Page 54 of Climbing Everest

Brixton

T he blinking dot on my phone hasn’t moved in over an hour. Madd has updated us a couple times, but nothing is making the surge of rage, fear, and pain lessen.

Fuck. I knew we should have told her earlier, there’s just been so much shit going on at once, it kind of took a back seat.

Or maybe you kind of like the idea of her carrying your baby.

Fuck. I can lie to her, to the others all I want, but not a chance I can lie to myself. I want to see her rounded with my kid. I want to see her tits and ass all plump as she grows a life in her belly.

I want the child that was stolen from us all those years ago. I want the family and future that was stolen from us.

Oh, and I really fucking want Dima Sidorov’s head mounted on a pike in the front yard. We’ll just pretend it’s a scarecrow or some shit if anyone gets too curious.

Well, shit. Now I’m starting to sound as fucked in the head as Maddox. But in reality, that cocksucker Dima deserves nothing short of pain, agony, a long and painful death after what he put us all through, after what he did to his own fucking daughter.

I’ll admit, I’m still feeling that sense of gratification over the look on Dima’s face when Everest climbed the stage and stood in the spotlight where every single person in attendance could see her clearly.

I’m also feeling a bit murderous over the way her fucking mother had spoken to her, the way she’d treated her, the fact she hadn’t given two shits her only daughter was supposed to have been dead. And that she’d known Everest was alive and struggling to survive.

Both of them are pieces of shit, and they’ll both end up dead. Preferably at my hands.

“We should have told her earlier,” I say as I drop my head against the back of the couch.

Both Kato and I have been sitting in the living room, TV muted, while periodically checking for updates and watching to see if the little blip from Everest’s tracker moves.

“Yeah, well. Nothing we can do about it now.”

“I can’t lose her again,” I admit without looking at him.

He raises a glass filled with what I assume is bourbon to his lips in my periphery. “She’s not going anywhere.”

I finally raise my head and frown in his direction. “Because you think she’ll forgive us, or because you won’t let her go?”

Something hot and ugly is filling my veins as I stare at him and wait for his answer.

“I’d prefer the former, but the latter works too.”

“Fucking asshole,” I mutter under my breath. I know he heard me, and I don’t give a shit.

“I’ll let that go. But the next time you or Maddox decide to forget my role in this syndicate and disrespect me again—”

“You’ll what?” I say, slowly sitting up and unfolding to my full height. “Kill me? No. You’ll order someone else to do it. That way, you can pretend you were simply doing your job. Kind of like Everest, huh. You were simply teaching her a lesson.”

“I don’t remember you protesting a fucking thing when I brought Nick in,” he says.

He hasn’t stood up. Hell, he hasn’t even dropped his foot from where he has his ankle crossed over the opposite knee.

He’s the picture of power. He looks so much like his father, Christos, I fight the urge to pull my gun and shoot him in the face.

Or maybe that’s just the fear of losing Everest. Fuck, even losing her trust is enough to shake me. For a moment, it had started to feel as though no time had passed between us, like we were those dumb kids who fell in love way too young.

“She’s moving,” Kato says, his eyes on his phone.

Still standing, I begin to pace as I watch the blinking dot winding through streets and pray she’s coming home. I know Madd will stay with her regardless, he will keep an eye on her.

But I need to see her, to hold her, to apologize to her for keeping that shit from her and one of us needs to make an appointment with someone to get her back on birth control ASAP. I won’t be another asshole who takes her choices away from her.

While Kato and I had run after the McLaren in hopes of stopping her, Maddox had the brains to chase after her. He’d stayed at the hole in the wall bar with Everest and Flora the entire time, reporting in periodically.

Not good enough. I need her here. I need to look her in the eye and apologize. Yeah, I know it’s going to take a shit load more than simply saying I’m sorry, but it’s a start.

What really sucks is my girl isn’t the kind of woman who can be bought with expensive shit or jewelry. She’s an action girl. Always has been.

We’ll be starting over from scratch with her, proving to her once again that she can trust us.

I won’t let her go, though. Never again. I might not be down with controlling her or taking away her choices, but that’s one thing I can’t give her – freedom away from me.

As the dot gets closer, my pacing continues, eyes glued to my phone screen. Definitely taking the streets leading home. Unless she veers off the path for some reason, she should be home in about five minutes.

Of course, the five minutes drag until I’m nearly coming out of my skin.

The garage door rumbles to life at the same time the motion sensor beeps at her arrival so close to the house. The guards would have opened the gate the moment they spotted Kato’s vehicle.

I’m already striding toward the door leading to the garage before the garage door begins to close.

Except Everest doesn’t walk through the door.

Nope. My wife is carried in by Madd, her protests slurred and half-hearted.

“I’m not that fucking drunk, asshole,” she says, pushing at Maddox’s chest as he carries her into the living room and sets her on the couch. “I’m going to bed,” she says, lunging to her feet the moment her ass hits the cushion.

“We need to talk first,” Madd says.

“Really? We need to talk now when I’m drunk?

You three have had weeks…fucking weeks to tell me the truth, to warn me that I could end up pregnant.

Guess what? My father – Dima is in the wind.

Yep. Apparently, he’s scared of the consequences and disappeared.

Maybe this time, he’ll finish the job himself instead of sending one of his lackeys to do it for him.

So that’ll be two kids –” She holds up two fingers as she sways on her feet.

“Dead. Oh, and you get to grieve my death again. Or whatever the fuck you three did before.”

She turns her attention to Kato. “You can go make more money and kill more people.” She turns to me.

“You can fuck your way through Cedar Springs. I mean, if there’s anyone left you haven’t screwed yet.

” Then she turns to Madd. “And…well, I don’t really know what you did but yeah.

Fuck you. All three of you. I’m still pissed.

I don’t want to talk tonight. I want to go to bed. Alone.”

Even with her gaze a little unfocused, she still manages to level a glare on each of us in turn.

“You hear me? Alone . Do not knock on my fucking door. Do not come in there thinking you have the right to touch me, and don’t bother waking me up in the morning. I’ll come out if or when I feel like it.”

We’re all silent as we watch her tirade. She might be drunk, she might be adamant she has no desire to talk, but apparently, she has a shitload to say.

She turns and starts to stomp away, but spins on her heel, almost losing her balance. I lunge for her, ready to catch her if she tumbles, but she swats my hands away and rights herself.

“You know what? If you would have just talked to me about it, I probably would have said yes.”

I frown down at her. Madd and Kato are silent.

Maddox is the one who finally speaks up because none of us are exactly sure what she’s referring to at this point.

“Yes to what?”

“Having a baby. We didn’t care if we were married when we were teenagers. Why would I care now? But you did like every single other cock sucking piece of shit man in our fucked up world of crime and made the decision for me.”

She’s back to that again. Doesn’t matter how many times we try to explain to her it was before we knew the truth. It also doesn’t help that none of us bothered mentioning it to her until this morning.

While, yeah, Madd probably could have gone about it differently or waited until we could sit down and have a civil conversation with her. Either way, though, I’m sure she would have reacted the same way.

Whether we told her sooner or not, we’d made the decision for her, taken her choice in the matter away, forced our will on her.

And okay, look. I really want to pin all this on Kato but in reality, I wanted to knock her up as badly as he did, I wanted the child we thought she’d stolen from us.

We’d wait, though. If she isn’t pregnant now, we’ll wait until she decides, until she’s ready.

Shit. If she is pregnant, that’s two days in a row she’s been loaded. She’d be super early in the pregnancy, but it could still be harmful.

Wonder how pissed she’ll be if I put a stop to any form of drinking until she either takes a test or starts her period.

Wait.

She just said she would have agreed to starting a family with us if we’d simply talked to her about it.

I’m not one to usually dwell on the past, being as there is literally zero way to change shit.

But damn…we could already be on our way.

Had I known she actually wanted to try for a kid already, I would have kept her stuffed with my cum day and night.

Pretty sure Kato and Maddox would have done the same, almost like a race to see whose swimmers would make it to her egg first.

Everest raises a hand and pushes some wayward hair from her face. “Fuck, I’m tired,” she mutters.

It’s not that late, but she apparently drank enough to have to be driven home and carried into the house. I wonder if she’ll remember admitting she would have agreed to start trying for a family in the morning.

Although that sentiment might be moot now.

“I’m sorry, E. I don’t know what else to say. You’re right – we should have told you earlier. To be honest, I forgot about it. I was so wrapped up in having you back, in planning our wedding, learning the truth about what your father did…” Kato says as he pushes to his feet.

When he closes the space between them and reaches for her, cupping her face in his hands, she doesn’t back away.

But her bottom lip quivers, and it feels like someone punched a hole in my chest as I watch tears well in her eyes.

We fucking hurt her. Again. It was unintentional, but we’d still cut her deeply enough that we’ll have to spend every moment we can making it up to her, convincing her she can trust us.

Again .

Fuck. Two steps forward, ten fucking steps back.

“You can be pissed at me. It was my decision. I wanted to punish you, to make you hurt as badly as you’d hurt us.

I didn’t know. I hope you know by now I would never do anything – fuck, E.

I’m just…I’m fucking sorry. If you want to stay mad I understand, and I’ll make an appointment for someone to get you any kind of birth control you want.

We’ll wear rubbers until you say otherwise.

I’ll do whatever it takes until you trust me again.

But me . This is on me . I’m their Don – Maddox and Brixton were merely following my orders. ”

Eh. It’s not a complete lie but not the full truth, either.

Thing is, though, if she’s only focusing her rage on him, that still gives Madd and me an edge with her, it gives her someone she’ll feel she can trust.

I have a feeling she’ll latch onto Madd more than me, though. After all, he was the one who took it upon himself to spill.

After a few seconds, she lifts her chin and steps out of his hands, sniffling as she looks at each of us. “I’m going to bed.”

She doesn’t demand we all stay away, doesn’t give the same speech.

She also doesn’t invite anyone to join her, either. Simply turns on her heel, her shoulders hunched forward as though carrying the weight of the world, and slowly shuffles toward the room that we assigned as hers.

It’s still impersonal, still only contains the things that were there when it was nothing more than a guest room. Sure, she has clothes and toiletries and shit, but we’ve been acting as though she’ll simply have to bend and mold into our lives.

Maybe it’s time for something else to change – like the three of us learning who this Everest is, discovering what our twenty-three-year-old Everest likes and dislikes.

It’s time we stop with the yours and mine bullshit.

She will be Kato’s wife in just over a week. Paper or no paper, she will also be married to me and Madd. Why the fuck are we all still pretending as though we’re not a cohesive unit?

Besides, if the three of us slept surrounding her every night, it would be yet another line of defense between our girl and anyone who might dare to fuck with the most important person in our lives.