Mark (Mallick Brothers 3)

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 daysI 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.