Guff grabbed me and spun me around. I had the sense to try to fight him off, but he was too strong.
“Go ahead,” he whispered in my ear. “Struggle.”
I couldn’t believe this. I couldn’t believe this was going to happen, in the middle of the day, in the parking lot. I was so close to getting out, so close to running.
I should never have come to Knoxville.
Chapter 2
Travis
I hadn’t been home in a long damn time.
Knoxville hadn’t changed much since I last left it over five years ago. Same assholes ran the place, same economically depressed industries, same old shit. I wasn’t sure what the fuck was drawing me back, except to visit my brother.
Maybe I needed a little nostalgia. For the past five years I’d been a member of an elite Navy SEAL team tasked with hunting down and killing international terrorists. Our biggest adversary, a group based out of Pakistan called The Network, had attempted to blow up a nuclear power plant in Michigan. Fortunately, though, the team’s old SEAL captain and I had managed to foil the plot, averting a serious disaster.
But since then, the captain had decided to retire from active SEAL duty, and the whole team had been put on temporary standby until a new captain could be selected. That meant my ass was stuck in a semi-permanent shore leave, and I was already getting fucking bored.
There were only so many women I could fuck before they all seemed the same. I’d been hanging around Chicago, hitting whatever spot struck my fancy, taking women home almost every night. I never had a fucking problem getting a girl to warm my bed each night if that was what I wanted.
But that got tiring soon enough. And so I found myself driving across the country just to get a glimpse of my old hometown.
I didn’t have family in Knoxville, not anymore. I came from an old southern family, farmers and fighters and drinkers and thieves. My parents were dead and my extended family had all gotten out of town, probably for the best. Knoxville wasn’t exactly welcoming to the Rock clan anymore.
These days, Knoxville was run by the Dixie Mafia. That was fine with me, though those guys tended to be dramatic assholes. I knew them back in my younger days, back when I was just a dumb and reckless asshole teenager doing whatever I could to make a buck. I wasn’t interested in getting involved with them. All I wanted was to do a little trip down memory lane and to finally visit my older brother after all this time.
Which was how I ended up at Mack’s Roadhouse. It was a little backwoods place on the edge of town where all the damn rednecks ended up. I sat my ass down at one end of the bar, ordered a whisky, and took in the feel of good old Knoxville.
It felt crowded and loud. That was pretty much how I remembered it, but maybe my memory was skewed a bit toward the positive. Mack’s was really just a rundown plywood box with a hole in the back to shit and piss in, plus a bunch of bootleg liquor lining the shelves.
I sipped my whisky, ignoring the loud idiots all around me. I was one of these guys, back in the day, back before the Navy kicked my ass into shape. I was just a dumb fucking hick kid back then, and all I dreamed about was one day owning some farm land.
Instead, I ended up enlisting and wound up becoming a Navy SEAL. That kicked my ass into shape, and I never looked back. I went overseas, fought the good fight, saved the damn world.
That was all I wanted to do in this life: travel the world, fighting the bastards who hurt innocent people. I felt most alive when I was out in the trenches, sleeping in ditches, my life in danger.
And I was fucking good at it. You didn’t become a SEAL if you were some soft piece of shit. I was one hard motherfucker, and I lived for that. I didn’t take any shit from anybody, because I was a man trained to kill and always win.
I knocked back my first whisky and ordered a second. I decided to nurse this one, not wanting to get too fucked up before the night really got going. If I remembered correctly, Mack’s got pretty fucking wild after the sun went down, and I was in the mood for some good southern pussy.
I looked up from my drink and saw her for the first time. Blond curly hair, big green eyes, thick red lips. She looked surprised to see me, probably not used to seeing a real man mixed in with all these fucking scum.
And shit was she fucking sexy. Her full breasts were showing out the top of her sundress. I gave her a nice smirk, keeping eye contact, and slowly nodded at her.
The girl turned red and looked away. I wanted to laugh. I couldn’t believe a girl like her got shy at a man giving her a nod, but there it was. She was skittish, the pretty fucking thing.
Just then, these three guys came wading through the crowd. The one in the front, this string-bean looking fuck with disgusting hair and yellow teeth, put his hand on the girl’s shoulder. She went from looking embarrassed and surprised to terrified as soon as she turned toward him.