EPILOGUE
Mark - 2 days
Aggravated assault did end up being the official charge.
When I got home and saw the news, saw the leaked cellphone video of the attack, I was actually surprised they didn't bump it up to attempted murder. But given as the bastard was beating on his wife, they let it be at assault.
Ellis had needed to wait a full day before Eli would agree to see him, and even then, Ellis said he barely got a handful of words out of my brother.
I had the distinct, sick feeling that that was not an isolated incident, that something had changed in Eli, that he might never let any of us in again.
Maybe it was premature to feel that way, but it was just the sensation I was getting. There was something about that look on his face when he walked out of the interrogation room. We all felt it. It was why my ma freaked the fuck out.
Because that man, that empty shell of a man that was in those cuffs, that wasn't Eli Mallick. It was a different person completely.
And maybe none of us were sure we would ever get the old one back.
It was premature for that kind of thinking, but I couldn't shake it either.
Through it all, through my pacing, my raging, my sleepless nights, Scotti had just... been there. She didn't nag on me to open up when it was clear I didn't want to. She didn't demand I hit the sheets and get some sleep when it was clear I needed it. She made food, but didn't beg me to eat. She just let me go through it, but was there for me when I dropped down on the couch, just completely empty. She curled in. She fucking held me.
If I wasn't sure before, even through the stress and devastation, I knew it then.
I loved the woman.
Too soon? Maybe.
But true nonetheless.
Sometimes it happened like that.
"I have no idea what you usually buy," she said, coming in the door with about fifteen bags in her hands and hanging off her arms.
I chuckled as I stood and moved toward her to take most of the bags. "One trip, or die trying, huh?" I asked, kissing her temple. "I'll eat anything, babe. Thanks for hitting the store."
"Thank Rush. He was the one risking a ticket for driving without a license," she said, smiling as she put her bags down on the island.
"Are the rest getting in today?" I asked, knowing they had been talking about them coming back in light of the shit that went down with Collings, something she had kind of rambled on about as I had been pacing, figuring it was important information. And it was. And it was a huge weight off my shoulders to know she felt about a thousand percent more comfortable about staying with me.
"Mhm," she said a bit absentmindedly as she started putting the cold items away. "I was going to, um, meet them for coffee or something so we could catch up and..."
"Have them over here," I cut her off, watching as she froze for a second before turning.
"It's okay. We can meet somewhere. I know your brothers are..."
"Coming over later, yeah," I agreed, nodding. We were trying to hash out how to get Eli to open up. "This is your place now too, Scotti. Your brothers are important to you just like mine are to me. No reason they can't all be here at once."
It wasn't the biggest house in the world, but we would certainly all fit.
"You're sure?" she asked, and there was no mistaking the excitement in her voice.
"Positive," I agreed, reaching for her, and pulling her close.
I was man enough to admit that I hadn't felt like anything physical since we got back after the station. I was too worked up, too all over the place, too angry at the world to think of anything like that. But with the fog clearing, with the acceptance of my own helplessness in the situation, there was no denying that I was getting some ideas.
Those ideas would likely lead to the ice cream in the bag on the counter melting while I fucked her hard and rough until we were both too spent to do anything but curl up in bed after.
That was exactly what did happen too.
Scotti - 37 days
I closed my eyes tight, wanting to block out the whole world, wanting to disappear, wanting anything but to see the look of utter devastation on the faces of the people around me.
Because the trial was over.
The verdict was in.
And the sentence was handed down.
It wasn't a surprise per se.
The evidence had been damning. Eli's testimony had been robotic. The pictures of the so-called 'victim' in the hospital were horrific at best.
It all added up to guilty.
And he was guilty.
We all knew that going in. We had hoped to gain sympathy from the testimony of the woman who had been getting such a bad beating from her husband that she had obviously needed plastic surgery after. But when she took the stand, all that came out of her mouth was defense for her husband, how he was a good man, how he didn't deserve such a brutal beating.
Never mind how she didn't deserve a brutal beating.
I guess that was yet another horror of being a rich, powerful man in a society that allowed them to get away with whatever they wanted. They could force their victims to lie under oath.
I personally wasn't even all that surprised by the sentence. Like I said, the whole thing just went horribly. If only Eli had snapped out of his funk and given a convincing testimony of how horrific the beating he had witnessed had been, maybe he could have gotten it down a few years.
As it was, he got ten years.
Eligible for probation in five.
Even if it was just five, I knew that was too many for the Mallick family. Five years when they never went five days without seeing one another.
And, judging by the fact that Eli refused to have visitors in jail, I was sure they were all thinking what I was as well; he wasn't going to accept visitors in prison either.
He was cutting ties.
He was pulling away.
It was killing everyone who loved him.
As for Eli, when I looked at him after the sentence, as he was pulled by the officer to stand, he showed nothing. No shock, no anger, no devastation. Not even as he heard the crying of his mother, Fee, Lea, and Dusty. Not even as his father, the hardass, lifelong loanshark he was, had to wipe a few tears away. Not as his brothers cursed and called at him, practically begging for him to look at them.
He was just... empty.
All I could think, being maybe the most objective third-party, was how much he was going to miss. He was going to miss his beloved nieces growing up. He was going to miss Lea's and Dusty's and maybe someday my children's births. He was going to miss birthdays and anniversaries and Thanksgivings and Christmases. There was going to be a sizable hole in every single life event from this point on. There was no way to deny that. That spot could never feel filled. Life would feel always just a little bit lacking with him gone.
Even if he did get probation in five. That was still five years. Five years meant Becca would be heading into middle school. It meant that any babies born would be in elementary school before they even met him.
Because make no mistake, he wouldn't meet them.
I didn't know Eli well, but I just had the gut feeling that he was never going to let his family bring kids into a prison to see him in chains behind glass. No way.
And that, well, that was a fucking tragedy.
Unable to hold it in any longer as I watched Eli disappear, I leaned to my right, resting on King's shoulder because it didn't feel right to cry on Mark right that moment, knowing he was the one who was actually losing something, not me, but needing a shoulder regardless.
It was just so fucking sad.
My heart ached for all of them.
"Take two," King said, giving me a squeeze. "Then knock this shit off and be there for your man."
I smiled because that was exactly what I needed to hear, and nodded.
Then I took two.
And I was there for Mark in the capacity he would allow.
I had spent enough time around men to know that they didn't want you all up their ass when they were dealing with something. Your best bet was just to be around, to be there when they finally did need a sounding board, or a hug, or whatever. I had started to worry that maybe the method wasn't the same for boyfriends after we left the station that first night, but eventually, it proved to still be the right method. After he had raged and stewed and worked things out in his head, he had come back to me, held me, fucked me silly on the kitchen floor.
This, I knew, was going to take a lot more time. But we had plenty of it. He was worth the ups and downs.
"Two minutes are up," King declared, making me laugh and swipe at my cheeks then move to put an arm around Mark, leaning into him as he talked to his father.
It was a good two days before we were able to talk about it, to let it all out. But that was what he needed, those two days, so that was what I gave him.
Mark - 1 year
I would never get used to the feeling.
It didn't matter how many times it happened over the past year.
Each and every time something great happened, like Shane and Lea bringing Jason into the world and then shortly thereafter announcing that they were going to pop out another, even when Dusty and Ryan tied the knot and started working toward their own family as well, even through all the birthdays and holidays, no matter how truly happy we got, there was a sadness beneath it all.
Because Eli never came back to us.
When they took him out of that courtroom, unbeknownst to us, they had completely taken him out of our lives.
There were no phone calls.
Letters were returned.
Visitation, no matter which one of us went up there (and every last one of us had tried), was denied by him.
We didn't know if he was alright.
We didn't know if he was trying to make the best of it, or if he was letting that life completely consume him.
Mom didn't know if he was eating, if he was sleeping, her main concerns being a mom.
Pops and the rest of us guys didn't know if he fell in with a gang, if he was getting beat on, if he was letting himself rage out and getting more time added to his sentence, or spending too much time in the hole.
We didn't know shit.
It was like a death in the family.
And it left a void.
So even though every time I looked down and saw that square-cut diamond ring on Scotti's hand, knowing how fucking insane it was that I had a woman who was there for me through my worst and still wanted to sign up for more, I couldn't feel one-hundred percent happy.
Scotti threw down the bridal magazine that Fee had dropped off, along with about fifty others, with a huff.
"What?" I asked, watching as she shook her head at the room at large.
"What the hell is an 'empire waist?'"
"Um..."
"Yeah, exactly," she said, big-eyeing me like I was in on something. Which, well, I fucking wasn't.
"Why do you need to know what an empire waist is?"
"Because, apparently, for my rectangular shape, which is really just a math typa way to say I have no boobs, hips, or ass," she said, rolling her eyes, "that is a good dress type for me."
I smiled then, unable to hold it in.
Scotti was a lot of things.
She was beautiful; she was brilliant; she was funny in a sarcastic way which just so happened to be my favorite; she was giving; she was loyal; she was amazing in bed; she was an alright cook, but an expert gardener. One thing she absolutely was not, was a girly-girl.
Fee once asked her opinion on her outfit and showed her one dress then came back out a minute later with an expectant look to which Scotti replied, "Well, are you going to change or what?"
Apparently, it had been a completely different dress, just in a different style, but the same color.
That was hilarious to the girls who never let her live it down.
So picking out a wedding dress, which was of utmost importance I had been informed, was proving a special kind of torture for her.
As a woman who was generally in jeans, tees, or the occasional nice black dress, I was pretty sure she never even realized that certain styles would fit her figure better than others. She just went with what she liked or what she felt hot in. It had never steered her wrong in the past.
That being said, beauty magazines (bridal ones included) made billions capitalizing on a woman's insecurities.
They were turning my usually very self-assured woman into a nervous wreck.
"First," I said, ducking my head to catch her gaze, "you have tits, hips, and an ass. And they're all fucking amazing; I don't care what that magazine says. Second, I don't know, nor do I care, and neither should you, what the fuck an empire waist is. All I care about, and all you should care about, is that you pick a dress that you feel good in. That's it. I don't care if it's a goddamn hot pink ballgown that I will spend two hours trying to get under to find your sweet pussy." She laughed then, her face losing all its tension in a blink.
"Was there a third?" she prompted when I trailed off.
"Hold on," I said, looking up at the ceiling and closing my eyes. "I am imagining the pussy-search thing for a second." She swatted my shoulder, and I smiled as I looked down at her. "Third, this is our wedding. It's supposed to be a chill ass party to celebrate that we are only ever going to fuck each other for ever and ever amen."
"Yes, that is totally what it is celebrating," she drawled, grinning.
"My point is, baby, I don't want you fucking stressed out about this shit. It's supposed to make us happy, not frantic. Don't read that shit," I said, gesturing toward the pile on the table. "Just figure out what you want. You want a Justice of the Peace? Fine. You want a banquet hall and every criminal in this town attending, we might need some private security, but fine too. You want to fly to Vegas... well, we'd have to bring my family and yours because we would never hear the end of it if we didn't, but we can do that too. Whatever you want."
"It's your wedding too," she said, shrugging.
"Yeah, and all I want is my last name following your first, my ring on your finger, a smile on your face, and my aforementioned pussy-search. That's it. Everything else is background noise."
Her face went soft at that.
"Do you think maybe Charlie and Helen would let us have the wedding there?" she asked, sounding almost embarrassed to ask. Because it meant too much to her.
I knew she had a soft spot for my parents' house. Maybe it was because it was the first real home with a mom and dad that she had known in a decade. Maybe it was because it was the first place her family and my family had shared a Thanksgiving together, then Christmas, New Years. It was a place we made a ton of memories.
And she wanted this one there too.
"Baby, I wouldn't be able to finish getting the question out before they agreed," I said, watching as her smile went almost a little shy. "They fucking love you. They fucking love your brothers. They obviously love all us fucks. Mom would love knowing that you want your wedding there. I'll bring it up tomorrow, but I'm telling you it is a go. So you can check venues off your list."
I meant it metaphorically, but she actually pulled away, rummaged around under the magazines, making three of them fall to the floor where she left them, and dragged out a pad of legal paper that literally had three different columns and words all the way down on each column, and crossed off what I could only assume was 'venue.'
"King is going to walk me," she said, not able to meet my eye. "I mean, I know Charlie is like a..."
"Scotti," I cut her off, shaking my head, "Pops isn't going to be offended that you didn't ask him to walk you. Don't be ridiculous. King has been the only father you have ever known." In fact, when I decided I needed Scotti in a more official capacity and bought the ring, King had been my first stop on my way back from the jewelry store.
I had found him in his office, busting his ass to get it ready to open up. My brothers and I, along with his brothers, pitched in as much as we could to get the shithole he bought into workable condition. But he was still months away from being able to open up shop.
When I walked in, he had been sledgehammering a wall of broken, crumbling Sheetrock. Hearing me, he had looked over his shoulder at me. "Figure there's only one thing that puts that look on a man's face," he said, dropping the sledgehammer, and moving toward me. "You're gonna ask her."
"Not before I ask you."
His smile went a little amused at that. "I know Scotti wouldn't appreciate being discussed like chattel, but I appreciate you coming here."
"I know what she means to you. It's the right thing."
He nodded at that. "Can't think of anything that has made her smile the way you do, Mark. Figure if that is all you can offer her, and let's be real, we both know you have a lot more than that, but if that was all there was, I would be happy for her to have that for the rest of her life."
So I had my permission.
And it was only right Kingston was the one to give her to me.
Hell, from what I had pieced together about the time they spent in the cabin when Scotti was in a funk about leaving, King had been the one to try to reason with her.
That's a damn fine man, my father had said after he had spent half an evening talking to Kingston, getting the whole story about how he had taken on the parental role of all his younger siblings, sacrificing all the things he maybe had planned for his own life to do so. These days, you don't see that kind of selflessness.
And I couldn't have agreed more. And as we worked side-by-side on his place, it became more and more clear exactly how much he had sacrificed, how hard he was scrambling to make up for lost time. But that being said, there wasn't a single speck of resentment in him. He never talked about the career, wife, or kids he had needed to put off to take care of his siblings. In fact, even as he busted his ass to get his new business started, he also still made time to help Nixon and Atlas with theirs. As for Rush, well, he was dirty-talking women at Fee's place and happy as a fucking clam.
I knew his focus was work right now, getting a life together, but I hoped he wanted more eventually.
It would be a waste for a man that yummy to not have a woman. That was Fee.
And he's a genuinely good person too. Guys that hot are never decent. And that was Lea's input.
Give him time. That was Dusty, always the one to believe a little time, a little faith, and maybe some deep-breathing did wonders, no matter the situation.
"And I know you have Ryan, Shane, and Hunter standing up with you," she went on, anxiety a strange thing to find in her, and something that was proving how important this whole thing was to her. "Do you think that Fee, Lea, and Dusty would..."
"Woman," I cut her off, tone firm, "you're their family now. Of-fucking-course they are going to stand up with you. Just try to stop them. And the girls are gonna wanna all be flower girls. All that traditional shit is handled. You just pick your dress, what food you want, and the decor. The rest is gonna handle itself. And, if you don't want to even handle that shit, outsource to Fee. She loves it."
She watched me for a long minute, eyes completely unreadable, something that never happened anymore. Just when I was about to ask what was wrong, she shook her head slightly. "I'm really lucky," she declared, making my heart do a strange as fuck expanding thing in my chest. She thought she was the lucky one? "I mean you're awesome and everything. And I love you," she said, lips twitching. "But I mean... I got parents and sisters and, though I had plenty of my own, brothers. I got nieces and a nephew and stability and... and I don't know what the hell I ever did to deserve any of it."
Her eyes were swimming, and I had to fight to keep a smile from creeping up. I had learned over the past year that Scotti, while a bonafide badass in a lot of ways, also apparently had a tendency to tear up over just about any emotion. Pissed off? Tears. Grateful? Tears. Happy? Tears. I figured it maybe came from a decade of trying to be 'one of the guys' and therefore not allowing herself to let that shit out often. So now it was just coming out all the time. I found it endearing as fuck.
"Some day, baby, you're gonna realize you deserve every bit of good that comes your way," I told her pulling her against my chest so she could get it together. The tear thing didn't always end up leading to her soaking through my shirt, though it definitely happened. Sometimes she just needed to have a moment.
"Oh, so I was thinking," she said a moment later, sounding hesitant. "About the guest list."
"Okay..." I prompted when she didn't go on.
"Just, hear me out on this one, okay?" she asked, pulling away to look at me. The tears were gone and her lips were in a serious line.
"Okay."
"I want to invite Collings," she announced, making me jerk back.
"What?"
"Look, I know he's a cop. And if he had to, he would bring any one of us in because he's one of the few good cops on the force. But he's also someone who buried some incriminating evidence he had on me; he gave me and my brothers a chance to start over; he let me come back to you without always being worried. And he even called you guys about Eli," she went on, eyes going sad even as his name sent a punch to my guts. It never stopped. It never would. I almost hoped it never did actually. Maybe he gave up on us, but we didn't give up on him. "He does so much good around here, and he gets shit on just because he's a cop. We owe him a lot. The least we can do is invite him to our wedding."
Really, she had a point.
There were many, many times over the years when he had just enough to drag me or my brothers in, but never did. And, hell, after all that shit went down with Lex Keith and The Henchmen, he had been the one to help out Jstorm, get Wolf out of it, and save at least a small amount of dignity of the NBPD.
"You want him there, baby, he's there."
And six months later, he was, looking uncomfortable in one of his usual work suits, pulling at his tie, looking around at the interesting group of criminals that made up our wedding. Namely, several of The Henchmen and Scotti's brothers, but he showed up, and he wished us well. He told Scotti she looked beautiful. He told me not to fuck it up.
Scotti did eventually pick an 'empire waist,' which apparently meant that it kinda came up under her tits. Whatever. She looked fucking breathtaking in it with her long, dark hair left down and a crown of white flowers she had grown herself that matched the bouquet she had also grown herself.
And, the crazy chick she was, she accepted my hand, making me the happiest goddamn man in the world.
Scotti - 2 years
"I hate him," I declared to Evie who was working the store with me. "That is the second time this month he has come in and ordered a vase for both his wife and his girlfriend. Same flowers, same vase, same note. Guess it makes it easier for him not to screw it up when they bring it up to him."
I opened a very small, very cute, and very busy little flower shop in the main area of Navesink Bank. I had just so happened to luck out when the only florist we had in town decided to retire to Florida. And since I lived with Mark, and I worked, and the only real, large purchase I had needed to make was my car after I finally got my license, I had most of my chunk of the money from the holdups to use to make this dream a reality.
I had been working at, and loving, a nursery one town over, learning all the ins and outs of growing and taking care of various flowers. And while it made me happy, I always wanted to be my own boss. I watched Kingston flourish with his business, and it made me see how much I wanted to have something to call my own as well.
So I took my dreams and business plans to Charlie and Ryan and asked them to give me their honest opinion on the viability of my plan, them being the better business-heads in the family. To my utter shock, and delight, they had both been optimistic, insisting we needed a florist and that if my goals were modest, not to make a fortune, then I would be happy.
With their approval, I powered ahead. I went ahead and took over the old florist seeing as they had the right setup with fridges for the flowers and shelves for displays. All it needed was a little modernization, and it was ready to open. And thanks to Mark being a badass contractor, that work was all managed in under two months.
Then I had my grand opening.
Within two weeks, I needed to hire help.
Within a month, I felt like an actual success.
Charlie and Ryan were right; I would never get rich. But I was making my own money. I was calling my own shots. I had a normal, stable job where I paid taxes and felt like a productive member of society.
My mother would have been proud.
Not just of me, but all my brothers too.
Through many ups and downs and trial and error, they had all found their way as well.
"Well, well, well," I said as the door opened and in walked Rush. "Did you come to bring me to lunch?" I asked, belly reminding me it was time to eat. In fact, I was a little too hungry, and I was starting to wonder if maybe I was pregnant. We hadn't been planning on it per se, but we also hadn't been as careful as we used to. I may or may not have put my new Ring in on the exact same day and, as the packaging warned, that was the only way it was effective.
"No, I, ah..." he said, looking almost... sheepish. Rush? Looking sheepish? What the hell.
"Are you... here to buy a woman flowers?" I asked, huge smile proving completely unstoppable. "Oh my God! Are you?" I asked when he seemed to go just a little red.
"Okay. Forget it. I don't need this. I'll order online," he said, holding his hands up, walking backward toward the door.
"What? So you can get a broken vase and wilted flowers? No, come on, come pick something out. I won't tease you anymore." Okay, that was a lie, but I was going to wait until he at least picked out the flowers first. Because there was no way I was missing out on teasing him when he had gotten the chance to completely torture Mark with questions. And I wanted to know what kind of woman could get a man like Rush to buy her flowers.
She had to be something special.
"So, she likes lilacs," he said, voice low. "Do you have lilacs?"
"Sure," I said, smiling. "In the backyard at my house. Not for sale."
"Oh," he said, face falling.
"Relax. I will cut some for you and make them pretty. Pick out a vase," I said, waving a hand toward the wall where I kept them lined up on shelves. "Where'd you meet her?"
The look came back, the almost oddly shy one. "At the office."
"At Fee's office?" I asked, knowing most of her women were moms or grandmas. It was a great way to make a buck for women whose schedules didn't allow for a nine-to-five at minimum wage. Plus, Fee offered great benefits. "Aren't they all... wait... no way!" I said, smile going huge.
Because there was one girl, one single girl who worked there. But she wasn't an operator. Oh, no. She was the sweet, kinda mousy, very out of place girl at the front desk.
When Rush's face went red again, I knew.
Oh, boy, I bet that was going to be a good freaking story.
Mark - 3 years
I lost a bet on the gender of my own damn kid.
It was really just par for the course. I had been losing every single bet I made for the past several years, especially in the kid department. Lea popped out three that I was wrong on. Rumor was, she had another on the way that I'd be wrong about as well. And Dusty had just had her first. Again, I was wrong.
But I put almost a grand on my first being a boy.
I think all my brothers bet on a girl for the sole reason that I was in a losing streak and it was smart not to bet the same way I did.
I wasn't disappointed that it was a girl, of course; I was happy no matter what we wanted. But damn, I needed a fucking comeback in the bet department.
Scotti had been a, well, terrible patient during her delivery, something I had fucking delighted in. She was a fighter. She raged at my sisters-in-law when they tried to tell her to breathe through it. She told her brothers to get vasectomies because they should never do this to a woman. She had begged the nurses for the drugs. Unfortunately, she had been too far into labor for the drugs.
So she just screamed and cursed through it all.
And then there was a very tiny, very healthy, very loud baby in her arms.
"Elizabeth," she declared, giving me a smile. "We can call her..."
"Eli," I said, feeling that all-too-familiar stabbing sensation.
He was more than halfway done, I reminded myself.
He would get to know his namesake before she even started school.
If he came back to us at all, the small, bitter little voice said at the back of my mind. It was hard to stay positive after three years of no contact. Eli had fired Ellis, so we couldn't even get him to get us information. And we knew no one on the inside. Our contacts knew no one on the inside.
It was radio fucking silence.
All we did know was that he was still alive and that he did use the commissary money we filled his account with every week. What he used that for - food, items for his cell, bribes, we had no fucking idea. But he used it. So, that was something at least.
I also knew that Fee, the genius that woman was, had found a small loophole in his 'return to sender' rule for all mail from us. He did not return the letters written in Becca or Izzy's handwriting or the pictures from little Mayla. Those ones he kept. Those connections he wasn't able to brush aside.
That gave us hope.
But those were thoughts for another day.
This day was about little Elizabeth and the amazing woman who brought her into the world.
"Happy Birthday, you weird, squishy combination of DNA," Atlas declared, looking down at the blanket-draped baby in his arms like it might declare a nuclear strike and take him and the whole hospital out. He had proven himself capable of handling Becca, Izzy, Mayla, and Jason, being that they were older and he could ask them what they were screaming, crying, or fighting about. But he was shit with the babies. The first time he had held Danny, he had almost dropped him when he wiggled hard and burst out of his swaddle.
"You could just call her Elizabeth," Scotti said, smiling at her brother. "Or little girl. Or little lady..."
"Yeah, well, where's the originality in... oh, God," he groaned, eyes going huge. "It's, um, it's," he went on, his brows furrowed as he jumped up and moved toward the bed. "It's like gurgling or some shit. I don't know. Take it. Take it, damnit," he begged, trying to shove the baby at Scotti who was laughing and groaning at the same time, holding onto her stomach and lower which she claimed felt flayed.
"Here," I said, reaching for the baby and saving him any further PTSD from the incident, understanding that panic. I hadn't handled Becca all that well in the beginning either. I generally loved her... from a safe distance. Until she stopped being so fragile. "She's just hungry," I explained to ease that frantic look on his face. "Don't worry. In a couple months, she won't be so scary."
"If you say so, man. Better me than you, that's all I can say."
I smiled at that, remembering thinking the very same thing. Eventually, though, he and all his brothers would be wrapped around her little finger, and she would completely change everything for them, even their ideas on possible fatherhood.
"Is King coming up?" I asked as he walked toward the door.
"Yeah. He's just finishing up for the day. He'll make it in before hours are over though."
Kingston was a fucking busy man these days.
But I knew he was perhaps the most excited out of all of them to have a niece. It was clear that was a man who did want children of his own, but he never got the chance to have them yet.
"Text me when you guys get back to the house. I'll drop in with some food or whatever the fuck I am supposed to bring after a baby is born."
With that, he was gone.
"He looked green," Scotti declared as I moved back toward the bed. She reached for her robe thing she was in and started to pull it down as Elizabeth started whining, her chubby face getting red and angry in indignation.
"He'll get over it," I assured her as she pressed Elizabeth to her breast.
"And here I was thinking it would be Nixon who was awkward with her."
"We thought the same thing about Ryan back in the day. But like Nixon, he just had a knack for babies."
"So," she said as the baby started suckling, looking up at me with a tired smile. "One down."
"Four to go," I agreed, smiling because we both had come from families of five kids, and both sort of agreed that maybe it would be the goal.
"You got some work to do on that house now. We don't have room for five."
"And a chicken."
"And you know they are going to beg for a dog some day."
"So long as it isn't related to Coop," I agreed. "Wherever that mutt ended up."
"So your brothers are taking bets on her eye color..."
"Oh, fuck," I said with a grin.
Scotti- 6 years
He didn't make parole at five like we expected, for reasons we didn't get to know about. I figured he had gotten into a small amount of trouble at some point, gotten into a scuffle, gotten another couple months put on his sentence.
But today was supposed to be the day.
The only reason we knew that was because when Ryan called the jail to put money into his commissary, it got rejected.
The energy around us was palpable. The men were expectant. They wanted their brother. They missed him every single damn day he was gone. They worried themselves to ulcers. They raged and paced and fell into dark places at times. Like around the holidays. Like on his birthday. Like every single time a letter was returned to sender.
I understood why they were excited.
But that was why my stomach was in knots.
Because I had a feeling that they were getting their hopes up, that this day was going to be downright heartbreaking to them.
I glanced over at Fee, Lea, and Dusty, seeing a similar tension in their eyes. The kids, luckily, were mostly unaware. We had all, as a group, decided to not make a big deal about it to them, not wanting to make them nervous or get their hopes too high.
Becca was old enough to be sat down and talked to about it. In fact, Fee and Hunter had very much told her what Detective Lloyd had told them to tell her, information she accepted with the wisdom of a kid who grew up in a non-traditional world. Izzy and Mayla weren't far behind Becca, but didn't remember their Uncle Eli quite as well as Becca did.
As for Shane and Lea's group, six-year-old Jason, five-year-old twins Jake and Joey, and one-year-old Sam had never met their uncle. Neither had Ryan and Dusty's Danny who had just turned four, Ford who was three, or the very newborn Gia.
My children, well, they obviously hadn't met him either. His namesake, Eli, was three. Jules, whose real name was Julia, Helen's middle name, was two. Our youngest, just a couple weeks old, born just two days after Dusty and Ryan's Gia, was Natalie.
Three down, all girls.
Mark was just about having a heart attack.
As were all my brothers who would surely never think they should be allowed to one day date.
I hoped for my poor husband's sake that the next and final two would be boys. I hoped it for my girls as well. As a girl who grew up with brothers, I wanted that for them. Granted, they would have Jason, Jake, Joey, Danny, and Ford to look out for them. So no matter what happened, they would have a bit of insulation from the world. Which was good.
"Do you think it is bad news that we haven't heard from Charlie and Helen?" Dusty asked, eyes a little swollen, Gia being a bit more difficult than her previous two babies, always up at night with colic. She quickly defended her sleeplessness, insisting Ryan took her so she could try to catch up, but said that there was no way she could sleep through her baby crying. So neither of them got any sleep.
Charlie and Helen had gotten up before the sun had even risen, and drove all the way up to the prison, having no idea what time he might be released, and not wanting to miss him.
It was the middle of the day.
It wasn't looking good.
If they had him, if he was with them, they would have at least texted someone so everyone stopped worrying. And I doubted the prison released anyone after five or six in the evening.
"Six years," Fee said, looking at the backs of the men we all loved so much. "So much has changed. I mean, just look at that," she said, waving a hand to the backyard where the kids were all in various levels of play. "When he left, it was just my girls. Just the three of them. Now there are thirteen. I don't think, even if they can get him back, I don't think the videos we all took of every event will ever make him feel like he was caught up. I think a part of him is always going to feel like he doesn't belong in the way he used to. You guys know Eli," she said, then gave me a sad look. "I guess you didn't really get to know him much either."
"He's just... he's got the kindest soul," Dusty insisted. "I know all these men are good and giving and sweet. But Eli just always had something a little extra. He was more patient, more introspective, more... I don't know... is 'soulful' too cheesy?"
"It's cheesy alright," Lea agreed with a smile. "But it is also accurate."
"I worry what prison could have done to that part of him," Dusty went on, blinking hard at the tears that were swimming in her eyes. "It's nothing. Just the hormones," she insisted, shaking her head.
It wasn't.
We all felt it.
It was always my deepest fear. Not for myself. I knew I would get by well enough. It was what I had always worried about for my brother. I worried it would make Kingston hard, would take away the goodness. I worried it would steal Rush's humor. I worried it would turn Nixon and Atlas, make real hardened criminals out of them.
So while I didn't know Eli for long enough before his incarceration to truly feel how they did, I could relate.
It was all of twenty minutes later when Charlie and Helen's late model black SUV pulled up.
There was a mix of both hope and fear in my belly, making it feel like it dropped and swirled simultaneously as all the women seemed to move forward at once on numb legs.
There was a long second where we knew nothing. The windows were darkened. We could barely even make out Charlie and Helen, let alone anyone possibly in the back seat.
But then the front doors open and out walked Charlie and Helen.
One second.
Two.
Three.
Five.
No one was in the backseat.
"Oh, no," Lea said, voice a hiss.
Charlie looked at his sons, face blank. Helen's, oddly, was equally blank. She wasn't devastated as we were expecting if things went a different way than we had all been hoping.
"He wasn't fucking there," Charlie hissed, looking bewildered. "We got there before the prison night lights even went off for the day. Sat right outside the front. Finally, I was worried they were closing so I went in and they said he was already released, that we must have just missed him."
"We watched all day," Helen said, shaking her head.
"Maybe he was counting on that," Ryan said, looking like he was holding it together for the most part. But that was Ryan for you- strong, stalwart, calm, able to detach himself from situations so he could keep a clear head. "If he didn't want to be seen, maybe he shaved his head. Maybe he changed just enough to slip by unnoticed into a cab or bus."
"Where would he go?" Helen asked. "Back to his place?"
"I will go and check," Shane declared, giving Lea a look.
There was a loud ringing in Charlie's back pocket, making Shane freeze mid-stride and turn back as Charlie, a very composed man, fumbled for his phone, hope clear on his face.
"Mallick," he clipped into the phone.
We didn't see relief though.
In fact, it was maybe the first time in six years that I saw Charlie Mallick slip into loanshark-mode, criminal-mode. In general, the men kept that stuff away from the women and kids as much as possible. I had seen it in Mark and Shane here and there, when they got a call about a job that needed to be handled. I even saw it when Mark came home after a job, carefully burning his clothes, washing all traces off his body, then bleaching the bathroom.
But it was a whole other thing to see it on Charlie, on the man I had long since started to see as my father figure.
It was almost shocking to see the sweet, caring, loving grandfather to my kids go cold so fast.
"Lo?" he asked, not because he needed that clarity for himself, I didn't think, but because he wanted his sons and wife to know who was calling him.
And me, well, I had been in Navesink Bank long enough to finally understand the careful power dynamic of all the syndicates in the town.
There were The Henchmen MC, allies, gun-running bikers.
There was Richard Lyon and his cocaine.
Once upon a time, there was Lex Keith and his evil, and some twisted fuck known as V as well, both long-since dealt with.
There was Breaker, the contract muscle, and Shooter, the sniper.
There were the Grassis and their docks.
There was Third Street and their hookers and heroin.
Then, well, there was Lo and Hailstorm who were in a league all their own. They had their hands in a little bit of everything. But they were this machine, this thing full of well-oiled parts and highly trained people.
If Lo was personally calling, it could not have been good.
"What? You've got to be fucking kidding me, Lo."
I knew the feeling that was in my stomach right then. I had lived with it every single day for ten years.
Dread.
"Marco?" he said, again, for his sons' benefits.
That name meant nothing to me, and I turned helplessly to the women at my side.
It was Lea who looked the most concerned and Lea who first spoke.
"Right before Eli went away. And I mean right before," she said, looking at me. "There was this shit going down with The Henchmen and Lex Keith and all that crap you've had to have heard stories about. What you might not have heard was that Janie's, Lo's favorite protege, man Wolf had gotten himself pulled in by this cop on a fucking power trip. And something about him didn't sit right with Janie. She was desperate, so she came to Charlie to ask for him for help in, ah, extracting some information."
Beating the shit out of him, more like.
"Charlie said no, but I started to throw a fit about it and then Eli stepped in and agreed to do it. So he did it. And after we learned that the cop wasn't really a cop. His loyalty was to his family. The Abruzzo family from out in Long Island."
"And?" I asked as Charlie just stayed silent, listening to whatever Lo had to say.
"And Janie went to the Grassis since this is their turf and no other mob is supposed to be stepping in. The Grassis seemed to take care of it."
"From what we can tell," Charlie said suddenly, "they did. And Lo is just warning us in the name of caution. It seems like that shit that went down with The Henchmen," he said, and I felt my stomach turn over, knowing that that shit was horrific beyond words, "might be linked back. She just wanted us to keep an eye out."
"Yeah, if only we could find the pain in the ass and fucking warn him."
That was Shane.
And it was such a Shane-thing to say that I found myself smiling despite a very serious situation.
"We're going to find him," Ryan said, tone firm. "Shane will go to his apartment. The women need to all be back at their places in case he shows up there. The rest of us will scour the town."
"I'll put calls out to all the local friendleys that can keep an eye out, Henchmen excluded since they got enough of their own shit to deal with," Charlie said, very much still in work-mode. "Scotti..."
"I'm calling now," I agreed, reaching into my back pocket to send out a massive text to all my brothers to keep an eye for him, that it was important, that he could be in danger.
"He can't go far," Hunter reasoned. "He has probation. He has to stay in town. And he will have to check in with the parole office between now and tomorrow morning. He might not want to see any of us right now, but he's not stupid. He's not a glutton for punishment. He doesn't want to go back to jail. He will check in. But we do need to find him to warn him."
"Baby," Mark said, moving toward me as I tucked the phone away so my hand was free, the other one supporting the bottom of the baby sling around my chest.
"It's fine," I said, giving him an encouraging smile. "Go. You have to go."
"I promise I will be home by bedtime, no matter what," he said, touching the top of Natalie's head.
"Mark, take as long as you..."
"I will be home to help you put the kids to bed," he cut me off, tone soft and firm at the same time. "You know finding Eli is important to me, honey. But this," he said, running a hand down my cheek, then over Nat's head, "is every bit as important. So I will see you in about four hours to help you get all of them bathed and in bed. No matter what. Okay?"
Six years and he could still make my heart do that swelling thing at times. "Okay," I agreed, leaning in when he pressed a kiss to my temple.
"Love you," he said, eyes meeting mine, showing me how much he meant it.
"I love you too. Now go. You're wasting time."
He gave me a smile and ran off toward Charlie's car, all of them piling in because they needed to leave the cars for us to get the kids home.
"Alright," Helen said as we all watched our men drive off, "how about we have a late lunch before you guys all head out?"
And that was Helen Mallick for you.
Maybe it came from over thirty years in that life. Actually, that wasn't even right. Her entire life, childhood included, was full of stress and criminal situations. But she had spent her early marriage waiting on a man who might come home bloodied and bruised or not at all while she had to keep it together for five young sons. So in this situation, she was as calm as ever as she smiled at her grandchildren and started herding them inside the house.
She would let them help too.
She was that kind of grandma.
She didn't care about all the counters, floors, and walls getting covered in food. She didn't care about having to scrub the kids off after.
She just wanted them to help, consequences be damned.
It was almost dinner time when we finally made it home. I ushered Elizabeth and Jules into their bedroom with a huge pile of toys, then put Natalie in her crib.
It was the first time all day that I could get away and breathe for a moment. So that was what I did. I walked out and fed Nugget and his coop-mate Chicka. I checked my phone, but had nothing from Mark or my brothers.
It was almost eight, almost bedtime, leaving me thinking he was going to break his promise, when I saw the lights of his truck pull into the drive, followed by the slam of his door, and then the footsteps on the path.
"Hey," I said on a grateful exhale when he stepped inside. "Is everything okay?"
"Everything is fine," he said, voice calm. "Where are the girls?"
"Natalie is asleep, but she is going to want the boob in another half an hour. Elizabeth and Jules are playing with blocks. I just... needed to breathe."
He nodded at that.
"They're being quiet. Let's let them be for a minute," he said, gesturing toward the couch.
I moved with him, sitting down, my body a little tense as he seemed to somehow relax. His arm slid around my shoulders even as I angled to the side a little to look at him.
"Did you guys find Eli?"
It was right then that it happened.
His light eyes started to dance.
A ridiculous grin started to pull at his lips.
"Yeah."
It was like a boulder was lifted from my shoulders. It didn't matter suddenly that he was maybe broken from years in the system, that he was actively trying to distance himself from us, his family.
He was out.
He was okay.
They knew where he was.
The rest, I was certain, would fall into place.
"And?" I prompted, impatient, while he just kept grinning at me.
"Baby, you aren't going to believe this shit..."
XX