Page 103 of Once A Crime Lord

“I need to see my mother.”

“There’s nothing you can do for her, Lyla.”

Her heart stopped. “She’s…?”

“Your mother’s alive, but her state hasn’t improved.”

“I should be there.”

“We have men guarding her. They’ll let us know if any changes.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but stopped when Carmen appeared with Nora on her hip. Carmen rushed forward and set Nora on her lap before she buried her face in Lyla’s hair. Beau leaped on the bed, nudged her with his wet nose, and settled beside her with a huff.

“I thought I was going to lose you,” Carmen whispered, voice thick with tears. “Don’t you ever scare me like that again.”

Nora smiled up at her, unfazed by her near-death experience. Lyla’s hand trembled as she ran the back of her knuckles down Nora’s soft cheek. The baby nuzzled her chest, clearly seeking a meal. She recoiled.

“What is it?” Carmen asked, raising her head.

She glanced at Blade who was already closing the door. She raised Nora away from her chest and kissed her on the cheek.

“Did Nora eat?”

“Yes, I gave her cereal. Why?”

“She’s acting hungry.”

“She probably wants to bond with you. She’s been a little stressy. Besides, your boobs must be full.”

The moment Nora nuzzled her, her breasts filled with milk, but her heart was racing. Last night, she turned a corner. Her father was the first of five men to die by her hand. Every kill pushed her closer to a precipice from where there would be no return. What she witnessed in the warehouse shoved her over the edge into a straight-up killer with no conscience or morals. Even now, something dark and twisted inside her demanded retribution.

Nora grinned at her, making her heart squeeze with a wild rush of emotions. She wanted to cuddle her daughter, but memories of what she’d done kept her from holding Nora too close. She didn’t want to infect her baby with... her. Having Nora breastfeed suddenly felt abhorrent. A normal person would be horrified that they killed their own parent, but she felt nothing. Was it because she was in shock or really felt nothing? Maybe she was morphing into a sociopath.

“Lyla? What’s going on?”

She hugged Nora close. “Thank you for taking care of her when I was...” Going off the rails, killing people, and shooting the dead bodies of her mother’s rapists. Her throat closed up. “Thank you.”

Carmen shot to her feet and smacked her head. “Don’t you ever do that to me again, bitch!”

She blinked. “What?”

“You tell me to take Nora and run while you sacrifice yourself? Do you know what that did to me? I could hear gunshots going off and I thought... I thought...” Carmen paced and waved both hands in front of her face as tears poured down her cheeks. “I didn’t know what was happening. I was trying to keep Nora quiet, and that guy found us.”

Carmen paused to savagely kick Beau’s doggy bed before she resumed her frantic pacing. Beau, Lyla, and Nora watched avidly. Carmen planted her feet and did a Peter Pan pose.

“I shot him.” Carmen sounded half defiant, half proud of herself.

“Yes, you did.”

Carmen sniffed. “He was my first.”

“I know.”

Carmen let out a gut-wrenching scream and punched her fist in the air. A second later, she bizarrely stomped the ground with one foot as if she were trying to put out a fire.

“I got him! That should teach him to mess with a woman with a baby! That motherfucker! He was calling me like a dog. ‘Here slutty, slutty.’” Carmen made a gun with her thumb and pointer finger. “I got him, Lyla. I did it.”

“You did good.”

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