Chapter 18: Shadows of Strategy

The weight of the Stewart lawyers and Jessica’s mother’s demands had settled over the ranch like a fuckin’ pall, heavy and suffocating. Court proceedings, inevitable. Custody battles, looming. A clean break, they called it. A goddamn war, I knew. Leon’s shadow still stretched long, his network of judges and senators a constant threat, and the last thing I needed was a custody fight drawing more eyes, more questions, leading ‘em straight to Martin, to Libra, to the fragile lives we’d somehow birthed from this abyss. Jessica’s mother, trapped in her world of appearances and social climbing, was adding fuel to the fire, pushing Jessica to marry Malcom Stewart, her gentle, oblivious lover, blind to the truth of his twins’ paternity, blind to the depravity we swam in since her shrill November 1993 visit. Marry him, she’d shrieked down the phone, save the babies’ future with his name, with Stewart money. It was a twisted kind of sense. A strategic move in this goddamn war. But convincing Jessica ... that was another battle entirely.

I stood in the living room, the scent of stale cum and baby powder a bizarre mix in the air, facing Alex and Zoe—my sisters in sin, bound by blood through our mother, Maggie Harper, and by the depravity we’d forged together. The babies were quiet for once, sleeping in the nursery down the hall, tended by nurses bought and paid for, their corruption complete since that August 1993 orgy. Alex’s eyes held the same bone-deep exhaustion I felt, but hard with resolve. Zoe, lean and wired, her own pregnant belly a ghost of a swell now the babies were out, paced the floor, her gaze sharp. My own body ached, my pussy still raw from the night’s depravity, milk leaking faint onto my tank top, but my mind was cold, calculating.