18. Raleigh

CHAPTER 18

Raleigh

If I’d been told that I’d spend the day riding around in a police cruiser with two huge dogs and the county sheriff of my own volition… I’d laugh whoever said something so absurd out of the room.

And yet here I am, Derrick’s passenger princess.

I’m even wearing his clothes, for fuck’s sake. They smell like fresh air and lavender and him , and it’s way more difficult than it should be not to bury my face in the long sleeves and inhale. My white wedge boots don’t exactly match, but whatever- I’ll survive.

The reason I’m wearing them? Mine had puke on them. I’ve been feeling nauseous a lot lately- figured it was just my bad food choices or the stress of trying to catch Silver. But the moment I threw up, something clicked. When was my last period? It’s been over three months.

Three months… is three periods I should’ve had that I’ve missed, and worse, didn’t notice that I’ve missed.

My periods have always been a little unreliable- it’s not unusual for me to go a month without a period, and then have two in rapid succession- but never this unreliable. I can’t have missed three menstrual cycles without noticing.

But I haven’t confused the amount of time that’s passed. It’s been three months since Derrick and I were locked in that room together, and since then, I haven’t bled once.

I think I’m pregnant.

And the only man on the planet who could be the father… is Derrick fucking Lindman.

This is too big. This is too much. I’m pregnant?! Fuck. There’s probably a tiny creature inside of me and in nine months I might have a stomach the size of a watermelon and then give birth to it and be holding a baby made of me and Derrick fucking Lindman -

But no, that’s not right… it’s six months. In six short months, I might be changing diapers. A new thought breaks through the babble, and I feel my stomach roil all over again.

If I’m pregnant, that means I’ve been pregnant for three months and I know nothing about pregnancy, but I do know that this means I’m probably most of the way through my first trimester.

I might start showing soon.

I’ve only just discovered the possibility, and I could be feeling the baby move before long.

I place trembling fingers on my lower belly, hoping to sense something, anything, that confirms it. I’ve been so listless and bitter these last three months, and now I’m grappling with the idea that there could be a life growing inside me.

Tears leak from my eyes, but I quickly wipe them away, turning my head toward the window to hide my face from Derrick. Thankfully, he’s focused on calling the tow truck to have his Corvette repaired.

God, I don’t even know if I am. I’ll buy a pregnancy test as soon as I can. I’ll ask Derrick to stop at the convenience store, and I’ll check right there in the stall of the public restroom. I don’t want to get my hopes up.

But… it all makes sense now. The nausea that hit me out of nowhere last week, the way certain smells suddenly make my stomach churn. I’ve been an emotional rollercoaster. And those strange cravings? I never thought I’d be the type to crave olives and chocolate.

A baby

A baby’s not capable of judging me. A baby would need to rely on me, would need me to notice them.

I won’t be alone.

If you’re there, I’m here… for you, I say to myself, pressing my other hand slowly to my stomach overtop of the first, trying to make the gesture as discreet as possible. I can’t feel anything- I suppose it’s still too early. I have no idea when exactly I’ll be able to feel the baby move, or even how big it is right now.

I don’t know the first thing about babies, or being a mother, for that matter. But with my hands resting on my stomach and my eyes threatening to spill over again, I make a decision: I’ll do everything I can to be a good one. I’ll try harder than I’ve ever tried at anything.

If I am pregnant, I can’t stay in my brother’s house with this baby. He’d never forgive me for getting pregnant by one of his most bitter enemies. And frankly, I don’t want to have to look him in the eye if he were to find out. I wouldn’t be ashamed, but I am practical. He’s managed to keep forgiving me for my troublemaking, but this will be too much. I have to make my own way in this.

And what about Derrick? I glance over at him- the potential father. That means nothing to me, so long as I don’t think about it too hard. In fact, not only does he not need to be involved, but he never has to know.

I’ll leave. I’ll leave the estate… forever. I’ll go overseas, make a life for myself and my baby in southern Italy or Switzerland or France. I’ll raise this child without the restrictions or expectations that were forced on me for my entire childhood. They’ll be happy, and safe, and fiercely loved.

Losing everyone I’ve ever known will… not be easy. How could I possibly explain things to Iris, much less Thomas? I can only imagine they’d be more disappointed in me than they already are. But Clara? Surely, Clara would understand- she wouldn’t judge me. But even then, I can't ask her to keep a secret this big from Thomas, not when they’re just starting their marriage, finding their footing together. We’ve only just begun to reconnect, to find a new normal between us. How could I burden her with this now? It would only make things worse.

I still need to clean all my messes before I leave and that means, getting rid of Silver.

“Welcome to Bun & Run, can I take your order?”

I blink, jolted out of my thoughts as I shift in my seat, suddenly aware that we’re at a drive-thru.

Derrick orders some breakfast sandwiches and gets himself a hot tea. I desperately want to order one of the iced lattes on the menu- but I pick a fruit smoothie with white chocolate instead. Derrick also grabs two little cups full of whipped cream for his dogs.

To my horror, he hands them both to me.

“They’ll love you forever if you feed them these,” he promises.

I don’t want two big dogs to love me. I don’t even want them to like me. I want us to be ships passing in the night, never to grace each other with our presence ever again.

Derrick pulls out of the drive-thru with our sandwiches and onto the road before he realizes I haven’t stopped holding the two cups in my hands, staring at them in consternation.

“They’re not going to bite you, Raleigh,” he assures me, misinterpreting my hesitation.

“I don’t think they’re going to bite me,” I say, offended. “I think they’re going to slobber on me.”

Derrick laughs in surprise. God it’s such a nice laugh. So unfair. “I see. I thought you were afraid of them, or maybe dogs in general. But no, it’s not personal, you just think they’re gross .”

Well, when he puts it like that, I sound like a hell of a bitch.

I look back at the boys in the back seat. I don’t know which one is Chance and which one is Justice, but they’re both staring at me- very patiently, I’ll admit- with bright caramel brown eyes, asking me where the fuck I found my audacity. I’m denying them their whipped cream and insulting them?

Alright.

Slowly, I reach my arms through the partition, holding a cup out to each of them. They immediately bury their big black noses in them and start licking up cream with gusto.

Okay. I’ll admit it. That’s… pretty cute. They’re such big dogs that I half expected them to rip the cups out of my hands, but they’re actually being very careful to not make a mess.

“Is whipped cream really good for them?” I ask Derrick.

“It depends on the dog and how well they digest lactose, and I don’t give it to them every day, but it’s a nice treat,” Derrick says. I can hear the smile in his voice, and I refuse to look over to discover if that smile is pointed at me or at the dogs. Either way, I can feel myself blushing.

I’m actually disappointed when the dogs have licked every last speck of cream out of the cups. They lick their noses clean and stare at me.

“I don’t have any more,” I say defensively. I’m not going to be guilted by these furballs into scraping the whipped cream off my own smoothie and giving it to them. Absolutely not .

“How do you tell them apart?” I ask.

Derrick smiles, and it’s a cousin to the nostalgic good boy smile that he uses in all his political ads. It’s real.

“Well, I’ve had them since they were puppies, so I know them like the back of my hand now. But what helped when they were little was- Chance’s ears are darker, and Justice has the brown star on his forehead. Their personalities are also totally different. Chance values his personal time. If you wake him up while he’s sleeping, he’ll side-eye you for an hour. And Justice is a crybaby like you wouldn’t believe. He begs for everything. He’s on his best behavior right now because of you, of course, but he would’ve been whining for that whipped cream if it were just me.”

I smile at Justice, so he knows I appreciate how well he’s behaving. He bobs his head and licks his nose. We get each other.

Also, I too hate being woken from my naps. Chance’s gained a point in my book.

“Can we stop at a gas station? I want to get some chips.”

Derrick’s phone starts vibrating, texts coming in rapid succession. “Sure. Hold on.” He pulls into another parking lot and reads through them, then types an address into his GPS. His smile is gone, his blue eyes suddenly frosty.

“You don’t mind if we check this lead first, do you?”

“No, not at all.”

“We’ve got the address for the owner of that Buick. An Emma Clarke.”

Emma Clarke? That’s not right. That’s not Silver.

Derrick turns in his seat to look directly at me. “A couple things before we head over there. We’re going to drive around the neighborhood of the address, and if there’s anyone at the house itself, I’m going to ask the homeowner a few questions. That’s it. We don’t have a warrant to enter the house, and we don’t have any evidence at present that the person the car belongs to is involved with Silver.” He points at me. “You are going to stay in the car with Chance and Justice.”

“ Excuse me-”

“No,” Derrick cuts me off, his tone so firm that the dogs and I freeze. “I am trained, I am armed, I’m wearing body armor, and I have legal precedent to be asking questions about a stolen car. You are…”

To his credit, he does pause before calling me a civilian, maybe understanding how ridiculous it is that a member of a mafia family counts as a ‘civilian’ in this case.

Or maybe he was just stopping himself from calling me a ‘ criminal ’. Rude.

“You’re a civilian,” he goes on, “and you aren’t armed or wearing any form of protection. So you’re staying in the car.”

Hm, yes. Maybe if either of us were wearing protection the first time we met, I wouldn’t be here right now.

But if we’re going straight to Silver’s legal address- and I believe we are- then I need to be involved. I have to help bring him down.

Derrick actually looks surprised when I nod. “All right,” I lie. “I’ll stay in the car.”

Emma Clarke- whoever the fuck that is- lives in a modest suburb with neat little lawns and two-car garages.

I’m disappointed, honestly. Up until we started driving past identical little houses with identical little yards, I was still daydreaming about storming Silver’s house and arresting him today . Instead, we have to ask this Emma a bunch of questions, and hope her answers will lead us directly or indirectly to Silver, and not just straight into another dead end.

“This is bullshit.”

“What is?” Derrick asks, and I realize I’ve spoken out loud.

I chew on my words. “I just- I expected this to be more straightforward. There’s a guy running a gang and we want him to stop? Cool. We find him, we kill him. But no one seems to actually know who this guy is or where.”

Derrick smiles crookedly. “You do know that most people don’t know your brother is a mafia boss, right? It’s not common knowledge”

“What’s that have to do with anything?” I ask, instantly wary.

“I mean, most people believe he’s a business investor and real estate tycoon, or they don’t know he exists at all. That’s his public persona, his mask. The Warwick estate is just some really rich guy’s heavily secured mansion. There’s a huge portion of the populace that doesn’t even think modern mafias exist, or that they only exist in other countries.”

I… never thought of the fact that most people don’t know who my brother is. I’ve always felt invisible because I’m a trivial part of the Warwick family, but the idea that Thomas is invisible to others too? Impossible. Ridiculous.

“S-So?” I stammer.

Derrick looks over at me, maybe hearing how badly he’s just rattled me. “So… who is Silver when he’s not a gang leader? What’s his mask? Sure, sometimes it’s as easy as catching a man committing a crime on camera, running some facial-recognition software, showing up at the guy’s house, and arresting him. But sometimes it’s not that simple, and we have to ask questions about a person’s motives, their past, and their goals before we can start looking.”

I shake my head, my mind shifting on its axis.

Silver literally wears a mask. But I’ve never wondered who he is underneath it.

Because every time I think of Silver, I think of him standing before that bare mattress with a matte black gun in his hand. He’s not a human with a human face in my memory. The fangs painted on his mask are real.

Silver isn’t a person to me. He’s a monster.

I’ve felt insane and stupid many times before in my life. But this is the first time I’ve wondered if I’m literally unstable. My brother is just an armed businessman, and Silver is human.

I know so little and understand even less. What else is true in the world beyond the Warwick estate’s walls? How long will it take me to catch up to a person who hasn’t lived inside for the first twenty-five years of their lives?

How am I supposed to start questioning why someone else is the way they are when I don’t even know who I am?

“Raleigh?”

I jump, even though Derrick didn’t shout. He’s slowed the car to a stop on the street and is staring at me like I’ve grown a second head. “What?” I say, more sharply than I mean to.

Derrick’s eyes are too sharp. Too clear. He’s seeing right through me, and I don’t like it. “What’s wrong?”

Get your shit together, Raleigh.

I absolutely do not want to cry in front of him again. I’m not going through more vulnerable and embarrassing self-discovery with Derrick Lindman as my witness.

Instead, I smirk my hardest smirk at him. It’s the only thing I can think of that will hide my tumbling thoughts. “You’re really a cop, aren’t you?”

Derrick blinks. “I’ve been a cop almost as long as you’ve been alive, Raleigh.”

“Yeah, but I just assumed you drifted on my dad’s money,” I say, and refuse to feel bad about it. “And that you caught his eye because you were good at playing roles. But everything you’ve been saying about proper procedure and asking questions? That sounds pretty legit.”

The line is back between Derrick’s eyes, and his jaw is working as he thinks of a response. I’ve not only irritated him enough to make him forget about my spiraling thoughts, but I’ve genuinely upset him.

Instead of responding to me though, he just jerks his chin, indicating something over my shoulder.

“We’re here,” he says, and turns off the car with a sharp twist of the key.