Jesus.
A baby. I’m going to have a baby.
In the middle of a war. With three men who share me like I’m some kind of prize. With a father in federal prison and a brother states away building his own chapter. With enemies who want me dead and a marriage that started as a strategy.
My mind slips into my past without my permission.
We livedin a different house back then, in the old compound before Dad expanded and built the new wing. I was twelve.
Mom’s hands shook as she unwrapped the pregnancy test. I sat on the edge of the tub, watching her pace in the tiny space. She wouldn’t let me leave. Wanted me there for some reason, maybe because she was scared and Dad was out on a run, and she didn’t want to be alone.
“How long do we wait?” I asked.
“Three minutes.” Her voice was tight. “Feels like forever, doesn’t it?”
I nodded even though I didn’t really understand what we were waiting for. Just knew it was important. Knew Mom looked pale and sick and scared in a way I’d never seen before.
The test came back positive.
She cried. Not happy tears—the other kind. The kind that came with shaking hands and a voice that kept saying “Not again, not again, not again.”
I didn’t understand then. Thought maybe she was sick.
“Mom?” I touched her arm. “Are you okay?”
She pulled me into a hug so tight I could barely breathe. “I’m fine, baby. Just surprised.”
Liar.
A month later, she started bleeding. Dad and Jackal carried her to the car while she screamed. I watched from my bedroom window, too scared to go downstairs. Too young to understand what miscarriage meant, but old enough to know something was dying.
She came home three days later. Quiet. Empty. It was like someone had scooped out everything that made her Mom and left behind a shell.
Dad tried. He bought her flowers. Cooked her favorite meals. Held her while she stared at the walls and didn’t cry because she’d used up all her tears in the hospital.
“The stress,” I heard him tell Ash’s dad one night. “The violence. She can’t take it anymore. This life is killing her.”
Four months later, her heart gave out. Just stopped. The doctor said it was a heart attack. Dad said it was the club. The constant fear. The baby she lost. The life she never wanted.
I was twelve years old watching them lower my mother into the ground, and all I could think was that the baby went first. The one she didn’t want but tried to love anyway. The one this life killed before it even had a chance.
Now I’m sitting on a bathroom floor with three positive tests, and Mom’s voice echoes in my head.
Not again, not again, not again.
I press my palm flat against my stomach.
What if I lose it like Mom did? What if the stress and the violence and the constant fear do to me what they did to her?
What if I can’t protect this baby any better than she could protect hers?
My throat closes. I can’t breathe. Can’t think past the image of Mom’s face when she came home from the hospital—hollow and broken and already halfway to the grave.
I don’t want that. I don’t want this baby to die before I even get to meet it.
But I don’t know how to stop it from happening. Don’t know how to survive in a world that killed my mother and might kill me too.
18
