Page 46 of Scotch: Unraveled

“Hi, babies,” I say softly. Macie hears my voice and stops crying. She hiccups, her face still red and looking a breath away from starting up again. I pick her up first. It hurts with my wrist mangled, but she’s more important than my pain. I kiss her cheeks, the top of her head, her chin. Anywhere I have to in order to calm her down.

Once I have her good, I place her back in the carrier, hook her in, and lift Mollie, who coos and babbles at me happily. “Mollie girl. I’ve missed you,” I say softly to her. Then I kisshercheeks, the top of her head, and her chin before I have to hook her back in, too.

I move to the table with the formula and water to prepare a bottle for each baby and limp them back over to fill the girls’ bellies until I make my way back to them again, then I check their diapers.

Leaving them is an entirely different pain than the one in my wrist or my leg, but it cuts no less deep. “Love you, girls. I’m get us out of this… I promise.”

Then, as hard as this one is, I go. And it’s I do, because after sneaking out of the room, I follow Brighton’s screams to another smaller, adjacent nook, where he’s got Bri’s hands chained above her head—and I get the distinct feeling this isn’t the first time a person has been strung up from that metal hook.

“Not allowed to fuck the Lord’s whore,” he says to Brighton on a disgustingly evil sneer that makes me want to rip his slimy lips from his disgusting face and shove them up his ass. “Sucks for you.” As he finishes his villain-of-the-year speech, he reaches up to yank at the collar of her T-shirt. I hear the threads ripping, but like with my panties, he doesn’t have the stuff to rip it off her, and I’m not about to give him the chance.

He pulls harder.

The cotton tears at the shoulder.

We both see the strap of her bra.

I think only I see red.

And I launch.

Bent forward, I make sure to use my shoulder instead of my head and neck to plow into his side, knocking Rodrick off balance.

“Ya fuckin’ cunt!” he screams. “I’m gonna kill ya.” The evidence on his face proves his intent.

“Not this time!” I yell back, shrill and full of hatred for this nasty, poor excuse for a man. I punch him, not letting up. Punching him. Choking him. Squeezing his neck until his face turns purple. While it does, I lift his head to slam it against the cement floor.

I must be running on pure adrenaline because there should be no way with my broken wrist my actions should be possible. Unfortunately, I get overzealous with my actions, slamming him down too hard with my bad wrist. It might have been fractured before, but I feel it full-on break now, causing me to cry out. He takes advantage of my momentary lapse of concentration, managing to flip us—someone else must be running on adrenaline, too.

“Cunt!” he shouts again, slamming his closed fist against my jaw. “Fuckin’ cunt.” A second punch makes contact along with his continuing shout. The cut on my chin reopens, splitting even worse than before. “Got nothin’ to say now?” Spittle flies from his mouth, hitting my cheek and getting in my eyes along with my tears. “C’mon, cunt, fight back so I have a reason to kill ya.”

And he is, with or without giving him the reason he wants, I know he’s going to kill me because I lack the ability to get up. Rodrick is not the kind of man to let such a choice opportunity pass him by. Part of me is ready to let go… to be done with the pain and violence. But then, I swear I hear my sweet mamaw’s voice in my head telling me, “not yet” even as he pushes up from the floor, kicking me in the ribs over and over, a continuous assault with the metal toe of his cowboy booted foot.

17.

Rory

We park the van away from the compound and trek on foot through the wooded lot and my eyes narrow cautiously when we come upon a darkened figure standing just inside the tree line, somewhere he couldn’t be seen. Hands on my gun, I slow down to scan the area for any other bodies, holding my breath in preparation for battle.

I raise my weapon, only to let out breath, lowering it back down, when I see the darkened figure is Tommy Doyle. Thank Christ.

“We got a problem,” Tommy starts in a low voice once we’ve reached him. “I put out feelers to find out what’s been goin’ on. Although the Sheriff’s Department and TPD usually work together, Rodrick’s targeted me, tryin’ to make it look like I’m in on shit. It’s because of my connection to the Lords and that I been thwartin’ his attempts to put the screws to the women. So the Sheriff’s Department ain’t lettin’ TPD in on any of their plans.”

“The whole department in on this?” Boss asks.

Tommy shakes his head. “Nah, I think they’re all believin’ one of their own because he’s one of their own. Don’t think the rest of ’em are involved.”

Well, there’s that. It’s bad enough we got war with the Horde; don’t need war with the entire Sheriff’s Department as well. We decide to spilt up, half of us going left and half of us going right to case out the joint.

While casing the grounds, it becomes more and more difficult to avoid being seen by the Horde, who keep showing up—from loud, rumbling pipes disrupting the stillness of the countryside, to loading trucks with wooden crates I know have to be product.

I fucking hope it’s not all product because some of those crates are huge. It’s probably the first time in my life I pray for illegal guns.

Other men unload cardboard boxes of varying sizes, but none as large as those damn crates. The goddam Horde pushing all this product on the streets, ruining lives, taking lives. Watching the sheer volume of the operation, I lay my palms to my forehead, knowing that once I get my lassies back, I have to do anything I can to keep this shite from hurting them or anyone else’s family.

I turn to my brothers to see that the looks on their faces match mine, which means unsurprisingly, their thoughts match mine, too.

Each of them get a head nod from me, and they each return one to me, then we move as a unit toward a couple of outbuildings. We keep to the shadows, moving around the corner of the closest outbuilding to the warehouse when Crass points out a door leading inside the main building, darkened even blacker than the shadows we’ve been keeping to. Not a sliver of moonlight strikes that side of the outer wall.

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