When Evan got home from work, he expected to find his wife. He spotted CoCo in the kitchen making dinner and went to greet her, kissing her cheek.
"Hey, is Lari upstairs?" he asked, looking as confused as CoCo felt. She thought Lari was with him. When he came into the house, she thought Larielle must've been in the car and this was a quick stop in for something.
When she had come home, it was completely empty and dark. She had found the dishes all done but the water still in the sink, which she thought was unusual for Larielle but attributed it to Larielle's short attention span. It wouldn't be the first time she stopped doing something before completely finishing it. CoCo was just glad she had finished the dishes.
Finding no traces of either teen in the house, CoCo assumed they had just left for their honeymoon already. She had nothing else to think.
"She's not with you?" she wondered. "I thought you kids left for the islands already."
Evan's face paled and he felt cold, shaking his head. "No, no, no," he mumbled to himself, running up the stairs two at a time.
"Evan, what's wrong?" CoCo asked as Evan burst through the door in Larielle's room.
He breathed and tried to calm down. He could find his wife. He just needed to have a clear head in order to do that.
"CoCo, right now, I don't have a lot of time to explain, so I'm going to give you the condensed version, and I'm going to speak as quickly as I possibly can," he told her, turning on his laptop and sitting at the desk, pulling something up and typing into it. "My uncle is a criminal. Trina and Daryl must have some criminal backgrounds as well, and Pablo. Pablo still wants Larielle-"
"I know that, he's always stopping by and asking for her, but I don't let him in."
Evan stopped talking and turned around looking at his mother-in-law. "CoCo, he came here?" he asked, frantic.
"Yes."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Well, it seemed trivial- Oh my God, that little cabron has my child," she realized, her breathing hitching. "I'm going to kill him," she muttered, growing hysterical. "My daughter."
Evan got up and sat CoCo down. "I am going to get my wife back. I told you what I had time to tell you. But now I have to go and get Lari. I promise I won't walk back through that door without Larielle."
"How are you going to find her?"
"I gave her jewelry with a purpose, CoCo," he told her, picking up his car keys and practically running out of the house, his breathing heavy.
He kept her location in his head as he made his way to her. If they so much as harmed a hair on his wife's head, there was going to be nothing but blood everywhere. He gunned the engine, pushing his car as fast as it would go, swerving around cars until he got to a deserted road.
The whole time he just kept praying for Larielle and their unborn to be safe. He just kept hoping that nothing had happened. He couldn't stop saying this was his fault. It was his fault. He should have known better than to leave her alone at home. He should have done everything differently.
He tried to keep himself calm. Becoming frantic wasn't going to do him a bit of good. He pressed a button on the steering wheel and immediately heard ringing.
"Hello?" Shayla asked.
"Ma," he said, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. But his mother knew him.
"What happened, Evan?"
"They took Larielle," he told her. "I'm going to get her. But when I come back with her, I want her to be at the house with you. It's not safe for her or my child while she's here," he told her.
Shayla agreed with him that it wasn't safe for them. Evan just shook his head.
"Why was I being so stupid, Ma?"
"Evan, you're not doing yourself no favors by putting yourself down. I want you to calm down and take a deep breath. You are no help to Larielle if you can't even keep your head. Breathe and think of your strategy. She's probably afraid enough for the both of you," she told him.
"Okay, Ma," he agreed, taking deep breaths. "I'll call you when Larielle is with me. I'm going to bring her to you."
"Okay, Evan."
They hung the phone up and Evan loosened his grip on the wheel, opening the center console, one eye on the road, the other on his pistol. He pulled it out and released the wheel for a second as he reached for the bullet clip and loaded the pistol. If anything happened, hell even if nothing had happened, someone would die today. And that was guaranteed.
***
Larielle woke up in a dark room tied up and naked. She tried to concentrate on what was going on, but she was dizzy and felt numb. It felt like someone was on top of her. She groaned, rolling her head.
A hand grabbed her face. "Lari," a male's voice cooed. She groaned, her mouth dry, her head throbbing. Maybe it was Evan. "Lari..."
Sensation began to come back to her, and she realized that someone was not only on top of her, but inside of her, thrusting in and out of her. And Evan would never take it while she was asleep. She began trying to fight.
"I'll teach you to give my pussy away," Pablo sneered at her, forcefully ramming himself into her. She tried to get away from him, tried to get him off her. But he just held her down. He held her wrists above her head, watching her cry. "Why you wanna cry now, bitch? You didn't cry when you fucked Evan and let him get you pregnant. You didn't cry then, did you, you fucking whore!" he spit in her face.
Larielle just squeezed her eyes shut, trying to take her mind away from her body, searching for a place of happiness where this wasn't happening to her. She prayed for her unborn's life. If this baby died, they might as well kill her too. She wouldn't make it.
Pablo's assault didn't stop with the spit, and Larielle couldn't free herself to defend from the attack. He got up and poured his seed all over her face before kicking her in the stomach. "Your fucking baby deserves to die, you whore!"
Larielle began to sob curling in a ball to protect her unborn. Her baby didn't deserve to die. Her baby was innocent and had come from love. She loved this baby and Evan loved this baby, and they were preparing a home for him or her. And she didn't want that taken away from her. This baby deserved its first breath.
"Stop!" she pleaded with her ex. "Please, Pablo, stop!"
The thought alone of losing this baby was killing her slowly. No woman should ever have to worry about her child being ripped away from her before it even got to breathe. No woman should ever have to feel that type of pain.
Everything got bright after that as she heard the door being kicked open, and Evan shot Pablo in the knee before he had a chance to see it coming. He wasn't going to give this nigga no chance to find a weapon.
Pablo went down in a cry of pain. When Evan saw Larielle, covered in blood, semen, and spit, he just about turned the gun on himself for having allowed her to be put in this situation in the first place. That was hard for him to see, knowing that he hadn't been there to protect her. As her husband, it made him feel like a failure. For failing to protect her.
He pulled a pocket knife out and began to cut the zip ties on her wrists and ankles. "I'm so sorry, Larielle," he told her, his voice thick with emotion while Pablo sat there in searing pain, yelling threats and obscenities. When Evan got Larielle untied, she threw her arms around him, crying into his shoulder.
Pablo tried to get up, and Evan let go of Larielle. If she had thought she was scared before when the boys were fighting, now she was plain terrified.
Evan took the knife and stabbed Pablo in the cheek. "Shut up, bitch!" Blood came from Pablo's face, and Evan kicked him in the dick. "What you do to my wife, nigga?" he demanded. Even with a mouth full of blood and the crushing pain in his genital area, Pablo managed to crack a smirk.
"She still got some good ass pussy."
Evan was horrified. Of all the crime he had seen, rape was the most vile thing next to the murder of a child in his eyes.
He took the knife to the tip of Pablo's dick, and Larielle covered her eyes right before he started effortlessly slicing it down piece by piece like a banana. But Pablo's screams of pain would be with her forever. But she didn't care. He had violated her, and no prison time ever would amount to what he took from her. Would ever help the way she'd felt.
She felt herself getting contractions and she would have helped Evan kill that fucker if she wasn't in such pain and distress. She was losing her child. And she was ready to crawl into a hole and die.
"Shut up, bitch!" Evan screamed, taking the cloth he'd used on Larielle and shoving it in his mouth. "You fucking violated my wife!"
Evan took the knife, carving Pablo's balls up instead of cutting them like he had done his dick. He sliced his balls apart, and Pablo began sweating, releasing a blood curdling scream, choking on the blood from his mouth as he cried like the bitch he was.
Evan didn't want to give this nigga no bullet. No quick out. That was far too kind. Far too generous. Something Evan wasn't when it came to Larielle. He loved her. More than anything in the world.
Evan carved Pablo's heart out his chest and stuck the pieces of his cut up penis in his mouth. "Eat a dick," he suggested just as Pablo exhaled his last breath.
Evan turned to Larielle, and she was sitting there rocking back and forth, sobbing. "I'm so sorry, Lari," he told her, pulling her into his arms. "I'm so sorry, baby. This is my fault."
"The baby," she cried, motioning to a pool of blood around her, coming down. She was in such physical and emotional pain.
Evan's heart sped up, and he tried not to cry. Tried to think the best. But his wife was losing their baby. And he had to get her to the hospital. He had to make sure that she was going to be at least physically okay.
He took her in his arms, lifted her up and walked her to his car, laying her in the backseat, still apologizing for what went wrong, trying not to cry. Trying to be strong with her while she was in the backseat in physical and emotional pain.
Evan sped his way to the hospital and took Larielle inside. She was rushed to the ER, and Evan was told he couldn't be with her. He had to wait.
He sat there in the waiting room, unsure what to do. He called Shayla and when she answered, he couldn't even say anything. He just broke down. "Evan..." She didn't know what to say.
"The baby..." was all he could get out. "We're at the hospital, Ma."
"I'll be there. I'll get CoCo, and we'll both be there," she told him softly.
"Okay." He told her which hospital they were at.
When Evan was allowed to enter the room, Larielle was in labor after only twelve weeks gestation with their baby. He went and held her hand. He had to be there for her. And she was in tears, looking up at her husband. "Why is this happening to us?" she asked. And Evan wished he had an answer, looking down at her tearstained face.
Larielle had to push and deliver their baby. And what she delivered was a little tiny palm sized fetus. The doctor let her hold the dead baby in her hand. It had been a girl. Larielle with sorrow in her heart looked at the little girl in her hand, so underdeveloped. And she kissed her fragile skin, whispering a Spanish prayer to God to rest her baby's spirit. She was an innocent and deserved nothing close to the way she was made to leave the world before she got to see it.
She cried looking at the baby girl. She wished so many things. That her daughter had lived. She would have been so beautiful.
When the doctor came back, Larielle looked up at him. "What are you going to do with her?" she asked.
"The hospital is going to dispose-"
"This is a human being!" she shrieked. "You do not dispose of human beings," she told him hysterically. "No, this is my baby," she whispered over and over. "My baby."
She held the palm sized fetus to her chest, and Evan went and spoke to the doctor in a hushed tone. The doctor nodded.
An hour later, a nurse came and gave Larielle a very tiny coffin. It looked like a toy for a morbid child. "I'm very sorry for your loss," she told Larielle and Evan soberly. She didn't seem so cold and clinical like the doctor had. She seemed to have some sympathy for the young couple.
She left the room and Larielle put the baby in the tiny coffin gingerly before she closed it and gave it to Evan, turning on her side away from him.
Just the fact that she had to put her baby in that little coffin was so heart wrenchingly devastating. She was in so much emotional pain. More than she had ever been in her life. Even her father dying didn't do this to her.
By the time Shayla and CoCo had showed up, Larielle had delivered a dead child four hours ago. CoCo was in tears with her daughter and sat on the bed, hugging her tightly. "I'm so sorry this happened to you, Larielle," she whispered.
Larielle held onto her mother, sobbing her heart out. She didn't say any more words. Shayla sat with her son, and she took his hand, rubbing it. She knew how he felt about that baby coming into this world. Knew how excited he was that Larielle was pregnant, whether or not it had happened on purpose. A miscarriage, especially a second trimester miscarriage, she would never wish on her worst enemy, yet alone her own daughter-in-law and son whom she loved.
Larielle was still passing clots and having contractions. She had asked that Shayla and CoCo leave her alone for the night. She didn't want Evan in the bed with her, so he laid on the couch. Neither of them got much sleep, though. All Larielle could see when she closed her eyes was her dead baby in her palm so precious. A baby that she would never get to see smile or pull in her first breath. A life lost.
When Evan heard her sniffling in the middle of the night, he went to check on her, but she turned away from him. "Larielle," he whispered, pushing her hair off her face.
"I don't want to talk, Evan," she told him, shrugging him off, her eyes landing on the little coffin with her dead baby in it resting on the table beside her. Liliana Isabel Carmichael. "I want to bury her next to my daddy," she told him.
"Okay, baby," he told her softly, stroking her hair.
"I want to be alone."
"Lari-"
"Please."
Evan moved away from her and went to sit on the couch listening to Larielle's sobs. There was nothing he could do to fix this. For the second time in his life... He was helpless.