by Lily White
“I’m sorry, Elliot,” she cried. “But I can’t let you do this. Not to my father.” Her voice shook as much as her body. “Not to him.”
Shock tore through my system, shock and the faintest sense of betrayal. I hadn’t done much for this young woman in the time that I’d known her. I hadn’t saved her from the nightmare in which she lived. I hadn’t rescued her from the depraved darkness in which her family had raised her. But I liked to think I’d given her three things her family never could: I’d given her freedom. I’d given her a choice. And I’d given her hope.
None of those things must have mattered as much as the loyalty she felt to the man who’d raised her, the loyalty that would now get her killed.
All emotion left me in that moment. Every bit of compassion, of warmth, of affinity I felt for Maggie dissolving as I stared at the needle she’d intended to use against me. I wasn’t sure what liquid was housed within the plastic tube. I didn’t know if it would kill me or simply knock me on my ass. But I was damn determined not to find out.
“No, Maggie. Don’t apologize to me. I’m the one who should be saying sorry.”
Her lips trembled as tears rolled across her cheeks to drip along the line of her jaw. Her eyes wide as saucers, she stared up into my face, panic lighting her gaze even brighter than the flames that roared behind me.
“For what?” she asked, her voice so soft I barely made out what she’d said.
Staring at the girl with what was left of my heart breaking apart in my chest, I released a breath filled with everything inside that made me a decent person. Pity was no longer a part of me. Hope had been driven away as soon as that needle left her pocket. And my concern for her was lost to the errant wind that drove past us as I realized there was nothing more I could do.
I hadn’t been able to save my wife. I hadn’t been able to save my son. And I feared I wouldn’t be able to save Maggie.
There was nothing left. No concern. No interest. No empathy or understanding. All that remained flowing through my veins was the pervasive need to kill.
“For not convincing you to go that farm and stay put. For not saving you the heartache of watching your family die.”
Her eyes rounded when she understood my intent, the bones of her wrist snapping when I forced the syringe from her hand. Opening her mouth on an ear-piercing scream, tears burst from her eyes once more. I smiled to hear her father’s scream rise up to meet her own.
“Take your fucking hands off my daughter! Let my baby go! I’ll kill you myself if you fucking hurt her.””
Refusing to release the grip I had on Maggie, my gaze slowly crawled from her face over to where her father sat bound in a white plastic chair. It wouldn’t have held him if not for the zip ties that prevented him from doing anything more than sitting as a helpless witness to the carnage I had every intention of bringing to the table.
My lips pulled into a feral grin, my eyes locked to a man I wanted nothing more than to slaughter like the fat pig he was.
“Here again, I have to ask how, exactly, do you plan on killing me, Crow?”
Rage was a purple mask on his face, the wrinkles and sagging skin only adding to the deep hue that now marred him. At a distance, I could still see the bloodshot red that streaked his eyes, the yellow of a decaying liver casting a sickening film over his glare.
I wasn’t sure if I’d broken Maggie’s wrist. It was impossible to judge my strength now that everything inside me had turned dark. She cried where she was kneeling beneath me, her wrist still caught in my hand and her body having lost every bit of fight it once had. Pulling her up, I ignored the cry of pain that tore from her lips, and I continued ignoring it as I dragged her over to stand in front of her father.
“You hurt my girl one more time, you son of a whoring bitch, and I’ll -“
“You’ll what? Scream at me some more? Wiggle around in the chair until it turns over and your face is buried in the dirt beneath your feet? There’s not much you can do while you’re bound, now is there? How does it feel, Crow? How does it fucking feel to be helpless to me? I’d like to know, because I’ve been wondering how my wife and son felt on the day you made them helpless to you.”
As soon as the words left my mouth, I felt Maggie’s entire body flinch against mine. Turning, I looked into eyes that held secrets too large and too horrible to share. I saw guilt mixed in with the horror, shame and the truth that she’d known all along exactly who I was, and exactly who my family had been.
It pissed me off to discover she’d known. And I’ll even admit it took me by surprise.
“You knew?” I asked softly. “You knew this entire time?”
She didn’t have to answer for me to know just how well she’d known the truth about what her family had done to mine.
And for as angry as that made me, it hurt, too.
Laughter rattled my chest, the laughter of a man who’d lost every ounce of sanity he had in him. Gone was the concern for a girl I’d never wanted to hurt. And gone was the promise I’d made to do everything in my power to help her live through this night. She was one of them, through and through. A Crow by birth – and now, a Crow by choice. Her silence had made her complicit, and for that I would carry no guilt if she died.
“She’s just a child. This fight is between you and me.”
Jonah’s voice dragged my focus back to him, our eyes locking to each other, both narrowed with the rage we felt.
“That’s good to know. Why don’t you begin this conversation by telling me where I can find my wife and son?”
“Let go of my daughter, and I’ll be happy to tell you whatever you want to know.”
I wouldn’t exactly have called his tone of voice happy. It was far from happy, in fact. But just having him talking was enough to calm the need inside me to rip his head from his withered shoulders. At least until I had the answers I wanted.
His angry glare softened when his eyes caught sight of Maggie crying, and for a brief moment I wondered if he didn’t care about her more than I assumed. However, that moment was lost as soon as I remembered the marks I’d seen across her bottom, the angry lines that scored her skin from the bottom of her thighs up to her lower back.
“We seem to have a problem, Crow. I offered Maggie the opportunity to leave, but she declined. And as you are probably aware, her refusal is as good as telling me she’s one of you. I can’t let her go now. Not when I know she’d just run off to call the police.”
“She wouldn’t do that.” Tipping his chin in the direction of his daughter, he said, “The girl knows better than to bring the law into family matters. Just let her go and we can keep this between us. There’s no point hurting an innocent girl.”
“Really?” I laughed, the sound becoming darker and more malevolent as the minutes ticked by. “Why don’t you tell that to the woman your boys almost killed tonight? Wasn’t she innocent? Did she deserve to get hurt?”
This conversation was lasting far too long, but I hadn’t planned for this to be a quick execution. The night was still young, and I had all the time in the world to carry out the revenge I’d been planning for so long.
“Or, better yet, why don’t you tell that to your boys when it comes to their own sister?”
Jonah’s eyes narrowed, his mouth pulling into a thin line as his nostrils flared open.
My lips formed an ‘O’ of surprise, a smile tilting my lips right after because it appeared my suspicions were true. “What’s wrong, Jonah? Didn’t you bother to check and see what your sons had done to your precious little girl when you gave them the go ahead to beat her?”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
A panicked cry cut through the night as I spun Maggie in place. Lifting her skirt in front of her father’s eyes, I didn’t give a shit if I was embarrassing her. At that moment, the only thing I cared about was showing the piece of shit in front of me exactly what he’d allowed two grown men to do to his daughter.
“Well, t
hen allow me to show you.”
With my voice booming over the other sounds that accompanied the night – the roar of the fire, the crackling of the wood as it broke apart into ash, the cry of the cicada that was a symphony of sound piercing the sky – I watched Jonah’s face, searching it for the exact moment when he realized what his sons had done.
The intensity of his stare was locked on me, anger for having lifted his daughter’s skirt quickly dissolving when he looked down to see the bruises and cuts her brothers had left on her body. I saw every emotion in his eyes that betrayed his thoughts, the exact moment of discovery seared into my brain as I absorbed the anguish and pain the realization had caused him.
“You see what I’m talking about, Crow? Did you tell them to do this to her? Did you ask them to leave scars?”
Screaming with the vehemence that consumed me, I held Maggie in place despite the fight she was giving me. Her tears continued falling until they become a puddle of mud beneath her feet, but I couldn’t give a damn about the pain I was causing her. Nothing was more important than delivering to this man every ounce of fucking pain he’d delivered to me.
“Is that what you allow to be done to a child you love? Is it?”
Jonah’s eyes continued glaring at the marks on Maggie’s behind, his eyes narrowing into focus on one particular mark as rage turned his skin purple once again. Glancing down, I wanted to know exactly which mark it was that made him so angry, wanted to memorize every minute detail so that I could carry the feeling of retribution to my grave.
But rather than finding a simple bruised line, or one of the thin slices I’d seen when Maggie had met me at the farm the prior night, I found something that turned my own skin a brutal purple, a mark that stole the breath from my lungs and shot pain through my jaw from how hard I gnashed my teeth. Without thinking, I reached down to drag her underwear up the cheek of her bottom to get a better look at whatever had caused that large splotch of blood. What I found went beyond a simple lash mark or bruise. What I found was mutilation.
“What the fuck is that?”
Dropping Maggie’s skirt, I turned her towards me, my fingers gripping her chin as I tilted her face up to mine. “Who the fuck carved their initials into you, Maggie?”
Her eyes bugged out of their sockets, tears still dripping down from the bloodshot orbs. Shaking her head, she attempted to refuse to answer, but my grip on her chin only became tighter, my face lowering down until we were nose to nose.
“Tell me which one of these motherfuckers did that to you.”
While I questioned Maggie, I heard her father in the background threatening to end a man’s life. After listening to what he had to say, I knew exactly who’d carved those initials into her skin, but I wanted to hear it from her mouth as well.
“Who was it?”
Her eyes flicked to the right, betraying her knowledge of the man who’d carved her skin. Following the path of her gaze, my eyes landed on the blond man whose ankle I’d sliced open with my knife earlier that night – the man who wouldn’t live to hurt another woman again.
“Who is he?” My voice was deceptively soft, concern dripping from the words and a gentleness to my tone that dragged her attention back to me. She searched my eyes for several seconds before swallowing down whatever panic and heartache still pulsed in her veins.
Closing her eyes, she spoke around trembling lips to admit, “That man is my husband, Elliot. He wanted people to know I was his.”
Shock tore through me, shock and a wave of rage so violent that my body became stuck in place. Most people reacted to anger with instantaneous action, decisions made without thought, and voices so loud that everybody within a mile radius knew what had pissed those people off.
But not me.
When my rage reached this level, I became cold. I became focused. I became as lethal as the rounds of a high caliber assault rifle, the edge of an expertly honed blade, or the blast of a nuclear missile that struck its target with ferocious grace.
“Was he your choice?”
Her eyes blinked up at me, her head shaking to the left and right so quickly I wasn’t sure I’d actually seen the response.
“Then it’s decided, isn’t it?”
Tears slipped over her lips. “What’s decided?”
Grinning down at her with a smile I knew scared her more than made her feel safe, I spoke slowly when I answered, “It’s decided that this night isn’t just about my family any longer. This night is about you as well.”
It was wrong of me to put what was about to happen on her shoulders. If she survived the night, she’d have to carry the weight of her guilt for the rest of her life. But she needed to know that there were men out there who weren’t as evil as her father or brothers – who weren’t as evil as the jackass strapped to a white plastic chair who was about to learn what pain and mutilation truly felt like.
I hoped Maggie would find another man in her life who was willing to protect her. A man who would defend her honor and would love her no matter what the world threw at her. I couldn’t be that man, but I sure as hell could show her what it looked like.
Breathing out a shaky breath, I closed my eyes and tilted my head up towards the night sky. It was time to end the nightmare that had held me prisoner for too damn long.
Angling my head back down to her, I opened my eyes and told her I was sorry, but I didn’t give her a chance to ask why before I began my lethal dance with the men seated around the fire.
“It’s good thing you like whoring out your daughter, Jonah. I’ll be sure to enjoy her when your body is burned to ash. Maybe I can make her scream for me like the husband you married her off to.”
Glancing over Maggie’s head, I locked my stare to the yellow and bloodshot eyes of her father. A wicked grin pulled at my lips to see the anger pull his mouth into a tight line.
“Would you like to know what I plan to do to her?”
If looks could kill, Jonah would have just sliced my body open from belly to throat. His entire body went perfectly still. “You leave my daughter out of this. I don’t know who the fuck you are, but I recognize you now. You’re the man who was sitting outside my house a few weeks ago. I should have killed you then.”
A bark of laughter shook my shoulders. “Yeah, you should have. But you didn’t and now you get to see your daughter go through the same thing you did to my wife.”
“We didn’t touch your fucking wife.”
My head snapped to look into the face of Maggie’s brother, the one I’d previously left laying in his own piss while I worked on taking down the blond man and the other brother. Gripping Maggie’s hair, I forced her head in the same direction. “Which one is that?”
An audible gulp sounded from her throat, her voice barely a whisper when she answered, “Finn. That one is Finn. The one on the other side of my dad is Brody.”
My smile stretched wider. I’d been itching to dance with Finn ever since Maggie admitted the way he abused her.
“I suggest you shut the fuck up, Finn. You and I will get our turn later on this evening. I promise you that. Be a good boy and show some patience.”
“I’m not –“
“What part of that statement sounded like you have a choice?”
His voice buried by mine, he snapped his mouth shut, his expression matching his father’s, making the family resemblance impossible to ignore.
“Don’t worry, you sick son of a bitch. I have plans for each and every one of you, so just sit tight and wait to see what I have planned.”
My fingers locked around Maggie’s wrist and she cried out in pain from the hold. I still wasn’t sure whether I’d broken the bones when I’d forced the syringe from her hand, but I couldn’t allow her pain to slow me down. I had a point to make to every one of the assholes who sat watching us.
Dragging her over the dirt by her arm, I ignored the way she begged and pleaded to be let go. As soon as we approached my truck, I threw her body up against the side and flipped he
r skirt up from behind.
“No! Please, Elliot! Stop!”
She fought against me, but the little girl had no strength left in her. Careful not to touch the areas of her skin that were still bleeding from what her husband had done to her the night before, I ripped her panties from her body, enjoying the way her father screamed behind us. In truth, I had no intentions of hurting her the same way her husband had, but I had no intention of letting her father know it.
Leaning forward so that I could whisper in her ear, I gave her one simple command. “Keep screaming, Maggie. Keep screaming and don’t stop, no matter what.”
Her mouth opened and the sound that tore across the night sky was so full of pain that it tore my heart in two. Fear, terror, panic and agony were threaded into that sound, enough heartache to poison the land and trees with the evil that she believed was being committed against her.
Grinding my hips against her, I led her family to believe she was being raped right there in front of them. The men screamed right along with her, the sound of pure rage reaching out to intermingle with the screams that tore from her throat.
This scene didn’t need to last long for me to get the point across, and when I was done shredding the heart of the asshole who’d raised her in such a vile life, I wrapped my arm around her neck, squeezing hard until her body went limp against the truck, until her mind was delivered to the darkness of a deep, dreamless sleep.
I hadn’t killed her. But her daddy didn’t know that.
Jonah and his sons continued roaring out their empty threats as I lifted her small body up into my arms. Opening the truck door, I laid her on the bench seat before closing the door to lock her inside. I didn’t want her interfering if she woke before my plans were carried out, so I pulled two screwdrivers from the toolbox in the bed of the truck and jammed it between the door and frame on both sides to ensure she wouldn’t be able to let herself out.
“You didn’t kill her,” Jonah called out. “Tell me you didn’t kill her! If you had, you wouldn’t be locking her inside like that.”
For the first time that night, I heard the hint of panic on his voice. Maggie hadn’t been wrong after all. Her father truly did love her; he was just too stupid to understand what loving somebody meant.