Chapter 11 #2
He's alert instantly, years of club life training him to go from asleep to combat-ready in seconds.
His hand reaches for the gun on the nightstand before his eyes are even fully open. "What? What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong." I grab his hand, pulling it away from the weapon, and press it against my stomach. "Wait. Just wait."
He blinks at me, confused, still half-asleep. "Van, what—"
"Shh. Just feel."
We lie there in silence, barely breathing.
His palm is warm against my skin, his fingers splayed wide, covering almost the entire swell of my belly.
The room is so quiet I can hear my own heartbeat.
Can hear his.
And then—
"Holy shit." His eyes go wide, all traces of sleep vanishing. "Was that—?"
"The baby." Tears are streaming down my face now, and I don't even try to stop them. "That was the baby. That was our baby moving."
Another flutter. Stronger this time.
A real kick, definite and unmistakable, pressing against his palm like a tiny fist saying hello.
"That's our kid." Garrett's voice cracks, and when I look at him, there are tears in his eyes too.
This man who never cries.
This man who's survived fires and funerals and years of watching me destroy myself.
He's crying because our baby kicked. "Van, that's our kid moving around in there. That's a real person. Inside you."
"I know." I laugh through my tears. "I know, I can feel it."
He shifts down the bed, pressing his face against my stomach, both hands cradling the small swell like it's the most precious thing in the world. Because it is.
"Hey, little one," he murmurs against my skin, his voice soft and wondering. "I felt that. I felt you." He kisses my belly, soft and reverent, right where the kick was. "Keep doing that, okay? Keep letting us know you're in there. Keep reminding us what we're fighting for."
I thread my fingers through his hair, holding him close.
The baby kicks again—maybe responding to his voice, maybe just stretching, testing out this new ability—and Garrett laughs.
A real laugh, full of joy and wonder and disbelief.
The kind of laugh I haven't heard from him in years.
"That's the most amazing thing I've ever felt," he says, looking up at me with wet eyes. "Vanna, that's—I don't even have words. I've seen a lot of things in my life. Good things, bad things. But this—this is something else."
"I know."
"We made that. You and me. That little person in there, kicking and moving around—we made that together."
"We did."
He crawls back up the bed and pulls me into his arms, one hand still resting on my stomach.
We lie there together, waiting for more movement, cataloging each tiny flutter like it's the most important thing in the world.
Because it is.
It's proof.
Proof that something good is growing inside me.
Proof that my body, which I poisoned for so many years, is capable of creating something beautiful.
Proof that all the pain and the struggle and the fear has been worth it.
"I love you," Garrett says against my hair, his voice thick with emotion. "Both of you. So fucking much it scares me."
"We love you too."
We stay like that for a long time, wrapped up in each other, feeling our baby move between us.
The morning stretches out, golden and quiet, and for a little while, everything is perfect.
The photos arrive three days later.
I'm in the main room, folding laundry—a basket of club shirts that need to be sorted—when Coin walks in with the mail.
He's been handling runs to the post office lately, part of the security rotation that keeps everyone busy and accounted for.
It's a mundane task, the kind of thing that would have seemed boring a month ago.
Now it feels like safety.
Routine. Normal.
"Package for you," he says, tossing a manila envelope onto the couch beside me. "No return address. Weird."
My stomach drops.
I stare at the envelope like it's a coiled snake.
My name is printed on the front in blocky, anonymous letters—the kind you'd use if you didn't want anyone to recognize your handwriting.
No return address.
No postmark.
Nothing to indicate where it came from or who sent it.
A normal person would assume it's junk mail.
A forgotten catalog. Something harmless.
I am not a normal person. And I know exactly who would send something like this.
"Vanna?" Coin's watching me now, his brow furrowed. He's picked up on my reaction, the color draining from my face. "You okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."
"I don't know." I pick up the envelope with trembling fingers.
It's light. Thin. Something flat inside—paper, maybe.
Photographs.
No. Please, no.
I should wait for Garrett.
I know I should.
He's in the garage, working on a bike, just a few hundred feet away.
I could walk out there, hand him this envelope, let him be the one to open it.
Let him shield me from whatever's inside.
But the not-knowing is worse than anything the envelope could contain.
The anticipation is its own kind of torture.
So, I tear it open before I can talk myself out of it.
Photos spill out onto my lap.
Me at the grocery store, reaching for a can of soup.
The timestamp says I was there last Tuesday.
I remember that trip—Maddox was with me, waiting in the truck. I felt safe.
Me walking into the clinic for my prenatal appointment.
Garrett was right beside me in that photo, his hand on my back.
He's been cropped out, but I can see the edge of his shoulder at the corner of the frame.
Me getting out of Maddox's truck at the clubhouse gates.
The angle suggests the photographer was across the street, maybe in the parking lot of the abandoned warehouse that faces the compound.
Me standing at the window of our room, looking out at the compound.
This one is the worst.
Because this means he was inside the gates.
Inside our security. Close enough to see into our home.
Each photo is timestamped.
Dated.
Proof that someone has been watching me.
Following me.
Getting close enough to capture these moments without anyone noticing.
And at the bottom of the stack, a note.
Handwritten on plain white paper.
Three words in that same blocky script.
I'M ALWAYS WATCHING.
The scream that tears out of me doesn't sound human.
It's primal, animal, the sound of prey realizing the predator has been circling all along.
Coin is at my side in an instant, snatching the photos from my lap.
I watch his expression shift—confusion to understanding to cold, murderous rage—as he flips through them.
His jaw goes tight.
His hands start to shake.
"Bracken!" he shouts toward the hallway. "Get Bloodhound. Now. Tell him to drop whatever he's doing and get in here."
Everything happens fast after that.
Brothers appear from nowhere, their faces grim.
Someone takes the envelope, handles it carefully, treating it like evidence.
Someone else guides me to a chair, wraps a blanket around my shoulders, presses a glass of water into my shaking hands.
And then Garrett is there.
He bursts through the door like a man on fire, his eyes wild, scanning the room until they land on me.
In three strides he's kneeling in front of me, his hands on my face, my shoulders, my stomach—checking, confirming, making sure I'm whole.
"What happened?" His voice is barely controlled. "Bracken said there were photos—"
"He's watching me." The words come out broken. "Virgil. He's been following me. He got into the compound, Garrett. He took a picture of me through our window."
Garrett goes very still.
I've seen him angry before.
I've seen him rage and curse and put his fist through walls.
But this is different.
This is the cold, quiet fury of a man who has moved past anger into something else entirely.
He turns to Ruger, who's appeared in the doorway. "Church. Now."
"Already calling it." Ruger's face is carved from stone. "Everyone's on their way."
Garrett looks back at me.
His hands are gentle as he cups my face, but I can feel the tremor in his fingers.
The violence he's holding back.
"You're not leaving my sight," he says. "From this moment on. Not for a second. Do you understand?"
"I understand."
"This ends. Whatever it takes, however long it takes—this ends."
I nod, unable to speak.
The baby kicks inside me—strong, insistent—and I press my hand to my stomach.
Hold on, I think. Just hold on.
Your daddy's going to keep us safe.
I have to believe that.
I have to believe that love is stronger than fear, that good can triumph over evil, that the life we're building is worth fighting for.
Because the alternative is unthinkable.
The club goes into lockdown.
That's the only word for it.
Within hours of the photos arriving, everything changes.
The gates are manned around the clock—two brothers at all times, armed and vigilant.
Security cameras are checked and rechecked, angles adjusted, blind spots eliminated.
Nobody comes or goes without being logged in a notebook that Ruger keeps in the chapel.
Every vehicle is inspected, inside and out.
And I am never, ever alone.
If Garrett has to leave—for church, for work, for anything—someone else takes his place.
Maddox. Coin. Bracken.
Even Ruger, a few times, sitting quietly in the corner of the main room while I pretend to read a book.
Ounce stops by every evening to check in, his dark eyes scanning the room like he's cataloging every shadow.
At first, I feel guilty about it.
All these men, rearranging their lives to babysit me.
All this chaos because of a problem I brought to their doorstep.
But when I try to apologize—to Coin, to Maddox, to anyone who'll listen—they shut me down.
"You're family," Maddox says. It's the most I've ever heard him say at once. "Family protects family. End of discussion."
So I stop apologizing.
And slowly, the constant presence starts to feel less like suffocation and more like love.
"How are you holding up?" Tildie asks, settling beside me on the couch.
It's been three days since the photos arrived, and she's made it her mission to keep me company whenever the brothers are busy with other tasks.
"I don't know," I admit. "Scared. Angry. Tired of being scared and angry."
"That's fair."
"I keep thinking—" I stop, not sure I want to say it out loud.
"What?"
"I keep thinking this is my fault. That I brought this on everyone. If I hadn't been an addict, if I hadn't gotten involved with Virgil in the first place—"
"Stop." Tildie's voice is sharp. "Don't do that to yourself."
"But it's true. None of this would be happening if—"
"If what? If you'd made different choices years ago?
" She shakes her head. "You can't change the past, Vanna.
You can only deal with the present. And in the present, you're clean.
You're fighting. You're building a life.
The man who's threatening you is a predator who would have found another victim if it wasn't you.
This isn't about what you did. It's about what he is. "
I want to believe her.
I want to accept that Virgil's evil is his own, not something I created or deserve.
But the guilt is hard to shake.
The sense that I've brought danger to these people who've welcomed me in.
That my past is poisoning my present.
"The club doesn't blame you," Tildie continues, softer now. "Nobody blames you. They're angry, yeah—but they're angry at him. At what he did. At what he's threatening to do. You're one of us, Vanna. And we protect our own."
"One of us," I repeat quietly.
"One of us." She squeezes my hand. "Now stop moping and help me pick out crib bedding. I found this adorable set with little elephants, and I need a second opinion."
I laugh despite myself.
It's weak, watery, but it's real.
One of us.
Maybe someday I'll believe it.
That night, I lie in bed with Garrett's arms around me, his hand resting on my stomach where the baby has finally stopped kicking for the night.
"Are you awake?" I whisper.
"Yeah."
"Do you think he'll come for me? Virgil?"
Garrett is quiet for a long moment.
When he speaks, his voice is flat. Certain. "He'll try. But he won't succeed."
"How do you know?"
"Because I won't let him." He pulls me closer, his lips brushing my temple. "Because this club won't let him. Because there's not a force on this earth strong enough to take you from me."
I want to believe him.
I want to trust in his strength, in the club's protection, in the love that's supposed to conquer all.
But I've seen what Virgil is capable of.
I've felt his hands on my throat, his fingers between my legs.
I know the darkness that lives inside him.
And I know that sometimes, love isn't enough.
"I'm scared," I admit.
"I know. Me too." He takes a breath. "But we're not running. We're not hiding. We're going to face this together, and we're going to win. Because the alternative isn't an option."
The baby kicks once, like a punctuation mark.
Like its own agreement.
I close my eyes and try to let Garrett's heartbeat lull me to sleep.
Try to trust that tomorrow will be better. That this nightmare will end.
But when I finally drift off, my dreams are full of shadows.
Of photos with timestamps.
Of a voice whispering in the dark.
I'm always watching.
And somewhere out there, in the cold February night, Virgil is waiting.