The bar had never been livelier since Isabelle’s birthday when Hanna first walked into it and looked into Roarke’s eyes. James’s release from the hospital might as well have been a bar mitzvah. She knew he was doing it because she knew who he was to her now, understood the importance of him. This was his way of trying to suck up to her father and she couldn’t help but turn a little red in the face over it. She liked the idea of him wanting to make a good impression on her family for incredibly selfish reasons. It made her feel a little bit like a high schooler again.
“Alright, alright, can the invincible man have a drink or is that against hospital advice?” Rick asked, pouring out large, overflowing shots of whiskey.
“As if it would stop me, even if they did,” he laughed, taking a glass.
His laugh was still wheezy and there was still pain on his face when he moved around just a little too much. It hurt Hanna to see, the times when he cringed and attempted to hide it. But she was happy to see the smile that was on his face, through it all. He’d always been that way, the one to smile even when her birthday party was soaked in the pouring rain or she fell off her bike three times in a row the first time they took the training wheels off.
Hanna watched him carefully. She loved his smile, she loved seeing it back on his face. But she was also wary. She needed him to be careful. He wasn’t invincible, despite what Rick had said. She learned just how incredibly breakable he was and she never wanted to experience something like that again. She patted his back and rubbed his shoulder and he turned to give her a wink and a smile, a way to say he was alright and everything would be okay.
Rick, however, wasn’t done. He came over on wobbly feet and put an arm around Roarke, nudging Hanna and giving her a wink as well. He held up what was left of his drink, preparing for another speech.
“A toast, as well,” Rick said. “To the happy couple who finally sorted their crap out and we can all collect on our bets for this soap opera drama.”
There was a round of laughs. Hanna didn’t care. She tucked in closer to Roarke and he didn’t shy or away or try to brush her off in a tough guy show like he might have done only weeks ago. He put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed her back just as hard and just warm. Even James had a warm face for them. He hadn’t exactly been entirely happy about the turn of events as far as her relationship with Roarke was concerned, but for now he seemed to be content. He was happy to see her happy.
Roarke took a shot and Hanna took a discrete sip of her Coke. Despite James knowing and her and Roarke putting all their cards on the table, they still hadn’t broken the news to the gang. Now it was less to do with them respecting Hanna and more to do with the fear that if they told too many people, then it might get out to the Caracals. Roarke fumed and seemed to go red behind the eyes at the thought of Hanna or the baby being put in danger when she brought it up to him.
There was something else bothering her too, something she kept to herself for a while now. She’d done some research on the Withers family. She could have just asked Roarke or Amber, but she didn’t want to arouse suspicion in either of them. She couldn’t get Isabelle’s words out of her head, however. She talked about bringing up a child and for days after, Hanna was certain she was referring to Hanna’s own, that she had somehow found out about the baby. While that wasn’t exactly off the table either, she was becoming more and more certain, remembering how her eyes had looked, how serious.
She realized, one night when she couldn’t sleep, that Isabelle was talking about a child of her own. She had to be. There was no other explanation. But then the question became…was she talking about her child in the present or as a hypothetical in the future? That’s the part that bothered Hanna the most. Was Isabelle pregnant? If she was she was certainly taking a great number of risks for a woman with child that Hanna couldn’t even imagine with her own child. It might also explain the erratic behavior. A mother would do anything for their child.
“Can I talk to you?” Hanna said to Roarke, pulling on the hem of his sleeve.
His face turned almost immediately, sensing her tone. He walked to the edge of the bar with her, ushering her to sit on a stool.
“Are you okay?” he asked, placing his hands on her stomach, ignoring the discrete nature of her condition. “The baby is okay, right?”
“Yes, yeah. It has nothing to do with us,” she said and watched him relax so completely from head to toe that she almost felt bad and at the same time nearly swooned for the amount of care he had for their child. “I was thinking about something and it sounds ridiculous but I also need to know if there’s a chance it’s a possibility.”
“Okay. Hit me.”
“Is there a chance Isabelle was pregnant?”
A lot of things went across his face in the first few seconds after she asked that question. Confusion in the form of a furrowed brow, shock, anger, fear. He settled on pensive.
“I doubt it,” he said. “She never went out with a guy. Then again, there seems to be a lot about her I don’t know. She was always shy as fuck around guys that came to the bar and I don’t think you can really fake that, you know?”
“She faked the innocent act,” Hanna pointed out.
“Point taken, but she was smart and bright and quiet. She just had a lot going on under the surface,” he said, shrugging.
“And there’s not a chance she had a lot more going on romantically—or otherwise?” Hanna asked. She felt bad, forcing him to picture his baby sister in this way but she needed to be certain. This could be the different between a lot of things, about how they handled things from here on out.
“Well,” Roarke said, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. “There was this period over the summer. She took a bunch of trips to New York City. She said she went with some friends or something but…”
“But that sounds like the prime time that something could have happened.”
Something seemed to snap behind Roarke’s eyes as he realized something. He sat down quickly, huddling in close to Hanna. The party continued around them but Roarke held her gaze and let his fingers tap on the counter with anxiety.
“What if Isabelle is in the same situation as us?” he said.
“Meaning?”
“A Caracal. She had no real information to give them about the Pharaohs,” he said. “The younger sister of the president is good for bargaining but they aren’t using her like a hostage. They let her in. Why would they do that when everything about that situation would seem like some kind of setup?”
“Can you get to the point?’ she huffed.
“What if she’s in with one of them, too? Maybe even Isiah Clark, at the worst case scenario,” he said.
She paused. There was a real chance of that, she realized with a sinking stomach. Isabelle could easily be pregnant with a Caracal’s kid. It would also make her words make sense, the fear of raising a child in that environment, an environment that the child was born into. It was falling into place and she met Roarke’s eyes with her own that she was sure were round in fear.
“Fuck,” she whispered out.
“Yeah. Fuck.”
The party carried on behind them.
Hanna still wanted to believe the best. She wanted to think Isabelle had fallen in love and was trying to do her best to justify it, to hope there was some real humanity behind Isabelle’s choices. But somehow she was sure that love had little to do with this choice. She went out and found the exact enemy her brother would lose his mind over. She may have given birth to a child that would have heritage from both sides in his genes. Would that protect him from Roarke or make him that much more of a target, she wondered?
***
The next day, when everyone was working off their hangovers, Roarke and Hanna called them together in the bar, first thing in the morning. They weren’t exactly thrilled about it and Amber put together an entire pitcher of Bloody Marys and greasy food from Dunkin Donuts that was practically demolished in the first seconds the groups began arriving.
“Alright, what do we have that couldn’t wait until at least noon?” Rick asked, mouth have full of a donut and guzzling some coffee he brought.
“Long story short—and no there is no time for questions—we think Isabelle is in with Isiah Clark,” Hanna said.
“Well that was obvious,” Rick said.
“She’s pregnant. Was pregnant. She had a kid,” Roarke said. “At least we’re pretty sure she is. We don’t know that Isiah is the father, but I’m willing to bet he is.”
“Wait, you know that for a fact?” James asked, stepping forward.
He was still weak, though he was far more bushy eyed than anyone else around him. But he was in sheriff mode, quizzical, skeptical.
“The evidence is circumstantial, I’ll be the first to admit that,” Hanna said. “But it also checks out against her character profile. It’s the only thing that really seems to string all her actions together thus far.”
James started stroking his chin, thinking. He made her pass tests like this as a kid, trying to convince him of her theories, the evidence trail she was following. Then had it had been a fun game, now she desperately needed him to believe her. They’d never convince the rest of the group to go after the Caracals in force, against Isiah personally, unless they were absolutely certain. They’d lost several men already fighting Roarke’s battles for him against his sister. They couldn’t ask them to do it another time with certainty.
“This is fucked,” Rick said.
“Clark has that huge rancher on the edge of town,” Roarke said. “He’s had gang members patrolling it nonstop for months now.”
“Yeah, because has a fuck-ton of money invested in a lot of drugs and guns there, we’ve been through this,” Rick said.
“Why would he store goods at his own house?” Hanna asked. “Wouldn’t they use the same warehouse where they were hiding the girls?”
“That is a point worth examining,” James said.
“He’s got something personal there that wasn’t there before,” Roarke said. “Isabelle and a baby?”
It wasn’t enough convincing to make this a foregone conclusion. But they put doubt in everyone’s minds. There was a very real possibility that this is what was going on, the answer to what they were trying to figure out. They very nearly reached a conclusion. Would it be worth the risk to figure it out? Try to shut all this down?
And, if it was true, they were talking about more family. Isabelle’s child would be Roarke’s niece or nephew. He’d be the uncle to the child of the Caracal leader. That had to burn at him in a way nothing else did. Isabelle truly did get her revenge where that was concerned. Hanna had to hand her that one for the ingenuity. She wanted to believe that Isabelle might truly care for this man, for the baby. And maybe she did. Maybe she fell in love in an unexpected place as well and was trying to make the best of it for the baby who was about to enter an unstable world.
But it was coincidental that it just happened to be the Caracal leader who was the father of her child. With her it seemed impossible to tell what was genuine, what was real, and what was all part of a larger game that only she seemed to know the rules of.
She was gambling with the life of a child who didn’t ask to be born and who would depend on her its entire life. She prayed that Isabelle understood that and didn’t bring that child into the world lightly.
They adjourned. Anyone who was willing to help was going to meet again at dawn the next day. Roarke promised there would be no punishment for anyone who didn’t want to get involved, who would rather stay out. The problem of course, with gangs, was that family matters concerned everyone. This wasn’t just about one member having a squabble with a sibling. This was about the gang itself being threatened by someone they once considered a friend.
They would see how many were ready to take on that revenge.