Chapter 43
Jake
I pace back and forth in my garage, waiting for Daphne to arrive with Ashley.
We’re a mess, a fucking wreck. All of us want to be upstairs with Savannah, with our daughter, but instead we’re standing here, waiting and losing our fucking mind as we do so.
Wait for what? To be told that our greatest nightmare is true?
I don’t know what to believe. We’ve seen the video, the confession on Corbin’s part. With a little bit of searching, Lucy confirmed that Corbin did own the agency we used.
Still, it can’t be real.
We need Ashley to come through those doors and tell us he was lying. That she’s never met Corbin before and that this is all some big fucked up lie.
Because if it’s not, I don’t want to think about what that would mean.
“Would you sit the fuck down!” Walker barks at Caleb.
Caleb stops pacing. “He’s fucking pacing too!” Caleb yells, pointing to me. “What do you want us to do? Fucking sit on our ass and twiddle our thumbs!”
“Enough,” Leroy intervenes. “We’re getting ourselves worked up before we even know anything.”
“You can’t expect us to just remain calm after what we saw on that laptop,” Walker growls.
“No. But there’s still a good chance none of it is true.”
“What if it is true?” I ask, my body feeling like I’ve been hit by a truck. My mind, body, and soul are drained. “What if Athena is really the baby Savannah lost?”
Everyone is quiet. “No.” Caleb shakes his head. “Because that would mean–” His voice cracks, and my heart clenches. “That would mean our baby, the one Ashley was supposed to be carrying, is dead.”
Tears sting the back of my eyes as the reality of that hits me... hits all of us, and the room grows silent.
“If it’s true, it changes nothing,” Leroy states, rubbing his face with his hands. “She’s our daughter. We were with her from day one. We changed her dirty diapers, and we stayed up with her when she couldn’t sleep. Blood or not, that little girl is ours.”
“We can’t think like that,” Walker argues, shaking his head. “I can’t. Not yet.”
I’ll never be able to get the sight of Savannah holding Athena, rocking her in the nursery, covered in blood, out of my mind. It was like a scene out of a horror movie. But what broke me was the gut-wrenching sobs that left her as I held her back when Walker took Athena to be cleaned up.
I held her, cried with her, felt so fucking helpless and confused. I had no idea what was going on, only that my Omega was in an extreme amount of pain and I didn’t know how to help her.
She believes what Corbin said. That Athena is the baby she lost.
How were we put into such a fucked up lose-lose situation?
If Corbin was telling the truth, and he really did put Savannah’s baby in the place of ours, that means our daughter died. That she was just tossed to the side like she meant nothing. What would the doctors have done with her body? Did they throw her away like trash, or did they bury her?
My stomach rolls while bile makes its way up my throat. Running over to the trash can, I empty everything I have in my stomach as I shake.
If Corbin was lying and only said these things to cause Savannah pain, then it’s going to destroy her. To give her that hope, only to have it ripped away... I’m not sure if she will be able to survive that.
But if he wasn't lying, then she spent months mourning a child that was never really gone.
“Fuck!” I shout, grabbing at my hair. “This is fucked. This is all so fucked!” my voice cracks as tears spill down my cheeks.
The sound of the garage door opening gets all of our attention. A car pulls in and we all step aside.
The lights turn off, and Daphne steps out. She’s alone. Lucy stayed behind and is currently upstairs with Savannah and the baby.
“Where is she?” Walker demands.
“She’s here.” Daphne heads to the trunk and opens it. Muffled screaming fills the air as Daphne drags a bound and gagged Ashley out.
Her eyes are wild, terror clear on her face. When she sees us, she begs behind the gag to help her and pleads with her eyes.
“Alright, bitch. Time to talk,” Daphne says, ripping the tape off her mouth.
“Help me. Please. She’s crazy!” Ashley sobs, snot running down from her nose.
“Trust me, honey, this is me tame. You don’t want to see my crazy.” Daphne laughs, shoving Ashley forward.
“Guys? What's going on? Please, please help me.”
“You got that chain I asked you to set up, big brother?” Daphne asks Caleb.
Caleb looks three seconds away from ripping Ashley apart. “Yup.” Caleb pulls the chain that’s connected to the ceiling down. It’s supposed to hold up a punching bag, but Caleb took it down and added a hook.
Ashley looks at it and starts to panic. “Arms up,” Daphne instructs, yanking Ashley’s arms up to loop them over the hook where they are bound together at her wrists.
“Let me go!” she screams. “I didn’t do anything. You won’t get away with this!”
“Away with what?” Daphne asks, cocking her head to the side. “We only want to ask you some questions.”
“W-what questions? I’ll answer anything you want to know. You don’t need to do this.”
Walker storms over to her, getting in her face. “Be very fucking careful on how you choose to answer this question, Ashley. If you fucking lie to me, I’ll let her gut you like a fucking fish.”
Ashley's eyes widen in terror, her breathing bordering on hyperventilating.
“Is Athena our daughter?” Walker asks, and my heart fucking sinks at the panic in her eyes.
“Of course, she is.” Ashley lets out a hysterical laugh. “Why would you think she’s not?”
“I don’t know... maybe because Corbin Miller said she wasn’t,” Caleb adds, getting in close to Walker and right up in her face.
“W-who?” she asks, her voice going higher, her eyes flicking between Caleb and Walker. “Who’s that?”
“Don’t fucking lie to me!” Walker yells in her face. “You have three seconds to tell us the truth or I’ll let her do what ever the fuck she wants to you.”
“I’m sorry!” Ashley screams as she cries, screwing her eyes shut. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
Caleb grabs Ashley by the throat and squeezes. Her eyes snap back open as she chokes.
“Tell us what happened, or I’ll cut your fucking tongue out of your lying mouth,” Caleb spits.
He lets her go, and she coughs. “I didn’t know what to do. I was lost. I was hurt. I was afraid of hurting you guys.”
“Why lie to us?” My voice cracks, the realization of what she’s saying sinking in. “Why not tell us the baby was stillborn? You would have been able to keep all the money we paid you. You had a signed contract that even if you had a miscarriage, you were protected. Why leave us in the dark and allow us to raise a child who wasn’t ours?”
“I didn’t want you guys to get hurt. You were so happy to be dads, I couldn’t break your hearts.”
I bark out a humorless laugh as I wipe my eyes. “Bullshit. You were afraid of losing out on all the money, living with us and being the baby's nanny would’ve gotten you.”
She swallows hard, and I know I’m right.
“So it’s true?” Walker asks, his voice shaking, his body vibrating. “You and Corbin came up with this crazy fucking plan to just pretend our baby didn’t die and replace her with another one?”
“I had to!” she sobs. “I had to. I needed the money. My mom is sick. My school bills, my–”
Daphne backhands her hard enough to make her head snap to the side. “Shut the fuck up,” she says in a low growl.
“Did you know?” I ask her. “Did you know when you met Savannah that Athena was her baby?”
Ashley’s eyes widen in shock. “W-what?” she shakes her head. “No. No, I had no idea. I didn’t know who the mother of the child was. He told me she died during childbirth.”
“So you just let some random man help you ruin people’s lives? Didn’t you think it was sketchy as fuck to just take some random fucking baby?” Daphne asks, but doesn’t let her answer. “No, because you're a sad, pathetic human who only thinks about herself. I looked into you, Ashley. Your mom isn’t sick. And sure, you have some school loans. But that money wasn’t for that. No, the guys paid you enough beforehand to pay that off. You owed the wrong people money, and you knew if you didn’t pay them back, you were as good as dead.”
“I’m sorry,” Ashley sobs, repeating it over and over again.
I stand there as everything comes shattering down around me.
The baby we fell in love with while she grew inside Ashley is dead. The little girl we took home that day in the hospital wasn’t her.
We’ve been raising someone else's baby. Not just anyone else’s baby, but our Omega’s.
The woman we’d die for. The one who owns each of us wholeheartedly.
While she was mourning the loss of her baby, one that was ripped away from her at birth, and was told that she had passed away, we were living this happy little life with that exact baby.
We had the one thing that kept her from giving up on life.
We had no idea this whole time, yet I can’t help but feel the need to apologize.
A loud roar has me jumping, pulling me out of my own spiralling thoughts.
My eyes snap over to Walker as he starts to throw things against the wall. His screams of agony have me sinking to my knees.
One by one, my pack reacts as reality sinks in.
Tonight changed all of us. And I don’t know if any of us will be the same.