Rachel had just gotten out of the car with Tanner and Donovan as the police cars screeched to halt in front of the penitentiary. They had been out at one of the indoor gyms with Tim's group. Nathan had planned to go driving with Ian, so they'd gone without him. Maggie had been just behind them on a motorcycle and flew off it and straight up to the house, disappearing into the door.

Faster than Rachel could comprehend, police officers flooded the area, exiting their cars and surrounding the entire penitentiary. Several approached Tanner, guns drawn, and he raised his hands and slid them behind his head.

"On the ground." An officer said, and Tanner knelt, turning his back to them. Three officers came up behind him, cuffed him, and then slammed his face into the ground.

"Stop it!" Rachel screeched. Tanner was being complaint. There had been no reason to be that rough with him.

An officer came over and ushered her back, and Donovan slid his arms around her and held her back from getting herself arrested too.

"You too need to stay back," the man said, his chocolate eyes regarding them sympathetically.

"We will, Allen. Rachel, calm down," Donovan whispered sharply into her ear. "You can't change anything here."

Rachel stopped struggling, but hissed her breath as they roughly pat Tanner down and relieved him of his knives. When they dragged Tanner to his feet, she caught sight of the scrape across his cheek and his split lip, and tears filled her eyes. They officers ran their hands down the front of him and found the knives stuffed in his boots and cursed.

"Why the fuck are you armed to the teeth?" the officer spat in Tanner's face, but Tanner didn't respond.

Tanner caught sight of something behind her, and his eyes widened. Tears poured down his face as Tanner fell to his knees, almost taking the officers holding his cuffs down with him. Tanner would never cry in front of people... not unless... Rachel turned around and caught sight of Ian. Two officers were dragging him out of the house, and he was kicking and screaming at them.

"Please, let me stay with him!" Ian begged, but the officers shoved him into the back of one of the cars. Once inside, Ian kicked the door so hard that the car shook. His head slumped forward, and his shoulders shook in what Rachel knew were tears.

The muttering and curses of the officers pulled her attention back to the house as they were bringing out Julian. Naked from the waist up, his skin was bare for the world to see, inked and scarred on every inch of it. Julian's hands were handcuffed behind him, and he was silent like the grave.

It drove a cold wedge into her ribs, and she clutched her chest.

Blood was all over him–in his hair, spattering his face and chest, and all over his hands, it looked as if Julian had ripped someone apart. Julian noticed her quite quickly and snapped his dark gaze to her. It was different than what she'd expected. There wasn't any malice, fear or sadness.

They were gone.

Empty of emotion, his eyes were glazed over as if someone... as if someone had been killed in front of him. They shoved Julian into a separate vehicle just as the ambulance rolled up. Paramedics jumped out and ran into the house with a stretcher, and Rachel really started to panic.

Where was Nathan? Why hadn't she seen him yet?

"Rachel." Donovan lifted her chin, and tears dripped from it. "Come here." Embracing her, Donovan pressed her face into her chest, and she shook.

She looked back to Tanner, their eyes met, and Tanner tightened every muscle in his body as they dragged him off to a car.

Everything was falling apart. Why? What had happened, and why was no one telling her?

The stretcher rolled back out of the house and ripped a yell of despair from her throat. Nathan was unconscious, and they were pressing some bandages on his side. There was so much blood staining his shirt that it was almost black, and Nathan wasn't moving. Donovan's grip on her hand tightened as Nathan disappeared into the ambulance, and then Maggie came up to them.

"I have to go to the station with Julian, Ian and Tanner," Maggie said to Donovan before glancing at Rachel. "Rick is dead. He shot Nathan and shot at Ian. Julian slit his throat."

Donovan covered his mouth, but Rachel's eyes wandered over to Julian. He'd seemed so desperate for friends and had really looked close with Nathan. To have that friend potentially taken away from him was cruel. And they were taking Tanner away from her.

"This is going to be a horrible mess," Maggie said, her voice as weak sounding as Rachel was inside right now. "I recommend you find somewhere quiet to hide it out, Donovan. Reporters are going to be on you and me like flies. For now, can you please follow the ambulance to the hospital and check in on Nathan for me. I told them to expect you, and I need you to let me know what happens."

"Of course, Maggie." As soon as Donovan had agreed, Maggie was gone. Spinning on her heals, she joined the officers and left for the station. The officers drove off with what was left of her happiness and her stomach sank as they departing with everyone from the pen in tow, save Donovan.

What was going to happen to them? To Tanner? Nathan couldn't die.

"Come on, Rachel. You can come to the hospital with me. I know you're worried." The officers gave Donovan pointed looks as he got into Tanner's car and rolled it out of the driveway. It was strange that Donovan had keys to his car, but his key ring was littered with them as if he had copies of all of them.

Sitting in the car that she had always spent time with Tanner in, the scent of the leather seats overwhelmed her and tears crawled down her cheeks again. It filled her with the memory of being soaking wet and him holding an umbrella over her even if he got soaked himself. The way he had tucked her in her coat in the dark, coming so close but also keeping her at a distance. Lastly, it reminded her of how he'd desperately pulled her on top of him and held her on Christmas day.

Would she never spend another day with Tanner in this car?

Would she even be able to see him again?

Why was Donovan not taken with them?

Rachel looked to his serious expression, and then felt like she wanted to heave her stomach contents. That had been happening a lot lately, and she just shoved it back down as she focused on Donovan.

"Why didn't they take you too?" Rachel asked. Donovan was part of LCP as well. Shouldn't they have taken him with the others?

"It's complicated, but my son perjured himself, and my case got tossed out. I've been free for quite a while now. I just stayed because if felt wrong to leave." Donovan turned into the hospital, drove around until he found parking, and then turned the car off.

"Tanner was crying," Rachel said, clutching her stomach as tears flooded onto her lap.

"Rachel." Donovan tried to comfort her, but it did little to ease the pain. This had been coming since well before Christmas, but she'd been fighting off the anxiety and dread.

"They're going to kill him, aren't they?" Her voice cracked, and Donovan had no kind words to ease the sinking feeling in her heart.

The look on his face was clear. Tanner and Ian were going to be... She couldn't even think the words as she trembled harder. Then her stomach did heave, and she opened the door to retch onto the ground. Donovan came around to her door with some napkins from the glovebox, and she took them to wipe her mouth.

"Rachel, I know this is... impossibly hard. Are you okay... physically?" Donovan helped her up, and she leaned against the car window, holding her stomach as more tears dripped down her face.

"No! None of this is okay. I can't lose Tanner."

Before she break down, she grit her teeth and pressed her forehead harder into the window. Compressing everything into a hard ball, she shoved it into the back of her mind as she knew there was nothing she could do at the moment. They needed to go in and check on Nathan, and Tanner hated to see her cry.

When the entered the hospital emergency room, someone had been waiting and herded them toward the waiting area where Nathan was being operated on. On the way, the woman explained the current situation.

The bullet hadn't gone all the way through. They had to extract it, and Nathan had lost a lot of blood. It was still up in the air if he would make it through or not, but the wound was on the side of his abdomen with the least organs. That was better, but not good.

Rachel asked for some water and then went to her wallet to get something from the vending machine. Sitting next to Donovan, she opened it and stared at the cards. This was about to get much worse, and the media would be all over it and anyone involved. That meant that her father would expect her to play her role, which she had no intention of doing.

One by one, she snapped her credit cards in half until she reached the last one. Dark and sleek, she traced the numbers with her fingers and then stood up and slid it into the machine.

She devoured a bag of pretzels, followed by some health-nut protein vitamin bar. Only after, did she open her bag and pull out her small bottle of vitamins and pop one of those into her mouth too. The vitamins exacerbated her bouts of nausea, so she could only take them with food, if one could call vending machine snacks food.

Donovan was staring at her, she noticed after a moment, and she fidgeted uncomfortably.

"What are those?" Donovan asked, swiping the bottle from her hand.

Normally, she'd have stopped him, but she was sluggish, swallowed by how badly she wanted to feel Tanner holding her against his chest or too see Nathan smile again. Rachel didn't want to talk about anything right now, but Donovan swore under his breath. It wasn't something he was prone to doing, so she knew this was going to be a conversation.

"Rachel, you're pregnant?" The bottle of pills wasn't exactly vague, with the huge Prenatal Vitamin title. "Who knows?"

Rachel narrowed her eyes. "No one." Rachel paused. "Just the mob."

"What do you mean 'the mob'?" Donovan looked horrified, and she let out a small sigh.

"I didn't know how to tell Tanner, so he doesn't know yet, though I'd planned to tell him. Tanner never wanted to sleep with me in the first place and only did so because he was wasted beyond cognition and frightened of dying. It was hard to tell him that there were consequences to it. So, I went to Oliver."

"You should have come to me," Donovan insisted, placing her bottle of pills back into her hands.

"Oliver isn't that bad. The guy has an in-house doctor, and she talked to me about what I should expect and what to do before my first real visit in a few weeks."

"I'd have taken you. Oliver is dangerous. You shouldn't associate with him."

"I know, but any doctor you'd have taken me to would have asked questions, and my father would have found out. With everything that is going on, I can't go back to my father now."

"How long, Rachel?"

"A little over four weeks."

"And... Tanner didn't think to use protection?" With Donovan's normal way of speaking, Rachel could tell that he had not intended to use his name at first.

"It was right before that woman's corpse surfaced in the river and caused all that buzz. Tanner was really drunk and upset, and he told me to go home. I didn't listen, and well, here we are."

"And you're fine with that?"

"It's not like it's something horrible. I can't say that I expected to be a mother... ever... but I'm okay with it. I just don't know what I'm supposed to do now. I need to tell him, but I don't even know if I can reach him, and I'm afraid that they are going to take him away from me... from us. Will it just make it worse if I tell him?"

Rachel looked to Donovan for the answer, and he just shook his head and ran his hands through his black hair. It had been up at the back in a very short nub as it usually was, but Donovan pulled the tie out and it fell around his ears.

"I can't even begin to give you advice on any of this. But, yes, you should tell Tanner. Even if I don't care for him, he has a right to know. I imagine it'll tear him apart, but it's wrong not to. It would be even worse to live with the guilt of never telling him if he..." Donovan stopped speaking and closed his mouth, realizing he had just been about to utter what she was refusing to think.

It trailed more tears down her cheeks, and she pressed against her stomach lightly.

"I want to tell you everything is going to be okay, Rachel, but there is no way out of the contract we all signed at this point. It will be hard, but I beg you to lean on me. I will do the best I can to help you in any way."

There was nothing that Donovan could do, but maybe Oliver could help. It was reaching, but she had to grasp at some straws or she would feel a coward for not going down fighting. Rachel would do whatever was in her power to help Tanner, even if it meant selling her soul to the devil so that she could raise his child.

There would never be peace for her child in her father's house, and she would not subject the precious life inside of her to that. Rachel was never going home to that house again. All she needed, she had on her, and Oliver would have been notified that she'd used his card. They would be here soon, likely, and she would walk away from this world for the next.

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Word count: 2440 -- Edited July 15th, 2020