A Twist of Fate Read online

  I shook my head, trying to clear the cobwebs, but that just hurt. A cramp in my abdomen drew my attention just as my hearing kicked back in. A woman was yelling angrily. I glanced back up in time to see her. The bitch who had been causing us so much grief over the past few months was coming towards me with something in her hands. I saw the menace in her eyes, the intent to do me harm. I glanced back to Toby, ready to say my goodbyes to him, but his lips were moving. He was yelling something at her. My mind was still fuzzy, not fully processing, but it stopped her in her tracks. She moved toward him, yelling back at him as she went, then she was standing there screaming at Toby. I remember the terror I saw in his eyes as they locked on me for just one precious moment before warmth spread outward trailing down my thighs…

  I had only looked away for a moment. Just one moment before everything I loved was ripped away from me.

  I don’t remember the ride in the ambulance.

  Shock. That’s the word I kept hearing. The only one that seemed to get through. Surgery. They said that one too when I was able to make my mouth work to ask. All they kept saying was, “She’s in shock,” or “He’s in surgery, honey.”

  It didn’t feel like he was in surgery.

  It felt like he was gone.

  I was alone. The room they took me to, eventually, was quiet as a church on a Monday.

  “Gretchen?” I heard a familiar, feminine voice say from the doorway. The nurse had walked out moments ago, after refusing to update me on Toby’s status, and had left the door open. I turned my head slightly to the side to see the woman who stood there.

  “Ever!” I called out as the tears leaked down my face again. She would be able to tell me something. She was family. She could find out. Actually, it wasn’t just Ever there. Her mother and father were with her. “Please!” I begged with my raspy voice. “They won’t tell me.” I had to stop speaking as the sobs forced their way to the surface. “Is he okay?”

  “Is who okay?” Ever asked me, looking both puzzled and hurried.

  “Toby,” I managed to get his name out even though it was only a whisper on my lips. A prayer. Because I knew. I knew. I couldn’t feel him anymore. Before, I could always feel the possibility, the anticipation of seeing him again. Now, all I could see was the look in his eyes before… I refused to see it again. To see what she had done.

  Ever and her parents moved further into my room then. I had to explain. “We were on our way,” I started to tell them. “Your house. We were headed there to…” I glanced down at my belly, my hand moving over it, cradling what we had been so damn excited to tell them. I glance back up to see two more men in my room, ones I had seen in passing before when picking Toby up from the clubhouse. “I am…” I couldn’t speak past the tears. The damn things kept clogging my throat and making it too thick. “I was pregnant. We were going to tell you,” I blurted out before my words failed me again. I didn’t have a chance to get anything else though before Ever and her mother swooped in and cradled me in their arms while I cried for what I’d lost.

  “Oh, sweet girl,” Lucy whispered against my hair.

  “Gretchen,” Ever choked up and couldn’t get anything else out as she held on to me until I winced from the pain of her pushing on one of the sore spots on my arm.

  “What is going on in here?” It sounded like the doctor who had been in to see me earlier. “You all need to leave,” he ordered with authority.

  Lucy stood, moving away from me, albeit it looked as though she was doing so reluctantly. “We are her family,” she stated coolly.

  “Lucy?” The man asked as he moved around Merc so he could see who all was in the room beyond the men who crowded nearer to the door. “What’s going on? I was told the young lady didn’t have family here to call.”

  “My son is her man, so she has his family here with her, and you will update her on his condition as if she was one of us,” Lucy informed him. God, my heart thundered in my chest. We didn’t even get to tell her about us and here was Toby’s mother, making sure I was a part of them. She was making sure I could get answers too.

  “Yeah, okay, we’ll see to that,” my doctor agreed. Then he turned his attention back on me. “Are you okay with these people being here when we talk about your condition though?”

  Deck was suddenly there. Somehow, I had missed his presence altogether. He spoke and left the room before I could really pull my thoughts together and understand what was going on around me. Everything was still very confusing and slightly foggy around the edges.

  “Ms. Tierny,” he sighed. “We have an OB coming down to check you over and make sure that everything is as it should be.”

  Tears raked down my face once more, if they ever even bothered to stop at all. “Everything isn’t as it should be,” I ground out. “I shouldn’t be here. Toby shouldn’t be in surgery. My baby shouldn’t be gone. What more do you want? Is there something else you’d like to take?” I knew my anger toward the doctor was unreasonable. I just didn’t know where else to put it in that moment.

  Lucy was back by my side as the doctor stood there and tried to figure out how to say what needed to be said to me without causing more of an emotional outburst. “It’s okay sweetheart, we’ve got you. My boy will have you when he’s better too. Everything will be okay. You’ll see. I know it hurts right now, but you’ll heal and have many more grandbabies for me to spoil rotten, okay?” She stroked my hair as she spoke, and the calming gesture almost had me believing the words she spoke. At least, they had helped before the doctor finally spoke up again.

  “We need to check to see if your body needs help with the,” my doctor seemed unsure of how to proceed with so many angry glancing being shot his way from Toby’s family. “I’m sorry,” he offered. “There isn’t an easy way to do something like this.” Toby’s father grabbed on to the doc’s shoulder and squeezed. I honestly couldn’t say if the gesture was meant to shut the man up or encourage him to just come out with it. I already knew what he was trying to say though. They needed to make sure I didn’t still have parts of my baby floating around inside my body. Just acknowledging that in my own head sent me into full-blown body-wracking sobs once more.

  “Doc, how about you give the women a few minutes. You know who Lucy is?” The doctor nodded as Double-D spoke to him. “Let her work her magic.”

  “Use the call button for the nurse’s station,” the doctor explained before giving the family some time alone with me.

  “Yeah man, make sure that they bring any news of Toby to us here. We’ll be sitting with his woman until he’s brought back down.” Toby’s dad didn’t give any room for argument as he told the doctor what to do. I sort of admired him for that, but it was a fleeting feeling. It seemed I wasn’t capable of holding onto much beyond anger and overwhelming sadness.

  The anger rode me hard, and before I realized what I was doing, words were spilling out of my mouth. “She tried to kill us. She did this. She took my baby. I warned him she’d been coming around more and more. My baby is gone now. What am I supposed to do? I want to take everything from her the way she took it all from me.”

  Double-D came marching over to the side of the bed where his wife was holding on to me. He lowered himself to his knees so he could look me in the eye. “What did you just say, darlin’?”

  “She killed my baby!” I yelled at him as tears once again changed the tone of my voice to one I didn’t recognize. It almost sounded inhuman to my ears.

  “Who?” He asked me, though judging from the flash of something in his eyes, I was sure he knew exactly who I was talking about. Toby had gone to his dad just days before to try to get something done about the woman. That conversation was no doubt playing itself out in his head again.

  “Seneca,” I managed to get her name past my lips even though that bitch didn’t deserve to ever have anyone know who she was. “Your fucking club whore killed my baby!”

  Double-D stood and moved away from me. Understanding was in his eyes, but he had a pu
rpose now too. “Find her,” He ordered one of the men who had come into my room at some point. Jesus, there were too many people in here.

  “I’ll find her,” the man said before he took off like a flash of lightning. No one else said anything for a few long moments, but even I could feel the tension ramping up in the room.

  “Excuse me, I need to be able to speak with a Ms. Gretchen Tierny,” someone stated. Whoever it was had been blocked by the people clogging my room. Double-D stepped aside and I was able to see that the man who had spoken was flashing a badge that hung around his neck. It’s a good thing he had it because his jeans and polo shirt didn’t quite scream ‘cop’ to me. Then again, I remembered speaking to him before when I first brought in. At least, I thought I did. There were flashes of memory coming to me that hadn’t been there moments ago. Being taken out of the ambulance. The man standing in front of me was shouting questions as they wheeled me into the hospital. What a dick. Why didn’t he wait? I shook off the thought because there was something more important that I wanted to know now.

  “Did you find her?” My voice sounded scratchy and abused even to my own ears, but that couldn’t be helped.

  “We have her in custody, ma’am. I just needed to go over things with you one more time.” I tipped my head forward and back in slow agreement. “You all can wait out in the hall while I speak to Ms. Tierny.”

  “That’s not going to happen!” Lucy told the man without any hesitation.

  “Excuse me?” The cop asked her as one brow raised nearly into his hairline.

  “This girl just lost her baby, my grandbaby, and we are still waiting to hear news about my son who is currently in surgery.”

  “Your son is Tobias Brothers?”

  “Yes, and we are all family so don’t even think about dismissing anyone.”

  The officer muttered something under his breath that I didn’t catch before he started his questions. “Okay, let’s start from the beginning. You said this woman had been following you around?”

  I shook my head to indicate that was false. “She wasn’t following me. It was Toby. She’d gotten it in her head that he was going to be hers.” I’m sure there was no way I could hide the distaste I felt at having to tell anyone that. Not that some of the club men didn’t already know, but still. “He had been with her intimately once before, at the club.”

  The detective glanced at all the men in the room and the kuttes they were still wearing. “The Aces High Motorcycle Club?”

  “Yeah, she was one of their whores,” I confirmed.

  “A hang-around who fucks the men when it pleases them,” Merc corrected. “Not paid for services, and not against her will.” I understood why he had to butt in there. Honestly, I hadn’t been thinking about the difference between the slang term and the official title a paid prostitute might use.

  “You mentioned she followed Toby around,” the cop stated, not the least bit surprised by Merc’s clarification of things.

  “It’s been months. It started when Toby and I began dating. I didn’t want to get involved with him then because of,” I hesitated, glancing at Ever for a moment. I didn’t need to go into this with the cop when she still needed to be told how her brother and I got together in the first place. It wasn’t fair. I turned my attention to her instead. “I met him when he was there about the tattoos.”

  “I know that,” Ever informed me with a small little smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

  “Tattoos?” The detective questioned.

  “We work at Permanent Marks,” I explained. “Ever tattoos there and I work the front desk. Toby is her brother.”

  The detective gave Ever a once over before turning his attention back toward me. “Why didn’t you want to date him?”

  “That’s a family matter,” Ever explained. “It has nothing to do with this. It was about me.”

  “Still,” he insisted, not willing to let it go until he could decide for himself if it was relevant.

  “I was angry at my brother then. We’ve since reconciled. I’m guessing Gretchen was feeling a bit disloyal to me when she took a liking to my brother. She shouldn’t have felt that way. My brother is a charmer, but he’s also a good man.”

  A shocked breath left me as she spoke those words. I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear that acceptance from her. It gave me the strength I needed to finish telling the detective exactly what had gone on. “We had gone out a handful of times, and I liked spending time with him. Then we were coming out of the movies one night and this woman was standing there by his motorcycle, waiting for us. She started making claims that Toby was hers and she simply didn’t mind sharing, but that it was time for him to come home to her now, because I’d had my turn.”

  Lucy’s gasp of surprise caught everyone’s attention. “When was that?”

  “About six months ago, I guess,” I told him.

  “Six months?” Lucy whispered the question. “She’s been following him around and causing trouble that long? I thought it was something new.” She glanced over at Double-D with the question still in her eyes. I don’t know if Toby’s dad knew anything before the other day. I was under the impression that Toby had tried to handle it without his biological family being any the wiser considering their troubled history with club whores in the past. He hadn’t wanted to add to their stress and cause a bigger rift between his parents and the club. I had a hard time not feeling regrets about his decision considering sparing them meant we ultimately ended up here like this. Then again, maybe it would have happened anyway. I didn’t know and the detective didn’t give me time to dwell on it any further.

  “What happened after that?”

  “We broke up for a while, but then he sweet talked his way back into my life. He told me about how he had been with Gretchen once, what her purpose was at the clubhouse, and that she was just crazy because he wouldn’t be with her. We spent that night together, making up.” I felt the heat of my own blush burning up my face, but I couldn’t leave that bit out. The officer would need to know why she had fixated on Toby.

  “The next day, she saw us out together and tried to pull the same shit. Only this time, she must not have been following him that night. She really did accidentally run into us that day. She tried to tell me she had been fucking him all night long, and asked how I enjoyed her sloppy seconds. I laughed at her, which pissed her off in pretty serious way. I knew she was lying because I’d been with Toby all night.” I picked at the blanket lying across my legs as everything we’d dealt with where this woman was concerned came flooding back, even things I had forgotten about for a while.

  “After that, we would see her places she had no business being. A few times, it was outside Permanent Marks. Sometimes it would be when we were walking through the grocery store. She didn’t approach us again, but she was always there. Most of the time it looked like she was legitimately there, you know. So, we couldn’t really say something to anyone about the fact that she happened to be shopping in the same store when she had a cart full of crap. We would see her at a club, but she would be dancing with someone. I thought it was just me going nuts, jealousy, or something. Then Toby told me he’d seen her car following him one day a couple months ago.”

  “I’ve seen her outside of our house whenever he’s been around the past few weeks. At first, I thought I was seeing things too. But she was just there earlier this week. I didn’t even know Toby was home, but I saw her outside of my bedroom window, and then when she realized someone had caught her there, she ran off,” Lucy added to my laundry list of stalking encounters. “What I need to know is what happened today.”

  “Seneca Davis was seen standing on the corner near the accident site talking to herself. A woman who had been waiting on a friend to come out of a shop overheard her saying something like ‘He is mine. He has always been mine. We’ll be together again. This is the only way.’ It was about that time that Mr. Brother’s motorcycle came riding down the street. Seneca took the bottle she’
d been drinking out of and tossed it at just the right moment. Toby lost control and they went down, slid for a bit. Ms. Tierny was able to get free of the wreckage, but Toby’s leg was pinned under the bike.”

  “She had a pipe or something in her hands,” I mentioned as I the memory of what happened started replaying in my mind. “She was going to use it on me. He yelled at her. Got her attention on him instead of me. He started telling her that she was fucking crazy and he’d never be with someone like her. He was pissing her off. He did it on purpose to keep her from hurting me. I took my eyes off of him for a just a minute. There was a hot rush between my legs,” I couldn’t get anything else out. It all stopped working as I remembered why I felt that sensation, why I’d looked away before…

  “According to witnesses, the woman lost her shit, ran at Toby with that pipe she had picked up from somewhere. It wasn’t part of the wreck. She,” he glanced around the room nervously. “She impaled him with it. He was brought here with it still intact in his abdomen.”

  “No!” Lucy’s voice sounded like an animal’s before she turned accusing eyes toward Double-D. A pit settled somewhere deep in my stomach as I remembered the stories about what Toby’s parents had gone through with crazy club whores and jealous assholes too. “I warned you. I told you to get rid of the whores. You promised me! Did you even try?”