Chapter 10: Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King: Chapter 10

“HYAAAAAH!!”

Harper shrieks and takes a frog-legged leap off the couch in my office and sends her stuffed animal into a dramatic, slow-motion somersault. She plops the giraffe on my desk. The computer monitor shakes in front of me.

She wiggles his long, floppy legs, making ninja noises in my general direction.

I don’t know where Nadia is. I try to make a point of not knowing. We may have shared a bed last night, but we didn’t speak. I didn’t join her until late, when she was already asleep—or pretending to sleep—and I left long before she woke up.

But I did sleep for those few hours, with her body next to mine, stretched out in the dark. Deep and blissful sleep. Finally, finally .

Maybe that’s why I weather being socked in the head by a stuffed giraffe better than expected.

The girl has followed me all morning. She spends most of her time asking what I’m doing, and then asking why I’m doing it, and then asking how I’m doing it, and then asking why I’m doing it the way I’m doing it.

She might have a promising future in mid-level management.

“Applesauce knows karate,” Harper informs me, as the words on the screen slip in and out of focus.

“I thought he was a doctor,” I mutter, half-listening.

“Doctors can know karate. Applesauce can do a lot of things! What do you do?” she asks, standing on her tiptoes to look over my desk, like she might find the answer there.

“…That’s complicated.”

“Mommy calls people on the phone,” she tells me, very proudly.

“Not anymore she doesn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s beneath her. And she doesn’t need to.”

Harper doesn’t seem to understand, but she lets it go and says instead, “When I get big, I’m going to be a nurse.”

“Not a doctor?”

“No, because doctors—doctors—” she scrunches up her face, trying to figure out a reason, “Doctors are good, but nurses are all really nice, and they can wear cartoon characters on their clothes,” she informs me, then keeps chattering on and on about how much she likes nurses. I get a small idea of what her life has been like up to this point, the experiences that have shaped her tiny little worldview.

She climbs back up onto the couch for another round of interrogation.

“What are you again?” she asks. I study her, wondering what she’s looking for. What she could even understand about the things I do. How do you condense something like that for a child? I study the email on the screen, the dot-gov extension filling up the recipient line.

“I’m a bad guy,” I tell her.

She giggles. “No, you’re not,” she says, like I’m just messing with her.

“I am.”

She shakes her head, refusing to believe me, her baby teeth grin bright and infectious.

“Uh-uh. You can’t be a bad guy or Applesauce would beat you up.”

“Applesauce has already beaten me up a few times this morning,” I remind her, and she immediately jumps off the couch again and goes running around the office, giggling and yelling something about how Applesauce is also a superhero who can fly and beat up bad guys, her feet pounding on the floor, her voice pitched and breathy as she shows me.

Olivia chooses this moment to come angrily sweeping in with a tray, eyebrows furrowed in bewildered outrage at the chaos. Her question is half out of her lips at the same moment Harper zips across the doorway and gets tangled up under her feet. Olivia stumbles, spilling the contents of the tray everywhere across the carpet in a shattering crash.

“ What the hell? ” she snaps.

Food and drink go flying. Broken glass glistens under the light.

Harper stands frozen, wide-eyed under her.

“Why are you in here?” Olivia demands, reaching down to take Harper by the wrist.

“Don’t touch that girl.”

My voice snaps and freezes her in place. She has one hand around Harper’s arm, staring at me like I’ve gone mad.

“Mr. Caruso, if she’s bothering you, you should let me—”

“ You’re bothering me,” I say. “Get out of my office and don’t make the mistake of touching her again.”

Olivia makes a motion to the coffee seeping into the carpet, “Well, do you want me to at least—”

“I said out!” I bellow, getting to my feet.

Olivia goes without another word, sweeping out and leaving a tense silence behind.

Harper stands frozen, staring at the stain seeping toward her feet, the giraffe clutched to her chest. She’s on the verge of tears. “I didn’t mean to—”

“She wasn’t looking where she was going.”

Harper moves to try and pick some of the mess up, but I sweep her up onto the couch, away from the shards of glass.

“Sit,” I order her, and this time, my tone makes her curl her stuffie to her chest and stay put.

Footsteps come bounding up the stairs two at a time and Nadia appears in the doorway.

“What happened? I thought she was in her bedroom—”

“Olivia’s clumsy and needs to watch where she’s going.”

Harper’s guilty silence doesn’t back up my story, but it doesn’t matter. If I say something happened a certain way, then that’s how it happened. In this house, I decide what is and what isn’t.

Nadia drops down across from me, helping pile pieces of glass and scattered food onto the tray. Our hands brush and we both pretend they didn’t.

“How long has she been up here?”

“As long as I have.”

Nadia shakes her head with a wince. “She left the TV on, so I thought—I mean, she’s always glued to the TV when I let her, so I didn’t think she’d go anywhere. She’s never had anywhere to wander off to before.”

“She didn’t do anything.”

Nadia must have heard something because I can see that she doesn’t believe me. But she doesn’t press it.

“Really, she should be in school,” she sighs, “Unless she isn’t going to school anymore.” She searches my face, as if that’s somehow my concern.

“How you raise your daughter isn’t my business.”

She huffs slightly under her breath. “I’m having a hard time figuring out what is and isn’t your business…”

“I’m happy to clarify any questions,” I counter.

“How generous.” Her smile clenches.

We finish picking up slivers of glass without looking at each other again. “I’ll get her out of your hair. Take her out and burn off some of that energy. Harper, go put some outside clothes on, please. We’re going out for a while.”

“Can Ren come?” she asks. She sounds almost hopeful. I don’t know why.

The room plunges into cold silence.

“I’m sure Ren has better things to do—”

“I’ll join you,” I interrupt, before she can make the decision for me. Nadia stares at me, her mouth tight, as Harper celebrates. I take the tray out of Nadia’s hands and head downstairs, feeling her eyes following me as I go.

***

Harper gets free rein on where she would like to go. Anywhere at all. On her request, we take a car over to Battery Park, where there’s some carousel she wants to ride, and which she talks about endlessly on the ride over. She wants to ride all by herself this time—or at least, her and her giraffe.

Nadia lets Harper do the talking, keeping a cold shoulder toward me as we drive.

“You didn’t used to be this quiet,” I remark as Nadia and I walk side by side into the park. Harper skips ahead of us.

“Things change,” she says, keeping her eyes forward and her steps quick. I match her pace, my long strides an easy advantage.

“If things change, then they can change back.”

“You want me to talk to you? Fine. Why are you out here with us, Ren?” she finally asks, quieter now that Harper isn’t within listening range.

“Am I not allowed to spend time with my wife?” I ask, the words warm against her ear as we walk too close to each other. Her silence goes up like a brick wall. Not convincing. “You clearly have something to say, Nadia; you may as well say it.”

“I have plenty to say. I just have enough common sense not to.”

I slide my hand against Nadia’s lower back. Tension tightens up her spine. Under my touch, her posture is immaculate, unease radiating like an aura. She has the good sense not to step away and lets my touch guide her along our route.

Harper bounces in place as she waits at the gate.

“Is there other stuff we can do, too?” she asks, breathless, like the world has cracked open like an oyster. “Like the slide?”

“Of course.”

“I didn’t know you had such an open schedule,” Nadia remarks.

“I can make time where needed.”

I slip my hand into hers, squeezing against her slack, empty grip. A firm reminder that I am not going anywhere. I bring the back of her hand to my lips to kiss, the way couples do. The taste of her warm, soft skin sets my blood on fire. She shudders and yanks her hand away, leaving me with my teeth bared.

Being with her makes me half mad.

Being without her makes me fully mad. I guess this is what they call a step in the right direction.

“Once Harper has tired herself out, where do you want to go?” I ask Nadia.

She scoffs like I’m joking.

“That isn’t an answer.”

“Because it isn’t a real question,” she says, cradling her hand like I’ve hurt it.

“Of course it is.”

“Oh, sure. I want to go to a show, and a six-course dinner, and a club, with a new outfit for each.”

“Alright.”

She turns to face me so fast, I think she might actually hit me. I don’t flinch. I’m bigger, used to pain, and more importantly, angrier than Nadia can ever be. Even if she swung at me, I wouldn’t feel a damn thing. But she doesn’t hit me with anything except an exasperated glare, like I’m taunting her or insulting her. She’s like a wounded animal. Everything I do, she regards with suspicion.

I know what kind of man I am, and it isn’t good.

But I also know what kind of man I’m not.

“I don’t want to do anything,” she finally mutters, turning away from me when I don’t flinch.

God, she hates me.

We’ve drawn close to the front of the line. I hold out my credit card, dangling it like a counterpoint in our silent argument. She swallows her anger as she takes it, her expression saying all the things her mouth won’t. She walks Harper down to the carousel, then comes back to stand with me at the exit gate.

“What’s the point of a carousel you can barely see your child riding?” I ask, the sun glinting into my eyes from the enclosed ride.

“It looks better at night,” she mutters. Muffled music drones from inside the ride. There are a lot of people here, and even in the spring, the weather feels uncomfortably warm for the season.

“…You said you were going to marry me as a punishment,” she finally says, quietly, under the chatter of the crowd and squeals of the children around us. “Is all of this part of my punishment somehow?”

“Do you want me to be here?” I ask.

She doesn’t answer—but she doesn’t have to. I already know what the answer is.

“Then it’s a punishment. It’s all punishment.”

She shakes her head, her jaw tight, arms crossed. She won’t let me see her face again as we wait, the minutes passing as the ride goes on and on, around and around.

Harper comes out of the ride, looking around for us as parents and children swarm together. Nadia steps forward to get her, but I whistle around my fingers, sharp and piercing. It draws eyes—but more importantly, draws Harper’s, and she smiles at me and comes running, rushing right past her mother.

“ Again? ” she asks and throws her arms around my legs.

Those big eyes look up at me, full of hope and excitement for something so simple .

“Again.”

I do a double-take as I catch Nadia’s expression out of the corner of my eye. She’s trying to be discreet about wiping off her cheeks, trying to hide the tears. I don’t know what they’re from. Anger. Frustration. Despair. I pretend not to notice.

I take Harper to the back of the line, and this time, Harper asks me to ride with her. Nadia doesn’t say a word.