Page 18 of The Hard Way

“How can you say that? You know as well as anyone the justice system doesn’t always work.” I could barely breathe. Tears pricked my eyes.

He made me sit back down. “You think this employee was going for a payday?”

“God, maybe. But no one can seriously think my sisters have any money. We’re the ones who pay everything.” Secretly, of course. “Uh, I need to call Vanessa. Don’t worry, I know I can’t.”

“We’ll figure it out. We’ll find a way to help.”

Thor returned soon after, not having found Odin. It was really bad that we couldn’t find him. Zeus filled him in on my sisters’ situation.

“You think it’s that banker?” Thor asked. “Does he still want your family’s farmland for mining fracking sand?”

“Maybe,” I said. “A lot of people want that land. My parents died fighting for us to keep it.” My eyes blurred again with tears. It was bad enough that a man had died. But my sister going to jail? They’d lose their entire livelihood, too. Probably sell our beloved farm.

Zeus made a six-figure donation to the Sunny Sisters GoFundMe from our Caribbean account, and Thor made me drink some more whiskey, even though it wasn’t even noon.

It was well past lunch by the time Odin came back. He took one look at my crying face and freaked. “Goddess!” He grabbed his own hair, like he wanted to tear it out.

Zeus went to him and shoved him up against the wall. “Chill the fuck out, she’s not crying about you! Her sisters’ farm is in trouble.”

“What?”

“Look.” I gave him the tablet. “They’re being sued. My sister could do time. And I know she’s not guilty. There’s no way she was negligent like they’re saying. No way!” The news was three hours old, and I still felt as panicked as when I’d first read it.

Odin scanned the article, holding the sides of the tablet tightly, knuckles white. His mood was getting more and more dangerous—I thought he might break the thing right over his knee. He handed it back to Thor with murder in his eyes.

“You’re sure your sister would never knowingly sell bad cheese?” Odin asked evenly.

“Sure of it,” I said.

Odin nodded. “This kid who’s telling lies? This Andy Miller? We go. We break him in half.”

“Wait, what?” I said.

“We go to Wisconsin. To Baylortown,” Odin said. “And we break this Andy Miller.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Zeus said. “We can’t go back there.”

“We have to go back there,” Odin growled.

“It’s madness. We agreed we couldn’t go back. If ZOX put it together—”

“Fuck ZOX,” Odin said. “Fuck rules.”

In a flash, Zeus had Odin back against the wall. “This isn’t prison. We’re not Mahfoud, making rules to keep you down. We’re family. We’re surviving. That’s what the rules are for.”

“They don’t know us there,” Odin growled. “We go in and out.”

“They know Isis,” Thor said. “She can’t show her face back in her hometown. Are you suggesting we leave her behind here? Because the God Pack doesn’t leave each other behind.”

Odin slid his gaze to me. “We don’t leave her behind; we take her with us.”

“To Baylortown?”

“Yes,” Odin said.

Something in my heart flipped upside down and right side up again. “It’s impossible,” I whispered.

“Odin—stop this,” Zeus growled.

---