My childhood wasn’t full of happy memories, but I had no time to feel sorry for myself right then. Someday, if I lived to be old, I could sit around and complain about all the things that went wrong with me. Hopefully with my husbands and daughter around. I rubbed at my belly.
Not yet, sweetheart. Stay in there through today. Please. I’ve got to get Daddy and your uncles back.
I pressed in the secret code to crack into The Bridge’s communication network. All the ship’s captains knew how to do it. About every three years, my mother had the numbers changed. Hopefully, she’d not done so when I’d not known what was going on. She never remembered to do it herself and with Nolan and Wes not helping her anymore, I doubted anyone had reminded her to alter the code.
It took the usual ten seconds before my mother’s face appeared on the screen. Had she been sitting there for over a week waiting for me? The only indication she saw me at all was the way she lifted her left eyebrow, a trait that had driven me crazy when I was a teenager. I once imagined taking my spoon and gauging her eyebrow right off her face.
She’d been a beautiful young woman, having me when she was twenty-five, and she was a stunning forty-eight-year-old now. We had the same color hair, brown with lighter highlights, although hers was always much shorter than mine, stopping right below her chin. She never let it grow an inch longer. I got the shape of my face, the height of my cheekbones, and the length of my nose from her. My eyes were entirely from my father’s side of the family.
“Mother.” I knew I had to speak first and the pains in my body weren’t going to let me fuck around.
“So happy to see you worked out the problem and got your memories back. I knew the strategic daughter I raised had to be in there somewhere.”
Drop dead where you sit.
I smiled. I was Melissa-Fucking-Alexander. Or at least that was what she needed to see. Who I was and how I changed wouldn’t interest her. She wanted her daughter as she remembered her, even if she’d never really known me, in any version. For the guys, I would fake it.
“Well, what can I say? I like to do things as I like to do them. This twisting my arm bullshit is annoying and beneath you. Need something? Ask me for it. You don’t take what belongs to me.”
“The universe is mine. I take whatever I want.”
“Bored.” I rolled my eyes dramatically. “You want my father’s bombs and you want me to come and marry the three goons you need politically. So here’s how this is going to work. You are going to show the guys to me—alive and well—and then I will show up and give you what you want.”
She leaned forward, her eyes huge. “You don’t set terms.”
“I’m afraid I do. I have your bombs. You have my husbands. I’ll call back in ten minutes. Have them there for me to see.”
I clicked off the screen, disconnecting the call. My hands shook and I stood up to center myself. What I really wanted to do was to cry and beg the universe to not make everything so hard. I didn’t get to be weak, not even when I was getting ready to have a baby.
My head hurt, a dull throbbing starting between my eyes. It would be a full-blown migraine later or maybe it was the labor. I had ten minutes to fill.
I clicked the recording device on the screen. C.J. had tried to use it when I’d been unconscious and it hadn’t filmed him properly. Everything depended on me making sure this one went thought without interference.
The light on the screen flashed and I waited until it indicated it was time for me to speak. I couldn’t let the lump forming in my throat get in the way of what I needed to say.
“Hi, guys. It’s me. If you’re watching this, then everything went as it needed to.” Goosebumps broke out on my arm. If they never see it, then my nightmare had come true and they were dead. I couldn’t live with that idea. “I bet you’re really confused and probably angry. Well, Nolan and Cooper, you’re most certainly mad. I always keep you that way, don’t you?” I laughed even though it wasn’t funny. Talking to the screen was really hard. I wasn’t particularly good at expressing myself on an easy day. What I had to take care of made it even harder.
“Listen, I made a huge mistake trying to run from you all those months ago. I panicked. I thought I could make it all go away and I nearly got myself killed and Cooper along with me. If you all haven’t managed to talk yet, he didn’t do anything wrong except not pass out until he’d snuck on my ship.” I rubbed at my eyes. “I’m sorry you had to watch my light shut off on your monitor, Dane. I can’t imagine how terrifying that must have been. I…I’m afraid I’m going to have to hurt you all again before I can make things right.”
I hadn’t spoken any of my plans aloud before, not all of them anyway. My father knew a portion, Jayne another bit. But no one understood exactly what I was up to except me.
“I have to get you back, but I can’t leave my mother with the bombs. So forgive me what I’m going to do, okay? I’m going to follow you in a few days. You can yell at me when we’re all together. You can tell me off something fierce. I love all of you. You’re my family. Try not to hate me too much, okay?”
I clicked off the recorder and closed my eyes. It wasn’t quite ten minutes. My mother would have to deal.
She was speaking to someone behind her when she noticed I was on the screen. When she whirled around to stare at me there was anger in her brown eyes. “They’re getting your husbands. It takes a little while to wake them. It’s not an instantaneous process. They’re going to be groggy and they won’t remember things for a while. It takes ten minutes to even turn on the setting to wake them on the machine.”
I’d known this, but the fact that she was in a little bit of a panic was a good thing. Just what I wanted.
“I’ll be in your office in three hours. I want them there. Awake or not. The second I see they are fine, I want them put on my shuttle. They’re mine to deal with. Talk about incompetence. Letting themselves get kidnapped? Pathetic. Once that is taken care of, you’ll have your bombs. I don’t want them. But you’re not blowing me up anymore. That got taken care of.” I hoped. “So I’m not marrying your goons, either. For good measure, I’m keeping one of the bombs. Try and make me do it, and I’ll blow you to smithereens.”
My mother made a harrumph sound in the back of her throat. “You are a ruthless bitch, aren’t you?”
“Just as I was bred to be.” I smiled at her before I turned off the monitor. Then I ran to the garbage can to throw up. This was a lot harder than I’d thought it would be.
I rubbed at my wrist. Before I left the ship I had to put my tracker back in. It was a stupid gesture but one that would remind me I was going home someday—back to Artemis and my guys.
* * * *
The Bridge always smelled the same. Funny how my arriving in places where I’d spent a lot of time immediately brought back all the memories associated with that time in my life. My mother had many ships she commanded, but none as sophisticated or impressive as The Bridge. It really was nothing more than a ship—except it felt like a planet.
A celestial body, which could pop in and out of places like the fastest ship in our fleet. There wasn’t a Nomad operation she couldn’t direct from The Bridge. Lives were saved or destroyed from her seat in the control room.
When I was young, I’d wanted to be her. These days, I wouldn’t mind seeing her dead. I couldn’t let her have the bombs. Too many people would die.
I’d arrived with no fanfare and if the leadership knew I was there, they left me alone. Nolan and C.J. wouldn’t have woken up from a drug induced non-consensual sleep very well. They’d be raising hell. It gave me free reign to wander as I saw fit. At the very least, the leadership would be preparing for my husbands to cause them problems. Unlike Truest, no one on The Bridge would fuck with me. I was Rita Alexander’s daughter. They’d leave me alone unless they wanted their heads chopped off.
Of course, they had no idea I’d already been on The Bridge for hours before their computers logged me in.
Thank you, Wes.
He’d taught me the little trick of sneaking on and off when we’d gotten married. The computer only saw what I wanted it to. This was the part of the plan Cooper had known, the one where I planted Geoff’s bombs all over the station and blew it up until she gave me free passage to get away. I still planned to do so, but that wasn’t all I was doing today.
I stopped in front of central command. The first time Nolan and I had made out—after I’d helped him lose his virginity at my aunt’s place—had been behind some fake bushes to the left of the main doors. He’d grabbed me, kissed me, and shown me he finally knew what he was doing. Actual sex would come later, but I’d felt him pressed against me, crazy for wanting me—as I’d hoped he would be.
C.J. had followed me around the hallways of the place for months while I pretended to not know his feelings. He’d been too…aware of me. I’d fought my attraction to him until I couldn’t any longer. I’d understood right away C.J. saw me for all my flaws and it scared the shit out of me. How did I let someone love me when I knew they weren’t fooled by all my falsehoods and the games I played?
The baby kicked me hard. She’d been very quiet lately but today she was moving around a lot, while gravity pressed her lower in my belly.
Worry about when I would actually be delivering surged me forward. I walked into the control center with my head high. People I’d known my whole life avoided eye contact. Good, let them be uncomfortable. If they knew me then they likely had a relationship with one of my husbands. Fuck them for what they’d helped my mother do.
Travelling through three hallways before I made it to the command center, I was tired by the time I got to my location. If I ever got pregnant again—and I highly doubted I would—I would spend the last month of pregnancy with my feet up, sleeping all the time.
A girl could dream…
The door to the command center whooshed open and I walked in. A blast of cold air hit me as it had for the last five years whenever I’d visited. My mother liked to deny she was going through the change, but if the temperature on The Bridge was any indication, she was hot as hell.
I shivered and rubbed at my arms. My wrist itched from where I’d put my chip back in.
My husbands were in front of me—except for Cooper who was hopefully safe in my father’s care—although they were clearly not with it. No one looked up at my entrance except my mom, who did her eyebrow-raising thing again as some kind of greeting. When I’d been younger it would have hurt my feelings. Other people got hugs and love, I got sneers and judgment.
In the universe we lived in, I shouldn’t have cared. Only I did.
Nolan, Dane, Wes, and Geoff were sprawled out on medical beds. C.J. sat up on one but rubbed at his eyes and didn’t seem to notice my presence in the room. A medical tech—Yuri—crossed between them, watching their vitals.
“As you can see, they’re fine. Now where are my bombs?”
“All in good time.” I shrugged like I didn’t care, like my heart wasn’t beating a million miles a minute, like I might not faint from relief. “I’ll judge if they’re fine or not. This whole thing has been a huge pain in the ass. And really, Rita?” Why call her ‘mom’ when she was so clearly my enemy? “You made me have to speak to Dad?”
I walked toward C.J. and stood directly in front of him. He was sitting up but the distant look in his eyes told me he didn’t see me. What I wanted to do was hold him, rock him in my arms, tell him everything would be okay. I wanted to kiss all of them. Bathe myself in their familiar scents and know everything would be fine.
I steeled my spine, locked my jaw, and pretended I was brave. The Melissa I had once been wouldn’t have had to make an effort. She managed situations without having to search for her guts. Or she ran like hell.
As I would do neither of those things, fabricating a tough exterior was all that was available to me.
I turned to look at my mother. “Put them on my shuttle. I’m taking them back to Artemis. Then you can have your bombs.”
“I’m not stupid, daughter. You’ll run off and I’ll never see the bombs.”
“As you’ve proven you can gain access to my ship anytime you want, I’d be stupid to do so. You’re going to have to trust me to keep my word. I hold the cards here. Would you like me to demonstrate them?”
My mother stood, striding toward me until she looked me straight in the eyes. “What do you mean?”
“I could blow one of the nukes. Then you’ll only have six instead of seven. Want that?”
My mother visibly paled. “You wouldn’t.”
I leaned toward her. “Mind wiping makes people crazy. Would you like to see just how far I am capable of going?”
I never gambled unless I could win. If she pushed me, I would set one off. Not a Nuke, but one just like the bomb she had stuck in me. I would make it explode. In her brig.
Chapter 5
Boom
I don’t know exactly what made my mother finally decide I was serious, but she stepped back and looked at her med tech for a second before she touched the chip on her wrist. I watched her do it as the obvious dawned on me. We all had the same damn machines in us, allowing us to communicate. It was how she easily found my ship. Mine had been disengaged, until Cooper reinstated it, but the guys had theirs. We’d not thought—because I hadn’t had my memory—that we were in danger from the Nomads.
Now that we knew, they were coming out. Fast. That’s how she’d tracked us. Wes for all his genius…he’d not seen it coming because we didn’t know, thanks to me, that we needed to suspect our allies.
“I need transport. Five prisoners to be brought to Artemis’s shuttle immediately.”
I nodded, turning from C.J. “Glad to see you’re taking me seriously.”
Ten men ran into the room. They were all terrified of my mother, the Nomads had always been. Rumors of her cruelty to her husbands and strategic wins against the enemy kept everyone in check. She’d held me in nothing but disdain my whole life. Throughout my childhood, not the ten men in front of me but their equivalent predecessors, used to deliver punishments to my person when she ordered them to.
I’d learned how to take a beating and not cry.
Time passed slowly as we waited. The men rolled my husbands slowly out of the room. I wanted to wrap my arms around all of them. Kiss them. Bathe in their nearness. I didn’t do any of that because it would break me.
My torturous upbringing may not have killed me, but having to say goodbye to them now—knowing they couldn’t hear me, understanding they wouldn’t remember whatever I said—nearly did. I had a plan and I was sticking to it. They had to be taken to Artemis and saved. Nothing else moved forward until that happened. I’d been wrong to flee all those months ago, but I’d also been right. The trick was figuring out the middle ground, and I’d never known it before.
The chip on my wrist beeped. They were on the ship. I’d get another buzz when my Mom’s men left the ship.
“If you think you’re getting off this ship, you’re wrong.” My mother sighed loudly. “I’ve played ball. You’re going to give me those bombs and then marry the men I want you to.”
I rubbed at my belly. “Think they want to take me like this?”
She rolled her eyes. “The baby can be dealt with.”
My wrist buzzed and I rubbed it. The Artemis’ shuttle would take them back to the main ship. Once the doors to the bay closed, the ship would take off and head straight to my father. By the time they woke up completely, oriented themselves, and figured out what the hell was going on, my dad would be there to grab their ship and pull them on board. Then, hopefully, they’d get my message and understand. None of us had a chance if this didn’t work. They’d have to wait for me on Earth. I’d be there.
I rubbed at my head. So far things were working but they could all fall apart in a heartbeat.
“You aren’t going to be dealing with my daughter and I’m done playing your games.” My wrist buzzed. The shuttle was space b
ound and off The Bridge. I took a deep breath. “You want your bombs? I’ll give them to you.” Lie. “But you’re going to leave me alone from now on.”
“Oh, really? And why is that?”
“I…” The ship shook and my mother gasped, grabbing the side of the wall. Her eyes were wide. She’d had no idea we were about to rock and roll. I lunged forward, reaching for the chair in front of me and missing it. I banged the side of my face before I hit the floor. My whole body vibrated and it had nothing to do with the ship jostling. This wasn’t part of my plan. Oh. What. The. Fuck.
“What the hell is going on?” my mother shouted at her wrist. A response came through, but I could barely hear it.
I tried to sit up and did eventually manage it, even though it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. It took me a second to realize I was wet—soaked actually. My heart fell into my stomach. I’d thrown myself around—or been pushed—so many times during my pregnancy I’d almost come to take it for granted I would be okay.
But this was clearly the end of it. My water had broken. I closed my eyes for a second. The baby was coming and her arrival put a real dent in my plan. Her father and uncles had gotten away. That would have to be enough. I was having a baby.
“We’re under attack.” My mother sounded more annoyed than anything else. It had been a long time since The Bridge had been attacked, mostly because she kept it bouncing around so much the Nobles could never find it before it vanished again. The rest of us did her dirty work on our smaller shuttles.
“Rita…”
She either didn’t hear me or didn’t care. “What a ridiculous day this is. Young lady, you are going to give me those bombs and you are going to hand them over right now.”
“Rita…”
She really wasn’t going to let me get a word in. “I’ve got the crazy Noble girl leading attacks on us. I’ve been planning for this. Your father promised me.”