I hadn’t wanted to stay at Vee’s father’s house, but we hadn’t had much choice. With everything that had happened, trying to find somewhere else to live had been the least of our priorities. The business was being handled by a man who’d previously worked for Vee’s father, and, as he’d vanished, we’d had no choice but to continue. Neither Vee nor I wanted Ellie-May to grow up in this environment, but, until she’d gotten bigger, it would have to do.
As the days and weeks passed, we gradually got to know the other parents of the premature babies, and some of the full-term babies who had complications. It was a strangely normal thing, the parents getting to know each other, much as we would if we all had children at the same school.
A young couple had a little girl as well, born with part of her bowel on the outside of her body. We struck up conversation with them, tentatively at first, but growing more familiar the more we saw of each other. They were Paul and Meaghan Lacie, and their little girl was called April. High school sweethearts, they’d married not long after graduating. Everyone had told them it wouldn’t last, but it had, and they’d had April not long after Meaghan’s twenty-second birthday. Vee liked having another mother of her age there, and though they were completely different people from completely different backgrounds, having the babies gave them something to connect over.
I’d dropped Vee off at the hospital to spend time with Ellie-May. I had a meeting with Dylan and some of his guys. I was aware of the Blood Legion still hanging around, though they hadn’t caused any problems for us. I’d been concerned I’d end up as some kind of revenge killing, but it looked like I’d managed to get away with Callum’s murder.
The meeting went smoothly. The men were accepting once Dylan had vouched for me. I’d wanted to hate the other guy, especially as he’d spent so much time around Vee when I’d been inside, but we actually got along. I was careful what jobs I worked on, making sure I was never hands on. I didn’t want to risk being sent down again, especially not now.
When I went to pick Vee up, she wasn’t waiting outside as we’d planned. I tried her cell phone, but it went straight through to voice mail. Threads of worry wound around my heart. Had something happened? Was it Ellie-May? I felt sure she’d have tried to contact me if our daughter had taken a turn for the worst. I parked the car and went into the hospital building, automatically heading up toward the NICU. I found her sitting in the corridor, staring at her hands in her lap. My stomach dropped and I hurried toward her, and crouched in front of her. She barely acknowledged my presence.
“Vee? What’s wrong? Is Ellie-May okay?”
She managed a nod. “It’s not her.”
“Then what?” Alarm spiked through me. “Please, tell me.”
“April didn’t make it,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “They took her in for surgery and she didn’t come out again.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ.”
“Meaghan was a mess. They told her and she screamed, and just crumpled to the floor. I’ve never seen anyone like that before. Such utter grief, it was like she’d turned into an animal. They had to sedate her.”
“I’m so sorry.”
She lifted her eyes to mine, wide and dark. Fathomless. “They die. These babies die. Ellie-May still might die.”
I shook my head. “No, baby. Ellie-May is doing great. Don’t think like that.”
She kept talking, but I had the feeling she wasn’t really speaking to me. “I shouldn’t have walked through the forest to find the body. I shouldn’t have had sex that night. I’d been charging around the city trying to get you out of jail.” For the first time since I’d found her here, she looked at me and actually saw me. “This is your fault as much as it is mine!”
Her words were bitter and cut me to the soul.
“No, Vee. It’s no one’s fault. The doctors said so.” I tried to take hold of her hands, but she yanked them out of my grip. Then, to my surprise, she smacked her balled fist on my chest, then hit me again, and again.
“Vee, stop it. Stop it!”
I grabbed her wrists, and she went limp, her head hung.
“This isn’t either of our faults,” I said. “It’s nature. It happens. And Ellie-May is going to be all right, but we have to do this together, okay? Don’t keep shutting me and everyone else out.”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
The fight had gone out of her and I folded her into my embrace. I got up enough to slide myself onto the plastic seat beside her, and then I just held her as she trembled in my arms.
***
The day arrived when we were due to bring her home. Ellie-May weighed over five pounds now and was doing well. Where most six-week-old babies would have started to smile by now, our baby hadn’t even reached the age which she should have been born. She was still so tiny, and the thought of putting her in the car and driving away with her was terrifying. We’d bought everything we’d need to be physically ready for her, but emotionally, I knew we were both way off the mark.
We hugged the doctors and nurses who’d done so much to keep our child alive. It was a bittersweet moment for them, too, I was sure. They’d grown attached to Ellie-May, but this was the point they always wanted to reach—a healthy baby finally going home. It was a trip some babies and their parents never got to make, just like our friends’ baby, April. We hadn’t seen Paul and Meaghan Lacie again. I guessed it would be too hard for them to stay in touch.
“Hi, baby-girl,” Vee cooed, carefully lifting our daughter from the cot she was in now. It was a miracle to see Ellie-May without all the tubes and wires. She was far smaller than most babies, but otherwise she looked completely normal. Our daughter cooed in response to her mother, her eyes bright now, though it was hard to see what color they would end up. She had a shock of dark hair, too, and I could already see she was going to be a little replica of her mom. I didn’t need to see any part of me in her features. I was happy for her to look like Vee. Two faces I loved more than life.
We’d brought in the baby carrier that would fit in the back of the car, together with a going home outfit Vee had bought especially for the trip. It was getting cold outside now, so we wrapped Ellie-May up, doing everything we could to protect her. Now her safety, her life, was being placed in our hands, and we were both equally nervous about getting it wrong.
“Thank you,” said Vee, hugging one of the nurses in charge of Ellie-May’s care. Vee wasn’t the hugging type, and I knew this was hard for her. “I can hardly believe this day has come.”
“I’m glad it has,” the nurse said. “It always makes my day to see one of these little sweethearts go home.”
“I hope I can do as good a job as you did.”
The nurse smiled. “You’ll do even better.”
Vee looked up at me, and I nodded my agreement. “You’re a great mom, Vee. We’ll be fine.”
I was sounding more confident than I felt. It had nothing to do with her abilities as a mother, and more my own insecurities, worrying about what needed to be done to keep this tiny girl alive. The weight of responsibility was like nothing I’d experienced before. Was this how Vee had felt about her sister? I knew I’d never leave Ellie-May, or Vee. They were my life now, and I’d lay down my own for them if I had to.
We strapped Ellie-May into the car seat carrier. Amid lots of farewells, and a few tears, we left the hospital for the final time, but this time with our baby. I drove more cautiously than I ever had in my life. Vee sat on the back seat, beside Ellie-May, holding her tiny hand. Within minutes, the baby was sound asleep.
We arrived back at the house to find Nicole had strung a banner with ‘Welcome Home’ written across it.
I unstrapped the carrier and carefully took it into the house. We put the car seat containing a sound asleep Ellie-May in the middle of the living room, and looked at each other.
What the hell were we supposed to do now?
Chapter Thirty-one
V
Over the next
few weeks, we fell into a rough sort of routine. Ellie-May dominated most of it—naps, feedings, changes—but X and I managed to snatch the odd moment together. Physically, I was almost healed from the birth and feeling more like myself again. I was exhausted from the nighttime wake-ups, but X helped, taking the baby early in the morning to let me sleep in if needed. Nicole was great, too, cooking meals and grocery shopping for us. She took Ellie-May if she could, able to tell when X and I needed a break, and was happy rocking and singing to her niece until she fell asleep.
I’d never planned to make my father’s house our home, but we’d kind of fallen into it. All our belongings were here now, as were Ellie-May’s things. We’d been through so much upheaval, I couldn’t face moving right now.
The business still ran from the house, with Dylan and X taking care of most of it. For once, I didn’t mind handing over the reins. It wasn’t my priority now, our daughter was. X made sure to run any important issues through me, but on the whole, things were quiet, and that was how I hoped they’d stay. The money from the business was coming in, something we desperately needed after spending so much time in the hospital, and without it we’d go bankrupt. I reminded myself that I’d promised Ellie-May wouldn’t grow up in the same environment as I had, but I also figured things were different now. Yes, we lived in the house, with the same business, but my father had been the negative force in everything that had happened. With him gone, we were free to rebuild our lives. Even Nicole had started seeing her friends again.
We would leave when the time was right, when we had enough money to pay off the hospital bills, and Ellie-May was bigger. I didn’t want to move away from the doctors who knew her, but I knew I’d have to cut those apron strings eventually. I didn’t know what would happen to the business—perhaps I’d just let Dylan take over the whole operation, assuming he wanted it.
Things were finally good in our lives.
***
I woke with a start, my heart racing and my breath shallow, though I had no idea why. Had I woken from a nightmare? If so, I had no memory of it.
My gaze flicked to the red lights of my LED alarm clock. It was three thirty in the morning. Ellie should have woken for her feeding by now. Why hadn’t she? My unknown panic turned to something tangible. The fear always at the forefront of a new mother’s mind—she’d succumbed to the silent killer of newborns, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and she died in her sleep. With her premature birth and subsequent sleep apnea, she was more at risk than a normal baby, and the thought sent my heart racing.
All of this happened in a matter of seconds, my mind darting from one thought to the next in the flick of a switch.
I couldn’t hear her breathing, or the funny little sounds she made as she slept, little grunts and snuffles that were both adorable and drove me crazy by keeping me awake, even while she slept. My fear turned to horror, and I floundered in the dark, reaching out to the small Moses basket beside the bed where Ellie-May slept. I reached for her, terrified I’d find her cold and still, but instead my fingers only touched soft blankets.
She wasn’t there.
A fresh burst of fear exploded inside me, and I leaned back across to flick on the bedside lamp.
X had been sleeping soundly, but the illumination of the room immediately woke him.
Crazy thoughts went through my head as I checked the floor, thinking she could have fallen out. How could she have fallen out? She couldn’t even roll over yet. She was so tiny. Had X gotten up to check on her, perhaps brought her into bed, even though I’d told him co-sleeping was dangerous for a newborn?
“X! Where is she? Where’s Ellie-May? Do you have her?”
He sat up, frowning and blinking in the sudden light. “What? No! What’s going on?”
“She’s not in her bed. Oh, Jesus. Where is she?”
“Don’t panic. Maybe Nicole thought you needed a break and took the baby in with her. We’ve all been exhausted. We could have slept through it.” He was already on his feet and heading for the door to get to Nicole’s room. I was right there with him, though I shook all over, fear for the safety of our child coursing through me.
We both ran down the hallway, toward Nicole’s room, and burst through her door.
“Nicole! Do you have Ellie-May?”
Nicole sat up in bed, blinking at us in confusion. “No, of course not. What’s going on?”
My hand was at my mouth, trying to choke back the anguish rising inside of me. I knew what had happened. There was only one possibility.
My father.
“He’s taken her!”
“What?” X looked at me in confusion. “Who’s taken her?”
“Who do you think? My father!”
I didn’t let anyone try to tell me otherwise. I pushed past X, back out into the hallway, and ran for the stairs. Even before I’d descended them fully, I could see the truth of what had happened.
The front door was standing open. He must have disarmed the home security system. “Oh, God, no. He’s taken her. That son-of-a-bitch has my baby!”
“How can you be so sure it was him?” he asked.
“I know it was. He’s been waiting, biding his time. I can tell. Oh, God, how could I have been so stupid to stay here?”
X reached out to pull me into his arms, but I pushed him away. “No, let me go. We have to find her. What if he hurts her? What if he kills our baby?
He didn’t try to convince me something else had happened. He knew as well as I did that what I said was the truth. “Ellie-May is his granddaughter. He won’t hurt her.”
“You don’t know that. He’d do it just to hurt me. That’s what he does. He hurts the people we love and then takes pleasure by watching us try to live with the pain.”
I tried to think, my hands knotted in my hair, my mind racing. I couldn’t seem to string a thought together, all my thoughts and emotions a whirlwind of chaos. My breasts tightened with that familiar ache of needing to feed her, though I’d been pumping milk and bottle feeding due to her prematurity, and I knew my body needed my baby daughter as much as my heart did. I couldn’t lose her. My heart would break into a million pieces and I would never recover from it. Not for X. Not for Nicole. This would be the one thing that would destroy me.
And my father knew that.
Chapter Thirty-two
V
X paced the hallway. “That motherfucker! We should never have left him that night. We should have kept looking until we found his body. This is my fault.”
I managed to pull myself together enough to think. “No, it isn’t. Remember the state I was in when you found me that night. I was pregnant and almost hypothermic. You made a decision at the time, and it was the only one you could have made. Imagine if I’d been left to get worse, and we’d lost Ellie-May?”
“Instead, we’ve lost her now,” he growled.
“We’re going to get her back. We have to, X. I can’t live without her. I just can’t.”
Nicole was crying, her hands covering her face. I couldn’t comfort her; I didn’t have it in me. I needed to exist now with only one focus—getting Ellie-May back.
I tortured myself with thoughts of her hungry and crying for me, that angry baby scream where she screwed up her little face and hands and wailed until she was red in the face. She’d barely passed her due date, and though she was ten weeks old now, she was still the weight of a newborn and needed constant care and feeding. I imagined my father not caring, letting her go hungry, and shutting her in a room where he couldn’t hear her. Would she even still be alive? What if he’d decided she was too much work to keep alive, too much of a liability with her cries being so loud, and he just put a pillow over her small face and smothered her? He could have done it while she slept beside me, and I’d been so exhausted, I hadn’t even heard her muffled grunts and squeaks of distress.
No, if he’d done that. He wouldn’t have taken her. He’d have just left the body for us to find.
“Where would he have take
n her?” asked X. “Have you got any idea?”
I had no clue where he’d been for the past six months. He’d clearly been holed up somewhere, waiting for the perfect time to come for our child. His granddaughter. Had he been recuperating from his own injuries? Was he fully well now, or was he still suffering? The cruel part of me hoped he was suffering, while the mother in me prayed he was well and capable of looking after a defenseless baby.
“Think, Vee,” X said, holding my shoulders and ducking his head slightly to look into my eyes. “He’s done this to hurt you, and he wants to see that pain. He wouldn’t just leave with Ellie-May and not have any way for you to find him. He wants to torture you. That’s why he’s done this.”
My mind was in a whirl. I couldn’t think straight. All I could think of was my tiny baby and how much she must need me right now. “I don’t know …”
“Yes, you do, Vee. Think.”
My father wanted to hurt me. Where had he hurt me the most before? My mind went to that fateful night, when he’d forced me to choose between the lives of my mother or my sister.
“I know where he is,” I managed to say. “He’s at the warehouse.”
“What warehouse?”
“The same one where he made me choose between Nicole and our mom. It’s his property. Damn it. He’s probably been holed up there this whole time. I never even thought to look.” I put my face in my hands, shaking my head at my own lack of insight.
“Hey,” X said, “don’t blame yourself. You had a hell of a lot going on.”
I lifted my face again, forcing my feelings away and trying to focus. “He’ll be armed. And he’ll be waiting for us.”
X nodded. “So will we, and our love is stronger than his hate. We won’t let him win this, Vee.”
Judged (The Mercenary Series Book 4) Page 18
