Chapter 25 Fawn
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
fawn
The three Cosa Nostra vehicles join us on the road, dotted around the same line of traffic. Jasmine is in one of the other vehicles as they’re taking her to a specific store to get some truffle for Maggie, who wants to cook beef, mushroom, arugula, and truffle pizza for dinner.
Sitting in the blacked-out SUV with my twins, I try not to laugh at the calamity. Our favourite snacks—fruit gummies, juice boxes, and cookies—are spilled across the smooth leather.
In the front seat, HJ is driving, eyes always half on the road, half on the rear-view mirror, but I’m too busy intercepting Luca as he tries to steal Ash’s cookies.
I smile at the gentle tug-of-war—chubby hands, heavy heads, like sumo-wrestlers in baby seats trying to claim what is rightfully theirs.
That cookie is the most important thing in the world to them right now.
Their entire reality revolves around it.
Ash is growling in outrage, clutching the crumbling cookie while I referee with one hand and fish a lolly out of Luca’s thick black hair with the other. It’s a moment so loud, normal, and real, so wildly alive, that it almost drowns out everything from earlier.
Almost. But not quite.
Because above the noise of my babies and the endless back and forth of the Cosa Nostra guards’ radio crackling in and out from the front, there is always Clay… Sir.
Even when he’s not physically present.
He hovers in my mind and much, much lower, a persistent hum, a dangerous warning—his last sentence hanging in my mind. “Have your pretty body ready for me.”
I squirm, anticipating.
As we merge onto the main highway, a wave of sunlight angles through the dark tint on our windows, gilding the twins.
The roads are busy and congested today, at peak hour.
I’m about to lean in to plant a kiss on Luca’s sticky cheek when my peaceful, normal chaos fractures with a single, impossible noise—a horn, high and shrill, carving through everything and stopping my heart mid-beat.
Before I can process anything, I look left and see in haunting clarity the front grille of an oncoming car, close enough to count the smashed insects across its rusty bumper. The headlights bore into me.
Monstrous.
Impersonal.
I scream.
CRUNCH.
Everything happens at once. All events collide into a singular scene: we are hit.
The impact is violent. It feels as though our SUV is shoved sideways.
My head jerks, skull hitting the window.
The world spins. I reach for the twins, but the seatbelt slices into my shoulder.
I reach harder, further, desperately, protective fingers diving through space to touch my babies, protect them, but my body is pinned to the door by the force of the spinning car.
Spinning.
I want to protect them. I want my babies. I want Clay. I want Clay. I want my Clay. Please, please, oh God.
Please.
The SUV slams to a halt.
I fall forwards.
Now, moments after the crash, time seems to stretch like taffy… My face floods with tears, so, so, so many that I choke on them as I try to breathe.
To comprehend.
What. Just. Happened...
My heartbeat drowns everything except the high-pitched ringing in my ears. The sound triggers something—
A memory: I’m ten, hearing the shot blast through our caravan, mistaking it for a blown tire or the old oven finally exploding.
I remember my bare feet slapping against linoleum as I ran from our shared bedroom.
I remember finding her. The metallic smell.
The way her eyes stared at nothing. The same ringing in my ears then as now—a sound that has always meant one thing…
my life changing while I am powerless to stop it.
The keening sound of babies crying slices through the ringing in my ears, and I am back in the car but not where I was before the crash, and time is normal and steady.
Luca! Ash! I force my eyes to find them, my vision blurring at the edges. Above me, two babies are still strapped into their seats, crying.
A sliver of hope.
Mummy is here.
I try to get to them, but my arms are heavy, like someone filled them with rocks. I peer down at my body. I’m on the floor between the front seat and theirs. I must have slipped out of my seatbelt, been thrown forwards. God, I hope I didn’t slam into them.
I try to move, but my legs are tangled.
Finally, I manage to reach with a shaky hand and touch a chubby leg.
They are crying so much. Oh, God. I can hear them.
More noise filters in—HJ in the front, barking curses, and the echoes of the crash.
At least, I think they are echoes of metal on metal, of screams, of tires screeching, of motorbikes thundering, but…
They’re not echoes. They’re happening right now.
Outside the crumpled SUV, cars are skidding, hitting, smashing into each other.
Sirens blast in the distance. Shouting and shrieking and car alarms howling so loud I feel their vibrations in my chest. The dizzying reek of burning plastic and leaking petrol inundates my nostrils.
There is something warm and sticky on my cheek and lips. Flinching, I think it’s blood, but when I suck my lower lip between my teeth, I taste sweet and citrus—juice.
I try to move again, but I can’t. I focus on my baby’s skin under my touch. “It’s okay—” Mummy is here. I want to speak, to tell them it will be okay, to soothe, to coo, to promise, ‘Mummy is here! You’re safe. I promise.’ But my voice comes out choppy, clogged with tears.
Mummy is here.
Mummy is here.
There is so much going on outside. People are shouting—some in accents I can’t place, voices of women, of men—all frantic and ripe with fear.
But it’s quieter in here. I realize that the armoured SUV has protected us in ways I’ll never truly understand, the baby seats have held my boys throughout the crash, and that outside is now a horror scene.
I remember bickering with Clay about the ridiculous baby seats, being like fortresses, not at all soft and pretty, but fucking armour.
I choke on the taste of blood and sugar and tears and try to speak again. “Mummy is here.”
I said it!
It feels like the most important thing to say, as if nothing in my life has ever been more significant than letting them know I am here.
Louder this time: “Mummy is here.”
“Don’t move!” HJ’s head snaps back, eyes like lasers. His forehead is split open, blood matting his brow to his hairline. “They’re coming. Stay still in case you’ve broken something.”
“My babies?” I whimper.
He flicks his gaze from one car seat to the other, making sure I see his serious analysis. “They’re alive.”
“But they’re crying—” My voice cracks. Panic snatches my air. “Why are my babies crying? I want to see them, but I can’t move.”
“Hurt or scared, Fawn. ‘Course they’re screaming. Stay calm. Help will be here soon. If you force yourself to move, you might do more damage. Please, just for once, do as I ask.”
Why aren’t you moving?
“Can you move?” I sob.
“My legs are stuck. We hit a pole,” he admits darkly, before saying something into his microphone. His tone is urgent as he curses and speaks, alternating between his earpiece and me. To me—“Stay still.” To them—“We are trapped.”
Static.
“Where is the boss?” he asks someone on the other side of the speaker.
Clay…
“Clay!” I whisper his name as a plea. “Is he close?” Clay, Clay, Clay! Clay will be here soon. Clay will come.
Suddenly the door at my feet is wrenched open, the frame creaking in protest. Light floods my body from the newly opened door.
I blink hard, trying to focus. I see a silhouette, the harsh Australian sunlight bleeding around a big blockage. Behind the black form, another car is on its back, wheels still spinning in the air.
Squinting at the vehicle, I glimpse a pale arm flopped through the broken window, slapped to the road—everything upside-down—a dark red stream snaking down the limb. I close my eyes.
“Don’t touch her!” HJ barks.
My eyes snap open when two big, rough hands move up my body, massaging, feeling, untangling. Hands of a blue-collar worker, someone who spends hours growing callouses on their palms, working on machines or rock or brick. I see only a black oval hovering above me, not a face.
HJ’s car door is opened and another man leans in. “We need the jaws over here,” he shouts.
Then I am scooped up.
Behind me, I can hear the opposite passenger door crank open, my eyes darting back to watch a man in blue—a blue uniform—reaching in to grab Ash. A paramedic?
I look back at the man who has me in his arms and gasp. Dread claws at me. Thirty-or-so years old. Eyebrow scar. Leather jacket. Tattoos. A patch.
A biker.
No, no, no!
I find a fragment of strength. “Put me down!” I think I screech, but it comes out like a chirping baby bird. Baby… My babies. “I need to stay with them! No! I need to stay with them!” My head lolls, a wave of disorientation crashing down on me, sweeping me under consciousness.
I groan as he carries me across the road where cars are scattered, upside-down, on their sides—it was a pile-up. He lays me on a patch of grass, my arms and feet connecting with the soft, warm blades before my spine flattens.
“Who are you?” I breathe.
“Help,” he offers, gruff.
Help? “But you moved me? Why did you move me?” I mouth the words, each hard to expel. “I need to be with them. They need me. I need to be with them. You don’t understand.”
Breath stutters from me as I feel torn in two—my heart is in the SUV in pieces, two little boys who will one day call me Mummy. I can’t wait for that day. I want that day so much. Please, God, let me have that day.
“You don’t understand. You’re not a mother. They’ll be so scared. I need to be with my babies.”
“The others were being grabbed by the ambos, lady,” he states, tone reassuring, an attempt at soothing.
“Stay calm. Someone had to get you out; the car is on fire. I’m the medic for my club,” he assures.
“I wouldn’t have moved you if I weren’t sure I could.
You responded well when I checked your legs, arms, and neck.
I don’t think you have a break. I was very gentle, but don’t move anymore just in case. I think you may have a concussion.”
My lips are trembling. “My babies.”
My babies.
Mummy is just over here…
He lifts his head, dirt and blood caked in his brown beard, smeared across his neck and leather jacket, and scans the area, stopping on something in the distance. “They’re being put in the ambulance right now, with your bodyguard.”
I pant. So… “Are they ali—”
“Alive? Yes. All three.”
“So…” I try to catch my breath, to clear my vision, to slow down and hold on to hope. The lingering sense of dread won’t end. Something inside me screams this nightmare isn’t over. I can’t believe it is. That crash. It is… “It-it’s over? We all survived? They will be okay? Right?”
Then I hear the unmistakable timbre of Clay Butcher roar my name. “Fawn!”