“No, you don’t get to walk away from me, Layla,” he growled loudly, uncaring of the family members watching us now.
“Yeah, I do.”
When he wrapped his arm around my waist to stop me, effectively slamming his front into my back, I lifted my foot and stomped it down on top of his, getting the reaction I wanted when he let go of me, cursing as he hopped around.
“Layla, I’m warning you.” Still ignoring him, I pulled my keys out of my pocket and unlocked my vehicle, refusing to break into the run I desperately wanted to. “Last chance.”
“There’s no reason for me to talk to you, Mark. Leave me alone.”
“Oh, there’s a huge reason for you to talk to me,” the asshat pointed out loudly as he jogged up behind me.
“And what’s that?”
If I’d thought he’d been talking loudly before, I’d been mistaken because what he said next was almost bellowed.
“Because I’m your husband!”
Who knew four words at that volume which didn’t involve threats or bodily harm had the power to stop my heart, but they did. They also had the ability to stop Mark’s heart, too, because I just knew my brothers, Dad, and Gramps were already planning how painful his death was going to be and where they’d bury the pieces of his body.
Well, they could start by putting his penis in a matchbox, one of those tiny ones. Did they make replica versions for doll houses? That’d be all the space the tiny appendage needed.
Yep, my coping mechanism when it came to Mark Montgomery was lies and denial, and what I’d just said was a colossal lie… but not as big as his d—
“You’re a dead man!” one of my brothers roared, just as Gramps yelled, “Get outta my way, woman. I don’t care if this knife’s bamboo, it’ll just take a little longer to do the job.”
Figuring I’d use his disembowelment to escape, I reached for the door of my car, only to shriek when someone picked me up and threw me over their shoulder. Unable to see anything other than a denim-covered ass, I kicked out, hoping to catch them in the nuts, perfectly okay with the potential brain damage I’d sustain when they dropped me afterward. It seemed a small price to pay.
Just to add some fire to the nut cracking, I yelled threats of my own at my victim, pissed all over again that I couldn’t make them anything other than general ones, given that I had no clue whose shoulder I was hanging over.
I’d love to say I was that aware of my surroundings, but a pair of jeans and a gray t-shirt didn’t stand out in a group of men who all wore something similar. I also never stared at my brothers’ asses—we weren’t from that part of the country—so that wouldn’t be something I’d recognize, either.
Just as I threatened to give the person a superglue enema, they stopped walking.
“Right, she’s back now,” I heard Dad say as the blood pooled around my brain. “You stole the pride and happiness I’d have had walking my only daughter down the aisle to hand her over to get married.” Each word was ground out, making them sound disjointed, and it took my brain a couple extra seconds to make sense of them. Then again, that could be due to the increased blood flow to it as I continued to hang upside down.
“Yeah, my only granddaughter,” Gramps added, getting cut off by my cousin, Ariana, yelling, “Hey!”
“Oh, sorry, baby girl,” he called, sounding sheepish. “Love you to the edge of space and beyond.”
Because she was standing behind us, as I pushed up using the belt around my captor’s waist, I caught her scratching her forehead with her middle finger. “Yeah, yeah. If you were my favorite grandpa, I’d be hurt. However—”
His gasp cut her off. “Take that back.”
“No.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him take a step forward, putting him into my line of vision. Just. “Take it back, Ariana. I’m being remarkably good natured about that little slight of yours.”
Shrugging, she crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t see why, you only have one granddaughter.”
He had the good grace to wince. “I was caught up in the heat of the moment. Did you not hear? That-that- that—” he gestured behind him in our direction before taking a glance over where the kids were all watching us and hissed, “that ruffian says he’s married to Layla, your ten-year-old cousin.”
Ten?
“I’m twenty-six,” I tried to shout, but it was weak thanks to the pressure in my head from gravity working its evil magic on me.
“Of course you are, sweetheart,” Gramps cooed, sounding like he was talking to a kid. “One day you will be, but you need to enjoy your childhood for another sixteen years before you can say that.”
Lifting up higher, I searched for Grams and found her watching us all like she was going to kill someone.