Three Ruthless Bikers : One Temptation

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN — First Movement

LENA'S POV

Three things happened on the same Wednesday morning.

Edmund's lawyers filed a motion to suppress David's evidence on the grounds that it had been obtained through illegal surveillance. Two more women came forward publicly. And I woke up at five in the morning with my heart going too fast and a feeling I could not name sitting heavy in my chest.

I lay in the dark for a while trying to identify the feeling.

It was not fear. I had learned what fear felt like in my body by now. Fear was sharp and cold and lived in my throat. This was different. Heavier. Somewhere lower.

I got up and went to the kitchen and made tea and sat at the table in the early dark and waited to understand what I was feeling.

Ghost found me there at six.

He did not ask immediately. He made coffee and sat across from me and let the morning be quiet for a few minutes the way he sometimes did, giving things room to surface at their own pace instead of pulling them out.

"Edmund's lawyers filed again," I said.

"I saw," he said. "Helen called me at five."

"They want David's evidence suppressed."

"They do," Ghost said. "They will not get it. Helen has already prepared the counter argument. David's evidence was compiled over twelve years through legal means. Journalism. Public records. Witness interviews. There is nothing in that file that crosses the line they are claiming it crosses."

"They know that," I said. "They are not doing it because they think it will work. They are doing it to slow things down."

"Yes," Ghost said. "Delay is Edmund's only strategy now. He cannot win cleanly anymore. He knows that. His lawyers know that. Everything they file from here is about buying time and exhausting resources."

"Will it work," I said.

"Not on us," Ghost said simply.

I wrapped both hands around my mug and looked at the table between us. "Two more women came forward."

"I know," he said softly.

"Seven now," I said. "Seven women over fifteen years." I looked up at him. "How does a man do that for fifteen years and no one stops him."

Ghost held my gaze. "Because he made sure the people whose job it was to stop him were the same people he was paying," he said. "That is what David's file proves. It is not just Edmund. It is the entire system around him."

"And we are dismantling the system," I said.

"Yes," Ghost said.

I nodded slowly. Let that settle.

Then the baby kicked and I grabbed Ghost's hand across the table and pressed it flat against my stomach before he could react and he went completely still and waited and when the movement came his eyes closed briefly.

"They are restless today," I said.

"They know something is happening," he said, which was not a rational thing to say and completely unlike Ghost and I loved him for saying it.

Axel was the one who drove me to the appointment that afternoon.

Rook had arranged a proper prenatal check at the off grid clinic, a more thorough one than the early scans, because he had been monitoring everything carefully and wanted a full picture of how three babies in one body were managing at this stage.

Axel drove with one hand on the wheel and one elbow out the window and talked the entire way about nothing in particular, which I had come to understand was his way of making space feel lighter when something was sitting heavy.

"You are nervous," he said at one point.

"I am not nervous," I said.

"You have been quiet for twenty minutes," he said. "You are nervous."

"Or I am enjoying the silence," I said.

He looked at me sideways. "You have never once enjoyed silence when I am in the car," he said. "You always eventually crack and start talking. Twenty minutes and nothing. You are nervous."

I looked out the window. "What if something is wrong with one of them."

"Nothing is wrong with them," he said.

"You do not know that."

"Rook would know," he said. "Rook has been monitoring you since day one. If something was wrong Rook would have already done something about it. You know that."

I did know that. It did not entirely help but I did know it.

"What if they come early," I said.

"Then we handle it," Axel said. "The way we handle everything."

"That is not a plan," I said.

"It is the only plan that has ever actually worked for us," he said. "We handle it. Together."

I looked at him. At the scar near his eyebrow and the easy way he held the wheel and the particular certainty he carried about everything concerning the babies that had been there since the moment he felt the first kick.

"You are going to be a good father," I said.

He did not say anything for a moment. Then, "I did not have a particularly good example to learn from."

"Neither did I," I said. "I think we are going to figure it out anyway."

He glanced at me sideways. Something warm and real in his expression. "Yeah," he said. "I think so too."

The clinic was quiet when we arrived.

Rook was already there, which should not have surprised me but did slightly. He had driven separately to set things up with the doctor beforehand, which was exactly the kind of thing Rook did without telling anyone he was going to do it.

He met us at the door and looked at my face and then at Axel's and said "all three are fine" before I had even said hello.

I stopped walking. "You do not know that yet. The scan has not happened."

"I spoke to the doctor this morning," he said. "Based on everything I have been tracking, all three are where they should be. The scan is to confirm what I already know." He held my gaze. "They are fine Lena."

I looked at him. At the complete certainty in his green eyes that had nothing performative about it. Rook did not say things to make people feel better. He said things because they were true.

"Okay," I said.

"Okay," he said back.

The scan took forty minutes.

The doctor was thorough and quiet and professional and I lay on the table and watched the screen and breathed carefully while she worked. Axel sat in the corner with his elbows on his knees and his eyes on the monitor the whole time. Rook stood near the equipment watching the readings with the focused attention of someone cross referencing what he was seeing with everything he already knew.

Three heartbeats.

Strong and clear and separate from each other.

The doctor took measurements and made notes and occasionally said a number that Rook responded to with a small nod of confirmation.

When it was done she turned to me and said everything is developing well and the babies are a good size for the gestational age and we should expect them to continue growing normally and I should come back in three weeks for the next check.

I said thank you and sat up and Axel crossed the room in three steps and hugged me before I could get off the table, a brief fierce thing, and said into my hair "told you."

I laughed.

Rook, from across the room, allowed himself a small quiet smile that he thought nobody noticed.

I noticed.

On the drive back Axel had the radio on low and the window down and the late afternoon light was coming through in a way that made everything look warm and temporary and worth keeping.

"Axel," I said.

"Yeah."

"Thank you for today," I said. "For the car and the talking and the not letting me spiral."

He glanced at me sideways. "That is what I am here for."

"No," I said. "That is what you chose to be here for. There is a difference."

He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "yeah. There is."

We drove the rest of the way back to the compound without talking much and it was the good kind of quiet this time, the kind that has something warm inside it, and when we pulled through the gate and Ghost was there on the steps looking up at the car, I watched his face relax slightly when he saw me, just slightly, and thought about how much a person can say without saying anything at all.