SweetHarts (5 Book Box Set)

by Kira Graham

  “I’m a sinner, Father, a terrible, awful sinner. I’ve been engaging in pre-marital sex with the hottest man on Earth for more months than I care to recount, and the trouble is, I’m really not sorry about it at all,” I sigh, starting small because there’s no use in giving the poor guy a heart attack.

  “You know, of course, that this is a sin, my child.”

  “Well, yeah, but it just feels so gooood. I mean, I know in my heart that marriage is important, and my mama is having fits because I’m not even a little interested in changing my whorish ways, but here’s the thing. Jesus said that we’re supposed to love one another and honor thy neighbor, so I can’t figure out why loving my guy is such a huge problem. Then yesterday, he did this thing with his tongue that was just—”

  “Yes, well, the pleasures of the flesh are so tempting,” he cuts in, his stiff bark making me stifle a giggle and glance at my belly.

  “Amen, Father. Although, let’s be honest, I’m basically a shoo-in for heaven no matter what I do now, seeing as how I’m carrying my cousin’s babies for her, and all that. So, I figure that all I have to do is just talk about it a little, ya know, to seem somewhat contrite.”

  “False contrition does not slip past the Lord, child,” he intones gravely, and once again, I have to keep myself from laughing.

  “Well, Father, the way I see it, God already knows me inside and out—my thoughts, my actions, and my words—and if he hasn’t struck me down just yet, then I can’t be doing everything all that wrong. I thought for sure he’d kill me when I put that skunk in Rosetta’s trunk, but all I got was the opportunity to laugh while I recorded her screaming and running from her car as she vomited all over her front. Ahhh,” I sigh, the amusement still so strong that I have a hard time not laughing out loud.

  “Life is a balance sheet, child. Everything gets written in the book.”

  Good Lord, my chapter must be longer than Noah’s beard, and let’s not even get started on Rosetta’s.

  “Yeah, well…” I sigh, my back aching too much for me to stick around and shoot the shit, providing cheap thrills to this dude. “That’s all I’ve got to say. Don’t worry about the penance, Father—I’m going to be on my knees for a while tonight,” I purr, smirking when he gasps. “Have a good day.”

  And with that, I leave the box, whether Cleo and Jack are done or not. I need to pee like Jesus just struck my bladder, and I need to do it now, I think, panting and putting my hands on my back to help me waddle-run to the bathroom in the back. Timpson, or whatever his name is, nods to me and says something into his sleeve, and there’s possibly a lot that I could say to that, but later.

  “Oh Lord, don’t let me soil myself,” I whisper as I push through the highly polished wooden door and into the bathroom.

  The room is small, with only three stalls and two sinks on the opposite wall, but as I bang into the stall and push my underwear down, holding my dress wrapped up at my hips, all I can do is groan and close my eyes in bliss.

  I shouldn’t have. I really, really should not have.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ares

  “Jack! Calm the hell down! I can’t hear what you’re saying through your sobs,” I yell, already standing as I try to make sense of his screams.

  “You need to get here! Tee…”

  “Did she go into labor early? Dammit, Jack, you were supposed to keep her calm on the couch, where she can’t get into any trouble,” I roar, my heart beating a mile a minute.

  Ever since Dr. Payne gave her another checkup and measured the babies, I’ve been on tenterhooks. Tee is massive, well past the size she should be, and so uncomfortable lately that it’s all I can do not to lose my shit when I see her little grimaces. The only bright spot in all of this is that the doctor is more than happy and very surprised by the size of the babies, as well as by their lung development, which seems to be so important all the time. At the moment, and I can’t believe I’m saying this because it sounds cockeyed, Tee is seven months-ish, and she’s gotten those babies to the point of damn near ready, even if there’s so little space left in her that I keep expecting to look over and see a limb bust through her belly.

  She’s on a soft bed rest routine right now, and we’ve all prepped for early labor, something that Doc Payne tells us is more than likely since it’s multiples, and Tee is so dang small.

  I’m ready for it, but God help me, I am still as terrified as hell for her to go into labor. I saw Alex give birth. It’s something that I can’t ever un-see—or forget. Trust me, I’ve tried.

  “Someone took Tee! Me ’n’ Cleo were putting some, uh, offerings in the…uh, office at the church, and Tee was in the confessional. She wasn’t supposed to leave!” he wails, his cries so loud that the volume forces me to pull the phone away slightly.

  “What?” I yell, my heart rate speeding up so fast that I feel lightheaded enough to sway before Paris, who is in my office taking notes for this afternoon’s meeting, leaps up to steady me.

  “She—” he wails, “left the confessional.” Another wail. “And went to pee!” This time, his wail is so loud that Paris winces and stretches his eyes widely. “When Father Jameson told us where she’d gone, and when that guard guy wasn’t there, either, I got real scared. My baby’s gone, Ares! Some sick, demented, very much dead person took my baby!” he screams, his hysteria climbing so rapidly that I hear Cleo curse and shuffle from his side of the line.

  I can’t move, and I find that my feet are glued to the ground as the import of Jack’s words settle into my mind. Tee. Someone snatched her, and in her condition, my little spider monkey can’t fight back.

  Cleo is sobbing as she picks up the phone, too, but it’s manageable enough that I can understand her much more clearly than Jack.

  “Ares, please…oh God, you need to get here. You all do. Bring the police and—and dogs and stuff. Tee is gone. She was in the bathroom, some old lady says, but she never came out, and when I went in there, the window was open. Jesus, how did they get her outta the window?” she yells, her own emotions picking up enough that I gulp and fall into my seat, seeing stars.

  Paris, as frantic as I am but able to regroup, grabs my phone and starts to bark questions at Cleo.

  “Where are Grange and the others?” he asks, his fingers flying over his phone screen while he nods and grunts. “Good. Zeus is on the way, too. He’ll check out the scene and get on the diagnostic. Cleo, honey, listen to me—I need you to take a deep breath and calm down, okay? You’re pregnant, and you can’t be upsetting yourself like this. Knowing Tee, she probably just left under her own steam to go get something to eat,” he says soothingly, lying through his teeth, but convincingly enough that I hear the sobs on the other side calm down somewhat. “That’s a good girl. Breathe. Adonis is on his way. I want you to stick close to your dad and whoever is there right now—”

  “No one’s here! That’s what I was trying to tell you guys. That Timmons—Tim-something—guy and the SUV are gone. Do you think that they saw her and followed? Or maybe they took her to the store or home? God, I hope so. This is all my fault. I should never have come out here today. I’ve been having a bad feeling all week.”

  “Shh, it’s okay. Tell me again. This Timmons…”

  “Is gone. I’ve looked everywhere, and if Daddy’s screaming wasn’t enough of an alarm, the old lady who was watching Tee got a hair up her ass, too, and started yelling it to passersby outside the church. I looked—hell, I ran—to get the others. They’re not here, Paris,” she whispers, the low, fearful tone in her voice confirming something that’s starting to unfurl within me.

  “Okay, baby. I’m going to stay on the phone with you until Adonis or Grange and Heath get there. You just sit down and ask that priest to get you some water.”

  “This is my fault. I made her come out here with me so that I could put meat in the church’s air ducts,” she sniffles. “It was supposed to be fun. I thought that she needed some cheering up ever since she got that stretc
h mark.”

  I want to laugh when Cleo says it, but I’m numb, way too numb, to think about the wreck that I walked into when I got home that night. Too numb to think as I now get up and follow Paris out of my office and into the elevator. All I can think about, as we ride down and meet Nate in the lobby, is that she’s defenseless, and as the thought strikes, rage engulfs me.

  No one is hurting her, not ever, and God help Mindy, Timmons, or whoever is playing this game now, because when—not if, but when—I find them, I don’t care what I believed once. I’m going to kill them.

  “We’re moving!” Nate yells into his phone as soon as we’re in the car, and I hold on, not daring to move as he punches the gas and performs a tire-squealing turn, steamrolling through the laws, the police siren behind us, and all traffic as he gets us through peak mid-afternoon rush hour and races towards the suburbs, where the church is.

  “It’ll be okay. Tee is the least weak woman I know,” Paris says softly, and I don’t know if he’s trying to convince me or himself.

  I can’t forget that he’s got as much at stake here as I do, and I feel my throat go tight when I think of those babies, his babies, in danger because they’re inside Tee right now.

  “You’re right,” I force myself to growl, snapping my mouth closed when Nate takes a corner and just barely misses a pedestrian.

  “Move!” he yells, laying on the horn so hard that my ears start to ring.

  I focus on the sound, let my clamoring panic get drowned out by it, so that by the time we arrive outside the church, our tires screaming as we skid to a stop, I’m rock-solid.

  I can do this. I’ve been training for months now, just waiting for the day that I could get my hands on Mindy and whoever else has been sending those notes. This is it.

  “What do we have?” Nate barks as we run in to see Adonis cradling Cleo, who doesn’t seem to be able to keep her head up.

  Jack is out cold with a shiner, and Heath is wincing as he rubs at his knuckles and grimaces apologetically.

  “Sorry. I just couldn’t stand the sound of his screaming anymore. The dogs walking by were going nuts,” he says sheepishly, eliciting a chuckle from Zeus, who comes trotting out from a small room off to the side.

  “Okay, so here’s what I have so far. Tee went to pee, and someone, either Timmons or Mindy or whoever the fuck is working for that psycho, left a smear of blood on the window. Calm down, bro, it isn’t Tee’s—trust me, the scrap of material that I found on the sill doesn’t match what Cleo said she was wearing. We got lucky, because if we can identify who that blood belongs to, then we’ve got a lead. Brent is on his computer as we speak, looking into Timmons and whoever was on his team. I’m thinking that that’s a good place to start, because as far as we’ve been able to establish, Mindy doesn’t have a pot to piss in since her parents disowned her.”

  “That isn’t enough! Dammit, we need to go now. We have to find her,” I seethe, my anger so strong that I have to breathe deeply to keep myself from blacking out.

  I’m terrified, and that terror is fueling this seething monster beneath my skin that demands that I find someone to kill.

  “And we will. Listen to me, Ares. Tee is smart—”

  “She’s pregnant and practically full term for a multiple pregnancy, Z! She could go into labor at any time,” I hiss, my arm snapping out to catch Paris when he weaves, his face going white.

  “I know that, doofus. Trust me, I freaking know that. My own wife is ready to explode any day, so I know exactly how tricky this is, but running off half-cocked isn’t going to help Tee. We need to think now, put things together, and have a game plan before we move,” he stresses, the urgency in him finally hitting home enough that I force myself to calm down.

  Paris isn’t doing any better, and only snaps out of it when we hear a scream and then watch as Sin throws herself at him, her cries so loud and filled with angst that he pulls himself together for her.

  “Hush, baby. It’s going to be okay. We’re going to find them,” he croons, his eyes meeting mine with a stark plea that cuts right through me.

  My brother is terrified right now, and he’s on the verge of cracking if we don’t do something. I get it. Those are my nieces or nephews—or both—inside Tee, but they need to remember that she’s important, too. She has to be okay, too.

  Please, God, I beg silently, feeling emotion threatening to overwhelm me. Let her be okay. I know that she’s strong, but she isn’t infallible, and right now, she’s vulnerable.

  “Let’s regroup at Adonis and Cleo’s. Cleo needs to rest, and if I know my wife, she’ll be here—”

  “Zeus Aristotle Hart! Where the hell is my cousin?”

  We all groan and turn at the clickety-clack of heels that seem too high for a lady in Rosetta’s condition to be wearing. She sways like an unsteady ship at sea as she comes towards us, her body so big right now that I’m amazed that she can hold herself up.

  “Baby—”

  “Don’t you baby me, you liar. You left me to nap so that you could run down here because Tee and the babies are missing? I should kill you,” Rosetta seethes, the wind leaving her sails when Zeus lunges forward to grab her, his arms keeping her up when she lets out a wail and practically collapses. “I should have called those mercenaries months ago.”

  “Baby, you know that you can’t just order a hit on people. We need to take Mindy in legally—”

  “Oh, F-bomb that!” she screeches, pulling away to glare at each and every single one of us. “That biatch is dead. Do you hear me? When we find her, she’s done. I’m not living my life with the threat of that woman around my neck, and I most certainly am not—”

  “My child, the Lord wants you to practice forgive—”

  “Shut it, Father Stick Up the Ass. I don’t have time for your holier-than-thou bullshit. Do you know that that crazy-ass bitch was part of this church, and that she’s been using her position as an Ambassador for Christ to run around hurting people? No? Well, she has. She’s nuttier than squirrel poop, Father, and it’s time that someone did something about her. Now, Cleo, I know what you said—”

  “Kill her,” Cleo hisses, her eyes so hard that I look at poor Adonis, only to find the nut smirking and looking at her like she just hung the moon. “She’s gone too far. It was okay when it was us on the line—hell, I’m going to bet that if Tee hadn’t been knocked up, she’d have kicked ass in that bathroom, and I’d have walked in on her turd-dunking some poor fool. But the babies are off limits.”

  I growl, the sound going unheard when everyone agrees—all except Paris, who shakes his head and mutters a curse.

  “Tee is in danger. This isn’t just about the children,” he says softly, his thumbs caressing Sin’s jaw when he pulls back to look into her tear-soaked eyes. “I love our babies, bunnypie, but—”

  “I know, and I agree. This isn’t only about them. I want my bitch back, too, Parry,” she whispers, her voice agonized. “I want them all back. Find her.”

  “We will, baby, I promise,” he murmurs, his narrowed eyes meeting mine in unspoken agreement.

  I love all these people, and I have the utmost faith in them, but if they think that I’m letting my woman stay in the clutches of a mad person while they do everything by the book, then they are sorely mistaken.

  That’s why I’m calling in reinforcements in the form of Rosetta’s cartel buddies, Juan and Luiz Cortez, the kingpins with hearts of gold and a sense of justice that extends to more than just a small slap on the wrist.

  “Yo,” Juan answers when I step outside to call him, my mouth pulling into a dark smile.

  “She grabbed Tee,” I say by way of greeting, my smile getting even more sinister when I hear a foreign curse and then the unmistakable notes of Luiz’s voice as he comes onto the phone.

  “Where did it happen, boy?” Luiz barks, not bothering with a greeting.

  I fill him in, my mind running a mile a minute, while I hear talking and murmurs on the other side. Then he come
s back, and I’m ready to go to war.

  “We’re on the way. Pray, mijo, that we find her in good health, or this person—she is going to cry.”

  With that, he ends the call, and I turn to look at Paris, nodding discreetly.

  Yeah. Pray. Pray that they get to these people before I do.

  Tee

  I’m not feeling so good as I slump down on the couch and try to breathe in several deep, slow breaths, my pulse racing so hard that I feel slightly lightheaded. My head thumps where that idiot coldcocked me with his gun, and I can smell a lingering whiff of pee because I was mid-stream and unable to wipe, seeing as how I probably fell off the toilet.

  My side hurts a little, where I possibly hit the ground, and my throat is so dry that I feel as if I haven’t had anything to drink in years. But the room that I’m in is surprisingly nice, and when I look around at it, I think that whoever did this place up must actually have put some effort into it. It’s obviously a basement because there are no windows, and I can hear footsteps up ahead every now and then, letting me know that I’m not alone.

  And I’m not, I think, a small curl of fear pushing through my purposeful calm when I rub my belly. It’s not just me that I have to think about right now, and with that in mind, I don’t know what I’m going to do. The old Tee, pre-baby bump, would have torn herself ragged finding a way out of here, but now, as I am, I have to take a step back and play it safe. The steel door I discovered upon waking is thick, and there’s no handle, which suggests that I’m not getting out unless someone lets me out.

  “We’re in deep shit, guys,” I whisper, my face scrunching up when my hip throbs.

  I’m trying to hold myself together here, but it’s not easy. I’m so pregnant that I can hardly move without groaning, and, in terms of multiples, I’m pretty much at the door to labor. I could go into labor any day now, and that would be very bad at the moment, because while it’s not unheard of for women to give natural birth in these kinds of situations, Doc Payne told me that it’s not always safe. The time that it takes between delivering each baby could be dangerous for one or the other, meaning that one of them could go into distress if things don’t move quickly enough.