Parker’s heart almost dropped out of his chest as he went over to the crib where two bundles wiggled erratically. One looked as if it was freshly bathed and the other still had dried fluid and blood over its body.
Picking up the dirty one who was crying, he felt overwhelmed in relief and happiness. It was the girl and as soon as she was picked up, she stopped her crying instantly and looked up at him with the most beautiful burnt orange eyes. She gurgled and relaxed completely as if she knew already who he was. The baby had strong facial features and even his hair coloring. He wanted to die and scream at the same time.
“Where is she?” Jaelen asked shaking Cheyenne.
“I’m so glad you’re here!” Cheyenne said relieved. “I-I was forced to bring her here, Parker.” When she couldn’t get away from Jaelen’s grip, she stopped trying to fight him. “Chyna called me and told me to meet her at the house. She said she wanted us to become a family again. But when I came, Charisse was hysterical. She and Chyna had fought viciously and…” She howled a long hurt wail. “They were fighting over a gun! There was nothing I could do!”
Parker gave her an ominous stare.
“You were there with two people,” Onyx accused her cruelly. “The footprints outside indicate a large female.”
“Joanie came with me, Parker,” Cheyenne said obviously.
“Jaelen go outside and find out if you can assist Mandingo,” Onyx ordered.
He released her and slammed the door behind him.
Onyx cracked her knuckles. “Now, you can either tell me the truth or I’ll start breaking you little by little until you’re barely alive, woman. What happened to Charisse if there were two of you in the room?”
Cheyenne looked very terrified as she stared into the black pools of death and it was hard to look anywhere else. “S-She shot Chyna in the chest and then started having contractions. I was so overwhelmed I just helped her out. And then she ordered us to take her away.”
“One against two?” Onyx asked suspiciously.
Angrily, Cheyenne said, “We were scared for our lives!”
“And she forced the two of you in the car?”
“I was holding the baby. She didn’t even want to touch it Parker. She didn’t want anything to do with it,” Cheyenne said. “I didn’t want her to shoot and hit the baby and then I didn’t even know about the other one. She hadn’t delivered.”
Onyx yanked off the coat that was covering the huge blood and fluid stain on the couch.
“You didn’t answer my question!” Parker bellowed after seeing what Onyx uncovered.
The baby wiggled in annoyance, but she still closed her eyes and went into a deep fussy sleep like her brother.
“She had Chyna’s gun! We had to do what she wanted. She got in the car behind us and all she could talk about was ending it. She even wanted to kill herself in the car, but I convinced her Parker.” Cheyenne said this proudly. “I convinced her that she needed to live and then when we arrived here she went into another contraction and had the other baby – the one you’re holding. She still wanted to kill herself.” Tears actually started to stream down her face. “And that is when I convinced her that … that the babies needed milk. H-Her milk.”
Neither said anything, but they glared even harder at her and that prompted her to keep going.
“After she fed the babies she was still determined to kill herself, but I didn’t have any kind of communication to reach anyone and she was too weak to drive, so she forced Joanie to go with her. I was so afraid for the babies’ life I ordered Joanie to do whatever she wanted.”
“So at no time you thought to gang up on her?” Parker asked.
“I knew we could,” she answered obviously, “But I felt that we should look out for the safety of the babies. If she was so desperate to kill herself, she might be desperate to take us with him.”
Onyx’s phone sounded at the same time they could hear in the distance the helicopter taking off. “Fine. Keep me updated Manny and don’t disappear off the radar again. We’ll listen to the rest of this liar’s story and then I’ll beat the shit out of her.”
Cheyenne trembled and moaned. “You have to believe me, Parker,” she beseeched. “I know we pushed her to the edge all of her life and one day she would just fall off. I didn’t know it would be today. I didn’t know she would go off like this.”
And that’s what bothered Parker the most because this morning Charisse had been fine. Hell all during her pregnancy she had been fine, but the way Cheyenne was talking it was as if Charisse had been hiding this dark personality all along and seeing her sisters together just brought it to the surface.
She continued between sobs as tears ran down her cheek. “I know in the past I’ve been a bad person, but I’ve changed.”
“You’ll never change,” he denied.
“I did,” she refuted. “It was when I was at the restaurant and Charisse hit me. It woke me up. Made me see what a bad person I was. Now I see the light.” She took a brave step toward him. “Charisse changed too, Parker. She was crazed. She vowed to take us up here and then disappear into the woods and kill herself. She just wanted to make sure the babies were okay. It had been the final plan that she and Chyna had made.”
“And she was the one that burned the house down?” Onyx asked, looking angrier by the second.
“Yes,” Cheyenne answered as if it were obvious.
“And now?” Parker asked. “Where is she now?”
“She was too weak to take herself from here and ordered Joanie to drive her away. I’m not even sure the direction.”
Onyx looked over at Parker and then back at her. “Just let me know when you want me to kick her ass, Parker.” She went over to the couch and pulled away the coat that covered the large stain of blood and fluid. “So she had the second one here?”
“Yes. She was in labor during our ride,” Cheyenne answered. “I did everything I could to help her. I did! But everyone knows she had this in her head long before having these babies.”
“And even when she was having the baby you never thought about taking the gun away from her?”
“She held it tightly. I didn’t want to take a chance.”
Perfect answers as if they were true or she had time to think of all this – lots of time.
Parker gathered up the other baby in his arms and kissed both foreheads. He could smell Charisse on them and know that at one point she had held the children just as he was doing now. Deep in his heart he knew that she could still possibly be alive and whether she wanted to kill herself or not, he would spend the rest of his life keeping her alive once he found her – if he found her in time.
“One more question, Cheyenne,” Parker said protectively holding the babies. As he had listened to Cheyenne’s story, he had come up with his own resolutions as to what to do in this whole situation. “When did Charisse come up with the plan to steal the money that was originally stolen by Pascal?”
***
When Charisse had slit her wrist, she remembered as the life left from her, she had been conscious the whole time. She had watched the water turn red around her and the way her body had become weaker and weaker and how her heart had struggled to beat as little by little the blood had poured out of her.
This was the same feeling she was feeling now as her body was slowing down, but she was still able to see and hear around her. It had felt as if her stomach had come out of her she was positive she had hemorrhaged so much that all the blood was still between her legs because it felt so hot down there. The pain receptors felt dull and the shock had taken over to cloud her from so much agony.
Snow had started to fall thicker now. Heavy enough to come down through the trees and fall on Charisse’s face. She released the cold crystals melting on her warm skin, which she knew would soon grow as cold as the snow. Death would not be welcome this time, but the fight in her had gone and she knew she could not live through this. She would never see Parker or her babies again but at least they
would know she had fought to stay alive. At least he would know that she wanted to live and see him again.
But she hated that she had never told him how much she did love him. She wanted to be with him and raise more babies with him. Most of all, she would give anything to die in his arms with gray hair than lying here like a nobody in the dirt.
She watched as Joanie still held the gun at her, but then dropped it and sobbed remorsefully. Was this regret?
Joanie looked down at her jacket to see there was blood on it and she took it off and dumped it over in the two-foot hole she had dug in front of the car. It was a struggle with her wound to cover that up and longer than necessary to get it all patted down and then put some branches and twig over it, but she seemed to be in a lot of pain and did a horrible job. After wiping her prints off the gun, she dropped that by Charisse’s side. Her wound was bleeding even more now and Charisse could see her getting weaker and weaker.
When she got in the car, she looked one more time at the still body of Charisse and then closed the door. She drove back and Charisse almost thought that Joanie was going to drive over her, but she didn’t.
Soon as the car lurched forward slowly down the road, Charisse suddenly felt something move on her thigh.
Chapter 48
Blood didn’t move. Intestines didn’t either.
And her heart had not stopped yet. It was only beating normally.
She raised her head to verify that she was lying down and no part of her was moving.
Joanie’s car was still moving away slowly, but Charisse ignored this as she reached down. Her fingers trembled because the blood and fluid that was on them had started to freeze. It was a struggle to get her hands down her pants and she gasped as she felt the sliminess of the placenta between her legs, when she had thought she had passed this at the cabin. It was hot and firm, when it wasn’t supposed to be.
Gasping again and snatching her hand away abruptly, because she felt it wiggle again.
Bracing one arm against the ground and using her other hand to reach down again, she grasped the placenta firmly and pulled it from out of her pants to her stomach as it wiggled again – even more.
It wasn’t just a placenta! It wasn’t her intestines!
Dear God! It was a baby! Another baby!
She tried to call for Joanie, but the car was too far away and she was too weak to even get up and run for it.
Her fingers were too numb to get the placenta off the baby’s face and it seemed to be struggling to try to help her.
Looking around frantically, she saw the knife she had dropped and thanked Nevada for her brilliant survival skills. Dragging her body over, it took a lot of effort to reach the knife that was only three feet away becoming covered up by the rapidly falling snow.
Carefully, she sliced away the placenta and then pushed it away. The baby wiggled angrily as if to say “about time.” If she was in any other situation, she would have laughed about this.
Pulling away the rest of the placenta excitedly, she fought to get the baby all in her arms and then gasped seeing it was another boy. He was tinier than the other ones and much lighter, but he looked exactly like the others except he had Parker’s sensual brown eyes. She fought to get the jacket up and tucked the baby under it. Once she had his body pressed against hers for warmth, she cut the umbilical cord and tying it the best she could.
She pulled out the rest of the afterbirth and kept the knife in hand knowing she had another mission. The drag over to the hole almost made her collapse into exhaustion but she felt the wiggle on her belly and knew she couldn’t let anything stop her. She used the knife as a semi shovel to knock some of the hardened dirt away.
Tucking the gun in her pocket with the knife, she used her stronger arm to pull up.
Survival for the baby was so dominant in her mind; she didn’t care about anything else. It took a while just to get her legs to cooperate with what she wanted, but she knew if she followed the tire tracks back, Joanie could see her, stop her and take this baby.
Now the snow was so thick Charisse almost couldn’t barely see where she was going, but she figured she needed to get somewhere to safety or warmth. She was trembling all over and just wanted to lie down to let death take her over. Despite her loss of strength and her own exhaustion, she was going to fulfill her new life’s commitment and live for her babies and live to see Parker.
Each step she took, it racked her body and made her shake, but she held tightly to her bundle. She only paused briefly to allow the baby to covet a breast so it could feed. After getting over the initial dizzy emotions, she trudged trying to see, but the snow was getting thicker and thicker.
If she stopped, the temperatures and snow would kill her, but if she kept going her body was going to give out. Either way she was dead, but at least she could get the baby closer to safety – hopefully.
***
Cheyenne seemed very lost for words and as the silence enveloped the cabin, it was getting very tense in the room. Slowly, he saw her take a step back. She was unsure of herself. Obviously he had pulled out a card she had not expected.
“Or were you going to convince me if I tried to go after her still that she was a lying deceitful greedy cunt like you?” Parker sneered putting the babies down reluctantly.
“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know that you stole that money in the beginning. You convinced Pascal to do it right?”
Cheyenne didn’t answer.
“On his death, you knew only he had the bank account numbers. He didn’t trust you, but we set a trap, you little slut. I made sure it would be easy for you to get to Pascal’s items and when you picked it up, I didn’t let anyone know you’d obtain them – no one except Onyx and my accountant. They kept an eye on the money for me. They made sure I didn’t know until last week when my accountant sent me a nice email where he was vacationing in Florida how the money was transferred from the account and placed in Charisse’s. But obviously my ex-wife didn’t tell you that she ordered Charisse to make sure she took care of the guardianship papers several months ago and the drop was treated like a regular deposit instead of a trust transfer, but it immediately notified my accountant either way.” He walked closer to her. “You really thought I’d sit here and believe Charisse did this to herself when she’s not the same woman you remember?”
“She is! Parker she was hiding herself from you. She most likely thought stealing the money was a way to destroy you. She knew taking the money could hurt your business.”
“You’re as stupid and shallow as Chyna was and really have no idea how much I’m really worth, Cheyenne, especially since you have no one digging in my business anymore. That money is pocket change compared to the wealth I’ve encompassed and I’d rather use it wiping my ass than crying about it being stolen.”
Now there was panic in her eyes and with the gnash above her nose, it looked worse. Before she could say something Parker’s phone rung and displayed Jaelen’s number.
Putting it on speaker when he answered, he asked with great concern, “What’s going on?”
“We’ve found Joanie’s car in a bank. An officer should be arriving soon to get you out to the scene. From the helicopter it looked like she was lifeless in the car but we don’t see another body in the car from the air. We just dropped Mandingo off nearby and I’m heading– .” Lots of static came through the line and the call dropped.
Parker looked over to the window briefly and saw that the snowstorm had hit and now his concern was no more on Cheyenne, but on the fact that Charisse was out there somewhere.
When he started to go to the door behind her, Cheyenne pulled a gun out from under her shirt.
“Stay away from me,” Cheyenne cried fearfully.
“If I was going to kill you, I’d have done that already you lying bitch. I’m going to find Charisse.”
“You’ll never find her!”
“You better hope I do. That’s my wife out there!�
��
“Your wife is dead,” Cheyenne sneered. “I saw her die in Detroit.”
“I wasn’t talking about my ex-wife, Cheyenne. I was speaking about Charisse. I married her some months ago.”
By the look on Cheyenne’s face, it was obvious Chyna had not told her older sister that she divorced Parker and this helped Parker understand that his former wife had really been in the best interest of Charisse and him. “Put that gun down,” he ordered. “Before you hurt yourself.”
“Fuck you, Parker Mills.” She was enraged because she knew she had lost the game she had wanted to play on him. “You think money is just so easily obtained? You spend money like it just grows on trees. I’ve seen the lavish gifts and services you bestowed on Chyna. You rubbed all our faces in it all these years, when you and I both know it should have been me!”
“Wealth is easily obtained when you work hard for it and not try to steal it from people, Cheyenne. And as for lavishing my wife with anything she wanted, that’s how I was brought up. You and I were never meant to be.”
“Shut up. I made sure some friends talked me up around you. I saw you were dressed well and I had seen you at other parties. I told them to invite you to the party I was going to be at and you knew you were supposed to have drinks with me.”
“I vaguely recall someone telling me that a pretty woman was asking about me,” he admitted. “But I saw Chyna there. Not you.”
“She went in my place because I thought you were a loser once I learned you worked at the plant but dressed like a million bucks. I didn’t want you and didn’t care until I saw how you spoiled my sister.”
“You should never judge a book by its cover,” he sneered. “Your greediness caused your stupidity of losing the best thing that could have happened to you and I’m so glad about that. Now you just heard Jaelen say the police were coming. Put the damn gun down.”
“No! They’ll just see your dead body. And I’ll run out of here and hide.”
His Substitute Wife... My Sister Book Two Page 24