And when I got to the table where my brother and Bristol didn’t even seem to care that I’d had their child for over twenty minutes, I was very disappointed.
I didn’t want him to leave.
“Thanks man,” Dallas said when Silas handed the baby over.
I set the bag of dirty clothes on the floor and offered the diaper bag to Bristol. “I have to go wash my hands. There are things on them that I’d rather not think about.”
Bristol laughed, and I turned to find Silas gone, and nowhere in sight. Only the hint of pine in his place.
I couldn’t figure out why I was so disappointed, but I was.
Really disappointed.
But it wouldn’t be the last time I saw him. Nor the last time I smelled him.
Chapter 6
World’s greatest farter…I mean father.
-T-shirt
Silas
“Get the fuck out of my sight,” I hissed to Crotchet.
Crotchet narrowed his eyes. “Do you realize who you’re talking to?”
I smiled. “Yeah, I realize exactly who the fuck I’m talking to, now move.”
“You’re not authorized to be in here.”
“Crotchet, back off and let him through,” Rosenthal ordered.
Crotch Rot froze and turned where his boss’s boss stood behind him, ordering him to move when he hadn’t even had the chance to meet him yet.
Everybody knew what Rosenthal looked like, though.
He was infamous… just like I was.
“You heard the man,” I said quietly. “Move.”
Crotch Rot’s eyes narrowed, and he stepped forward. “You won’t get what you want. Trust me.”
I smiled. “Watch me.”
Crotchet moved to allow me to pass, and I barely held back the urge to pop him in the face with the back of my hand.
Rosenthal didn’t say a word until we were well away from Crotchet.
“You’re making an enemy where you don’t need to,” Rosenthal said amusingly.
I shrugged. “Like I give a fuck. I’m old and on the downhill side of dead. I don’t have to please everyone anymore. All I have to please is God and myself… and he’s neither.”
Rosenthal laughed.
“You never seem to lose the bad attitude,” Rosenthal rumbled.
I sighed. “I got it from my mama.”
“What can I help you with?” Rosenthal asked as we made it into his office.
He closed the door, and I took a seat and waited for Rosenthal to follow suit before I handed him a paper.
Shovel’s name was the only thing on the paper, but he knew right off the bat what I was after.
“I haven’t seen or heard anything from him. He fell off the grid the moment he got out,” Rosenthal said before I could even tell him what I wanted.
“I know that,” I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms over my chest. “What I don’t know is why he got out. There was no forewarning. No call to tell me he was out. No mention of parole at all, as a matter of fact. Why did something as important as this slip through the cracks? I check on this motherfucker once a week…then in between this week and last, he not only gets out…but then fucking disappears. Is that a coincidence? Because I’m thinking it’s not.”
Rosenthal’s face hardened to stone. “I don’t know what you want me to say to you, Mackenzie. I know you have a man on it. When I became aware of the situation, I started to follow the stepping stones, but I got nothing. Not a single thread.”
I tilted my head back to stare up at the ceiling.
“Need I remind you that he tried to kill my kids… my wife? Which was why he was in prison in the first place,” I said, not bothering to look at him.
“I know exactly what happened. I was right there with to you. Remember?” He reminded me none too gently.
I closed my eyes and let my mind wander back to that night. The night that my life changed forever.
***
“You’re going to watch. Watch while I rape her. Watch while I rape your son. Your daughter. Your other son. That other trash isn’t worth it… I know you don’t care about her…but the other four…yeah, I know that’ll get a reaction out of you,” Shovel smiled manically.
Bile rose in my stomach as I watched him rub a hand up and down the thigh of my wife.
She was drugged.
Shovel had drugged us all.
I’d trusted the wrong person, and now they were all going to pay.
My mistake was going to probably kill everything I loved in one fell swoop.
And I didn’t see a thing I could do to help me get out of it.
Then he snuck his hand into her panties, and my hands fisted behind my back.
Outwardly, though, I appeared calm.
God help him if he moved to my kids, though.
I couldn’t do this for much longer.
They were never supposed to get to my family.
I never agreed on this.
I knew this one moment in time would forever alter my course in life.
Whatever I had to do, I’d kill this motherfucker.
It may be now…or it may be twenty years from now…but the fucker would die. And at my hand.
“Coming in hot,” Rosenthal, my partner, said into my mic.
He was going to get here fast, I knew that.
But when Shovel started to run his hand along the side of my children’s faces, I nearly lost it.