Stone Cold - Ashby Crime Family

“I was pregnant with another man’s child, and Colm married me anyway. I lost the child, but by then my fate was sealed. I drank and drank, all day and all night. Barely living my life, just surviving from one day to the next. Then I got pregnant with Jasper.”

Did she know? She couldn’t. “And he changed your life?”

“No, he changed my priorities. It took me a long time, too fucking long, to get rid of a bad man. I don’t want you to spend a lifetime trying to kick this habit.”

A lifetime seemed so long. Impossibly long. “I’m not your problem, Sadie, with all due respect.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Bonnie. I’m going to help you.”

I didn’t know why this powerful woman gave a damn about me. I didn’t really trust her, but the small part of me that wanted it to be true sprang to life and started to warm underneath her perfect words. But still I protested.

“I’m not worth your help, really. You have so much more to worry about.”

Then a flash of something came to me. Laughing and loud music, the sound of fabric tearing. More laughter. Grunts.

“No!” I heard myself screaming.

Sadie rubbed a gentle hand up and down my arm and another flash came to me, blood on my arm. In the desert.

“They…” The voices had injected something. “Doctor! Sadie, please, the doctor.”

I wanted to tell her about the baby, to share this news with someone, but I couldn’t. Not until I knew how I felt about it. Not until I had a plan.

Sadie brought Dr. Lennox in and then left us alone. Through tears, I explained to the doctor what I remembered. Men. Holding me down and shooting me up. I was high. Higher than I’d ever been.

Two men masturbating and coming on my face, forcing their dicks into my mouth. They each had their hands on me. In me. Then they shot me up again and I felt warm liquid splashing on my face. Urine? My mouth had a terrible salty taste and I passed out.

“Maybe you can call the police? Mr. Ashby has made it clear the hospital can’t get the police involved. And as the owner of the hospital, we have to listen to his demands. I can bring you a phone if you’re willing to call the police.”

“No! I just want to get out of here. No police, just let me go.”

“I can’t do that. But if it makes you feel any better, whatever drug they used had cleared your system by the time you arrived, so you’re, everything is fine.”

“Thank you,” I gasped, unable to forget their filthy hands.

“Get some sleep, Bonnie, your body still needs to heal.”

I knew she was right, but I couldn’t relax, not when my worst nightmare had come true. Though as I stared up at the pale green ceiling, I realized that being pregnant and unmarried wasn’t my worst nightmare. It would be difficult, sure, but it wasn’t the worst thing I could think of.

I just needed a plan. Two plans.

Plan A and an exit plan.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Cal

I sat fuming in the car outside the private medical center that Jasper owned fully, outside of the family. Sadie, my own damn mother, had blocked me from going inside to see Bonnie.

It was total bullshit, and I sat out here pissed off, instead of going inside to check on Bonnie. To see with my own damn eyes that she was all right. I had to or I was looking at another sleepless night.

Every damn time I closed my eyes, all I could see was Bonnie’s lifeless form, crumpled on the desert floor, replaying how I felt in that one solitary moment when I thought she was dead. I never knew a person’s pulse could be so low and stay alive. But she was alive and, according to the prickly Dr. Lennox, she would be fine.

But that was all I could get out of the good doctor. It was clear something had happened to Bonnie, something cruel and unimaginable. Something she probably wouldn’t want to talk about with Maisie or me, or anyone else for that matter. Something that could push her farther away from me, deeper into the abyss of her fucking addiction.

Below rock bottom.

The car door opened, and Sadie slipped into the passenger seat with a serene, satisfied smile on her face. Without sparing me a glance, she reached for the seatbelt and draped it across her chest, waiting patiently for the car to start moving.

“Well? Aren’t you going to say anything?”

In typical Sadie fashion, she turned to me slowly, sighing with impatience. “What is it that you want me to say, Calvin?”

“Uhm, for starters you can tell me how Bonnie is doing? Is she awake? Talking? Did she say what happened to her, or what she can remember?” The moment I could get close enough to Bonnie, I had at least fifty more questions I could and would ask her. It almost felt as if she didn’t want to see me.