A/N: Please note that this chapter contains some references to rape - you have been warned

"Hey!"
The sound of her sister's voice made Sophie look up from her glass of red wine.
"You bloody bitch! How dare you start drinking before me!"
René and Sylvan gave each other equally cocky smiles upon Leila's outburst and both men laughed a little. René pulled out a chair for Leila and waited until she had seated herself before sitting down.
"They told us not too long ago that there's another karaoke contest tonight so I thought Sophie and I could get a head start on the drinking."
"Yeah but you also have to meet up with the Hurricane to talk about your match. René told me."
Sylvan acknowledged that Leila did have a point. He would have to remain relatively sober until after the Hurricane meeting.
"Here he comes now. You two, play dumb. Keep asking him 'Parlez vous Français?'"
Leila began to laugh. Sylvan appeared to have a short term memory as it was obvious to everyone that she and Sophie could understand and speak English but they felt more comfortable speaking in French. But if he wanted them to play dumb, they would play dumb.
René introduced the twins to the Hurricane and his partner for their match, who was none other than Spike Dudley. They nodded politely, merely playing the role Sylvan asked of them before looking at the bottle of wine which graced the table, smiling when they saw that it came from Bordeaux.
Leila and Sophie were talking amongst themselves in French, and René could only catch little snippets of their conversation. Leila wasn't giving anything away about what happened between the two of them at McDonalds, apart from the two girls glaring at her when they asked René for his autograph. Was she afraid that Sophie would go running to Sylvan to tell him?
In between breaks in their conversation, they managed to finish off the bottle of wine although another one replaced it in quick time.
Leila and Sophie had finished that bottle of wine and started on another before the Hurricane and Spike left them and René and Sylvan alone, seeing that the other WWE superstars had entered the club in readiness for the karaoke contest.
"Don't you think you've had enough to drink?" Sylvan asked.
"No way. We've only just started. Besides, we've been drinking wine since we were about yay big," Leila replied, indicating with a hand just how small she and Sophie had been when they started drinking alcohol. "Of course, it was watered down then but not now."
It was obvious that Sophie was ready to dance for a while in order to work off the alcohol she had already consumed to make way for more. Sylvan decided that he didn't want to take her onto the dance floor and asked René if he would. From the tone of his voice, it was more of an order.
He waited until René and Sophie were on the dance floor before turning his attention to Leila.
"You seemed to be a bit uneasy when you returned."
"What do you want for that effort? A medal?"
"I'm a little concerned for you. He didn't do anything, did he?"
"Apart from being a little too forward for my liking. You know, speaking before thinking."
"What did he say? And I really do want to hear it from you before I hear it from him."
Leila sighed, gathering her thoughts.
"The man who succeeds in gaining the key to your heart will truly be a lucky man indeed. That freaked me out a little."
"He was being honest?"
"He was. Too honest for my liking. If we weren't in McDonalds when he said that, he'd have a black eye to match his other one."
"Now, I'm going to be blunt and straight to the point. Do you like him?"
Leila nodded, too afraid to speak.
"Then what have you got to be afraid of?"
"Myself. I'm afraid of myself."
Sylvan nodded, well aware that he was only scratching the surface of the real Leila. Her bouncy attitude was a front to the real Leila. She didn't look very happy at the moment - in fact, she looked as if she was about to cry. Someone crying in a club was not a good look.
"I'll get René to take you back to your room."
As Leila watched Sylvan walk up to René and explain to him what was going on, she knew that she had to tell René why she had reacted the way she had when he made that declaration in the McDonalds restaurant. It was something she had never told anyone, including Sophie. And she was worried about how René would react when she told him. Once she had summoned up enough courage to tell him.
Hell, she had to summon up the courage to even leave the comfort of her seat for her hotel room but she knew she couldn't tell him in here, with an audience. Maybe Sylvan did have the best of intentions after all.
Sylvan's words to him reverberated through René's mind as he helped Leila back to her hotel room - "Tread very slowly. Something very major's happened to her." - and mixed with the sound of Andrea Bocelli singing "Nessun Dorma" which was coming from their room.
"Sylvan really was worried about you and now he's got me worried about you. Was it because of what I said to you in McDonalds?"
"It was. It just brought up bad memories that will take a while to go away again."
Uh oh. This meant being able to keep it from Sylvan, unless she let him tell him.
"Like what? Take your time to tell me."
Leila refused to look at René's face, instead looking at his shoes. She didn't want to see the look of disgust on his face when she told him.
In no uncertain terms, Leila told René exactly what had happened to her three years earlier. A friend of her brother's had said the exact same words to her and he meant them, because he wanted to be the only bloke in her life. Thomas knew Leila didn't feel comfortable with Marc so always stayed within a reasonable distance if the two of them were alone.
Marc knew that Leila wasn't comfortable with him and that Thomas was weary of leaving the two of them alone and resolved to get Leila alone at some point in the future.
A couple of months later, Leila and Sophie had gone to a party of a mutual friend of theirs and Marc was there, unbeknownst to the twins who were busy catching up with friends they hadn't seen for some time, sharing a few stories, telling a few jokes, generally having a good time under the watchful eye of their brother.
At one stage, she had gone to get another drink for herself and Sophie and found herself accosted by Marc on her way back with the drinks.
Seeing that she weighed less then half of what Marc weighed, it was an easy feat for him to literally drag her into the nearest room.
Leila paused, gathering both her thoughts and her courage. René was no longer standing in front of her but sitting beside her on the bed, holding her free hand in his. She was so afraid of how he would react upon her telling him just how far Marc had gone with her.
Whatever she had yet to tell him, René knew it was bad. He had an inkling what it might've been but didn't say anything. He allowed Leila to tell him at her own pace.
Gathering thoughts and courage, Leila began to finish her story.
Sophie mentioned something to Thomas about her taking so long with her drink and he went looking for her. He knew that Marc was at this particular party and that he wouldn't have put it past him to at least try and hurt Leila in some way.
As it turned out, Thomas walked in on Marc hurting Leila by raping her. Yelling at the top of his voice for Sophie to look after her twin, Thomas dragged Marc out to where everyone was and publically humiliated him for what he had been caught doing to Leila. She hadn't seen him since and knew she didn't want to.
Now, he knew why she reacted the way she had when he had spoken those words in the McDonalds restaurant. He also knew that she wanted to cry but was trying not to in front of him. His first response was to hold her in his arms and let her cry.
He did so and sure enough, she cried, letting out three years of anger and frustration.
There was no way he was going to leave her alone now. She had just spilled her guts and needed to know that someone would be there for her and that someone would be him. René Dupree. If he wasn't here for her, he would ensure that either Sophie or Sylvan were.
Leila eventually cried herself to sleep and René covered her sleeping form with a blanket, carefully placing a pillow under her left ankle to keep it somewhat elevated. There was no way he was going to leave her alone now so he conducted a quick search of the room for her mobile phone, eventually figured out how to send a text message to Sophie and waited for her reply back.
After he had received a response from Sophie, he pulled up a chair to Leila's bedside and turned on the tv, with the intention of watching the cartoons but he found his attention wandering from the tv to the sleeping figure of Leila only a few centimetres away …