he was going to rape her.” Anthony moved his hand up my face and was now cupping my cheek.

I winced at the word rape, “What would you do?” I heard myself say.

“Have you heard about the party Friday, tomorrow, night?” Anthony asked, pushing back my hair.

“Yeah, I was going to go with Quinn and Marceline,” I swallowed.

“Thomas, you know Thomas right, he’s the one hosting it?” Anthony explained, desperately may I add.

“Yeah, isn’t he one of your buddies?” I asked, I then bit down on my tongue.

“Right, well… We could blitz him, masks, no weapons, just our hands. Rough him up a bit and tell him we know what he’s been up too… Not go into detail, but if guilt means anything to him, he will know what we are talking about soon enough. He’ll stop whatever he’s doing with Quinn, and you don’t need to get your hands messy.” Anthony tilted my head back up to meet his eyes. I held eye contact with him for a long moment. “What do you think?”

“How would you take him away from the party?” I asked, like that was the only thing bothering me.

Anthony sighed, “We’ll pull him into the attack if we need too, let me worry about the details.”

“No weapons?” I inquired, placing my hand over his.

“No weapons Charity, I swear.” Anthony looked at me.

“Oh-kay,” my voice faltered.

“Charity, baby,” Anthony stood up and I felt too weak to stand.

“What if it doesn’t work?” I asked, looking up at him. He pulled me off of the seat and into his arms.

“If he has any sense of fear, it will work.” Anthony promised, stroking my hair, soothing me.

“Have you done this before?” I found myself asking.

“More times than I would like to admit to you,” Anthony said. His words hung in the air for a long moment.

“Will you do any serious damage?” I kept asking these stupid questions, I needed to stop!

“Physically? No. I won’t break anything, just bruise, enough to leave some sort of reminder.”

“Emotionally?”

“I can’t promise anything, he needs persuading.”

“Is it bad that I’m warming up to the idea?” I looked up at him.

“It needs to be done Charity,”

“Deep down I know that,” I replied, looking back down at our shoes. I was wearing pristine ballet flats, and he was wearing scuffed up work boots. It’s funny, isn’t it? How you get pulled into a world you never thought you would associate yourself with besides parties. But here I stand, with my new world, my whole universe. And I was letting him convince me to do something so violent to people of my old life; it was all so different. But I had always found myself wanting some sort of change in my not-so-perfect little world, and here he was, offering to help me get out of my sticky situation, his way.

“If you don’t want me to do it, say the word.” Anthony extended his arms and looked for any sense of faltering.

“Are you doing this for me?” I finally questioned.

“What do you mean?” He raised a suspicious eyebrow at me.

“I mean,” I started. “Are you doing this because you want to clear my mind of worry? That you want my friends to be safe solely because they’re my friends? Or are you jumping at the chance to beat up some popular meat-head because there is some sort of understandable motive if anyone asks?”

“I don’t feel comfortable knowing that you are associating yourself with a person who is capable of sexual assault,” Anthony replied, he paused for a moment. “Right now, you’re safety is all I really care about. And if your friends are in danger, that puts you in danger. I’m your boyfriend; it is my job to fight the bad guys. This isn’t some motive for finally pummeling the shit out of them, if I wanted to beat up some jock, I would have done it by now. Attempted rape isn’t a slice of the pie; it’s the whole damn thing, okay?”

“Now I want pie.” I replied nervously.

“Okay?” Anthony repeated, boring his eyes into mine.

“Okay,” I nodded.

“I can give you the night to think about it,” Anthony offered. But I knew my decision wasn’t going to change.

“I don’t really think there is any thinking that has to be put into this, he’s going to hurt Quinn if he isn’t punished.”

“I need to ask one thing of you though,” Anthony said, pushing a stray lock of hair behind my ear.

“I’m not beating anyone up,” I said with finality.

“No,” Anthony shook his head. “I would never you to do that.”

“Then what is it?” I urged him to continue.

“I need you to distract Quinn tomorrow night, okay? We can’t meet up at the party alright, or it will be too obvious,”

“But…”

“No but’s, we can’t be seen together, at all. You pretend I don’t exist, and I’ll do the same too you okay? We need to get this sorted out now.”

“How do I distract her?” I pushed the conversation along.

“Nine to Ten; just distract her. Dance with her, get her drunk; I don’t care. Just keep your eyes on her and your arm linked with her. We can’t afford for her to go looking for Stephan, I’ll do everything else, but I need you to do that for me.”

“I can do that.” I obliged.

“Are you sure?” Anthony seemed concerned.

“Anthony,” I said firmly. “Please, just get this nightmare over with. I don’t want him hurting Quinn anymore.”