Red Revenge: Broken Country, #1

By Cherime MacFarlane

Adult themes, violence, approach with caution.

Marin is in real trouble. The president is a figurehead; They split the states into Red and Blue. Kidnapping across state borders of females able to breed is a business. For women of certain bloodlines, having eggs removed and stored while getting a tubal ligation is a safety precaution. Her grandmother told her to get it done. Using a surrogate would be best—she didn't. Now she's being delivered to the man who paid to have her kidnapped.

Tanner Eugene Worthington IV suspects his father may plan to kill him. He's made plans to escape. The woman's kidnapping brings it all to a head.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cherime MacFarlane
• Release date: Oct 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215716588

Cherime MacFarlane

Meet Award-Winning, Best-Selling Author Cherime MacFarlane. A prolific multi-genre author, she has a broad range of interests that reflect her been there-done that life. Romance, Historical Fiction, Fantasy, Paranormal, all sorts of characters and plots evolve from a vivid imagination. As a reporter for the Copper Valley Views, Cherime MacFarlane received a letter of commendation from the Copper River Native Association for fair and balanced reporting. She was part of the Amazon Best Selling in Anthologies and Holidays, and Fantasy Anthologies and Short Stories. The Other Side of Dusk was a finalist in the McGrath house award of 2017.

Book preview

Chapter One

My grandmére’s blood ran hot in me. Subsequent generations from her had worked hard to keep our state Blue. That color meaning women in this state had control over their bodies, their minds. After the debacle of 2022, women by the score left those states controlled by what my family laughingly called the Conceited Nodding Pricks. They sure weren’t Christian, and they nodded to each other like those old bubblehead dolls. The Christian Nationalist Party was—and still is—a joke.

Many women of that generation moved with little more than what would fit in a suitcase. When the pricks discovered that the pool of fertile and marriageable women had shrunk to nearly one percent, they had fits. When signing bonuses for marriage to those idiots didn’t work, a rise in kidnappings began.

Some of them, realizing their predicament, turned to brides from other nations. Dark skin bothered some men enough that they couldn’t bring themselves to breed with lesser stock. They refused to change their antiquated ways and when enticing females failed, as if it ever had any chance at all, bounty hunters took to stalking the Blues. It had become so bad, Blue states instigated border patrols. Still, if you had enough money to pay, you could always get some hot shot bounty hunter to snag a woman and get her across the border to your regressive state.

The women in my family had to be particularly careful. Besides wanting a woman to breed, several of the pricks in certain states wanted a woman from my bloodline. They thought it fitting to force one of us to bend to their will. As I said, pricks. Tiny ones.

I’d been careful. Situational awareness was a refrain none of my female relatives ignored. We paid attention to where, who, and what. Our bodyguards were handpicked and paid far above others. But sometimes nothing went as it should. We’d all done everything right. Somehow, we... I screwed up.

So I found myself trussed up and on a small plane flying barely over tree top level. How frightening to wake up to the sight of a guard with one meaty paw wrapped around the cuffs holding my hands bound. His grin, when he looked at me, resembled a badly drawn cartoon. I could swear I saw dollar signs where his eyes should have been.

Biting down on the inside of my mouth, I kept quiet, refusing to give one inch to the bastard. Whoever bankrolled this snatch and grab had paid him enough that no amount of begging would do me any good. And they wanted the woman to cry and plead.

I so wanted to tell him what I thought about his parentage, his intelligence—and couldn’t. I had to determine the elements of the situation. Other women had found ways to escape over the years. I’d figure it out. Somehow.

The plane rose and the grinning asswipe next to me laughed. I’m a hundred thou richer and you’re in your new home. Say hello to Idaho, sugar. The state where you’re gonna learn how to be a baby momma.

Not hardly. I had my tubes tied, as did my cousins. We already had eggs extracted and they are in cryogenic storage. A lie. I didn’t want a surrogate to carry my child.

He turned pale and my inner smartass cheered.

That can be reversed. He looked a little green.

No. Not if they were tied and sections removed.

You’re lying.

About me, yes. About my cousins, no. I’d meant to get it done, but hadn’t found the time. Something I regretted.

No. If you look on any of my cousin’s social media sites, you’ll find that posted in big bold letters so pricks with small brains get the message—don’t bother.

He glared at me. I don’t believe you.

Pull it up. See if it isn’t true.

Pull her belt tight. I’m turning on final approach in five minutes. The pilot took a quick glance back at us. You’d better be right. If she’s correct, you still owe me what you promised. The rest, anyway. I didn’t make this flight out of the goodness of my heart.

You’ll get your fucking money, the bounty hunter growled.

I’m sticking with you. Don’t get any smart ideas about taking off with her, the pilot snapped out. Now shut the fuck up and let me get this bird down.

As he lowered the nose of the small plane, I got my first look at the ranch. A sprawling monstrosity, it lay in the middle of what must have been a forest years ago before the drought and resulting massive fire which wiped out a lot of the trees. I could see several atmospheric water collectors sitting around the place. The roof appeared to be one huge solar panel.

Whoever paid him to snatch me had money. Like most of his type, I bet he didn’t give a damn about the lesser people. People probably with the same darker skin as I have. I supposed my bloodline would allow him to bend his standards and fuck me. Women from my family were high on the list of desirable acquisitions on certain websites. Those not under Blue control. The cachet would make up for the darker tone of my skin. It wasn’t a tan; this was one hundred percent all me.

By now, my family had figured out what had happened. My location in hand, they would send out feelers. Whoever this was, they couldn’t keep it a secret forever. Soon, Grandmére would know which jackass in some Red state had set out to kidnap me.

A Red state, Idaho’s birthrate had tanked. They were woefully short on marriageable age women almost all the time. Nor did it help that so many mothers did what they could to get their daughters to a safe Blue state. I knew what would happen the minute the plane touched down. It would be all about a medical exam. What had I done to stop conceiving? Did I have my tubes tied, as I claimed? Was there a birth control device anywhere under the skin, in the uterus?

Eventually, they would discover the tracker in my left earlobe. I doubted they would be careful about removing it. Too bad. I’ve always enjoyed wearing dangling earrings or large hoops. If they were as rough as I expected, surgery might be required to set that straight once I escaped these idiots.

The plane bounced once before all three tires firmly contacted the ground. My face blank, I cheered inside. Grandmére knew by now where I was. They would put together a rescue team and head in my direction soon. All I had to do was keep my cool and pray they kept me here at this location.

I hoped they would give up the search for a tracker once the one in my ear got removed. The one under my pinky toenail, my failsafe, might go undetected. That was the plan. A little Trojan Horse action. One more time, in a multitude of them, my anger at this fucked-up place threatened to derail my good sense.

The hamstrung federal government could do nothing to control the Red states. With the PLOTUS a symbolic position reduced to meeting and greeting dignitaries, control resided in the state legislatures and governors. How in the hell could we still call this hodge-podge mess the United States? The only thing uniting us was living on the same continent.

Grandmére thought about moving to Canada years before my mother and uncle were born. She didn’t because she felt it imperative that she stay and help those women who couldn’t leave the twisted mess this country had become. She explained everyone thought the Conceited Nodding Pricks’ hold on the government would slowly be eaten away until we could once again become the country we were before that pivotal 2016 election.

The pace at which the old guard, the men determined to keep their white male superior status intact, lost control could be labeled glacial. Except that no longer meant what it used to. There were no glaciers in any state but Alaska and those were shadows of what they used to be.

Anything below 40 degrees north latitude had withered away. We were well on the way to becoming a desert. With annual rainfall in the single digits, even the great Mississippi River had dwindled down to a fraction of its former glory. In short, the moneygrubbers were killing the planet.

The rest of the world did all they could to make up for the casual indifference of those in power in those Red states. Humans were barely holding their own, while the pariah nations—the United States and Russia—continued to live as they had before. In the case of the US, the Red states did. Blue ones did their best to make changes.

The passenger door opened on a gas guzzler vehicle that waited beside the dirt landing strip. A smaller vehicle sat behind that one.

As we sped past, I caught sight of the door opening behind the driver of the big all-terrain thing, but I couldn’t see who got out. The plane slowed to a crawl, and the pilot spun it around at the end of the runway. He brought us to a spot in front of the larger vehicle before shutting off the engine. The bounty hunter got out and swaggered toward the four men standing there. A large man with gray hair gave me a quick glance, then flicked his hand outward.

The younger man took a glance in my direction, stuffed both hands in his pockets, and hunched his shoulders. That body language told me he wasn’t happy with this. It also said he didn’t have the power to do much about it. A bag found its way into the large, older man’s hand. Then it got tossed to the grinning bounty hunter.

Manhandled out of the aircraft, I was soon in front of the big man wearing a grin that didn’t reach his eyes.

See this, Tanner? He waved a hand in my direction. Once we have your son from this breed, no one can claim we aren’t willing to be inclusive. Whatever the fuck that tripe means. I know her lineage. With our strong, pure heritage, we will override the miniscule amount of taint. There’ll be just enough to quash all that bullshit about how we aren’t taking care of the rest of the state properly.

The man about my age, Tanner, sighed and pushed his hands deeper into the pockets of his very expensive trousers.

Yes, he mumbled. Downtrodden, it seemed Tanner had no will of his own left.

I understood what the old man in charge had in mind. Either he, or the one called Tanner, would fuck me and they wanted me pregnant. Then they would make noises saying how they were changing the face of the government—while not doing so. I wondered how long I’d be alive after giving them what they wanted.

Chapter Two

I hate my life and hate my father. Most of the time, I hate myself as well. He’s called me a coward often enough, along with a few other epithets. My father hates me almost as much as I dislike myself. He blamed it all on Mother’s genes. Said her family didn’t have enough killer instinct, whatever the fuck that means.

Mother had been sweet, kind. A gentle soul. Somehow, her nature imprinted itself on me, more so than his. Something he’d never forgiven me for. My grandfather, Gene II, had been determined to cut all of what he called emotional subservience out of the Worthington male line. His first act had been to remove all women from the property. This was a male household. If a worker who lived on the property wanted to marry, they left our employ.

Our night porter, the person who took care of any needs either of us might have during the night, had a daughter by a marriage when young. He told me once his wife died. His daughter had never visited him here. She couldn’t even get on the land.

Father didn’t know—yet, that Ben was about to put in his resignation. His girl was leaving town for school. I had a feeling since she was into her teen years, Ben planned to get her out of Idaho. No sane parent wanted a female child of an age to get pregnant to stay here. I suspected he’d do his best to smuggle her into Oregon or Washington. He’d need to go along or face arrest for removing a viable female from the state.

Like Ben, I had plans. This unmitigated bastard had to be stopped, but this mess I now found myself in skewed my timetable all to hell. I didn’t need this complication. A fucking year away, maybe even six months from ridding myself of a few cousins, and here I was, everything in flux again.

The woman I’d been staring at from the corner of my eye got tugged in our direction by the bounty hunter. I knew what came next and shifted my gaze to the ground at my feet.

Father would put her through a battery of tests with Dr. Thorpe officiating. A little later in the evening, they would expect me to deliver a full load of sperm into her vagina. If I didn’t show immediate signs of performing as expected, an enhancer would find its way into my body. They would tie the female to make sure she wasn’t capable of either escaping or resisting. The entire process had been laid out in excruciating detail for me a week ago.

I took another glance at the woman. Surprisingly calm for being a kidnap victim, her eyes met mine. Raw anger blazed from what looked to be hazel irises. With her wide eyes set in an arresting face, one not in the least what Father would characterize pretty, she held her ground. This woman would neither beg nor plead.

A body lush with curves would be my undoing if I didn’t get a handle on my urge to touch her. They would all expect me to shrink back, intimidated by the female. The expression on Father’s face gave away his thoughts. In his estimation, my trying to impregnate her would be like a toy poodle going after a she-wolf. This would cost me. And dearly.

More than the normal heat radiated from the woman. I suspected her anger might be the source of the waves I felt. If looks could incinerate, I’d be up in flames. All of us would be human torches.

Damn me if she wasn’t magnificent. A prize. Wondrous and awe-inspiring. I had to subjugate her? Never in a million years.

Father suspected I might be a closet homo. I wasn’t gay. Not that I thought there was anything wrong with it—I didn’t. Mother had given me a different worldview. Had Father known I’d been visiting with her in the expensive spa, a fancy jail, for years before her death, he’d have beaten me silly. What he didn’t know meant no extensive recovery time for me and a longer life for Mother. He’d have had her killed and disposed of the body had he known. Her family would have put up a token protest, which he’d have ignored it.

Idaho had two powers behind the governor’s throne—the Worthington and Anders families. A second tier of families with money, but not enough to make a difference, sat right below us and the Anders. Lisabeth Lauren Larch’s family hadn’t had enough power to force Tanner Eugene Worthington III to marry her. But they had enough to make sure she didn’t become another vanished woman, eliminated after producing a son.

No one wanted to cross King Gene. Neither did they want any of their expensive to produce and guard females being used to breed, then tossed aside. None of the second tier patriarchies could topple either of us, but they could muster enough pressure to wobble the throne.

Stabilization required time and money best used elsewhere. Pandering to some of the second tier’s demands gave them a feeling of control, limited as it might be, and kept the wheels of government rolling along smoothly. Just as I appeared to give in, which kept me from landing in a cell somewhere and allowed me to work on my plans.

I had my uses. Just enough exposure to show how the womanless Worthingtons were fine. Thank you all for your concern. To be rid of me would require a providential accident, something he could cry a few tears over as a grieving father. Not enough to disrupt anything he had planned, of course.

He didn’t dare get rid of me without having the heir apparent already in place. What with the strict DNA testing, the Larch family would rattle the cage bars hard enough to make it costly for the old man should an heir with no Larch family heritage suddenly turn up. In her own way, Mother still protected me.

I pitied any child with even a drop of that debased blood that came into Father’s orbit. Another reason I sincerely didn’t want to impregnate her. I’d suffered enough at his hand. My body shivered at the thought of what he would do to tame bad blood.

Father motioned Osborne, head of security for the Worthington family, forward. Take charge of her. Get her to Thorpe and let’s get this show moving.

His gaze shifted from her to my groin. It took all my strength to stand there and not shift from foot to foot. He knew it. Lifting his eyes to my face, Father grinned. Be sure to tell Thorpe he’ll need the enhancer.

I wanted to throw myself on him and beat him senseless. It would never happen. The second I tried, Osborne would taze me into submission. Both fists in my pocket shook with anger and humiliation. A tiny burst of sound, a chuckle, came from the...woman. She hadn’t been here for over fifteen minutes and already knew I was a speck of dirt on the man’s highly polished shoe. I hated my life. Him and now her. If a solar flare broke through and turned us all to ash, I would be happy.

Chapter Three

I couldn’t help laughing at the pretentious bully. Talk about over-the-top melodrama, Tanner Eugene Worthington III took top honors as the biggest drama queen I’d ever had the misfortune to meet.

This place and his addressing the young man as Tanner told me all I needed to know. One of the powers behind the Idaho government, Worthington had a reputation as a ruthless bastard. For the record, he