Page 45 of Scotch: Unraveled

“Me and Chaos both know what you’re goin’ through. I’m gonna be real here. Nothin’ brings a man lower than knowin’ his family’s vulnerable in the hands of some crazy fuckwad.”

The wind has been picking up all day, blowing leaves and sticks across the road. Small cyclones of dirt and wind swirl up around the gravel shoulders, awaiting the storm rolling in. The thick clouds darken the sky from the blue of night to black. An ominous play by Mother Nature, considering what we’re about to do.

Fat raindrops begin to pelt the windshield as Blood makes the turn down Squirrel Crick Road. Fuck—I got a bad feeling things are gonna get worse before they get better.

16.

Frankie

“Maybe we chose the wrong woman,” one of the Horde—I can’t see his name patch because he’s turned away from me, but he’s wiry with dirty blond hair—says to Rodrick, as if I’m not sitting right in the room with them.

Unfortunately, this gives Rodrick cause to look directly at me and scowl. Then, without giving me enough reaction time to even flinch, his hand shoots out to fist the back of my hair and he pulls at it hard enough to tilt my head up to look at him. “Where’s yer man now, bitch? He get tired of yer ass? Not a brother who likes settlin’?”

I whimper with tears sliding down from the corners of my eyes as my scalp burns from where he pulls. I can’t help it. I wish I could because I don’t want to come off as weak in front of him, but it hurts.

I’ve been going along with the Horde, doing what they ordered me to do—never putting up a fight, never—not until now. Not until seeing that dead, evil look in his eyes and my heartbeat speeds up, thudding, thudding, thudding hard against my ribcage because I know something worse is on the way.

My skin prickles in an unnerving way a split second before he tugs hard on my hair, hard enough that I either stand or spend the next few months sporting a significant bald spot. I stand and immediately get shoved face-first over the table, knocking some of the cleaning products onto the floor.

But it’s when I hear the clinking of his belt buckle that my fight-or-flight seriously kicks in. The unzipping of his fly could’ve been a building collapsing for as loud as it rings in my ears. My hands flat on the table, his still fisting in my hair, he kicks my feet wider apart.

Now tears flow for a completely different reason.

Rodrick shoves my pencil skirt up to my hips. “Gonna fuck ya,” he grumbles in my ear. “Gonna tear up every hole you got just in case he decides to fuck ya again. He’ll take one look at what’s left ’a ya and toss yer ass aside because when I’m done, bitch, you’ll never take a dick again.”

While he’s distracted by attempting to rip off my panties—the man isn’t even strong enough to rip them off the first try—I bend my knee, crushing my heel in his balls. And as I caught him completely off-guard, he got the full brunt of my kick, a kick that might have taken away his ability to father children, not that the world would mourn missing out on the scumbag progeny from the likes of Rodrick.

He squeals like a piglet trying to escape the butcher and falls to his ass on the floor. I use that opportunity to make a break and sprint for it, though somehow, he manages to snag one of my ankles, tripping me up, and I fall face-forward, using my hands to brace, jamming my wrist while clipping my chin on the hard cement floor.

It could be a ripe peach the way the skin splits. Blood oozes from the open wound that stings badly and if I survive this ordeal, will probably leave a scar. Seems all my stunt accomplished is to set off a beast. I thought he was bad before, and he was, but now—before his eyes looked dead. Now I see death in them.Mydeath.

I attempt to scramble away, but he’s on me, tackling me to the ground again, trapping me beneath his solid frame.

“Now I’m gonna fuck ya lookin’ in yer eyes. I wanna see yer fear. Can already smell it.” He breathes in deeply, flipping me over. I claw, kick, hit, and bite. Anything I can do to get him off me. He’s not going to violate me.

This feral warrior cry rips from somewhere deep inside me as I prepare to end this. Maybe I would’ve ended it, maybe I wouldn’t have, but Scud doesn’t give me the chance, shouting, “The fuck you doin’?” while ripping Rodrick off me. “You use her, she ain’t worth shit.” Then he looks to me. “Get up. Go clean yourself, then get back to work.”

Pushing up, I’m back to using strictly one hand because the injured wrist I kept immobilized with that towel is the same wrist I jammed again when I first went down.

I’ll be lucky if I don’t need surgery on it.

Between my wrist and my chin, not to mention the aches and pains from the struggle, it takes me forever—or what feels like forever—to hobble my way to the bathroom to clean up the best I can.

The best I canis the operative phrasing because I’m a mess, taking three bandages from a box sitting on the back of the toilet to cover the gash on my chin. For my wrist, I supplement the towel with almost an entire roll of paper towel the Horde had lying next to the box. Between the two, it keeps my wrist stable enough to hopefully prevent any further damage.

It doesn’t go unnoticed that as I hobble away from the bathroom, I’m only feet away from the door that leads to the outside. Time is hard a mother to keep track of in this place, what with only getting glimpses of day or night when one of the Horde boys comes inside or leaves the building, but since it seems that a bit of it has passed since the last time one of the boys showed up, I figure it has to be close to night.

I could probably do it right now. Make a run for it. No one would think twice about seeing me move out the back—but at the same time, if I did get found out, what would happen to Brighton and the girls? Rodrick would probably kill them.

All those thoughts jumbling around my head, it takes a beat to register the sound ripping through the building and my blood runs cold. Then I run. Every step hurts worse than the last, but Brighton’s screams echo so loud in my ears, I’m not sure if it’s a memory of the scream I just heard or if she’s still stinking screaming.

That sonofabitch Rodrick has my best friend by the hair, dragging her out of the room she’s been staying in with the babies.

Oh, god—the babies. I need to help Brighton, but the babies are babies. I need to make sure he hasn’t hurt my girls.

With his attention all on Bri, I pivot to take the wall, keeping off his radar. He pulls hair from her skull; I see him rip it out and she cries loud enough to make my gut clench. When he punches her stomach to shut her up, it takes everything in me to cover my mouth to keep him from hearing my gasp while I watch the most beautiful soul I’ve ever known double over as she loses her breath, unable to cry out anymore.

Tears rim my eyes and I have to look away. The closer I get to the room he pulled her from, I hear the precious sound of my Macie, my girl. Her cries sound angry, not hurt. But I have to see her to know for sure, which means as hard as it is, I turn my attention away from Rodrick and Brighton and slip through the open door. The girls’ carriers rest on the cot, my girls in them.

---