Chapter 16: Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King: Chapter 16

Harper and I sit down at a shaded table under the sprawling branches of a red maple, taking a corner amid the chaos surrounding the food stand. Harper is overjoyed by a lackluster lunch. Her malformed chicken nuggets are supposedly shaped like animals; they don’t look like any animals I’ve ever seen.

She interrogates me while she eats, with the same ferocity that her mother sometimes does. Important, soul-searching questions, like what my favorite animal is. I’ve not given it any serious thought in the last decade. I tell her I don’t have one. This is the only wrong answer.

“Pick one for me,” I tell her.

“I can’t just pick for you!” she exclaims, like I’ve asked her to commit war crimes.

“Why not? You know all the animals. I don’t. You pick.”

She giggles.

“Your favorite animal should be like you,” she says, dispensing wisdom. I watch her as she thinks, her expressions exaggerated. It reminds me of Nadia, the way she could convey a whole paragraph of text with a single look.

Nadia keeps questioning my motivations, but I don’t really understand why. This little girl is half her. That’s enough. She’s a representation of everything that could have been for us. What should have been. The future that wasn’t. But she’s still here, and I have a duty to take care of her.

Men who shirk their obligations to their family, who refuse or abuse their role as protector and provider—I can’t fucking stand them. Those who move into my territory, they either know it, or they learn fast. I have never been like the other families who mindlessly snatch up territory and business wherever they could get it, sprawling out just for the sake of lining their own wallet and stroking their own dick. I take care of what I have; I rule it with an iron fist. If I’m spread too thin, it’s out of my control. I may be a wildcard where the other families are concerned, but people like the way I do things. Sometimes, the old-school way is the best. When you could deal with bullshit with nothing more than a tall tree and a strong rope, or a quick-drying pair of heavy shoes.

As Harper dwells over what animal she should choose for me, I think my motivations are quite clear. Harper deserves to be taken care of because she’s a child. She deserves to be taken care of by me because she is under my roof and loved by my wife. She may not be mine. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t my responsibility.

She taps her lip, giggling, trying to think. I’m at least ninety percent sure it’s going to be a tiger because we just saw a tiger, and she can’t think about anything else.

“Your favorite animal is a tiger,” she graciously decrees.

A shadow falls over her. A man strides up to the table, dressed in a dark denim jacket, his hands full of rings and swirling tattoos. I stand, instincts bristling. I know the type of man he is just by his look, by the way he meets my gaze—he knows me.

“Caruso,” he says, flashing a bright smile surrounded by dark stubble. “No need to get up.”

He sits down in the seat next to Harper.

“Get away from that girl before I shoot you on the spot.”

I’ve already drawn my gun. It’s just under the edge of the table, away from the eyes and cameras around us, the barrel pointed at him under the table. He lays his hands out flat on the table, palms up.

“No need for that, son. Dellucci sent me to talk. Believe me. If he sent me to do anything else, you wouldn’t see me coming.” Slowly, with careful motions, he holds out a hand. “Atlas Reicher.”

I ignore the offer to shake.

Harper’s big eyes stare up at him, confused by the sudden interruption, but oblivious and fearless as she looks him over.

“What’s your favorite animal?” she asks.

“A snake,” I answer for him. Atlas smiles.

“You know why he sent me, Ren.”

“Because he doesn’t value your life very highly.”

“Because he’s willing to extend an olive branch. Just this once. He sent me for a reason. Not one of his lackeys that might feel a certain way about what you’ve done to him and his men. I’m a—what, a neutral party, I suppose. Best chance you’re going to get a fair deal here.”

“I don’t need a fair deal.”

“Oh, you do. You really do. Because if it comes down to a fight, won’t be nothing fair about that. He knows you have the girl that killed his son, Ren.”

“So, tell him to come get her, and he and his boy can have a speedy reunion.”

Atlas leans back as if I don’t have a pistol aimed right at his future children.

“I’m gonna pretend, for your sake, that I didn’t hear that.” He grins. “So, here’s the offer: Either you give over the girl, or in three days, we make a formal declaration with the families to have you named as a liability and have you…” he glances toward Harper, choosing his words carefully, “ expunged , let’s call it.”

Killed, to spare syllables.

I’m not impressed by his threats.

“The families haven’t been united on anything for as long as either of us has been alive. That’s not going to change over some man who couldn’t handle a simple shakedown.”

Atlas grins like he finds it funny.

“Hell, if I were Dellucci, I wouldn’t be shouting that from the rooftops either. Let the boy sleep with some dignity, you know? But you know how Jon is. He’s just like you, Ren. No mercy. And, sure, the families might not agree on how to cut up your territory among themselves or who gets which politician in which pocket. But one thing everybody can agree on? You’re bad for business. And the vultures will all be happy to pick whatever they can off your carcass.”

We glare at each other, his smile stretching the corner of his mouth as if he’s told me anything I don’t already know. As if I haven’t thought about all this for days, turning it over in my mind like a puzzle, trying to find the solution that doesn’t burn the whole world down with me.

“You know what else is bad for business?” I counter him. “All-out war, which the families will never sanction. What’s actually in everyone’s best interest is to let Jon and me settle this how we will, while the rest stay out of it like they always have. Alliances are just for show and everyone knows it. Nobody is really willing to get their hands dirty for anybody else. Not in this day and age.”

Atlas laughs again, low and unsurprised. “Mori said you wouldn’t play ball.” He runs his hand over his stubble. “Truth is, I knew it, too. If all I had to offer you was a threat, I wouldn’t have wasted my time, which is why I have one more offer,” he says, shuffling comfortably in his seat on the bench. “And this is the best one you’re gonna get, where everybody goes home happy. Well— alive , I guess, happy’s got fuck all to do with it. We can keep bloodshed out of it. You keep the girl, keep your life, and Jon mercifully forgives and forgets. This can all be like it never happened. And all you have to do is give him…everything. And I mean everything . Property. Territory. Accounts, national and international. The shoes you’re wearing, right now? His. He doesn’t really care if they fit or not.”

“Like that’s an offer—”

“Ahh,” Atlas cuts across sharply. “You and I both know that is a hell of a better offer than most men get. You can either be alive with nothing, or dead with nothing, Caruso. That ain’t a hard choice.”

He glances down meaningfully to Harper, who has lost interest in the conversation she can’t understand.

“It’s not every day we get to make such an obvious right move, y’know? And I’m telling you, as the neutral party, you better make it.”

“You could’ve made the right move today, Reicher. But you still got up and decided to follow me here. To sit down at my table, with my family, and threaten me. Whatever hell is coming for Jon Dellucci—it’s coming for you, too.”

Atlas nods, as if he expected as much and everything has gone exactly as he predicted it. He stands up.

“I’ll give you in a few days to really think it over. Let your ego settle. We’ll see then if your answer has changed. Have a good day, Ren. Enjoy your food, sweetheart,” he says to Harper, his hand brushing the top of her head.

I want to beat him bloody.

The stranger heads off down the road, into the hustle-bustle of people meandering cluelessly around him. Anger has made a knot in my throat so tight, it hurts to swallow. My grip on the gun could warp the damn thing, the world fuzzy like static at the edges of my vision.

“Who was that? ” Harper asks.

The question shatters my rage. She pulls me back to the moment, the girl all puffed up and dramatic. I take a breath. Then another. One at a time. If all I do is breathe, I won’t do anything I’ll regret.

“No one to worry about. Just a dead man.”

Harper gives me a funny look and just laughs, her big smile biting the head off a tiger-shaped nugget. Oblivious.

I take out my phone. I shouldn’t have let Nadia out of my sight, not even here, in such a public place. Reicher must have followed us all the way from the house. Who knows how long he’d been waiting. Stalking. He could have gone right after Nadia himself if he’d had the means to take her.

The phone rings once, twice. Anger swirls in my skull.

What if I lost her again—just like that? Over a stupid bet. A stupid doubt, needing to prove to myself , that I could…

The ringing interrupts my swirling thoughts, heart pounding louder than the repetitive noise.

I stare at Harper, wondering if I just cost her everything over some silly little bet. Foolish pride. One of my countless weaknesses.

“Hello?” Nadia finally answers.

My shoulders slump. I didn’t know I had been tensing until it all unravels.

“You were right,” I say, the words tightly. “I didn’t last an hour. Where are you?”

***

Harper bounds around the zoo, laughing a mad scientist laugh. She runs full speed toward the giraffes in the distance. Nadia is right by my side. I march us along like soldiers, my grip tight on her arm.

“What happened?” she demands, not for the first time since we met back up.

“Nothing,” I lie. I don’t bother making it sound convincing. Usually, I’m good at lying. Right now, I don’t have it in me to swindle her. My thoughts are too short and narrow, fuse burning. I follow Harper at her breakneck speed.

“Harper,” I snap, when she gets too far for my liking. The girl turns, surprised. She’s never heard me talk to her like that before, and for a split second, guilt tastes like ashes in my mouth. But she obeys and comes bounding back, unfazed and parroting some song from one of the kiosks.

“Ren,” Nadia says, slowly, “you’re hurting me.”

I glance down. Her skin is white where my fingers are wrapped around her arm. My fingers ache as I slowly loosen my death grip on her. “Sorry,” I mutter. She asks something, but I don’t really hear it. I try to put out the rage in my head like a fire, but the anger just keeps finding more and more material to consume, burning brighter and hotter.

He didn’t just threaten me. He threatened all of us. Even her.

My eyes follow Harper. She holds Applesauce on her head, so he can get a better view of the giraffes in the enclosure. I stare into the pen without seeing anything in front of us.

I imagine how he would kill them. I imagine how I would kill him.

My thoughts spill, wet and red, through my skull, filling up my thoughts until they threaten to overflow.

Would Jon Dellucci be true to his word if I gave it all up? Is trading everything I have to my name the only way to spare them? I study Nadia’s face in profile, the way she smiles when she talks to Harper. She came to me to give her daughter a good life.

What if I can’t?

What kind of man would I be if I let her go back to having nothing?

My thoughts are interrupted by Harper’s squeal, my head snapping up. She’s found a kiosk stall with stuffed animals hanging from the ceiling and walls of the booth. She points different stuffed animals out to us. Applesauce might have come from there, but I don’t see any like him.

She bounces from animal to animal, just as amazed by each one. The keepers announce a feeding time and show for a nearby exhibit. Nadia ushers Harper over so she can get a good view. I’m rooted to the spot, hypnotized before an audience of stuffed animals and branded merch offered by a bored teenager manning the desk.

Am I going to send Nadia and Harper back to a life where even getting her a single toy is a struggle?

I can’t. I can’t.

I buy one for her there on the spot. A tiger.

Nadia kneels with her hands on Harper’s shoulders, the two of them looking out at the enclosure. I hold the tiger out to her. “Here.”

Harper’s eyes go wide. She looks up at me in surprise instead of taking it off my hands. When she only gawks, I add, “He’s yours.”

“But I already have Applesauce.”

“Maybe Applesauce needs a friend.”

“But I’m his friend,” she reasons.

“Well, fine. This one’s mine, then. But I still need you to take care of him for me.”

Her eyes light up. She holds out an arm, for some reason happy to agree to those terms even when she wouldn’t take it for herself.

“Okay! Mommy, look,” she says, happy to show off the tiger. “Ren’s letting me look after his tiger! I told you he’s nice!”

Nadia goes pink in the face, avoiding my eye as she mutters low, “I never said he wasn’t.”

We both turn back to feign watching the animals and pretend nothing was said at all.