Thirteen
My entire body feels like one big ache. Actually, ache is far too tame a word for how I feel right now. I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck.
Wait! I was, wasn’t I?
Well, not a truck… just a motorcycle. I suppose if it had been a truck, it wouldn’t hurt this much at all, because I’d be dead.
Small mercies and all that.
My mind is still fuzzy, like it’s stuffed with cotton wool, as I try to remember the details, but try as I might, I can’t recall anything unusual. No loud engines, no commotion, no traffic congestion that might have led to a vehicle mounting the sidewalk and mowing me down.
One minute I was walking along, out of the way, right where I should have been. I wasn’t even trying to cross the road. Next minute I was surrounded by people and being scraped off the ground by an ambulance crew. And in between… nothing.
“Sweetheart, you’re finally awake!”
It’s not the voice I hoped for or expected, but I move my head, wincing at the stabbing sensation that arrows through my neck and my left temple as I try to focus on my mom.
I blink a few times, somewhat unsuccessfully, in an attempt to clear my blurry eyes as she comes to stand by the bed. “How are you feeling, honey?”
Honestly, that seems like a trick question.
“Where’s Kaiden?” I ask instead. I love my mamma dearly. We’ve always been close, but right now I just want my husband. Need him to hold me and tell me everything will be alright. That he’ll love me, and protect me, and cherish me.
Even with my blurred vision, I notice how she immediately stiffens and a frisson of unease skitters through me.
“He’s not here,” she says, but there’s something in her voice.
“Is he working?” I ask, knowing he’s been picking up every kind of job he can to keep us afloat. To support us so we can be together.
But even as I ask, I think I already know the answer.
“He’s gone, Aspen, and it’s for the best.”
Every muscle in my body contracts as if I’ve been punched, kicked while I’m already down, and I cry out in pain. But it’s the agony in my heart that sears me the worst, even as my battered flesh sings from the physical hurts.
“No!” I scream as alarms sound and bleeps increase in tempo. A nurse rushes in and shoos my mother out of the way before jabbing me with a sedative.
“You’ll soon feel better,” she assures me before leaving the room, but she’s wrong. I’ll never feel better again.
My head is swimming even more than before, but I refuse to give in to the tug of oblivion. Not yet.
“Where is he?” I demand from my mother as she returns to my bedside, her eyes swimming.
“Aspen, you know nobody leaves the mafia. You can’t just walk away.”
An even worse fear hits me. “Is he… is he…” I can’t even say the words.
“He’s alive, as far as I know,” she tells me, but her mouth is tight, and I figure she knows more than she’s saying.
My heart, my mind, my soul is a cacophony of contradiction. Relief that he still lives, but distraught that he’s abandoned me.
“He left me?” The words are small and anguished, and my mother reaches out and takes my hand.
“He saved you,” she says instead. “He sacrificed for you. Just as surely as he almost cost you your life.” There’s a harsh bitterness to her voice.
“What do you mean?” I whisper, barely comprehending what she’s trying to say.
“All your incidents and accidents? Did you really believe they were simply a series of misfortunes?” she demands, her tone angry now. “You were targeted, Aspen. Kaiden put a bullseye on your back when he left La Cosa Nostra and married you.”
“No!” The word comes out as more of a pained whimper than the denial I want it to be. “He worked his whole childhood for nothing to pay someone else’s debt. He served his time and turned eighteen. They don’t own him anymore.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” she hisses at me as my blood pressure starts to spike again.
“Well, you’d know, I guess.” It’s a low blow.
I’ve never called my mother out on her relationship with Don Salvatore before.
Not even as a teenager when she became pregnant with my baby brother without another man on the scene, except for the one she ‘visited’ several evenings a week.
Although that’s when I got wise about the nature of those visits… and to a married man no less.
Her eyes widen, but before she can respond, the nurse hurries in again.
“I see your heart rate is still elevated,” she says, fiddling once again with the dial on the bag of fluid I’m hooked up to via a cannula in the back of my hand.
“I’m going to up your dosage. You’ll get drowsy after this, but it’s probably better if you sleep and relax. ”
She checks my chart and notes something down on it. “The good news is, your final test results are back in, and there’s been no ill effects on the baby. Everything is progressing normally with your pregnancy, despite your accident.”
I choke, then burst into tears, and the nurse pats my arm. “I know how worried you must have been, Mrs. Brooks, but you’ll have good news to share with that handsome young husband of yours when he comes back again.”
She leaves, not knowing how she’s just upended my entire world.
“You’re pregnant?” My mother’s tone is strangled when she finally finds her voice.
“Apparently,” I tell her, refusing to meet her eyes.
“You didn’t know?”
“No… Kaiden was here?”
“You can’t tell him,” Helene hisses. “He’ll try to do the right thing, then both you and your baby will suffer the consequences. The child will just be another target for Vito Rossi to use to keep Kaiden in line. In fact, since you didn’t know, maybe you should consider…”
“Absolutely not!” My voice is suddenly stronger than it’s been since I woke up.
“But you’re so young, Aspen. You’re still in school, and you’ll be a single parent…”
“What, like you were when you fell with Milo?” I don’t say it to be mean. Just to remind her that she also was faced with this same choice.
Besides, how could I ever get rid of the last little piece of Kaiden I have?
“He must never know, Aspen. It’s too dangerous. If you keep this baby, it needs to be a secret.”
I’m suddenly exhausted. I don’t know if it’s the meds or my emotional state, but the blackness is pulling me under, and this time, I willingly let it take me.
I don’t want this conversation. I don’t want to consider the impact all this will have on my life.
My heart bleeds far worse than my body, but fear for Kaiden has me balanced on a knife-edge.
I understand my husband better than my mother, or even Kaiden himself thinks.
I know he would sacrifice to keep me safe.
Of that I have absolutely no doubt at all.
But my mother’s right. A baby would change things.
After what his father did to him, there’s no way Kaiden would willingly abandon his own child.
It would cut too close to the bone. And that might be the downfall for all of us.
Kaiden thinks I’m naive - innocent. I’m not.
I just choose to overlook the things I can’t change.
Accept them. Ignore them. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know they’re there.
Sure, it might have taken me longer than some to realize the kind of world Kaiden had been drafted into.
The one my mother skirts the edges of. The players and the pawns.
But I know who they are and what they do.
I just don’t let on. I like to think that keeps me off their radar.
It’s not a world I want to be involved in, regardless of how I feel about Kaiden.
So maybe he’s right. Maybe I am naive for thinking we could be free of them.
I’m not so unworldly that I haven’t heard the stories and rumors about Vito Rossi.
The man they call the Viper for good reason.
And I saw first-hand how he treated Kaiden.
The dreadful things the bastard used to do to my sweet boy.
But I truly thought my husband could extract himself once he came of age.
Or maybe that’s just what I wanted, needed, to believe.
I close my eyes and block out the world, retreating into my mind and reaching towards the beckoning darkness that entices me, promising peace and escape from my tattered emotions.
A baby. A sweet, innocent life. A small part of Kaiden for me to cherish and hold close.
I was ready to fall apart when Mamma told me Kaiden was gone.
It felt like my heart was in a vice, being squeezed until it ruptured.
And then came the unexpected news that I’m carrying his child.
It’s like I’ve been blessed with this baby to keep me balanced and sane.
It eases the vice-like grip on my chest, and even though I’m terrified, I feel a strange kind of peace settle around me.
Or maybe it’s acceptance of the inevitable.
Either way, like it or not, I know what I have to do. And I will do anything I have to, to keep this precious gift safe from the clutches of those who would use it as any form of leverage. Even if it means we both have to disappear from Kaiden’s life completely.