by Jc Emery
“Hey,” Jeremy calls over the television. It sounds like he’s playing one of his video games that has him as a mercenary fighting evil in a foreign land. He got me to play once and spent the entire time explaining the game to me to a point that it sucked the fun right out of the experience. The sound from the TV stops, and he strides up to me. There’s an awkward look on his face, like he’s trying to work something out in his brain. Finally, he just asks, “You pregnant?”
The wind practically gets knocked right out of me. My face flushes, and I’m having trouble making sense of the question. Not because I don’t know what he’s talking about—obviously I do—but because he knows. The test. I left the test in the hall bathroom without even thinking about it. Duke was in such a rush, and I couldn’t sit in there all day, and the window is way too high up for me to have crawled through in order to run away
“He know?” Jeremy asks. I shake my head.
“Don’t say a word to him,” I warn. “I need to tell him in my own time.” Jeremy nods.
“Whatever. Love you, Sis. But you don’t want him knowing, you shouldn’t have left it in the bathroom.”
“‘Don’t want him knowing’ what?” Duke says from the open doorway. His deep voice slams into my heart in a way that makes it near impossible to keep upright. This is bad. This is so very bad. Not even my mouthy-ass brother says a thing. I turn around and face Duke. My eyes are wide and I shake my head. I keep trying to get the word “nothing” to come out of my mouth, but it won’t. This isn’t nothing. This is everything.
“What did you leave in the bathroom, Nicole?” he asks. His eyes survey mine for an answer. “I’m giving you the benefit of explaining before I find out for myself.”
“Just, nothing. Stop, okay?” I say as quickly as I can. I throw my hands up in the air and move to block his way down the hall. His muscles tense as he shoves me out of the way and stomps down the hall to the bathroom. I can hear his feet pacing the room for a minute before he stops. The metal wastebasket scrapes against the tile floor, and still he’s silent. I cast a glance at Jeremy, who’s stone faced and unmoving. His large frame folds in on itself and for a moment, he’s just a kid again. He’s my little brother who’s in trouble because he broke one of mom’s stupid QVC dolls.
Duke’s heavy footfalls sound in the bathroom, and he appears in the hall. In his right hand is the offending pregnancy test. The expression on his face is almost unreadable in its anger. I back up into the wall that separates the living room and kitchen.
“This nothing?” he asks with a bite to his tone. “This what you don’t want me to know about?”
I shake my head from side to side, almost in disbelief that this is happening. All day I’ve been so worried about telling him and how he’d react. All day I’ve thought it over and tried to make sense of having a baby. I’ve been searching for some sign that I can do this and I won’t fuck it up. But I’ve found nothing.
“No,” I say. It doesn’t come out pissed off and powerful like I intend. It’s a whisper, followed by a violent panic that overcomes me. He’s angrier than I expect. For the first time since I’ve known him, I’m honestly afraid of him.
“Didn’t want me to know, huh?” He asks, closing the distance between us. Less than a foot away now and the cloud of testosterone he always carries with him washes over me. “Knew you were hiding something, babe. I knew there was something you weren’t telling me—something you didn’t want me finding out about. This it?”
“I didn’t,” I begin, but he cocks an eyebrow up and leans in closer. His eyes are cold and unwavering. “Know how… to say it...”
“Jesus Christ,” he growls. “You tellin’ me the kid ain’t mine?” He pulls back a second and then slams his fist into the wall beside me. I close my eyes shut and tense up. It’s been a long time since I slept with anybody but him, so no. That’s not even a possibility. A single tear slides down my cheek. Duke growls and throws his hand into the wall again. Mistaking my reaction for confirmation, he brings a hand up to my chin and tilts my face so I’m forced to look at him. “Tell me you been fuckin’ around on me.”
“Fuck you,” I snap and shove him off of me. It does no good. He moves in and covers my body with his own. He’s got me sandwiched uncomfortably between his hard chest and the wall behind me. “I haven’t been with anybody else in months!” I use my arms to try to push him back, but he doesn’t allow it.
“Then why don’t you want me to know?” he says. His voice is gravelly as he lowers his head and rests it on top of my own.
“Because,” I begin, “I might not want this. I might not be able to do this.” I scrunch my eyes shut to stop myself from crying. The idea of not having this baby after I’ve spent the entire day thinking about it makes me want to barf. If it wasn’t Duke’s, I don’t think I’d keep it. But it is his, and this is us. But if he doesn’t want the baby?
“Might not want it? Like an abortion?” he says and pulls back. “You thinkin’ about killing our baby?” Though his voice has lowered, the anger wafts off of him in powerful waves. I go to respond, but he doesn’t give me a chance. “Not gonna happen, Nicole.”
He places his large hand on my stomach and lets his thumb make circles there. The action is so gentle and soft that I almost miss the words he’s saying. “This is my baby. You don’t want it? Fine. You can split once it’s born. But until then? I don’t give a fuck if I have to lock your ass in the clubhouse under twenty four-seven supervision until then. You don’t get to take that away from me.”
“I was scared,” I admit. Despite his threat, there’s relief in knowing that he wants this. As fucked as it is, I find solace in knowing he cares about this baby enough to go through me to make sure it’s okay. Knowing my mother and how well I’ve done with Jeremy, I need that comfort. I need to know that this kid has somebody on its side.
“Truth time,” he says and takes a step back. “This all you’re hiding?” I take a deep breath and look him in the eye. Over his shoulder is Jeremy, whose shoulders are tight. His eyes are locked on Duke. He looks so pissed off that I worry he and Duke are going to fight any moment. For all the times my brother is a shithead, I know he loves me.
“No,” I say. Better now than later on. “Darren Jennings offered to help my dad. It was stupid. I’m sorry.” I clench my fists at my sides and refuse to crumple under the weight of his stare. “But I changed my mind. I asked him to stop.”
“Club business, Nicole. Club-fucking-business. What were you thinking?” he asks and then goes off the rails, screaming and shouting about keeping my mouth shut and silence and how to be an Old Lady. He reminds me that I have no right interfering with that shit, and he throws his fist into the wall one more time—this time closer to my head.
“Shut it down. Call him and shut it the fuck down!”
“Back off, you’re scaring the shit out of her,” Jeremy screams and shoves Duke away from me. My stomach drops in fear for Jeremy’s safety, but my body won’t respond. My legs wobble, and I slide to the floor as the two wrestle toward the door.
With wide eyes and a panicked expression, Duke holds Jeremy’s neck on both sides. He’s not squeezing, but his grip is tight, as evidenced by the white of his knuckles. Duke stares into Jeremy’s neck with his back to the open front door and says on a plea, “I gotta get out of this house.”
Duke leaves, and Jeremy quickly slams the door shut then locks it behind him. With a few strides, he’s kneeled down beside me, but the closer he gets the less I can handle it.
“Please go,” I whisper. “I need… some time alone.” He waits a moment before standing and walking to his room.
I give myself a while before I summon the courage to call Darren. With the calmest voice I can manage, I ask him to come by the house to return the file I gave him last week that contains all of my dad’s legal paperwork. He knows something’s up, because he asks me repeatedly what’s wrong in that pretend kind voice he uses in public.
When he arrives at
the house, my eyes are red, but dry. He wants to know why I don’t want his help anymore, and he’s inviting himself into the living room.
“I’ve done a lot of work on this,” he says with a sigh. I try to keep my distance, but wherever I move in the living room, he follows and stays within reach. If everything with Duke wasn’t fucking me up so bad right now, I might see it coming. But I don’t.
“Why the change of heart?” he asks.
“The club’s handling it,” I say. “I have to trust them.”
“You didn’t want the club’s help before. What’s changed?”
So much has changed. Duke being here and us working on being less fucked up together, and now making our own family? It’s more like what hasn’t changed. But Darren doesn’t deserve all of that. He barely deserves what I’m giving him now.
“I’m with Duke now,” I say. It’s the simplest answer, and even though I don’t want to invite him into this part of my life, I need this to be as quick as possible. Jeremy’s just in the other room, but it feels like he’s a million miles away.
Darren’s entire mood changes. He goes from thoughtful and annoyed to red-faced angry in a matter of moments. Then, just like always before, a sinister smile appears on his face, and I already know what’s coming.
He reaches out and grabs my arm tight and shoves me against the wall behind me. Bending down and in my face he hisses, “I had hope for you once. But it’s too late now. You’re nothing but a filthy whore.”
“Stop it,” I say as loudly as I can, hopeful that Jeremy can hear me. I open my mouth to yell for Jeremy when Darren raises his arm in the air, but the blow comes too soon. Right across my mouth, and a throbbing sensation erupts in my jaw and cheek. Darren grabs a hold of my hair and pulls my head back so I have to look up at him. “You’ll just fuck anybody, won’t you? You gonna fuck me?”
His free hand works at the fly of his jeans, causing me to freak out. I start to scream and fight him off, but the hand he places over my mouth silences me and pulls my body down the wall. “Actually, I think I’m gonna let you suck my dick. Just remember what happens if you bite.”
Shoved down to my knees, I push myself against the wall and keep my head turned to the side with my eyes clenched shut. Darren frees himself from his pants and grips his dick in his hand. Through the paralyzing fear of what he’s trying to do, I find the courage to fight back. Years ago, I didn’t fight back like I should have when he forced himself on me, because he convinced me that I deserved it. But now? Now I have something more important to fight for.
My baby.
Chapter 23
Shame isn’t an emotion I’m used to feeling a lot of these days. But right now as I climb off my bike at the safe house in Little River, I’m feeling a fuck ton of it. Everything about the shit that just went down is wrong. From the way I screamed at Nic to the way I accused her of sleeping around. It wasn’t right, and I really fucked up. The best I could do when I was in that place was to leave. It wasn’t her fault. She’d been trying to talk to me all day, and I didn’t want to hear it.
She deserves better than I was giving her.
Our baby deserves better.
For weeks now I’ve had it in my head that she was hiding something, and fuck if I wasn’t right. I never did like that arrogant prick she dated back in high school. Sure, part of it was jealousy, but the rest of it was just him. He’s always had his nose in the air, and he’s always treated Nic like she was beneath him. And my girl isn’t beneath anybody.
But I can’t think of that shit right now. She’s just got to take care of his ass, dismiss him, and shut it down. Whatever she had him doing to look into Butch’s sentence needs to fucking stop. A club member gets locked up, it’s club business. Family or not, it’s not up to her to get him out, and she knows that.
I signal to the guys we got watching the doors that I’m going in. They move back out of respect and keep their semi-automatics tight in their grip. We had to pull men from a few of our support clubs in the Bay Area for full coverage just in case Mancuso struck again. The guys we got here are a little short on brain power, but they know the drill, and most of them know their livelihood depends on what we’re willing to sell them and when. They need us, and that need makes them eager to avoid fucking up, so this is working out well.
The safehouse used to be a tiny cottage a few miles off Highway 1, down a narrow dirt road that is almost invisible to the naked eye if you don’t know the markers to look for. Now, all the windows are boarded up, and there’s only one way in and one way out. We soundproofed it as best we could years back, and it does a decent job. Inside, there are three men. Two are from the support club, and the third is Michael Mancuso—Princess’s twin brother and Ruby’s long-lost son.
He’s sitting up on the mattress we’ve provided him that’s on the floor. He’s hunched over and doesn’t even bother to lift his head when I come into the room. I nod to the guys who are babysitting him this shift and tell them to wait outside. For a moment, they pause. The last time Michael and I were in a room together, it was with a prospect, and the kid lost his shit and started wailing on the prospect so I ended up wailing on him. It got bloody and mean, but Ruby’s made Jim bring the kid home-cooked meals and fresh clothes every day. It’s not his fault he’s this fucked up, she reasons.
“You check out that lead I gave you?” Michael asks. When he lifts his head, I can see the black eye and swollen lip from our last encounter. I hope it fucking hurts and Ruby’s not been made aware of his injuries and provided him with any ibuprofen. He deserves to feel every moment of pain for how he beat his sister.
Even though I’m starting to understand him and why he did it, the reasoning is still fucked.
“Took it to the club,” I say and walk to the chair in the corner of the room and sit down. Earlier, when we were in Church to take a vote about Chief’s funeral, I brought up the little nuggets that Junior shared with me. Club voted him down cold, which is a problem, because I think he’s telling the truth.
According to Junior, it’s his cousin Tony who’s running the show back in New York. Tony doesn’t have the rank or the right to make the decisions he’s making, but he’s doing it anyway. And the first decision Tony made when he got out of the hospital was that he wanted Alex dead. Junior says that Tony did some kind of bullshit initiation process with him then gave Junior the gold Desert Eagle he says all his father’s men carry. It’s the Mancuso signature.
He was given a choice—kill his sister or Tony was going to kill him. Junior hasn’t been able to make contact with his dad or Uncle Emilio, his father’s underboss, because he’s got his own charges pending, but he doesn’t think his dad knows what Tony’s up to. Still, New York is a hot fucking mess, and Junior was more than happy to do Tony’s bidding. Or so Tony thinks. To this day, he maintains he just snapped in a moment of fear and couldn’t stop himself. He never wanted to hurt his sister.
“And?” he asks.
“They think you’re full of shit,” I say. “Got no reason to trust you.”
“She’s my sister,” he says. His large brown eyes look sorrowful and thoughtful. He isn’t pissed like he was last time. Now he’s just resigned. Then again, last time was when Jim delivered the news about Ruby. So maybe I’m feeling generous, but I’m gonna cut the kid some slack.
“My twin sister. I’m trying to help her, and since she refuses to let go of your club, I guess I’m trying to help you, too. Tony’s out for blood, and he knows by now that the plan he concocted didn’t work. Think about it. You cannot possibly understand the choice I had to make, but do believe that everything I did was to protect my sister.”
We go back and forth for another few minutes before my phone rings. I ignore it the first time, but by the second call, I pull it out of my pocket and see NIC across the screen. Sliding my finger over the green bar, I bring the phone to my ear. She’s sniffling and breathing heavy.
“Nic?” I say. Concern fills me, and I stand from the chai
r and walk to the door, where I signal for two of the men to come back inside. I walk to my bike. Whatever’s going on, it doesn’t sound good.
“Jeremy,” she says in a rush. “I need you to find Jeremy.”
“What’s going on?” I ask, positioning the phone between my face and my shoulder so I can strap the half helmet on my head.
“He took my car and went after Darren.”
“Why’d he go after Darren?”
“He was defending me,” she says. Her voice sounds strangled and hoarse.
“You okay?” I ask.
“I am now,” she says on a whisper. I let her know I’m going to be there soon and hang up the phone, instructing her to lock the doors and stay in the spare room because that’s the safest room in the house.
Jeremy’s phone rings once before he answers it with a clipped, “Got it handled, Sir.”
“What happened?” I ask, this time far less cordial than I was with his sister.
“Jennings came to the house and gave Nic some kind of folder. She told him she didn’t want him looking into Dad’s case anymore. Everything seemed fine, so I turned my TV on, but the next thing I know she’s fucking screaming. By the time I got to the living room, that sick fuck had her on her knees with his dick in her face.” The air drains from my lungs as rage fills my heart. I can’t focus on anything with the next words I hear. “He tried to make her suck his dick, probably rape her, too.”
I failed her. Because I left and came here to take care of shit I don’t have any business worrying about right now, I fucking failed her. My stomach churns, and my mouth goes dry. For the briefest moment, it brings back what happened to Chel and how we found her.
“I stopped him,” Jeremy says. “Got a few licks in before he ran. I don’t think he knew I was in the house. He didn’t get far.”
“Where is he?” I grit out, barely able to say the words. I’ve known anger, and I’ve known rage. I’ve even known fury. But this shit is fucking me up and making me see red in a way I never have before.
