She rocked Cara in her arms and laid little kisses against her skin as if trying to infuse love and tenderness into the child. It was heart-wrenching.
He took Lori’s hand and pulled her onto his lap. She laid her head against his chest, and he comforted her.
“Are you going to meet with Cesar and Tobias here or in town?” he asked, although he already knew the answer. Leif had gone to town and explained the situation to both men, and they agreed to meet here at the cottage. In the interim, Damon and another Texas Ranger went to Pylo’s house to give him a warning.
“Here, tomorrow,” she said, and he caressed her hair as she yawned.
“Close your eyes and rest. I’m not going anywhere.”
The feel of her palm against his chest warmed his heart. Their woman was absolutely amazing, and so very strong. Her sister was lucky to have Lori in her life, and doing so much to care for her.
“I’m proud of you, baby. You’re so damn strong. I love you.”
“I love you, too, and thank you and your brothers for being here right by my side for this.” She lifted her head and gazed into his eyes before she kissed his lips. He caressed her back and moved her snugger against his chest.
“Rest now,” he whispered, and soon she was fast asleep while he lay wide awake keeping a watch on her and her family.
* * * *
The next morning, Lori sat out on the back porch with Evilly while Cara played with some toys on the deck. Kyran and Leif brought over some new toys and some other things they thought would make Evilly and Cara more comfortable.
“It’s different here. I can feel it,” Evilly said, leaning back in the rocking chair on the porch with her hands over her stomach. Lori had been concerned about how small her sister’s belly was, but Nevin assured her that the baby was growing normally and her sister’s belly would grow more as long as she ate correctly and took care of herself. Lori would be sure to make that happen. She made a big breakfast, which they shared with Leif and Kyran. Even Cara looked better already.
“It’s weird, right? How quiet and peaceful it is. Wait until you see the town and start meeting people.”
“Are the men all like yours and like Cesar and Tobias?” she asked, looking and sounding nervous.
“They’re good men, who are loyal to the community and to one another. The relationships are special.”
“I can see that, although honestly, it’s scary. One man with fists is difficult enough. Two or more, and the grave would come quickly.”
Lori felt her heart ache, and she reached over and covered her sister’s hand with hers.
“Good men don’t strike their woman. Good men comfort her, care for her, and put her first. Pylo was all wrong for you. You just got caught up in thinking you don’t deserve better, and any attention was better than none at all.”
“You’re so much stronger than me. Always have been.”
“Evilly, do you forget it took Bragan shoving me so hard I hit my head, got a concussion, and nearly died before I left him? Not exactly brave.”
She looked at Lori and shook her head. “You were, too. You fought to live, you fought with our family about leaving town and not making up with Bragan, and you lived out on your own. You didn’t know a soul, and you succeeded. You found a place that sounds incredible. Too incredible to believe Repose is real. You have four men, four who are perfect, caring men who adore you. I can see it in their eyes. It hurts actually.”
“Hurts?”
“I’m jealous, envious of you to have men love you like that.”
“You can have that one day, too. You just need to get past all this bad shit.”
“I don’t think I ever will.”
“You feel that way now, but believe me, it too will pass.”
“But Cara and this baby won’t have their father, and he’ll always have ties to them. There will always be that fear that he could take them from me.”
“We’ll never let that happen. You’ll gain even more friends here that will support you and protect you. It’s been only a couple of days. Don’t you feel different already? Aren’t you happy for once?”
“I’m afraid to feel it. Like everything else I ever felt positive about or like my life was getting better, it all fell apart. I may never feel truly safe. It’s the reality of my life.”
“It doesn’t have to be. I was where you were once. Leaving home, our family was difficult to the say the least. Traveling alone, dealing with the constant headaches from my injuries, and worrying about being strong enough to make it alone ruling my every thought. I almost came back, a couple of times,” Lori told Evilly.
Evilly looked at her shocked. “What stopped you?”
“I wanted more. I felt I deserved more than being a punching bag. My God, Evilly, I loved Bragan. I gave him all of me, and he nearly killed me. How could I think that was normal, acceptable, or something to go back for?”
“How did you wind up in Repose?”
“When I called you, and you told me what was going on and how you were pregnant and involved with Pylo, I headed from Key Largo to Texas. I didn’t want to risk being too close to you in case Bragan was in contact with Pylo, so I drove farther and heard about a bartending position. I met Brooklyn. She’s the owner. She’s really nice and has a big heart, but she’s tough, too. I’ll tell you her story sometime, and you’ll meet her soon. I want you to meet all my friends and see how wonderful Repose is, and most importantly, safe.”
“How can you be sure he won’t find me?”
“Honey, I can’t be sure Pylo won’t, but I can make sure you have protection if he does come here looking. Right now I want you to focus on getting better.”
They both heard a noise and looked up by the side of the house to see Pylo coming toward them. His fists were by his sides, and he looked drunk. They both jumped up.
“Stop right there. Don’t you come any closer,” Lori screamed at him, but he kept coming. She grabbed Cara.
“Get inside, Lori.”
“She’s my woman. That’s my daughter. How dare you fucking leave me!” he roared.
Lori knew Kyran and Leif would be coming by any minute. She prayed they were pulling up right now as she hit 9-1-1 on her cell phone.
“Please, Pylo, don’t do this,” Evilly said, and he stomped up the step and came at her fast. He backhanded her across the mouth, and Evilly went flying to the porch floor. Lori screamed for him to stop as Cara cried.
He pulled Evilly up by her hair and shook her like a rag doll. Lori put the baby down inside and was looking for something to use as a weapon when she thought she saw him punch Evilly in the belly. Lori was enraged as she ran forward and forearmed him to the throat. He fell back and hit the railing, and she kept punching him and hitting him.
She thought she heard yelling, then suddenly she was being pulled off him, and Leif struck him as Kyran grabbed on to her and pulled her back. Sirens blared in the distance, and Lori looked down to see Evilly crying and holding her belly.
“An ambulance is on its way,” Kyran said.
Lori fell to the porch steps and held her sister.
“Kyran, Cara,” she said to him, and he went inside to grab the baby.
“Help is coming.” Lori said to her as she rocked her and Evilly cried.
“He was going to kill me. He never wanted this baby, he just wanted to control me.” She cried and remained in the fetal position until the paramedics arrived, and so did a whole lot of men.
As the paramedics got there and began to treat Evilly, she knew something was terribly wrong. Then Leif and Kyran were trying to talk to her when he looked and saw her knuckles were bleeding and her forearms red.
“You’re hurt. You need to go to the hospital, too,” Kyran told her.
She didn’t even think about her hands, the cuts and bruises. She thought about Cara.
“I need to pack stuff for Cara so we can be there for Evilly. Help me grab bottles and food. The diaper bag is ready,” she stated.
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“Honey, we’ll get it ready. Let’s take care of you,” Kyran said, and she pulled from his hold on her shoulder.
“No. Cara and Evilly first,” she said, and they helped her, but they were angry. She was angry, too. What made a man think he had the right to cause a woman, a person such pain? Where did things go wrong in his life to make him think that abusing a woman was acceptable? What made a man do this? What?
It wasn’t until they were in the hospital and she had to wait outside in the waiting room as they treated Evilly that she started to come down off the adrenaline rush.
In that moment she looked around her and saw everyone there. Antonia was holding Cara. Cesar, Tobias, Zeke, all her friends, and Marco, Mateo, and Leif were staring at her as Kyran stepped forward.
“It’s over, baby. You saved Evilly and Cara. Let’s get the doctor to look at your hands,” he told her.
She was shaking so hard she was afraid to move. Then Marco placed his arm over her shoulder, and they led her from the waiting room to get checked out.
* * * *
“How is Lori?” Cesar asked Leif when he came out of the double doors that led to the emergency room.
“She’s in shock. She’s closed up and just saying she needs to get to Cara. The doctor is wrapping her hands. They were split all over.”
“Kyran said she was pounding away at Pylo when you guys got there.”
Leif shook his head.
“It was crazy. She was not going to let that man kill her sister or hurt Cara.”
“Well, he can’t hurt her anymore. He’s going to jail for a long time.”
“Hopefully. Poor Evilly. She didn’t look good. Lori’s worried she could lose the baby.”
“It will be a damn miracle if she doesn’t,” Cesar said and then looked up to see Lori heading out with Marco. She immediately went to Cara, who opened her arms wide smiling, and Lori pulled her into her arms and hugged her.
* * * *
Lori held Mateo’s hand as they walked into Evilly’s room. The doctor told them she had several broken ribs and that they were monitoring the baby’s heartbeat. She would need to stay in the hospital because they weren’t certain if she would miscarry. Lori walked over to the bed and caressed her hand. She moved some hair from her sister’s cheek, then leaned over and kissed her forehead. The tears spilled from her eyes, and she wiped them away as Evilly slept. She could hear the light sound of the baby’s heartbeat and prayed that the infant pulled through. Her sister wouldn’t be able to handle losing her baby.
Chapter 8
Cara had fallen asleep next to Evilly. She caressed her daughter’s hair and felt emotional and weak. She could have lost the chance to see Cara grow up. She could have lost the baby, and she wasn’t in the clear yet. She had remembered just a few days before Lori showed up to help her that she wished she hadn’t gotten pregnant again and that maybe the baby wouldn’t make it. She didn’t want to bring it into a house filled with violence that would only get worse.
But then Lori arrived, saw the damage done to her, and saved her. She fought off Pylo until her men arrived and arrested him. She owed Lori her life, Cara’s life, and the baby’s life that was growing inside her belly. When Pylo struck her in the stomach repeatedly, she feared the baby wouldn’t make it. When she awoke to the sound of its heartbeat, she knew for certain that she wanted the baby to live and that she had to fight to pull through for the baby and Cara.
“Do you want me to take her and put her into the stroller?” Lori asked.
She hadn’t left Evilly’s side for the last several days. Her hands were bandaged up still, yet she fussed over the both of them.
“Let her stay. It feels good having her close, and maybe the baby feels her, too,” she said.
Lori smiled.
The door to the room opened, and the nurse was there.
“You have some more visitors.”
So many people had come by in the last few days. All friends of Lori’s from the Filling Station, and her men, and they all offered any assistance she would need, and welcomed her to Repose. So when the door opened, the last people she expected to see were her parents and four brothers. Lori’s shock was even greater.
* * * *
Lori stepped closer to the bed as her mother, Lyza, covered her mouth and walked into the room. Their father, Vallen, squinted and then looked at Cara sleeping.
“What are you doing here?” Evilly asked.
Their brothers walked in too and looked Lori over.
“We heard about what happened. We came right away,” her father stated and walked closer to the bed.
“We didn’t know he was being abusive. We asked him several times to tell you we wanted to talk, but he said you hated us and wanted nothing to do with us,” Lyza said, and Evilly looked at Lori. Lori reached out and gave her shoulder a squeeze.
“It’s true,” their brother Gideon told them.
“He never told me that. He said you didn’t care about me or about Lori. That you chose the business over us,” Evilly said.
“No. We never said that,” her father said to her.
“Why did you let him stay working for you all this time?” Lori asked them.
“We let him go a year ago. He was getting into things this family doesn’t get involved in,” Shohun, another of her brothers, said. Charles, Perrone, and Yorvan walked closer to Lori and looked at her bandaged hands.
“What’s that noise?” her father asked.
“The baby’s heartbeat,” Evilly said.
“Baby?” Shohun asked.
“I’m pregnant. The doctors are monitoring the baby because of the attack on me by Pylo.”
“He broke her ribs and punched her in the stomach. She could have lost the baby,” Lori added, and her family began to ask more questions as Cara started to open her eyes. Their mom and dad looked at Cara with surprise and instant love.
“This is baby Cara?” her mom asked.
Cara’s eyes widened, and she reached up for Lori to take her. Lori lifted her into her arms and held her close. She looked at Evilly, and Evilly nodded.
Lori walked closer to her parents. “Cara, meet your grandma and grandpa.”
Lori walked out of the room to give her parents and brothers time with Evilly and Cara. She felt conflicted because deep down inside, Lori felt like her family had chosen Bragan and business over her and her safety. She couldn’t have stayed living in Dallas with them, and with having to constantly face Bragan and perhaps everyone’s influence in getting them back together.
As she walked out the door, Yorvan called out her name.
She turned to look at him, noticing Gideon, Shohun, Charles, and Perrone standing behind Yorvan watching her. Yorvan caught up and stared at her.
“You look fantastic.” He looked her over. She wore a pretty blue blouse that brought out the blue in her eyes and that Mateo had complimented her on this morning. She didn’t know how she was going to tell Mateo and his brothers about her family being here, or her family about them.
She slid her hands along the beige skirt, wiping her sweaty palms. Her brothers all towered over her at six foot three.
“Thank you.”
“I mean it. You look so mature, and you’ve been working out? I thought you only studied martial arts and worked out because of the family business.”
“More out of determination to not let anyone push me around since I was on my own.”
He pursed his lips. “You took off without a word. You didn’t even give any of us, Mom and Dad included, any opportunity to support you.”
She shook her head. “If I was going to get support, then why was I asked what I did to infuriate Bragan to cause him to hurt me so badly?”
“Gideon was pissed off, and his comment was irrational at the time. You nearly died.”
“You don’t need to tell me. I was the one that went through it. Listen, I’m not going to argue with you over something from several years ago. We’ve all moved on with ou
r lives.”
“We miss you. We were worried, and Mom cried so much when you disappeared. Even though you called to say you were okay, she suffered.”
“Suffering is a part of life and the decisions we make. If you were all so concerned over my well-being and handling of what happened, then why would you allow your sister, Evilly, to get involved with the likes of a person like Pylo?” she asked with attitude.
“We didn’t allow it. We didn’t know about it. They were seeing one another behind the families’ backs when we caught wind she was in love with him, and then she got pregnant,” Yorvan said to her.
“So you kick her out of the house and just let her take off with Pylo and live with him when you knew what he was capable of?”
“That’s not what happened,” Shohun chimed in. Now the five of them were around her. She looked at them. They were very attractive men, all ranging from their late twenties to early thirties.
“Then what happened? Why don’t you explain it to me,” she said to him.
“Pylo was into crazy shit and working at Bragan’s dojo. We branched out and started running our own dojo,” Shohun said, which she didn’t even know. She thought they were still partners with Bragan and his family.
“Bragan and his dad started some shit and tried to destroy our dojo, but we just kept doing what we all do and running a legitimate business and expanding,” Shohun said.
“You should see the place. It’s awesome, and we have a gym now, too. A whole top-of-the-line facility to train everyone from the beginner to athletes going into the Olympics,” Charles told her.
“So you build this company up. What about the loan sharking and Cousin Louie?”
“Dad and the uncles separated from him around the same time the business started taking off,” Perrone told her.
“So you all are succeeding, and Evilly gets involved with Pylo, and you desert her for money and a business monopoly?” she asked, crossing her arms in front of her chest. She was living meal to meal for months before she landed the bartending job in Key Largo. They were all living large.
The Battlefield Series 6: The Ties That Bind Us (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 12
