Chapter 7 Rachel
SEVEN
RACHEL
“Motherfucker.” The bathroom doorknob rattled and shook again. “Is someone in there?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and tried to tell myself that my houseguests would be gone within the week to their newly pink abode.
“Giulia, that’s why the door is locked,” I said as calmly as I was able.
“Rachel?”
My brow furrowed at the hitch in her voice. “Yeah?”
“I’m really sorry, but are you almost finished?”
Awkward.
I heaved a sigh, then something hit me.
Giulia apologizing?
Giulia saying ‘sorry’?
That was when I realized something had to be really wrong. Was it the Dresden boy? Nyx hadn’t mentioned him during church today.
Seeing as I was only sitting on the toilet seat, not doing anything other than staring at my feet, my gaze trained on the test I’d thrown in the trash can, I unlocked the door.
She reared back when she saw me sitting on the seat, clearly expecting my pants to be around my ankles, then frowned as she waddled in, belly first.
I stared at that belly.
Was transfixed by it.
I’d been there once before, and I’d vowed I’d never get pregnant again.
Fate was such a bastard.
She cleared her throat, drawing my attention to her face, so I straightened up, saying, “I’ll leave you to it.”
“No. You don’t have to go.”
I arched a brow. “I don’t want to see you pee.”
“I don’t want to pee,” she warbled before she closed the door, with me on this side of the bathroom, locked it, and then promptly burst into tears.
Holy hell.
Rattled, I stared at her a couple seconds. I’d known her when she was a kid, didn’t exactly know her now that she was an adult and a Sinner’s Old Lady even if she had been living with me the past couple months.
She was Nyx’s woman. He was the VP of the Sinners, and his Old Lady was just as deadly as he was.
At least, that was what rumor said.
While gossip and hearsay could be useful in a court of law when used to manipulate a jury, around the Sinners, I didn’t need to be wondering about what they did and didn’t do.
The less I knew, the better.
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
The old saying whispered through my mind as I cast another glance at Giulia’s belly then at mine.
There was no sign of life there yet. No sign whatsoever. The pregnancy test had been a last-ditch effort of not having to go to the doctor’s to see if there was something really wrong with me.
I guessed I should be happy I didn’t have an ulcer.
Yay?
“What’s wrong, Giulia?” I asked her wearily.
I didn’t particularly want to know, but she was clearly distressed, and while my rep as an ice-cold bitch seemed to be set in stone in the tristate area, she was pregnant.
If I could solve her problem in the here and now, I wouldn’t have to hear Nyx and her arguing later on, followed by a three-hour-long session of angry sex.
Yes, three hours.
I wasn’t sure if I’d had three hours’ worth of sex in the past twelve months, never mind in one evening.
Of course, the hook up at the hospital ate into those one-hundred-eighty minutes for sure.
“I want to kill her.”
Confusion laced my words as I asked, “Who?”
Giulia was the kind of person who wanted to ‘kill’ a lot of people, verbally. This was different. The tears, the bitter hatred in her voice, it felt off to me.
“Kendra,” she hissed.
The memory of that white spandex dress had me grimacing.
“Why Rex lets her stick around, I’ll never know,” I muttered gruffly. “She’s been trouble since she showed up.”
Giulia blinked at me.
“What?” I asked awkwardly.
“I’m surprised you know who she is.”
I watched as she knuckled her eyes, looking remarkably like the small child I’d once babysat many moons ago. She wouldn’t recall that, I didn’t think her brother Hawk did either, but I remembered.
My throat even tightened at the memory.
Babysitting her was what had led to my attack.
“I know everyone in the MC,” I told her easily, my tone remarkably free from the horrors that had haunted me since I was seventeen.
I balled my hands into fists as she questioned, “You do? Why?”
“Because it’s my business to know.” I studied her. “What’s the problem?”
“No problem. I’m just… I didn’t think you liked working for the Sinners.”
“I neither like it nor dislike it.”
I worked for a lot of criminals. I was good at getting them off the hook, and it was far more challenging than siding with the prosecution. If I didn’t like anything, it was working with Rex. But, I couldn’t forget that I was only here because of him.
I’d gone to law school with enough money to pay for college and housing. I hadn’t needed to work. He’d covered every single cost, all with the intention of tying me to the MC in a neat, pretty bow.
I didn’t mind that, either.
I just minded that on the face of it, he wasn’t simply tying me to the Sinners. Really, he was tying me to him.
Another tie I didn’t need.
Giulia shook her head at my unruffled response.
“How are you so calm and collected all the time, Rachel? Even when your friend talked down to you, you didn’t react all that much.
Don’t you get mad? Don’t you cry? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you laugh.
Are you happy? Are you sad? I know you have nightmares; I hear them sometimes, but you—” Taken aback, I straightened up and shot to my feet, but her hand was on my shoulder, pushing me down.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to intrude, but is there something I can do to help? ”
Giulia… help?
God, there really was something wrong with her.
“I’m fine,” I told her woodenly. “You’re the one who came bursting in here in tears.”
Her nostrils flared as she backed off, perching her butt against the vanity. “She said she fucked Nyx last night.”
I couldn’t help myself—I snorted out a laugh. Especially when I thought of how, the last time I saw her, Nyx had shoved Kendra’s hand away as if it were coated in acid.
“You can’t seriously believe her?”
She just bit her lip.
My eyes rounded. “Giulia, you know Nyx is nearly forty, don’t you?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” she defended with a huff, a gleam of outrage bursting to life in her eyes.
The woman was malevolence personified.
Seemed fitting that only Nyx’s hellspawn could be the chink in her armor—hormones, they were women’s true enemy.
“It means that most men his age are starting to look for little blue pills to get them hard. You and Nyx fuck like there’s an apocalypse the next morning. If he used it anymore, it’d fall off.”
“You’re right.”
Her calm glance was somehow more disturbing than her tears.
“I know I am,” I groused, just thinking about last night’s three-hour marathon which had sounded like one or both of them were dying.
Only to myself would I admit that I was jealous.
Just a quarter inch.
“The question is,” I plowed on when her look was more disturbing than any the Long Beach Butcher—a serial killer I’d defended last year—had given me during our interviews. “Giulia, why would you believe her?”
“I’m on edge,” she argued.
“You’re always on edge.”
“More than usual.”
“Why?”
Giulia huffed. “I’m pregnant.”
“So? You’ve been pregnant for the last six months,” I pointed out, then it hit me. “Oh.”
“Oh, what?” she snapped.
“She called you fat, didn’t she?”
Her mouth tightened. “That bitch.”
“Yeah. That bitch,” I repeated, even as I got to my feet and encouraged her to rest on the toilet seat. “Do you feel fat? You know Nyx looks at you like you can walk on water, Giulia, so I don’t think—”
She sniffled. “I burst the seam on my favorite pair of jeans today, and none of my clothes fit.”
“Do you want to go shopping for maternity clothes?”
I could think of nothing worse, but her misery hit me on the raw.
“I don’t want to be one of those women.”
I arched a brow. “One of those women whose clothes fit?”
Growling under her breath, she spat, “A mom woman.”
“What kind of woman is that? You are a mom,” I drawled, and though it was wrong of me to be amused, her disgust had my lips twitching.
“Yeah, but I can be a cool mom. A biker mom. I don’t want…” She sucked in a shuddery breath. “The doctor said we can’t have sex after I give birth for six weeks.”
“That’s normal.” Christ, after I gave birth, I didn’t have sex for years, never mind weeks.
“Might be for regular women, but Nyx is…”
Reading between the lines, I rasped, “If Nyx cheats on you because you’re healing, I will defend you in court if you chop off his dick.”
A snicker escaped her. “Thanks, Rachel. I needed that laugh.”
Though I smiled, I told her, “I mean it.”
“Yeah, I know you do.” She patted my shoulder before she leaned forward and awkwardly rested her elbows on her knees because her belly got in the way. “Everything’s changing, Rachel. Nyx isn’t killing pedos anymore, so the sex is helping control things, you know?”
Of all the things I’d expected to happen today, this conversation was not on my to-do list.
Even if I liked to stay in the dark, I knew Nyx’s days of killing pedophiles was on hiatus.
Gnawing on the inside of my cheek, I thought about the first one he’d ever slaughtered, and much as I’d done back then, I appreciated the gray.
That was why I defended the gray.
Because nothing was black and white.
Nothing.
“When you have the baby,” I spoke the words carefully, “Nyx will be looking after it too.”
Reaching for some toilet paper, she blew her nose. “Him. I’m having a boy.”
Pain twisted inside me. Sharp, unexpected. “Nyx will be looking after him too,” was all I said.
“I guess.”
“He’ll be exhausted as much as you are, and there’ll be things he’ll have to do that will take his mind off the hunt. He’s going to be a dad, Giulia. That’s going to affect him.
“He values children too much. He’ll value you above all other women as well because you’ll give him what no one else has—a child. A family.”
She caught my gaze with hers. “It wasn’t—I didn’t—”
I reached up and squeezed her hand. “You can say whatever you want.” I shot her a smile. “Client-attorney privilege.”
Humor gleamed in her eyes again before it slowly died. “I’d let him sleep with her if it helped him control his demons.”
“You would?” I sputtered.
Slowly, Giulia nodded. “I’m surprised too.
I didn’t think love would be like this.” She rubbed a hand over her chest. “It hurts, but it makes you want what’s best for them, you know?
I need him to be…” She paused, blew out a breath.
“Nyx isn’t the kind of guy who wears happiness well.
So it isn’t that I need him to be happy. I just need him to have a baseline.”
“You’re his baseline.”
“Sex is his baseline. Don’t get me wrong, I’m horny as fuck right now. I’m on him more than he’s on me—” Well, privacy just flew out of the window. “—but after I give birth, that’s going to have to stop.
“I’m just worried, I guess. She hit me on a sore spot, and it blindsided me. Not just about the weight, but about Nyx needing more than I could give him.”
Shaking my head, I told her, “Giulia, I’ve known Nyx a lot longer than you have. I’ve seen him fuck his way through a lot of women. Sex is a constant. It never stopped his demons from clawing at him. Sex isn’t enough for that.
“You have more than sex. I don’t know what you have, to be fair.
You’re both lunatics, but you seem to mellow him.
Maybe you’re crazier than him so it means he has to be the rational one; I don’t know, and it’s not my place to.
You have your dynamic, it works for you, so now you have to have faith in that. ”
“We didn’t plan this kid,” she rasped.
“You didn’t have to. The second Nyx put his dick inside you without a wrap, I know he’d have been prepared for this to happen.”
Giulia stared at me. “You’re right.”
I patted her hand. “I usually am.”