Savage Things (Chaos & Ruin Book 2) (15 page)

He put up a fight. Of course he did; it’s in his very nature to brawl. And if he had three guys looming over him after he’d just been rudely awoken from sleep, I’m imagining it was in Jameson Rayne’s nature to knock all of their fucking teeth out. Kaya continues.
 

“He broke one of their collar bones for sure. The bone was sticking out of his neck,” she whispers. Her face is devoid of all color, her skin ashen. “There was blood everywhere. I was screaming at them to leave then, to just go, but the other two guys lost it. They said he could fuck one of them up, but he had no chance against two of them together.”

“Let me guess. He snapped their bones like twigs, too.”

“He smashed one of their faces into the cook top. It dented the metal. He shoved the other one out of a second story window. He landed on his back. I have no idea whether he lived or died. I kept trying to lean out of the window to look, but Jameson wouldn’t let me. He was still screaming at the other two, trying to make them leave, so I stood well back and prayed it was going to be over soon. Before they went, the main doorman guy, the one with the shaved head and the knuckle tattoos—” I know the one she’s talking about “—told him it was only a matter of time. They knew what he’d done, and they knew Ben was in on it, too. They said Ben wouldn’t be able to hide the truth, and that the two of them were dead men walking. They can’t have gone to find Ben straight away, they were far too messed up, but that’s not to say the guys at French’s didn’t send someone else over to speak to your friend.”

“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me he was in trouble at the shop?” I snap. My voice is raised, drawing attention from the curly haired woman watching an old re-run of Jerry Springer on the ancient, fuzzy television behind the counter. I know I’ve been a shit immediately. I didn’t give her a chance to tell me earlier. I was rude and I chased her away before she had the chance to tell me anything whatsoever. Kaya’s ears pull back a little, her eyes narrowing.
 

“I don’t need to be here right now, Mason. I could be at home, sweeping up broken glass and trying to glue the shattered remains of my furniture back together. Instead I thought I would give you a heads up. Jameson told me he would deal with it, but I know when my brother’s lying, okay? Ben doesn’t matter to him. If those doormen are too distracted hunting down your friend and beating the shit out of him, Jameson has time to figure out a way to get back into their good graces at French’s. He’d kill me if he knew I was here. So, please, Mason. Cut me some slack.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.” I rub my hands over my face, blowing out a deep breath. Fuck. How the hell am I going to fix
this
? I’m a no one in the fighting world. I don’t have anyone’s ear to whisper into. I don’t have any favors to call in. I mean, I have absolutely no way of digging Ben out of this hole he’s managed to fall into. So fucking typical. I feel like I’ve been doing this my entire fucking life. “Thank you for letting me know,” I say quietly. Outside on the street, a police siren blares into life right outside the coffee shop, drowning out my words. Both Kaya and I startle at the sound. The car races off down the street, tires audibly screeching as it takes a corner too fast, leaving both myself and the tiny woman opposite me smiling nervously for no good reason.
 

“You should find him,” Kaya says. “These guys aren’t known to wait around.”

“I know. I will. And your brother—”

“Don’t worry about my brother. Jameson’s like a goddamn cat with nine hundred lives. This time next week, he’ll be the golden boy at French’s again. And if not, the heavies who run the fights will all be dead and Jameson’ll be living in their houses, fucking their wives, and their kids will be calling him daddy. He always lands on his feet, you know? But your friend…”

I nod, staring at my coffee. She’s right. Ben
never
lands on his feet. Ben has the worst luck in the whole fucking world.

Chapter Fourteen

SLOANE

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been afraid over the past year. I don’t seem to recall a week where I haven’t had reason to be afraid. Okay, since Charlie Holsan died and Zeth took over the gym, things have quietened down, but even that quiet has been punctuated with spells of panic. You ask yourself, how long can this possibly last? How much time will pass before something terrible happens? Before the grim reaper comes knocking on your door. I know better than that; the grim reaper doesn’t knock. He sneaks into your house, unbidden, without your knowledge or consent. He takes without asking, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. But still, it doesn’t stop you from trying to hold back disaster. You still end up with your back pressed up against the door, heels digging into the ground, trying to prevent the inevitable.
 

I thought I’d reached the limit, maxed out the human capacity to experience fear, and yet as I stare down at the slender piece of plastic in my hands, eyes fixed on the brazen pink
 
+
 
sign filling the tiny display window, I know a pure and paralyzing fear the likes of which I’ve never encountered before.
 

Pregnant
?

How the fuck can I be
pregnant
?

I know the answer to that very obvious question: I was sick. I took antibiotics that screwed with my birth control, and then I had wild, animalistic sex with my boyfriend, and he came deep inside me. I remember the particular incident all too well. But that’s not what I’m asking. How could fate have permitted such a thing to happen? How could the universe have stood by and let life spark and form inside me, when I am who I am, a woman constantly balancing on the precipice of danger? A woman in love with a man who will probably end up shot and killed someday? I knew what I was getting myself into when I allowed myself to fall for Zeth. I was all too aware of the dangers and the risks, and I accepted them all because the reward of loving him was far greater than the fear of losing him. But this little baby inside me? This baby doesn’t have a fucking clue who its father is. It doesn’t know who its mother is, either. It didn’t get to choose us, the way I chose Zeth. It seems outrageous that such a tragic thing has been allowed to come to pass.
 

My eyes have misted over. I don’t know how long I lean up against the wall of the bathroom, staring at the pregnancy test in my hands, but when I finally manage to pull myself together my shoulder is aching like a bitch and my eyes feel very dry, like I haven’t blinked in a really long time. I want to cry. I want to dash over to the hospital and grab another three tests so I can do them all again, praying as I wait for each result to develop that the first was wrong somehow. It would be a waste of time, though. I know the test isn’t wrong. The body doesn’t lie. As if to prove that point, my stomach heaves and roils as I hurry out of the bathroom and downstairs into the kitchen. The house is filled with an oppressive silence, as though the walls were inhaling and exhaling a little while ago but now they have stopped, now holding their breath, now waiting for what comes next.
 

I have no fucking clue what comes next.
 

Ernie raises his head as I enter the kitchen. The small nub of his docked tail slides back and forth on the tile like a windscreen wiper as he watches me pour myself a glass of water from the tap and down it in one go. He makes a comical yowling sound, little schnauzer eyebrows raised, head angled to one side, like he’s trying to ask me what’s wrong.
 

“I’ll tell you what’s wrong, buddy. Everything is fucking wrong. The shit is about to hit the fucking fan, my little furry friend, and I have no idea what the fuck I’m going to fucking do about it.” Ernie doesn’t understand my need to swear in continued succession; he opens his mouth and begins to pant. It looks like he’s laughing. “This is not funny,” I tell him.
 

I should eat something. I haven’t had anything in my stomach for hours and I’m feeling a little light headed, but I know as soon as I get something down it’ll be coming right back up again. I’ve seen so many pregnant women in my time at St. Peter’s. Most of them suffer from morning sickness, and there are a lucky few who don’t. The women who
do
suffer from the constant need to throw up seem to bear it with rueful pride.
Look at me. I’m so pregnant, I just can’t seem to stop voiding the contents of my stomach everywhere.
It doesn’t seem as though any of them have ever been
this
sick, though. I can’t get up out of a chair without wanting to run for the bathroom. And don’t get me started on bacon. The faintest whiff of greasy, salty, usually delicious bacon, and I can feel the bile rising like a tidal wave up my esophagus. It’s getting harder and harder to disguise the fact that I’m not sick with the flu, and that I am, in fact, very knocked up.
 

Oh my god. What the hell am I going to tell my parents? I was supposed to be married and settled down with a nice neurosurgeon when I started a family. I wasn’t supposed to be living in sin with an ex-hit man. It doesn’t really matter what Mom and Dad think at this point, though. It only matters what one person thinks about it, and I’m almost one hundred percent sure I know how he’s going to react when he finds out.

He’s going to lose his goddamn mind. I can’t imagine him as a father. I can’t picture it at all. I’ve tried not to picture how it’s going to go when I tell him, because I’m too damn scared to even think about it, but when the scenario has pushed its way into my head despite my best efforts to keep it at bay, things have not gone well. Furniture has been smashed. Angry words have been thrown. Tears have been shed. I’ve imagined him saying the very worst things to me, his anger spiked, his eyes filled with misery. I haven’t, on the other hand, been able to imagine what I’m doing while Zeth is losing his shit. Am I happy that he’s horrified by the idea of a child? Am I glad that he doesn’t want it? Am I relieved that I don’t need to go through with becoming a mother? Or…

I’m too scared to consider the
or
.
 

If I’m not happy or relieved, then it means that I’m heartbroken, and that possibility doesn’t even bear thinking about. I can’t have a baby. I can’t be pregnant and carry a child to term. I’m not ready. I’ve never even thought about a family with Zeth, not even in an abstract, whimsical way, because such a thing is an impossibility. This life that we live together, it’s not safe for
us
, let alone another vulnerable, innocent human being. It wouldn’t be fair. It would be
cruel
.
 

And yet, a shade of doubt…

A what if...

Sloane Romera: Doctor.
 

Sloane Romera: Accomplice.
 

Sloane Romera: Lover.

Sloane Romera: Mother?

The idea sits heavy on my shoulders, either a weighty responsibility, or a weighty blessing. I just—I just don’t fucking know!
 

“Stop looking at me like that, Ernie.” His eyes are shining bright, his face lit up with the simple joy of attention being paid to him, but to me it looks like he’s happy that these sneaky thoughts are infiltrating my brain. “You’re supposed to be on my side,” I tell him. He gets up and comes to me, raising his head so he can rest his chin against my kneecap, looking up at me with those deep, soulful brown eyes of his. Sometimes it seems as though he’s wiser than most people I meet in the street. He manages to communicate so much in that even, steady gaze of his.
 

“I’m not telling him,” I say. “There’s no way I can tell him.”

Ernie blinks.
 

“I
can’t
. You don’t understand. How could you?”

The tip of the dog’s tongue uncurls from his mouth, poking through his teeth, and then disappearing again. “It’s not that simple. Pregnancies fail sometimes, you know. It would be stupid to say something this early. Who knows? It might not take, and then the arguing, the fighting, it will all have been for nothing.”

Ernie makes a disapproving grumble at the back of his throat.
 

“I’m waiting at least a month,” I say, imbuing my voice with a certainty that I’m definitely not feeling. “A month is fair. A month isn’t long.”

Ernie’s eyebrows twitch again, his eyes locked onto me, his tail still madly flicking back and forth. He doesn’t have a clue what I’m talking about, but for some reason I get the feeling he disapproves. “Look, it’s not up to you, anyway. It’s up to me. I need time to process this, okay? And looking at me like that isn’t going to change anything.”

The sound of the front door opening nearly causes my heart to explode. I panic, hands patting myself down, searching for something…for the pregnancy test. Did I bring it down here with me? Is it still upstairs in the bathroom? What the fuck did I do with it? My hand finds the length of plastic in my jeans, barely managing to fit all the way into the pocket at my hip. I shove it down as hard as I can, pulling at my t-shirt then, hoping the material covers the pocket from view altogether, as if my boyfriend has laser eyesight and might be able to see through the denim of my jeans. Zeth appears, and all the oxygen leaves my lungs.
 

He’s covered in blood.
 

“What—what the hell happened?” I can’t seem to find my voice.
 

He props himself up against the wall, looking down at himself. “Well. I was driving across town and I realized I was being followed. I thought it was Lowell, but turns out it was the Italians. Got a little ugly.”

“The Italians? The guys from New York?” I remember them calling a couple of weeks ago. Seemed like they wouldn’t quit for a while there. It’s been quiet for long enough since then that I thought the bastards had given up harassing him and had decided to leave him the fuck alone. Really, how stupid is an assumption like that? What the hell is wrong with me? Being sick and dealing with this Mason crap has really blindsided me.
 

“What happened exactly? What—what did you do with him?” I hate to ask questions like this, but I need to know.