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The moment passed and Mac tugged on Liam’s arm. “Come on, kid. You and your mother can stay with me tonight.”
“He’s not worth it,” Cain said as he started forward.
“I know,” Mac replied. “I’m good.”
And he was good. He was real good up until the moment he reached his sister in the parking lot. Lily was with her, and the two of them looked worried and upset.
“Did he touch you?” Mac tried to hold his temper in check, but it was damn hard.
Becca shook her head. “No, but I don’t…I don’t know what to do. Mom wants us there, but I don’t think I can stay at home. Not if he’s back, and she just…she just refuses to understand. She thinks that this time he’ll be good, that he’s miraculously become this man she’s always known he could be. She’s so far into denial that I don’t think she’ll ever come back. Mac, he’ll hurt her again.”
“I know.” He turned to Lily. “Can you take Liam to my place?”
“No!” Liam yanked on Mac’s arm. “I don’t want to go without Mom. Please, Uncle Mac. Don’t make me.”
Mackenzie recognized the fierce need to protect in his nephew’s eyes and looked at his sister because he didn’t know what to do. Christ, he just didn’t know what to do. His first instinct was to say no, to make Lily take Liam away from all the ugliness coming down on his head, but was that the right call? Was sheltering him from reality the way to go?
As it turned out, none of it mattered anyway.
“What the hell are you all bellyaching for? Get your asses home and be quick about it. Your mother and I have some news.”
Liam’s eyes went as big and as round as a silver dollar. Lily reached for him, and Becca moved in front of him, her body shielding her son from the monster behind them.
Mac turned around. “Back off, Ben.”
His father laughed, a cold, dry sort of thing that rattled his chest and started a coughing fit. Lila held on to his arm, and it was all Mackenzie could do not to tear her away from him.
“I see that fancy job of yours and all that city living haven’t taught you an ounce of respect.” Ben sneered, his eyes narrowing to twin slits of emerald as he moved from Mac to Becca. “I told you to get your ass home, girl. I don’t care how old you are, if you’re living with me, you’re going to abide by my rules. And when I say get your butt home for a family meeting, I don’t mean in a few hours or tomorrow. I mean now.”
Becca shook her head and whispered, “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Oh, Becs,” Lila said softly. “Please. Things will be different now.”
Ben stared at his children for the longest time and then shrugged. “That’s fine, Lila. I don’t want her little bastard hanging around anyway.”
Lila Draper’s face crumpled, and she started to cry, and if Mackenzie thought he couldn’t hate his father any more than he already did, he was sadly mistaken.
As Ben tugged on his wife’s arm and ordered her to the car, he paused, his hard, green eyes on Lily, a lecherous and disgusting smile stretching his lips wide.
“So, I’m guessing you’re Mackenzie’s new whore?”
That was all it took. Something snapped inside Mackenzie, and the roaring in his ears moved him forward. The pain in his heart pushed forward.
Nothing could have stopped him. Not Cain or Jake.
And certainly not the woman who tugged on his arm. The woman he sent flying when he took a run at his father.
Chapter 27
Lily sat on her front porch, a glass of juice in hand, though since she could barely keep anything down, she wasn’t exactly sure why she’d grabbed it.
It gave her something to do she supposed, since she was nervous as hell. Nervous and worried and, she sighed, so confused it made her head spin.
Mac had spent the night in jail and so had his father. The scene at the ballpark had been awful. It had been gut-wrenching and hateful and, on many levels, eye opening. Her stomach turned over just thinking about it.
The sound of fist meeting bone was something she hoped never to hear again. Or the anguished screams that had fallen from Lila. Never again did she want to see the red-hot rage in Mac’s eyes—that look would haunt her for the rest of her days. It was almost as terrifying as the pain she’d glimpsed when Jake and Cain finally pulled him off his father.
She’d stood there, holding her bleeding lip—injured by his elbow when he’d gone after his father—and the utter hopelessness in his eyes had her fearing that she’d lost him forever.
