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Megan hinted that there might be more to this, since there may have been women who weren’t willing to come forward. That got me thinking: how could Tami accuse him after the fact? Yes, Megan could testify about what she heard, but there was no physical evidence of a crime. I would need to talk to Ms. Dixon to see what our legal remedies might be.

Then my thoughts had turned inward to my role in the whole mess. I’d hired Brandon to be my PA and help with recruiting. Yes, Rigby, Thompson and Associates had sent him to me, but I’d not had a background check done on him. I realized my accusations of Teddy Wesleyan had come back to bite me in the butt. I’d chastised him for thinking everyone was out to get his money; meanwhile, I’d been too trusting. While Brandon wasn’t after my money, he was after me. Some people couldn’t stand my success. I hated that I needed to be on guard for possibilities like this, but I planned to have Caryn check on all our employees, including Kendal and Megan.

It also made sense to investigate the people our charities were giving money to. The headlines almost wrote themselves: ‘Dawson Gives Money to Mass Murderer.’ Not the sort of publicity I wanted.

The realization that I hadn’t done my due diligence, and that Tami really didn’t have a way to punish Brandon, made me take an emotional dive. I was instrumental in my best friend being raped. Add to it that he said the reason he did it was to take me down and ‘unmask’ me.

I thought about my behavior afterward. If I’d known, I would’ve done anything I could for Tami. Instead, I pushed her away and used it to help get over the hurt of her final rejection of me during the summer. The sad part was I realized it had worked: even now, despite knowing she’d been violated, I had no desire to be more than friends with her. It was a measure of self-preservation; I couldn’t risk her being anything more than a friend.

I was finally honest with myself: Tami and I would never have our someday. Finally admitting that to myself, I could move forward and just be friends with her. My Alpha Male side still wanted to claim her, but I needed to start thinking of her like the rest of the Wesleyan girls. They were friends that I sometimes had fun with. If I were told that Missy had found a boyfriend, I would be happy for her. Tami deserved her happiness without worrying about how her best friend would react.

Almost as sad as Tami and I was how this had hurt Alan. I felt nearly as bad for how I’d treated him as I had Tami. Jeff, Alan, and I had been friends for as long as I could remember. If you’d told me a year ago that Jeff would be dead and I would hardly be speaking to Alan right now, I would have laughed in your face. Nothing could have caused me to be without my two best male friends.

Sometime around three a.m., I had finally fallen asleep. It was hard to get up and run, but I needed to. The cold air felt good as I dropped into my thinking zone. I set a steady pace and let my mind clear.

I wanted to push all the emotion aside and decide on my course of action. No way was I ready yet to tell Tami or Alan about what happened. I also knew this was bigger than just Brandon, Tami, Alan, and me. If Brandon represented the type of man that fraternity was turning out, then something had to be done about them. I had a bad feeling that Brandon would have skated on his last charge of sexual misconduct if the two women involved had been just regular college students. As much as I wanted to get personal revenge, I wanted to make sure the others involved were punished.

That was when I realized I was glad I hadn’t told my mom. If she found out Brandon had raped Tami, there would’ve been no stopping her. Mom would have reacted like a mama bear protecting one of her cubs. After she killed him, I would be paying for lawyers and putting up bail money this morning. That meant I couldn’t talk to anyone in the family about this, and it also ruled out Kendal and Caryn. Kendal had ratted me out before when she thought it was for my own good, and I didn’t yet have a track record with Caryn. Technically, she worked for my dad, which had always been Kendal’s excuse. My uncle had made it clear where his loyalties were, and I didn’t want to get my grandmother involved in something like this.

Frankly, I needed a third party who didn’t have a dog in this fight to help me figure out what to do.

◊◊◊

As I pounded down the sidewalk towards my house, I dropped out of the zone when there was a woman with two girls and a boy standing by the driveway. When they saw me, they blocked my path down the sidewalk.

I told Duke to sit and stay. I was glad I had my Bo staff with me because something didn’t feel right.

“Hi. Our car is low on gas, and I need to get my kids to school. I was wondering if you could spare some money.”