by Vivian Gray
Jacob expected to see disappointed or upset looks from the men. He thought they would be disappointed to see him vault into action over a woman. Instead, he saw concerned, understanding faces, nodding, and men who were just as furious as he was that one of theirs had been touched.
Was it really that simple? Had it actually been true that the club cared about her because Jacob cared about her? He cared about the club girls because they were part of the club, he cared about the women in their territory because they were under the Talons’ protection, but it had never occurred to him that the men might care about someone who was his. Strange.
“Let’s go get her, boss,” Snake-eye said, and that was all.
The men slipped into action with the same sort of ease as if they did this every day. In reality, they hadn’t needed to ride out like this in at least two years. But there wasn’t any rushing as men checked their weapons and moved to their bikes; it was just calm, brutal efficiency. It was war.
Jacob rode at the head of the column with Patriot and Snake-eye at either side. He was burning with the kind of rage that sharpened focus and made muscles loose and ready for violence. He was ready for this, whatever it might turn out to be.
George had plugged directions into Jacob’s smartphone, which hooked on a stand on the handlebars. He followed the directions through a winding channel of back roads, focusing on that eventual dot as if it was holding Laurie safe. He resisted the urge to repeat to the dot that he was coming for her, for her and the baby; it took more work than he expected. He wanted her to know. Somehow, he wanted her to know.
Chapter Twenty
Laurie
Laurie tried to rest and ignore the intermittent tightening of her belly. She was dehydrated; her tongue felt dry and sandy in her mouth. The contractions were almost certainly nothing. Her doctor had told her that if she got dehydrated, the practice contractions would get more intense. All she had to do was get something to drink.
But banging on the door to her small cell – she refused to think of it as a room – hadn’t gotten her anything. She’d laid back down instead of exhausting herself screaming for someone who wasn’t going to come. She tried to focus on the positives.
Jacob knew what car she had taken. Whip and his dogs had taken her from the main roads, which meant the car would almost certainly be found. Jacob would know that something was wrong. As long as he knew to look. As long as he wanted to find her.
She forced herself to push those thoughts away. He wanted to find her. She’d been distant lately, trying to understand how to love someone who might not love her back, or who might not understand how to say that to her even if he did. But he’d never stopped trying, never responded to her coldness with anything other than the same warmth he had always shown her. Even when he’d been withdrawn, he’d never stopped being warm.
He would come for her. He would. She could believe it. She could trust in it. Even if right now it seemed impossible. How could he find her when, as far as she could tell, she’d disappeared?
Her eyes had finally closed, and she’d almost fallen asleep, when the door to the cell slammed open. She jumped up, and another one of those tight contractions rippled through her stomach, twisting her like a can being crushed. She tried not to let the sensation show on her face; it wouldn’t be safe for them to know that she was – well, that whatever was happening was happening.
Whip walked into the room, which she almost expected; the person trailing behind her, she did not expect. “Brian,” she said before she could stop herself. She’d never intended to acknowledge him again, not really.
Brian was clearly desperate for a hit; his hands were shaking, his eyes were twitching, and he kept shifting rapidly from spot to spot. “You goddamn bitch,” he replied. “You were supposed to be dead.”
The cold statement knocked her back just a little bit. “What?”
“I sold you,” he said. “I sold you, and you were supposed to be dead, so I wouldn’t ever have to see.”
Brian stepped towards her; Laurie forced herself not to shrink, no matter how much she wanted to. Whip held the other man back.
“I’m so sorry for your brother’s manners,” Whip said, and somehow it was even more horrifying that he was aware of Brian’s relationship with her. Had he known the day he exchanged drugs with Brian as her purchase price? Had that made the sick exchange just a little more fun for him?
“He’s nothing to me,” Laurie said, pushing the words out of her mouth even when they tried to stick. It hadn’t been true that night he’d appeared at her apartment, and she knew now that it would never be all the way true. But it would be something. She wouldn’t allow him to do this to her again.
Brian made a sound that would have been a snarl if his teeth hadn’t been chattering so hard, and Laurie resisted the urge to laugh at him. He’d been so important to her for so long. As a kid, she’d truly believed he was trying his best to keep her safe. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. He was just trying to get a fix. Maybe there had been a time when he cared about her, when he’d tried, but it was so far in the past it didn’t matter anymore.
“That doesn’t matter,” Whip said, and the dismissive nature of his tone made Laurie’s bravado fade. “He got you here, and that’s all that matters to me. You’re here, and that means Jacob will come here, and that means I’ll be able to take my revenge.”
“Your revenge for what?” If she could get him talking, maybe she’d get him to leave her alone, or refocus his anger, or do literally anything other than hurt her. Because the look in his eyes said that he was looking for a chance to hurt her. He wanted to hurt her very badly. She’d never done a damn thing to him, so it had to have to do with Jacob.
Whip laughed, and the sound was cold and cruel. “I can’t take his father away from him; that’s already been done, but far too clean for my taste. But I can take his child. I can make him see what happens when his child is torn apart by monsters.”
Laurie couldn’t be brave anymore. She wrapped her arms around her stomach and shook her head hard. Her eyes were hot with tears. The tightness came and went again, and it was sharper this time. No, baby, she thought. No, you can’t do this now. I can’t protect you like this.
“He doesn’t care about you, whore,” Whip said, in that same cold tone. “He just wants the baby. I’m going to take that away from him. I don’t care what happens to you, really. If you walk away, that’s fine. But if I have to cut that baby out of you just to hurt him, I will.”
“Leave me alone,” she said, shaking her head. There wasn’t anything she could do; she felt small and terrified and afraid. Just a few moments ago, she’d been consumed by hating Brian for never protecting her, but what could she do to protect her baby from this monster?
“And then I’ll get paid,” Brian said. “I told you who she was, whose spawn it was, and now I get paid.”
Whip reached out and punched the junkie in the face. Brian fell to his knees, squealing, his hands on his face and blood running through his fingers. “You’ll get paid if I say you do, tweaker.” Whip’s tone was finally heated. “Don’t you dare talk to me like that. Don’t you dare.” He planted a foot in Brian’s ribs and pushed, hard. “Get out of my sight, and we’ll see if I decide you’ve done anything worthwhile.”
Laurie watched the man who had been her brother crawl out of the room, weeping, on all fours. She tried to muster the energy to care, but there was nothing left inside of her.
The tightening pain was getting harder and coming more rapidly. As she felt the next one coming on, it was too much to handle. She closed her eyes and groaned, trying to stay calm. She could make it look like she was just frightened, she believed that she could. She’d had to do much worse things to survive, and she needed to survive this.
The accident. The baby. She’d been wet between her legs, and she’d assumed her bladder had let go in the accident, but what if that wasn’t what had happened? What if her water had broken? What if her w
ater had broken, and this was the beginning of labor? Oh God.
The bastard grinned like he knew exactly what was happening. “Really?” he said, like he’d just gotten to the exciting part of a movie and he was reaching for some popcorn. “Oh, this is too good to be true.” He stepped out of the room for a minute and came back with a chair. “I was going to cut the kid out of you before I took it apart, but now I can watch you suffer first. This is more than I’d hoped I’d get.” He plopped himself down in the chair as another contraction ripped through Laurie’s abdomen. She felt the panic rolling through her; they were coming fast, and hard, and the doctors had always been adamant; once that was happening, you got to the hospital fast, especially if your water had broken. Over and over she’d been told that first labors weren’t fast, but this wasn’t slow. It wasn’t slow at all.
“Please,” she managed to say. “Please. Please get me help. It won’t do you any good if my baby’s born dead. Please.”
He shook his head, that same sick grin on his face. “I don’t care how it dies. It just dies.”
When the next contraction came, Laurie couldn’t hold back the scream.
***
She lost track of time. The intense washes of tightness and pain came fast and hard. She wanted to lie down and be still and breathe, she’d read somewhere that that would slow the progress of labor, but her body worked against her. When she laid down, the pain was unbearable, and she’d find herself pushing back up onto her feet. Her body wanted to find positions that would move the labor along more quickly, and she couldn’t stop herself from squatting, walking, breathing. She thought of rushing at Whip, trying to knock him down and head for the door, but if he threw her into a wall, punched her stomach, anything... she didn’t know what it would do. Her baby might already be hurt; who knew what would happen if she wasn’t careful.
Jacob was coming. She had to believe it. Jacob would do anything to be here and protect her baby. She just had to hold on.
After a while, Whip started talking. She couldn’t focus on the words, too lost in just surviving what was happening to her, but she caught bits and pieces of it. How his father had been killed. How he’d spent a decade tracking down the Talons, and who had specifically done this to his father. How he’d planned a very different punishment for Jacob, stealing his club out from under him one step at a time. How this had been a much better option, as soon as he realized it was possible.
“I never thought he’d buy you,” Whip said as Laurie grunted her way through a hard, tough contraction. “I never thought he’d knock you up. I never thought you’d carry it, if he did. I don’t know why you decided to carry devil spawn.” And then he grinned, and the sickness of it made her want to scream harder. “Maybe that’s what I should do with you. Keep you after this, and fill you with Devil spawn. That would be interesting, wouldn’t it?”
“You’ll never touch me,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Dumb bitch. I already have.”
There was a loud noise outside the room, something that sounded like – gunfire? She saw panic flash across Whip’s face, and then she couldn’t help but laugh, even as yet another contraction tore through her. “I think that’s my rescue,” she said. She had to believe it was true. Jacob had come for her.
“Stupid whore,” he said, but this time the words were almost to himself. He stood up, ready to walk out the door, but before he even stepped out of the room, Jacob entered. For a moment, Laurie was sure it was a dream, some sort of pain hallucination.
There was no mercy; Jacob pinned Whip against the wall and hit him in the face. Three hard punches and Whip slid down the wall. Jacob tossed him boneless out of the room, shouting orders to someone Laurie couldn’t see. Everything was hazy as the contractions came so fast they almost didn’t stop. She couldn’t catch her breath, and she was suddenly screaming.
Jacob was at her side in a moment, holding her hand. Faintly she could hear him asking her what was wrong.
“Baby,” she managed to pant out. “Baby. Coming. Close, I think. I don’t know.” She let out a weak laugh. “This is my first time doing this.”
Jacob already had his phone out, and she could hear him calling someone and speaking rapidly.
“Ambulance?”
He paused and then shook his head. “Baby, we have to get you out of here. They resisted. There were shots fired. If the cops show up here – we need to get you out of here.”
She shook her head hard. “Can’t walk. It hurts.” Another contraction, twisting and hard, but this time there was a downward spiral to the feeling, and she felt the urge to bear down not something she could resist. She groaned, pushing, knowing she shouldn’t and not able to stop. “Going to be soon.”
“Fuck,” Jacob said. He was quiet for just a second, then shook his head. “Okay. We talked about this in the labor class. We’ll do this, we’ll get the baby out here, and then we’ll get to the hospital. They’re bringing a car around now, and we’ll get you there, okay?”
She meant to nod, but another contraction came over her, and this time the urge to push was harder. She groaned with it again, feeling like she was tearing herself to pieces, and like there was nothing she could do but go with the sensation.
She’d been wearing a dress to the appointment, and now Jacob helped her out of her panties. They were a mess anyway, and it wasn’t like she’d wear any of this ever again. He held her hands as she pushed with each contraction, and when she thought she’d die before it was done, she felt the sudden lessening of everything and knew that Jacob was holding their baby – their baby girl – in his arms.
She sagged down to the floor, exhausted and dazed, and watched. The baby was a mess, but she was waving her arms, and after a moment, she let out a little squawk that turned into a big cry. Balancing her safely in the crook of one arm, Jacob’s free hand reached down to slide a sizable switchblade out of his jeans pocket. He wiped the blade clean, carefully cut the umbilical cord, then passed the baby to Laurie so he could take off his shirt to use as a swaddle. After they wrapped their baby daughter in the shirt, he picked them both up together and carried them out to the car that was waiting.
“My family,” Laurie whispered as Jacob put the car in gear and turned onto the road.
Epilogue
Laurie
Laurie took a big, long breath, and then pushed the button on the mouse. There was a slight delay, and then the website flashed into a big launched! logo. Her crowdfunding campaign had begun.
“That’s it?” Jacob was tense and happy beside her, holding tight to Izzy as he watched.
“That’s it,” Laurie said. “Well, except for the media outreach and the email blasts and the social media campaign, and—”
“I get it, I get it.” Jacob laughed. “You’re a very busy woman, and I’m lucky to get a little of your time.”
“If this gets as big as I think it will, I really think you could leave the Talons behind. Assuming that’s what you want to do.”
There was a long, slow pause. This wasn’t the first time they’d discussed this, and Jacob had always been clear and confident about his choices. This time, he was just a little slower to agree. It made Laurie’s belly twist in knots, but she had to trust him.
“I don’t want to leave it all the way behind,” he said, carefully. “The Black Talons are in my blood. They are my family. They were my home. But being president? Yeah, I think I’m ready to give that up.”
It was better, really, than him giving up everything. If he’d walked away from his whole life because of her and Izzy, Laurie knew she’d always wonder if he regretted it. Keeping his toes in but giving up control? That sounded more like Jacob.
Well, except for the giving up control part. That didn’t sound like him at all. She had to grin, even thinking of it.
“So what’s our plan tonight?” Laurie asked.
“There’s something I want to show you two.”
“What’s up, Jacob?”
He grinned. “That would be telling. Come on.”
Laurie shut down her computer and took the baby from him. She grumped a little about being dragged away from her crowdfunding right as it was getting started, but truly, she was happy about being pulled away. It would keep her from obsessively hitting refresh every few seconds, waiting for something to click over and tell her she was finally a success. In reality, it wasn’t that easy, and she knew it. But still, the thought that it could be was tempting. She wanted it to be that easy. She wanted to know that she mattered. Regardless of how often Jacob told her she was a goddess, and beautiful, and the mother of his baby, it didn’t seem to really sink in. Not all the way, anyway. She believed he meant it; that was more than she’d managed for a long time.