Chapter 35
CHASE
“What the fuck are you playing at?” Landau chucks his unraveled bow tie onto the small interview table, his face tight with anger.
“I don’t want to hear it,” I growl, the split in my lip reopening.
“Oh, you’re gonna hear it alright.” He flicks the top button of his tuxedo shirt open. “You beat a man to a pulp in a room full of witnesses, and for what? Some chick?”
My lip curls and I rise so fast that my chair tumbles to the ground. “You watch your fucking mouth when you talk about her.”
“Or what? You’re gonna assault me too?”
My nostrils flare as we square off, my brain still spinning like a top at how my night took such a turn. He curses, turning away and thrusting a hand through his black hair and muttering. “Your group are all the fucking same, blowing your life up for a woman.”
I let out a deep lungful of air and turn away, deciding to take a seat on the floor rather than suffer the small flimsy chair with a wonky leg any longer. The back of my head has just dipped to the wall when he speaks again.
“What are you doing?”
“Making myself comfortable. I assume from your bitch fit I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.”
“Why the hell do you pay me so much if you think I can’t get you off for a scuffle?” He lifts one eyebrow pointedly, and my mouth parts.
“But then why were you—”
“Because you’re acting like a fucking idiot and it pissed me off!” Landau barks, his brows knotting into a scowl. Despite his obvious frustration, he leans over and offers me his hand.
I take it, rising to stand with my patience in tattered pieces. “We need to go and see Glen. Right now.”
“There is no need.” Landau drops my hand and walks over to the door, rapping his knuckle twice on the reinforced window. “He’s already here and he wants to speak with you.”
A low buzzing sound cuts the air, and the door opens to reveal Glen Powers, Attorney General for the state of New York.
“Glen, I need your help.” I cut right to the chase. The time for formalities and polite greetings has passed, and every second that Pepper sits in a cell somewhere is a second wasted.
“I can’t help you with Miss Quinn’s case.” The tall man slides his hands into the pockets of his sharp suit, the grey creeping up from his ears glowing in the halogen light.
“That’s not good enough. My family spent a lot of money to help you get elected.
You owe me.” I curl my hands over the back of the chair and grip tightly, needing an anchor and not caring how many fucking lines I cross if it means Pepper home safe with me.
Heaven and Earth—that’s the way it has to be.
“And I’m grateful for that, but this isn’t a misdemeanor. It’s a federal case, Chase. It’s bigger than you or me. She pissed off a lot of powerful people, and this directive comes all the way from the top.”
The structure I’ve so logically built my life around shakes, foundations threatening to crumble.
Because my whole adult life, I’ve made damn sure that my happiness is my own—that my emotional safety is my own—and here, suddenly, I find it tied to something else.
To someone else. The power that takes away from me is terrifying.
“There has to be something you can do,” I croak, grappling with his words.
He sighs, swiping a hand down his face. “Well, there is one small thing.”
***
This night is turning into one from hell.
“Emily?”
Long dark hair shifts, my sister’s sallow face turning this way from where she stands next to the hospital bed where our mother lies. Machines beep and staff bustle about like worker bees in a busy hive.
I reach the edge of the bed and pull her into a hug right as she bursts into tears.
“There was nothing we could do to stop her! She just—”
“It’s okay,” I soothe, rubbing my hand up and down her back. “Landau told me what happened as soon as they let me out.”
Emily pulls back, sniffing. “That was really fucking stupid what you did, by the way.”
“Less about that and more about this.” I dip my head toward our mother, who lies prone, hooked up to machines that bleep softly and bandaged from head to toe.
“She arrived not long after you left—just when I got back from hair and makeup—and she was so drunk she just…” She trails off, her blue gaze leaping to Mom. “I don’t think she even felt all of the glass that was on the table when she fell.”
I let my sister go and turn to face the languid waves of the heart monitor, sucking in a deep breath. “Enough is enough. I should have done something a long time ago.”
“You? What about me? At least you were here! I was off…” She stops and lets out a sharp little growl, shaking her head. “I was off making stupid decisions.”
I hitch my cheek in confusion and she tilts her head, scuffing her hand over her brow.
“I suppose now is as good a time as ever to tell you.” She glances down at the end of the bed, her finger tapping six times on the industrial plastic, repeating until I break her out of it with my question.
“Tell me what?”
Her shoulders shake as she inhales, fidgeting in the black gown she wears barefoot as she meets my gaze, her heels discarded on the chair behind her. “I’m having a baby.”
The soggy ball of noodles sloshing around my head where my brain should be cannot process the words that come out of her mouth. So I just stare. She twists her hands up in front of herself, nibbling on her bottom lip.
“Pardon me?”
“I’m having a baby.”
It’s those four words again. The ones that make absolutely no fucking sense because they are coming out of my baby sister’s mouth. Except…she’s not a baby anymore. Not by a long shot.
“What…why…how?” I stammer, and then quickly correct myself when she raises her eyebrows in alarm. “I don’t mean how how.” Christ, I don’t even want to think about that for one second. “I mean, with who? Who’s the dad? The guy from Milan?”
“No dad, just me. He’s not in the picture.” She shrugs one shoulder and waits for me to process.
“And that’s what you want?”
She nods, her gaze dropping to her fumbling hands. “Doesn’t mean I’m not terrified.”
I huff out a small laugh, purely out of shock. My baby sister is having a baby. I groan internally, because this means another niece or nephew to keep up with.
“Well, I’m here for whatever you need.” I place my hands on her shoulders, forcing her to look at me. “Except maybe diapers. You can do that part.”
She smiles softly and slaps my arm, both of us stealing a soaring moment of joy despite the gloom that waits to reclaim it at any moment.
“You’re going to be an amazing mother, Em.”
“Am I?” She doesn’t look so convinced. “What if I accidentally let it play in the bath with a toaster?”
I crease my brow and stare at her like she’s lost her mind. “I’m going to say that’s unlikely.”
Air rushes out of her mouth and her shoulders deflate, turning her attention back to our mom and reluctantly dragging mine the same way. The levity of the moment dies, replaced with niggling worry.
“You go and fix this thing with Pepper. I’ve got this.” She waves a hand toward the door. I open my mouth to object, but she cuts me off. “I mean it, Chase. I’ll speak to the doctors and get her into some kind of program.”
She folds her arms in determination—an expression I’ve seen on her too many times over the years. “It’s time for me to step up.”
I rock back on my heels and take her in, all five feet and eight inches. If there is one thing about Emily, it’s that once she puts her mind to something, there is nothing in this world that can stop her from achieving it.
“Okay, thank you,” I manage to get out of a suddenly thick throat. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I can.”
She nods, a moment of sibling understanding passing between us that we don’t even need to acknowledge.
We’ve always had each other’s backs, and we always will, but her letting me go to Pepper’s aid is more than that.
It’s a silent acknowledgment that she knows what this woman means to me, and that life is too fucking short not to tell her how I feel.
Because I am completely and utterly in love with Pepper Quinn.