Chapter 13: Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King: Chapter 13

Her perfume burns my nose before I see her. The hair on the back of my neck stands on end, flush with the feeling of being watched. My glare flicks to the doorway, where Olivia stands and looks me, arms crossed, working on her frown lines. I wonder how long she’s been standing there, obscured by the light of the monitor. I sigh, turning my gaze from the screen.

“What?” I ask, shutting down the computer. The sunset lights the room orange. I don’t remember when it got like that.

“Did you send Nadia out today?”

“I did.”

“…which means you took a look at the Blackwell offer,” she prompts like a disapproving mother already knowing the kid didn’t wash the dishes.

I glance at the black screen, my own reflection like an apparition staring back at me. In the distortion, my eyes look hollow, a skull in a suit.

“Not yet.”

A muscle in Olivia’s jaw ticks. I have been in here for a while. I glance at the sky again as it fades to the color of an old bruise.

Blackwell and I have been in talks about a business acquisition for some time. He got into the online media frenzy early, specializing in local news. He had a brief and blazing early success managing a handful of journalists, so he branched out and made it into a full media company. His business has taken a downturn in the last decade, and Olivia has been salivating over the thought of us acquiring it.

“…then what have you been doing?” she prompts.

“Research.”

She licks her lips, tastes the air like a snake, like maybe she can draw a drop of patience out of it.

“I wish you had told me. I would have prepared something for you to review, whatever metrics you wanted to—”

“It’s not related to Blackwell. It’s personal.”

The emotions that play out on her face are good enough for Broadway. It’s personal was the excuse I would give whenever I was hunting Nadia. It was my rationale for money thrown at private investigators, phone records scraped from data centers, and the occasional trip to Venice, where I followed a false lead that Nadia had taken a flight out of the country and was living abroad. Everyone either knew not to question what I was doing, or they learned fast. There was no amount of money, time, or blood that I wasn’t willing to part with in pursuit of her.

Olivia has always seemed exasperated that I don’t golf, get wasted in country clubs, and bribe my way out of DUI charges on the weekend like a real businessman.

“I know that…caution is necessary where you and Nadia are concerned,” she says, each word carefully chosen and spoken with a low murmur of respect, “but I have an obligation to tell you the truth. You didn’t hire me to bullshit you, so I won’t. And the truth is, I don’t like where this is going. I’m worried. Elijah is worried. You let this woman into your house, let her wander around and spend your money, when we don’t even know her. You barely know her.”

I can handle plenty of hard truths, but that one makes my jaw tick and my brain feverish. She’s gone too far. I know Nadia. I know Nadia the way you know the road to your childhood home, every bend and curve; it’s so familiar that you feel it in your bones.

Olivia wets her lips again. “I know you wanted to find her. And you have. So why does it feel like you’re still looking for her? Like nothing has changed?”

“What would you like changed?” I demand lowly, prompting. “Maybe a change in staff?”

Olivia has never succumbed to my threats. She always holds her head high against them. That’s why she’s lasted so long when others didn’t. She weathers the threat like a glancing blow and tilts her jaw defiantly.

“I want you to see Nadia for what she is and what she always has been: a distraction. I think you hunted her for so long that you’ve lost sight of why you wanted her. I thought—we all thought—”

Finally, she blurts it out, the question that has been itching under her skin like a rash. “Why is she still alive?”

“Do you think I’ve hunted her for years to enjoy killing her in a few minutes? Do you think I am that shortsighted?”

She raises her hands, palms up. “No, but…”

“Let me make one thing clear, Olivia,” I say, her first name scraping over my teeth. She goes very still. “I haven’t lost sight of anything.”

I stand to leave, but Olivia squares her shoulders and begins to speak as if making an incantation, a chant, low and melodic, as she begins to list: “We never made it to Stockholm. This business with Dellucci is festering. Elijah has had to stand in for you more than once with people who want to ally with you. If they can’t even get into a room with you, that might change their minds. And what about your territory? Leighton raised the rent on his tenants, and now people are complaining about you, thinking that you signed off on it. It’s been a couple weeks and you’ve done nothing —”

None of that is important. Not to me, not right now.

“I will handle it,” I say, hardly hearing half of it. “All of it. In time.”

“…Elijah said you would be better once you had Nadia!” Olivia blurts. A brave tone for brave words, but she’s just as scared as she is angry. There’s a tremble in her hands. I can tell when she slides them into her pockets, which she never does. “That you wouldn’t be distracted anymore. But I think you’re worse with her here, and frankly, I don’t trust her!”

“I don’t pay you to have an opinion about Nadia—”

“I don’t,” she interrupts. “I don’t have an opinion about her. But I do have an opinion about you, and I’m worried, Mr. Caruso. I’m worried about where this leads.”

She steps closer, drawn further into the office as the last of the light turns red as evening falls. “I want to know if there’s anything that I can do to help. If there’s something you need, that I can give you, that she—she won’t. I have always said, if you need something, you just have to ask.”

I study her face, which is carefully blank and submissive.

“I need you to think more carefully the next time my wife’s name leaves your mouth.”

Her face turns ashy, then pink, then almost purple. I suppose I had neglected to mention to her that Nadia and I were getting married.

“You aren’t cleared to know everything I do, whether it pertains to Nadia or not. Tell Elijah we’ll visit Leighton tomorrow before dawn.”

She finally nods. It seems, for a moment, that she wants to say something else. But she doesn’t. She simply says, “Yes, sir,” and heads back downstairs.

I glance at my hand, tensing and untensing my fingers. Usually, a conversation like that would bring agony, a blazing, furious heat that builds right along with all my anger and frustration, spurring it on like gasoline on a fire.

The scar tissue doesn’t hurt. I open and close my hand and feel nothing. It hasn’t hurt since Nadia and I were together that night. The doctors always said it was phantom pain; I always said they were fucking morons. Sure, all the symptoms lined up. No medication could touch it. The severity seemed to come and go with my moods. Alcohol took the edge off, and with the right combination of drugs, I could forget for a little while—but it never really went away completely. And still, I refused to believe it was my own mind doing that to me. But now it’s just— gone .

My fingers are still stiff. They always will be. But I can clench my fist, and it doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t hurt at all.

***

I catch a late meal, scheduling a last-minute and impromptu dinner with Blackwell.

I pretend Olivia’s scolding had nothing to do with it, but maybe she’s right. Maybe I can’t spend the whole day pouring over the past and course-correcting the future. Not if I let the present rot and collapse around us all.

It lasts hours, devolves into just drinks. I always make sure my business partners are well taken care of when I take them out. The most expensive liquor or the finest wine, all on my dime, and served by a waiter who knows better than to let them see the bottom of the glass. Real negotiation doesn’t start until they’re pink in the face, and I’m on my third drink of a watered-down imitation.

I don’t care about fair . I only care about results.

But as I chew passionlessly through the courses, talking business acquisitions and the looming fate of political campaigning, my thoughts circle back to Nadia. They always circle to Nadia, like birds coming home to roost. I wonder where she took that card today. I picture her in a dress with a cut-out back and an hourglass shape. Diamonds studs in her ears, on her fingers. A carefree laugh on her lips. Maybe I saw her in something like that once. I’m not much for imagination, but I have memories in droves.

But it doesn’t matter what she buys. The cut or the color. The number of carats. It matters that my money put it on her. The dress, the jewelry. The smile.

I close the thought like closing a book. I know better than to think I make Nadia smile.

It’s late when I arrive home. The house is dark. Quiet. Everyone is gone for the night except the security personnel, still vigilant at this late hour. I head toward the bedroom, my footsteps soft as I try not to wake her. The mattress creaks anyway, and the bedside lamp turns on. My spine stiffens as I feel Nadia watching me from the bed as I undress, tugging the knot out of my tie. She should have been asleep a long time ago.

“Did I wake you up?” I ask.

“No. I was waiting for you.”

The girl’s every action is a wildcard. Physically, she’s been overly familiar with me, even affectionate, and it hits me like a dessert that’s overly sweet. Mentally, I’m not sure we’ve ever been farther apart. I have no idea what she’s playing at or to what end. I expected her to be…simpler, which is stupid because I didn’t fall in love with a simple woman.

“I have a favor to ask.”

I scoff. “One credit card wasn’t enough—”

“It’s not about money.”

“Everything is about money.”

“Oh, please. We both know that isn’t true,” she says. She slides down to the end of the bed, sitting on her knees. The posture makes my blood run a little hot, eyes drawn to the hem of her nightgown as it runs up her thighs. I look away before I can get distracted.

“Then what is it about?”

“Respect. If I’m going to be your wife, then I need to be respected, Ren.”

I turn sharply.

“Someone disrespected you?” I ask, my thoughts turning red and I suddenly become hyperaware of the weight of the gun holstered on my hip.

“Why is my Uncle Marlow still alive?” Nadia asks. The woman loves her non sequiturs.

“…Why does that matter? Are you just craving a funeral?”

“Maybe. Everyone else I share blood with you killed. Why not Marlow?”

I study her face in the silence, looking for a tell. I don’t find one.

“Tell me what he did, and maybe I’ll reconsider.”

“Answer my question first,” she demands. “Why didn’t you kill him, Ren?”

Where the hell has Nadia been today that she came back with these kinds of questions? What did she do that sparked this? I swallow my annoyance long enough to consider telling her the truth.

Before we had sex, I had no problem talking about the past. Taking big handfuls of salt and rubbing it into all the old wounds still festering between us. But now—

I lick away the emotion on my teeth, pretending it doesn’t taste like shame .

“Marlow helped me hunt down your family.”

Whatever Nadia expected, it clearly wasn’t that. Her face pinches, like the truth is too large to swallow. “What…?” she breathes.

“He’s a predictable man. He’d put his own skin before anyone else’s, so I spared him on the condition that he give up your family. An easy trade, as far as he was concerned. You were the only one he couldn’t find.”

She falls silent, runs her hands over her face. I wonder if those are tears she’s rubbing away. And then I wonder why it hurts me, when I think they might be.

“Nadia,” I say, annoyed that she won’t just speak .

Instead, she laughs. A broken sound as she finally looks at me again, something wet and angry glimmering in her eyes. “So, he fucking played you.” Her voice verges on manic.

“No. I offered him a handsome reward for you. If he’d known, he would have—”

“Oh, not nearly as handsome as the reward he got for keeping me away from you, I’m sure. I hid out with Marlow for months, Ren. At his club. The day I turned 18, he made me transfer everything I had over to him. Why do you think I have nothing, Ren? Why do you think I didn’t cash in everything my parents left me? I could have been long gone. Marlow took everything from me. Fuck,” she breaks briefly, her voice warbling with an anger so intense, it verges on weeping, “Apparently, he took a hell of a lot more than just some goddamn money!”

My vision narrows. I didn’t know her family’s finances, didn’t know what she would or wouldn’t be able to access. It had never mattered, and I never put it together.

I stood smelling the stench of that club and bartered with Marlow, face to face. A gun pressed against his heart. Was she down there then, right there under my feet— so close— as he lied to my face?

I breathe out a low hiss, trying to calm down before I go do something I’ll regret.

“I want him dead,” she says, like she’s giving an order.

“Nadia—”

“He robbed me, tormented me, and the people who work for him, and now apparently, he betrayed his own fucking blood!” she yells, her voice cracking again. “You say my parents deserve what you did to them. Fine. Fine! Maybe they did—but if that’s true, then he deserves this. I’m owed, Ren!”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Excuse me? I’ve seen you kill people. I’ve seen exactly how simple it is. That’s what you said, right?” she asks, leaping to her feet and crossing the room. She gets up in my face, the orange light behind her throwing her face into shadow. “That it was easy .”

I should push her back. Get her off me. But my hands feel like lead, heavy at my sides as she leans in too close, her eyes coming into focus in the dark.

“Are you just going to let him get away with it?”

“I’m not your attack dog.”

“You were two minutes ago before I told you who I wanted you to go after! Where’s your rage now, Ren? Why all the loyalty for a man who lied to you for years, who betrayed me—”

“Enough,” I snap, pushing past her. I have to get away from her, or I’m going to drive out into the night and beat Marlow Gatti to death with my bare hands. Forget the gun; I wouldn’t need it.

My thoughts are so intense, I can barely see in front of me.

I storm out of the bedroom. Nadia’s feet come prowling right behind me, not leaving it alone for a second.

“Ren—” she demands. I ignore it. My thoughts collide in my head like cymbals crashing, rattling my skull and my teeth.

It’s sure as hell not loyalty keeping me from going after Marlow. I don’t owe the man a damn thing except a nice, slow hanging. I just can’t. I can’t.

Salvatore Mori is already breathing down my neck, goddammit. If I drop another body, if I go about this wrong , that’ll be the end of us. Taking out a man like Marlow unprovoked, a guy I do business with and who has, by all accounts, been loyal to me since I swore him into my service? The other families would look at me like a rabid dog, too dangerous to keep alive.

Like they don’t already.

Nadia gets her hand around my arm, turns me around to face her.

“Where are you going?” she demands.

The question shakes me back to the moment, back into my own skin.

I find myself pulling my jacket back on. I stand on the threshold of the house. Cold air wafts in through the open door. Her question echoes. Where am I going? I don’t know. My heart is hammering in my chest, my mind blank with rage. Am I going after Marlow, anyway? Telling my mind that I can’t, while I blindly run off and—

Fuck. Fuck . I try to ground myself, clench my hand for that old familiar pain to bring me back to the present. Nothing. It’s still gone, and now I fucking need it.

I shudder and lean against the doorframe. They’d lock me up in an insane asylum if they knew what it was like, that sometimes the world just goes black inside my head, but my body keeps moving, keeps acting, even if I’m not the one steering it. I run my fingers through my hair.

Nadia’s hand touches my shoulder. I shrug it off.

“Don’t.”

“Ren, come back inside,” she says.

I can’t.

I need to go somewhere else. Somewhere I can think, somewhere I don’t have to look at her and be overwhelmed by this awful urge to storm off into the night and kill a man just because she asked. Nadia is more right than she knows—it would be easy. So easy, I’d barely fucking remember it.

“Go back to bed.”

“Wait, I—I wanted to talk about this. Why can we never just talk about anything? I ran away from you for years, just so you can finally run away from me? The fuck—”

I shut the door in her face and slump against on the other side of it, drinking in the cold air like it can put out the fire in my head.

I wander, trying to stay present, stay in control. I force my feet in any direction that isn’t toward that sleazy bastard with his oil-slick grin. I reach the river, cross the empty roadway to look out at the water and the rest of the towering city that stretches out on the other side.

What Nadia doesn’t understand is that I’m not running from her; I’m running from what she makes me.

Everything in the mob works as long as it is allowed to work. As long as the ugly parts of our business are kept discreet, money circulates into the right pockets, and the cops are kept out of it by bribery, distraction, or force. But it’s a system, and if one part of the system starts to fester, like an infected limb, it will be cut off.

I clench my hand again.

I wish Olivia was right. I wish I had lost sight. If I had, then I wouldn’t have to see the way this all ends.