The Long Road Home [The Final McCassey Brothers Book] Read Online Free

thirteen before he even acknowledged that I existed. Then, during an unusually long visit, he suddenly started paying a lot of attention to me. Sometimes, I'd catch him staring at me when he thought I wasn't looking. And he was always making weird comments about my body and my looks.
    "A year later, he and my mom had some kind of falling out over money. My mom must've borrowed some from him at one point. I don't know where he got it, though, because he was always screaming poverty."
    "What'd she borrow it for?” Blackie asked.
    Georgia yawned and shrugged. “I don't know. I don't even know how much it was. But I do know that she couldn't pay any of it back. Dolan gave her a deadline and threatened to find another way to make her pay if she couldn't get his cash."
    "She didn't pay him,” Judd said somberly, “did she?"
    Georgia shook her head. “Not long after I turned fifteen, I came home from school one day and there he was, sitting at the kitchen table across from my mom with a .22 lying in his lap. She'd been crying, so he didn't need to pick up the gun and wave it in her face for me to know he'd use it on her. That's why when he announced that I had two minutes to pack a bag and kiss my mom goodbye, I listened. He said I was never going to see her again."
    It had been years since Georgia had thought about the last time she saw her mom, about the mixture of fear and regret she'd seen written on the woman's face as Georgia walked past her and into her bedroom.
    With all three men glaring as if she was under a microscope, she sniffed and blinked, allowing the hot tears that had welled in her eyes to spill over and run down her cheeks. Georgia tried not to remember any more of what she'd been through in the past four years, but it was impossible. Her high was gone, and she could feel it now; all the pain, anger, and humiliation she'd suffered. Had she known that ‘feeling’ was going to be like this, she would've kept the story to herself. It was so much easier, and a lot less painful, to be numb.
    She wiped hurriedly at her tears, wondering briefly how long it'd been since she'd cried; how long ago it was that she actually let herself feel some type of emotion. The heroin was going to kill her someday, she knew that, sometimes even wished for it. But until then, it was the only thing keeping her sane.
    Swallowing the lump that had formed in her throat, Georgia continued. “I never even turned around as he led me out the door. My mom was crying, calling for me, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't look at her because I felt like she didn't fight for me; it was like I'd been abandoned."
    "Weren't you scared?” Rebel asked.
    Was he kidding? “You grew up living in his house, Rebel. You know what the man was like. Of course I was scared! But no matter what my mom had done, I loved her, and was more scared about what he'd do to her if I didn't cooperate. I thought that if I went willingly, he'd leave her alone, she'd go to the police, and they'd rescue me."
    "What happened instead?"
    Something in the way Rebel asked the question told Georgia that he already knew—that they all probably knew—but she answered him anyway. “On our way out of town, he drove to a spot in the woods known as Lover's Lane. Teenagers have been going there to ... be alone ... since the beginning of time. Dolan parked his truck in a tight spot between two trees so I wouldn't be able to get either one of the doors open, and,” she paused to take a deep breath, “raped me right there in the front seat, less than ten minutes after we left my apartment."
    "Goddammit!” Blackie shouted, causing Georgia to jump as he stood, grabbed a wrench she hadn't seen sitting on the table, and hurled it through the glass door of the office. “If that lousy mother fucker wasn't already dead, I'd—"
    What? Georgia suddenly felt her heart start to beat faster as Blackie's statement sank in. “What did you just say?” she interrupted loudly enough to get