Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Chapter 24 - It Ain't Over Yet


"We're going to have to do press over this, babe."


"No we don't." she states flatly.  "We don't have to do anything we don't want to."

He gives an innocent chuckle, loving when she pouts, "We will have to say something, even if it's just releasing a statement."

"No, Jon.  I won't go on camera and discuss it, with anyone.  Not even your girl Savannah."

"We are going to have to Beth, we can't have this video out there and we stay mute about it all.  You know how this works."  he reaches over and pats her knee, "You know that damage control has to be done."

"I thought we were getting ahead of it?"

He looks at her, "Come on, we needed to get ahead of it if we were going to help him.  Since we didn't, now we have to do damage control."

"There really isn't anyway to control that damage."  she mumbles, digging through her pocket book looking for her phone.  She searches for her friend Tammy's contact and shoots her a text, "We're heading into the city.  Please leave a key with the doorman.  Love you, B"

They swoop in and get the kids, quickly and in team precision.  They kiss mom and dad goodbye, remind them to stay away from places that press will gather and then Jon reminds them that there is security around the house and at their disposal when they leave.  For the next week or two, they are to go nowhere alone.  The thought of his parents being hounded, surrounded and bullied by press boils his blood.  But he can't stay there and take care of them.  He needs to get his family in a safe place.

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The kids, all four are securely fastened in the back seats of Beth's Escalade, along with their life saver Lupetta.  As they pulled away from the Bongiovi home in Hazlet, Jake had to ask, "Where are we going now?" and he asks in a way that portrays that he's upset about it.  "I don't want to miss school, my friends, dad."

Jon looks in the rear view mirror at his son, "I'm keeping you out of school for a couple of days.  I'll call Poly and have your assignments emailed to us so neither of you fall behind."  He gives a quick wink to him  once they make eye contact in the mirror.

"In whatever is going on, is Dorothea involved?" he asks, and in a grown fashion.  

"She's your mother Jacob, please don't call her by her name.  To you, she's mom."  Beth turns to look at the young man and continues with, "We don't think she is, but we don't know for sure."

"Is that why we aren't going to her house for this hide out?"

Jon jumps in, "I had your mother moved too, Jake."

"WHAT?"  Beth didn't see that one coming, "When did you do that?"

"When you were packing." he looks over his sun glass top and adds, "is that okay?"

"Why would you do that?" Beth is pissed.  She's certain that Dot is involved in one way or another, how could Jon protect her after all that she herself has done to them and their family.  

"She needs to be safe too.  She is the mother to my children and for them I protect her."

Beth presses her head against the back of the seat, the tension tightening in her shoulders and her blood pressure rising.  "Whatever, I can't even care about it right now."

Jake can hear the conversation that they are having and he interjects, "Mom better not be involved in this, whatever THIS is.  If she is, I'll never speak to her again."

"Jake..."  Beth tries to coddle.  "We don't know who's involved, totally." 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The arrive at the apartment in the city.  They retrieve their things from the Escalade and Jon tosses the key to the door man.  The door man gives him a key in return.  "Who's house is this?"  Romeo asks them as they load into the elevator.  "I've never been here before."

Beth messes up his hair and says, "This is my friend Tammy's place.  She's on vacation and we have use of the place while we need to stay out of sight."

"Can I ask why we need to hide, again?  It always seems to happen at the worst time."

Jon gives Pete a look and she knows what that look means.  She gathers the kids things and ushers the 3 youngest ones down a hallway to find their places.  Jake stays with Jon and Beth. "Come on Jake."  Jon says, waving his son in the direction that he's going.  "I'll tell you what's going on."

"Jon...?"  Beth doesn't think it's a good idea.  "Really?  You want to put that on him?"

"I want him to know why we had to uproot him from his home, I can do it in a PG way."

They all take a seat in the living room, with a beautiful view of the New York City skyline.  Jake sits between Jon and Beth.

A deep breath, "Jake, do you remember a long time ago when that man broke into Beth's home in California?"

Jake thinks for a minute, "The time she was beat up really bad?"  He can't look at Beth, he's too embarrassed.  "we had to come here because of that?" he doesn't understand, that man is in jail and Beth is good now.

"In all honesty, that man did terrible things to her that went beyond hurting her. He raped her Jake."  That makes Beth cry, not because of talking about it, but she doesn't want Jake to treat her differently. 

Jake looks at Beth and can see her tears, and then he can see her trying to smile through them to show him that she's okay now, but he couldn't help it - he sprang to his feet and gave her a big hug.  His heart hurts for her now.  

Jon continues with his story, "the man that raped her installed cameras in her house when she was away with me on the road.  So, when he raped her and beat her into a bloody pulp - he captured it all of tape."

Jake's head lowered.

"That man is going to release that tape to whatever media avenue and people all over the world are going to see it."

Jake looks up at Beth, who's still crying.  Quietly he says to her, "I'm sorry Beth, what can we do to stop it?"

She shakes her head no.  "There's nothing."

"Jakey, the video is brutal and I don't want you to ever watch it.  If your friends hear about it and want to watch it, don't watch it with them.  Tell them not to watch it."  Jon tells his son.

Jon's phone alerts him of an email as it's tucked into his back pocket.  He pulls it out and reads the email that Matt, his brother, sent him.  The subject line says watch alone

Jon can see the video is titled, "The rise and brutal fall of Beth Bongiovi."  With just seeing the video thumbnail he can see that it's the video that they were sent.  Jon quickly texts Matt, where did you see this?

Matt responds right away.  It's on TMZ's website and a couple of other fake news sites.

Don't watch it.  Jon sends and drops his phone on the table and tells them, "The video has been released."

2 comments:

  1. Yeah something bad needs to happen to this asshole.
    I'm surprised Jon gave the full deets of the assault to Jake but I've lost track of his age at this point.

    ReplyDelete