Beware! Spoilers ahead!
Alright. Main character list.
Nick: Dude who gets raped on a first date type of situation.
Tony: Nick’s brother and most significant father figure. Super protective of Nick.
Julie: Tony’s wife. Super protective of her family.
Detective Rice: The detective investigating the whole thing.
Nick is a 20 year old guy who goes to a bar with his roommate. A handsome stranger, who introduces himself as Josh, hits on Nick throughout the evening and the pair agree to go home together for the night. Clearly, sex was the objective. Things kind of blank out there and the reader isn’t privy to the exact course of events. Nick wakes up the following morning in a hotel. He has been beaten, and raped. There is a lot of blood on the sheets. Josh is no where to be found. Nick goes home. His roommates freak out at the sight of him and take him to the hospital. There were a lot of wounds to the face and head. Damage to the rectum, etc. Police get involved. Josh is found pretty much right away. He was lying about his name, but I can’t totally remember what his name was because he was a garbage person so I will continue calling him Josh throughout. Josh’s whole defense was that Nick wanted it rough, and that he did nothing Nick didn’t ask for. Nick’s story was that he was knocked unconscious at the very beginning and woke up to all the injuries. It’s Nick’s word against Josh’s.
Tony is furious. He always struggled to defend and protect his brother because their parents sucked. So, he basically spends the whole book struggling to reign in his anger, and plotting to kill Josh. Julia is like “Hey, that is kind of irresponsible because we got kids and a family and stuff.” And Tony is like “Nick is like my kid, so I want to kill this guy.” Tony starts stalking him. He at some point actually assaults him. Detective Rice is like “Yo, Tony, you’re gonna mess everything up if you don’t chill.” And Tony is like “Okay, I’ll chill.” Even though he has no intention of chilling. Especially after Nick tries to kill himself over everything and ends up basically institutionalized. Also, Nick admits that he was actually awake and alert for the entire assault, but just wasn’t strong enough to fight Josh off. He didn’t admit it before because he felt like less of a man over it.
Finally, Julia has enough and she calls an old shady friend for help. She tells Tony to go visit Nick at the institution to provide him with an alibi and then she goes to visit Josh herself. She wears a disguise and shows up in his house. She tells him that she has pulled some strings, gotten him a whole new identity and enough money to start a new life. He’d be missing the trial and all that, but she just wants him gone before her husband kills him and ruins their lives. He actually agrees to do it and takes the bus tickets and identification she provides and leaves town. Afterward the police suspect Tony of killing Josh anyway because he has disappeared. But, he had a rock solid alibi for the night of Josh’s disappearance since he was visiting Nick. And the case pretty much goes cold.
The book keeps flashing back and forth between 2016, when all the stuff went down, and 2019 (present). In the present, Detective Rice is dying and has figured out that Julia helped Josh escape. He just wants her to admit it before he dies. So, she eventually does, and he promises not to tell anyone.
But, then the narrative continues and it turns out that instead of Josh moving on an starting a new life, the shady friend Julia asked for help actually picks him up from the bus station and kills him. The end.
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