Page 59 of Surviving You, Scotch and Sammy 1

“Mr. Turner!” he snaps. “I won’t ask again. And I won’t prove a thing, but I will have the police escort you away. You have two seconds to reverse your junk off my property.”

“No! Make her speak now. She’ll tell me herself, or I’ll be coming in there.”

“Scotch,” Marc’s hand comes down on my shoulder, forcing me to realize I’ve about climbed out Angelo’s window. “Cool it.”

“Geraldine,” Fred Ricardo calls out. “Call the police. But call Jerry, not Turner.”

“Call whoever you want, asshole. But I won’t leave without seeing my wife is okay.”

He scoffs arrogantly, then hangs up, and my mouth hangs open. He just fucking hung up?

“Alright, we’ll go talk to your dad,” Angelo reasons. “We can call the cops too.”

A strange buzzing noise fills the car, then the large iron gates slowly begin to swing open. I climb out of the car before stopping to think, and Angelo speeds up to catch up to me as I race across the lawn and up the dozen or so stairs to the front door. Exhilaration fills me as the large double door opens, but then Frederick Ricardo in all his pompous asshole glory slides between the gap before I can race inside. He closes the door with a loud snick, then he turns back to me and manages to look down on me despite my one-foot height advantage.

“Where is she?”

“She’s inside resting.”

“Resting? So she’s still sick? I wanna see her.”

“Not sick. Recovering.”

“Recovering from what?” The guys race out of Ang’s car and storm up the stairs to stand on my flanks. Ricardo looks down on us all, sneering at us as his chest puffs up arrogantly.

“Recovering from her procedure. It’s time for you to leave. The police have already been alerted.”

I grab the lapels of his fancy coat as a red haze washes over my vision. “What. Fucking. Procedure?”

His hands come down to mine, attempting to pry them away and even digging his nails in like a pussy. When he can’t shake me loose, his reptilian eyes come back to mine, and the blackness in his twinkle evilly. “We took care of the problem. The rest will be dealt with on Monday when I have a judge sign off on an annulment.”

I slam him against the stone wall of his mansion as my teeth snap. I resemble a wild dog frothing at the mouth as my hackles flare. “You don’t get to take care of anything. She’s my wife. This has nothing to do with you.”

His brow lifts arrogantly, uncaring that I’ve pinned him, or that my brothers are attempting to pull me back. “She doesn’t want you anymore, boy. She asked her mother and me for help last night. It’s already done. The head surgeon of the specialist division came at my personal summons, and he saw to her right away. Your parasite child has been removed from my daughter’s body. Next week, your names will be legally separated, then she can go about her life like you never existed.”

“You’re lying!”

“Believe what you want, kid. But it’s done. You’ve already broken the law. You’re on my property without my permission, and you’ve physically assaulted me. I’ll be adding that to the existing list of charges, and you won’t be a problem for Samantha anymore.”

My fist balls and flies without my permission, and within less than half a second, we’re a tangled mess of five men rolling on the tile porch as my fists and elbows hit anything that gets in the way.

The next eleven hours of my life blur; as the police lift me off of his rat face body, as my dad’s eyes express disappointment, then as he fires up when he hears what’s happened. I’m arrested and locked up for most of the rest of the day, then released again a few hours after dinnertime. My dad shouts about my rights until his voice is hoarse and cracked, and my mom cries as she sits on the floor outside my cell and holds my hand through the bars.

But everything that’s shouted around me is almost silent behind Frederick Ricardo’s words.

“She doesn’t want you anymore.”

“She asked her mother and me for help.”

“It’s done.”

“We took care of it.”

Even as I sat on the cold concrete floor and my ass turned to stony sleep, I didn’t believe him. I’m not stupid, and I know what Sammy and I have is real. There’s an explanation. There’s always an explanation, and if my dad has taught me nothing else, it’s that there’s always more than one version to a story. I haven’t heard the most important version yet, and until I do, I’m okay. We’ll be okay.

She made promises to me… Earlier this week. Last night.

Everything will be okay as soon as I speak with her.

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