Page 24 of Nothing More

She moisturized, wrapped up in her favorite robe, plucked her half-full wineglass off the counter and went to sit on her bed with her laptop.

When her video chat request was accepted, the screen filled with a Navajo blanket hanging on a span of dark blue wall, a backdrop she’d never seen in person, but felt as if she knew well at this point, after all the Skyping. She spotted a shoulder, and a small, round moon face resting atop it: a baby in a onesie, mouth puckered, eyes half-shut, while a hand thumped it gently again and again on the back. A small belch issued, finally, and then Michelle shifted around so her face was in frame, the baby cradled now in the crook of one arm.

“Raven, hi, sorry.” She sounded out of breath, and her hair had all but fallen out of its ponytail, golden streamers across her shoulders and spilling down onto the baby’s beanie-covered head.

“No worries, darling. Is this a bad time?”

“No.” Michelle looked exhausted in the way of all new mothers, but her smile was genuine. Happy. “I finally got her to eat. Small victories. I think she’ll sleep like a corpse, now.”

Raven tried not to wince at the phrasing; tried not to think of a blue-purple finger in a velvet box, sapphire gleaming against dead flesh.

Michelle had been both elated and nervous when she found out she was having a girl this time. Raven remembered that Skype call, the way Michelle had fiddled at the end of her braid, chewing at her lip, talking quietly as if Candy was only a few rooms away and might hear. “It’s just…” she’d said, gaze skating away somewhere offscreen. “With all that’s happened. Here, and in Knoxville, and New York.” She’d shaken her head. “Bringing a girl into the world feels…”

“Terrifying?” Raven had suggested, just days off the Abacus takedown and still buzzing with adrenaline and disbelief.

“Yeah,” Michelle had said, shoulders slumping.

Raven had thought that post-victory, post-violence feeling would burn off after a few weeks, and that her nerves would return to their normal, steely state.

She’d been wrong. Rattled had become her default setting, apparently, and it felt like a personal failing. Like a weakness. She badly didn’t want to let any of that show in front of Michelle…which made picking her brain a bit tricker, didn’t it?

Even if she wasn’t getting much sleep, Michelle was full of all those new-mummy hormones, in love with her new bundle of joy and as proud of herself and her little family as she’d been right after TJ was born. Club worries had been pushed to the back burner, and Raven wished now that she hadn’t called; she loathed the idea of bringing any sort of anxiety back to the forefront, when Michelle was all about the feeding, and burping, and diapering right now. That was enough to be getting on with without adding posted severed fingers to the equation.

She realized she’d been quiet too long when Michelle frowned and said, “Is everything alright?”

“Oh, yes. Fine.” Raven took a sip of wine to stall. She smiled afterward. “Bit of a frustrating day, that’s all.”

“Modeling trouble? Or Lean Dog trouble?” Michelle asked, knowingly; the twitch of her brows suggested she suspected the latter.

“It isn’t that I don’t love my brothers.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Or your scrumptious husband.”

Michelle snorted. “Riiiight.”

“But I don’t know how you stand being fully submerged in Lean Dog Land all the time.”

She laughed. “Fully-submerged? Where else would I be?”

Raven frowned and took another sip of wine. Perhaps it was her fault that Michelle had never envisioned a life for herself independent of the club. If she’d ever longed for something different, she’d never let on. And maybe that was Raven’s fault. With her mother dead early on, Raven had been the closest, most influential woman in her life. But when Michelle was small, still developing her sense of self and outlook on life, Raven had been at her busiest. Not even a teenager yet, and already deep in her mother’s world of runways and magazine spreads. She’d been a child herself, really, but was that a real excuse? Couldn’t she have asserted herself more firmly into Michelle’s day-to-day routine? Convinced her mother to let Michelle come and live with them? As if Phillip would have ever allowed that.

“Raven,” Michelle said. “You’re drifting again.”

“Bollocks.” She set the wine glass aside – far enough that it would be a long reach if she picked it back up – and attempted to refocus. “Sorry, sorry, just…”

“Raven,” Michelle said again, voice sharpening. “What’s wrong?”

Someone mailed me a finger. And a stolen ring. And rather than call the police, and have the whole place fingerprinted, and deal with it through all the legal channels I should have used, as a civilian and a business owner, I have a flat full of Lean Dogs. Who give me orders.

But she wasn’t going to say any of that to a woman with a baby falling asleep in her arms. So she said, “I do believe I underestimated my level of influence with the American Dogs.”

That got Michelle smiling again, which proved she was capable of doingsomethingright today. “What?” Michelle asked, laughing.

“Oh, you saw how it was back home. Your father would make a big fuss about the way I wasn’t careful, or I needed to stay at Baskerville, or he wasn’t letting me leave without an escort – but I could always give the boys he stuck on me the slip. Barring that, I could at least have them jumping every time I turned around. ‘Yes, ma’am, no ma’am.’” She snapped her fingers for emphasis. “I took it for granted, I suppose. After all, who would take security more seriously than my own brother?

“You should see this pack of Yanks.” She shook her head, and, fuck it, picked up the wine again. “You’d think they were guarding the Queen.”