X
“You gotta visitor, Mason.”
I sat up at my name, dropping the book I was reading onto the floor beside me.
Hearing I had a visitor filled me with a strange combination of joy and despair. I knew who it was, and while I was desperate to see her, I was also dreading what she was going to tell me. I was under no illusions that it would be concerning the Blood Legion. I prayed they hadn’t hurt her in any way. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to handle it if they’d put their hands on her.
I approached the visitors’ room with my heart in my throat. I was a grown man. Seeing the woman I loved shouldn’t make me so nervous, but I couldn’t help myself.
I spotted her immediately, sitting at one of the small tables. Her face brightened and she lifted a hand to wave at me, and then got to her feet.
“Fuck, Vee,” was all I managed before I wrapped her in my arms.
Seeing her again made me long for her like nothing I’d ever experienced in my life. The weeks had passed, and even though she wore a loose shirt, I could see the change in her shape, a roundness to her figure and face she’d never had before. She looked healthy and glowing, the total opposite to everything between these walls. Her being in here felt like an abomination to nature.
I held her so tight I thought I might crush her, and forced myself to loosen my hold. I kissed her hard, taking in the softness of her mouth, my fingers looping through the silky, soft strands of her hair. The very real possibility that I wouldn’t be out in time to see the baby born hit me. It would break my heart. A moment that would be lost and I’d never have the chance to get back again. Missing the birth of our first child.
“I missed you,” she said, as I pressed my forehead to hers.
“I missed you, too.”
A shout came from the C.O., “That’s enough, you two.”
We reluctantly broke apart and took our seats at opposite sides of the table. We kept our voices low as we talked, not wanting any of the other inmates to overhear us. I didn’t want to give them any more fuel for the fire.
“How’s everything going?” I lifted my eyebrows and nodded down to her bump.
“I can feel the baby moving now,” she said with a smile, putting her hand to her belly and then moving it away again just as quickly.
“I wish I could feel it, too,” I said, wanting more than anything to lay my head on her belly and feel our baby move beneath her skin, maybe even hear the second heartbeat, running faster alongside Vee’s. “You’ve been keeping to the prenatal appointments.”
She nodded. “Yes, and everything’s fine. You don’t need to worry about the baby.”
“I need to worry about other stuff, though, am I right? They told me you’ve been threatened out on the street. Don’t listen to them, Vee. Don’t let them blackmail you.”
Her dark gaze fixed on mine, serious and intense. “They said they’ll hurt you if I don’t give them what they want.”
My jaw tightened. “So, let them try to hurt me. You know I can take care of myself. “
“It’s different in here, X. You know it is. There’s nowhere you can go, and there’s too many of them. You could end up dead, and I can’t allow that to happen.”
“What have they asked for in return?”
“Just some business. I have one of my father’s guys handling it.”
I frowned. “You do? Which one?”
“You never met him. His name’s Dylan Ferrera. I’ve known him for years. He’s getting kind of suspicious about where my father is, but I’ve managed to string him along so far.” She paused and pressed her lips together. I had a sudden feeling she was about to tell me something bad, like the ground had been shifted out from under me.
“What?” I asked her. “What is it?”
“My father is still alive somewhere.”
My eyes widened. “How do you know this?”
“The detective who was in charge of his case came to see me. He was brought into a hospital upstate. A woman found him in the forest, I assume not long after we … did what we did. She’d been nursing him, but it sounded like she hadn’t let him go when he needed to get professional medical care. He finally escaped and was picked up and brought to the hospital.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.” She took a breath. “Anyway, Nickie and I went to the hospital. I figured we needed to finish the job while we still could.”
“Ah, shit. Vee, I’m so sorry.”
She lifted her hand to tell me to be quiet so she could finish.
“But when we got to the hospital, he was already gone.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. He hasn’t made an appearance back at the house, though. The doctors think he may have suffered neurological damage in the ‘accident.’” She lifted two fingers to do air quotes over the word. We both knew it was no accident. “The police are keeping an eye out for him.”
“You need to get away from the house.”
“No, I don’t. That will be the first place he will come if his mind is working right, and I want to be there when he does. I want this whole thing to be over, and it won’t be until I know he’s dead.”
“What about the men who work for him? How are they reacting to all of this?”
“I haven’t told them anything yet. Unless he finds a way to contact them, there’s no reason for them to find out. In the meantime, they’re working well with me. We have the new threat of the Blood Legion, and we’re dealing with it together.”
“And what happens if your father turns up?”
Her face took on a hard look, like granite. “Then I kill him.”
“Shit, Vee. Be careful.”
This wasn’t what a pregnant woman should be doing. She should be relaxing and taking care of herself, eating the right food and going to gentle exercise classes.
“Listen to me,” she said. “As well as dealing with the Blood Legion, I’ve got Dylan trying to track down the cleaner he thinks my father might have used to get rid of Harvey’s body. There are blood splatters at the scene, but not enough to prove he was killed there. Dylan has confirmed my dad took the body from Tony Mancini’s place—they obviously hadn’t had time to get rid of the bodies after you got me out of there, and perhaps my dad recognized him. I don’t know, but if we can find this cleaner, we can find Harvey’s body, and then we can prove he wasn’t killed by you running him down and then hiding the body.”
“What if the cleaner destroyed the body? He might have cut him up or dissolved him in acid, or hell, fed him to pigs.”
“Then we’ll have to think again.”
I nodded. “Okay. Thank you, Vee.”
“What for?”
“Doing all of this.”
She reached out and took my hand, even though we weren’t supposed to have extra contact between the greeting and farewell. “X, my dad put you behind bars. Plus, I love you, and I’m having your baby. It’s not as though I’m just going to forget about you in here.”
“You’d find someone else to love, in time.”
“No, I wouldn’t. And anyway, falling in love is the easy part. It’s everything that comes after that matters.”
I nodded. I knew she’d feel that way, but it didn’t make things any easier. Things would be better for her if she could just forget all of this and leave with her sister. She’d be safer, and so would our baby, but no amount of convincing would ever make Vee abandon the people she loved.
“Hey, Vee, be careful of that Dylan guy, okay?” I said. “Remember he’s your father’s man first. You don’t know how much you can trust him.”
She squeezed my fingers in reassurance. “I know. I’ll be okay.”
I wished I could find a way to believe that as much as she did.