Chapter 25: Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King: Chapter 25

The meeting room is a windowless, cold box. Like a slaughterhouse kill room. If the FBI had a hunch and a decent set of balls, they could turn some old-school Italian bloodlines into blood puddles. But that’s no way to treat an old business partner, is it?

Mori, Rossi, Santos, Greco, Corsetti—the families are each represented, some by their leaders, others by those they’re willing to sacrifice in case this room becomes a shooting range before all is said and done. We’ve all been patted down, but it’s the mob. There are no guarantees.

The long table cutting the room in half is bare except for ashtrays. No drinks offered. No one among us dumb enough to drink the Kool-Aid.

Dellucci sits at the opposite end of the room, a couple of his cronies on either side, and a cigar squirming in his teeth like a dying animal caught in an alligator’s jaws. He’s talking to Greco when I enter. Conversation and smiles die off as Elijah and I step into sight.

One by one, I make my way around the room to offer respect. Short, brisk handshakes. Dellucci and I are expected to shake hands, and as the number of people between us dwindles, the eyes of the room turn to the two of us in expectant silence.

Salvatore gives my hand an extra firm squeeze, holding my gaze steady—eyes that say don’t react . Tessa sits beside him, her hair pulled up in a strict, no-nonsense bun. She’s the only woman in the room, but her handshake is just as professional as the rest.

Jon and I finally stand face to face. I’m not the one Dellucci has an issue with, not really, but I am the roadblock standing in his way, and he looks at me the way a train looks at a car caught on the tracks. Like he will run right through me if he has to. It doesn’t bother me. I’m not a car trapped on the tracks—I’m just another train barreling head-on, right toward him.

He holds out his hand, offers the one that will require me to extend my injured hand. I do. A spinning drill bit of pain lances all the way up into my shoulder blade. I hold my grip and my expression, let the pain grind in the back of my molars and flare in the pit of my stomach. I drink it in like most men drink in a shot of whisky—for courage, or relief, or rage.

“Both parties have agreed that I will mitigate,” Raymon Santos says, “As a neutral party in this, I abstain from a vote.”

Santos waits for everyone to settle in. Elijah’s expression is stony and distant. He’s worried. Just like Olivia, he doesn’t trust me.

Santos gives a brief rundown of the circumstances that have brought the families here: Nadia’s debt to Dellucci—to the tune of $35,000, before interest, amassed over a period of two years. Fucking chump change. That’s what Jon got his son killed over. No wonder he’s pissed.

“Weeks ago, Jon sent his son Arlo to collect on Nadia Caruso’s—then Petrone’s—debt. He was killed in an altercation.”

“Murdered,” Jon corrects around the bite of his cigar.

“Can’t say that for certain,” Santos dismisses. “We’ll get to your version of events soon enough, Jon, just wait a beat. Now…” he leans back, looking between us and tossing down the paper of facts he has prepared in front of him.

“From here, it seems Nadia went to Ren Caruso for protection. He granted it—terms presently unknown. And in the process, he shot and killed two more of Jon’s men who were pursuing her. The Carusos have, historically speaking, had a bounty on Nadia for a little over half a decade. Everyone here knows that, and everyone here knows why. So there is an argument to be made that Ren has precedent when it comes to her capture.”

Everyone is carefully still at the mention of the past. What happened to my parents is largely regarded as one of the most egregious mob hits of the past few decades. Sometimes, an assassination happens. Fights break out, somebody gets shot down or beat up. But burning alive a couple in their own bed, with an accelerant? It’s old-school in an uncomfortable way. Like going back to the days of firing squads and electric chairs instead of by lethal injection.

Dellucci is the only one who shuffles in his chair, impatient.

“We’ll let Jon go first—seems to make the most sense to me. State his case—”

The stairs creak. Footsteps, slow and heavy, rattle the wooden boards leading down into the bunker, someone is trudging down. The room goes silent, every eye trained on the doorway like a grenade might come sailing through it.

No one coming down or up top makes a sound. Not a peep.

Salvatore Mori reflexively stands, his hand reaching for a weapon that isn’t there as he steps in front of his wife.

Marlow enters. He’s more sober than I’ve seen him in at least a year, but I can still smell the alcohol on him from here. His hands are empty. He ambles into the room. Either his suit is badly cut or there’s just no way to make a man built like a beer keg look put together.

“Seems somebody forgot my invitation,” Marlow sneers, laughing like he made a joke, but it doesn’t land.

“What are you doing here, Marlow?” Santos asks.

“I got my own investment in this. Nadia’s my niece, and we have our own history. Seems I ought to have a right to sit at this table and give my say.”

How the hell did he hear about this?

Santos looks around, seeking objections from the uninvolved. I glance toward Elijah, trying to assess the damage, but he’s only looking at Marlow, his mouth a flat, unhappy line. He looks the way he’s looked all day, like he swallowed something he can’t keep down.

Again, I search myself for that kind of fear. And again, I don’t find it.

“…Alright.” Santos concedes. Marlow pulls out his own chair and sits.

“You wanna know about my niece? I’ll tell you about her,” he says, when nobody asked. “Only reason she’s alive is ‘cause of me. ‘Cause I helped her. Promised her mother I’d take care of her. And she’s still alive, isn’t she? I did my part, I kept my word. And the little bitch repaid me that kindness by stealing over ten grand from me and my girls, and running off—”

“After you stole her inheritance—” I interrupt. Santos holds up a hand to keep me at bay.

“You think keeping your dogs off her tail was cheap, boy?” Marlow demands. “Her parents spent everything they had trying to get out and save themselves. What was left after that, they gave to me to use to protect her.”

I don’t know if that’s true. Knowing the mouth the words came from, probably not. But it looks damn bad for Nadia. This bullshit isn’t what I came here to fight.

I’m not the only to realize what’s unfolding.

“Why are we hearing this?” Tessa Mori asks the room. Sour gazes turn her way. A couple of the men don’t look kindly upon the interruption, and I’m certain it’s because said interruption comes from a woman. “This is about what happened between Dellucci and Caruso. None of this is relevant.”

“Think of me like a…a character witness, sweetheart,” Marlow grins.

Salvatore’s chair squeaks before he even opens his mouth, and that alone is enough to send a dangerous hush into the room. “Talk down to my wife again, and you’ll witness my character, too,” Salvatore says, with a smile that could cut.

“Alright, boys, let’s take it easy now,” Santos whistles, “We can all put our dicks on the table when we’ve handled our primary business. Mrs. Mori has a point. We’re here to stop citywide bloodshed if we can, not take on everybody’s personal grievances. It’s not a damn pity party, Marlow.”

“You think I want pity? I want some damn justice. Not for me, hell, that ship has long sailed. But if I don’t get a proper vote in this, I should at least get a voice,” Marlow insists, and that so-called voice is getting louder and more belligerent by the minute. “But fine. I’m just here to stand with Jon. Back up what he’s saying, make sure we all understand what the right thing is.”

My hand curls into a fist.

Nadia was right. I should have killed him after all.

“Jon, go ahead. State your case. Start wherever you see fit.”

Dellucci puts out his cigar on the heel of his leathery palm and leans forward to speak. He addresses the room, but he looks only at me.

“Nadia Petrone came to me when she was at a low point. Had a new baby. Sick little thing. Real sad, you know. Pulled at my heartstrings with that whole sob story. So I said, alright, Nadia, I’ll help you. I’ll risk my neck, and I’ll help you, ‘cause God knows if the Carusos ever find out that you were within my reach, they’ll come baying for blood. I knew that Ren was after her—but what can I say? I got a soft heart in here,” he says, thumping his big chest. “So I give her a little money, just a couple of grand. I say, ‘Don’t worry about it—you take care of the little one.’

“But a few months later…she comes back. Now, I’m not a charity, and it’s a little more than just a couple of grand she’s asking for. And she’s still just a kid, and she has a kid, and it’s a whole fucking mess. She swears to me she’ll pay it off within six months, no problem. I let her take the money. Six months comes and goes. She doesn’t have it. Hell, she doesn’t have her own money, much less mine. So, I say, alright—alright, one more time, because you’re a sweet young thing and you’ve had a hard time of it, just one more handout to get you on your feet—make good use of it.”

My fingers curl around the arms of my chair. I anchor myself to it, afraid if I don’t, I will launch myself across the room. I know for a goddamn fact this is not how Dellucci operates. Kindness is not within his vocabulary.

“The girl takes that money, and what does she use it for? She uses it to bounce around New York and try to get away from me.”

He’s twisting it all up. She was trying to get away from me, not him, not just her debts.

“She slips through the cracks, vanishes with the cash. Now, before, I wasn’t even counting interest. I told her I was, just to get some pep in her step, but I wasn’t. Now, I was charging, and the numbers—they kept going up. Inflation’s a bitch these days, ain’t it?”

Murmurs of half-amused agreement.

Like hell he wasn’t counting from the very start.

“I found her once. Sent a couple of my boys to remind her she still owes. Just a chat, nothing ugly. Even gave her an offer that woulda let her pay off some of it with work. But she says no, and off she goes just like that. Slips away for another couple years. Until a couple months ago. And this time, I sent my boy to go get her and bring her in. And he didn’t come back from that.”

The room has grown cold and quiet. My ears ring. My thoughts burn. The urge to argue rises on my tongue, to lash out at every ridiculous point he’s made.

Funny how he didn’t mention what kind of work he offered her.

I would’ve paid Dellucci ten times whatever pitiful loan he gave Nadia if he had respected my family and our losses and turned her over to us. That’s how it should have been done from the very start. It was his own stupidity that caused this, his own lack of respect that put his loan in the red and cost him his son.

And Nadia would have never needed Dellucci’s money if Marlow himself hadn’t taken her inheritance. The idiots cheated themselves by cheating the girl.

Jon goes on about his son. His accomplishments. His “ingenuity.” The bright, promising future that Nadia snuffed out like blowing out a candle.

Arlo Dellucci was a man with more muscle than brains, a short temper, and a gambling problem. Not just a habit, a problem. He wasn’t any fucking good at it. Killing him was probably a positive for the Dellucci family net worth. They will recoup the losses he took on Nadia’s unpaid debts in no time.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. I ignore it until it starts to buzz over and over with an incoming call. I move to shut the damn thing off, when I see the waiting text from Nadia—

Harper’s being taken to the hospital

I’m omw there. Can you answer

Ren

The room looks to me. I’m not sure why until I realize that I’ve stood up and tossed my chair aside.

“I have to go—” I hear myself say, avoiding eye contact.

Salvatore stands and so does Elijah. Ripples of concern and confusion spread through the room.

“You aren’t going to make your case—?” Santos calls out.

“Elijah will make it for me.” I keep moving, pushing past the confusion. “I have to go,” I hear myself repeat, as if someone else is puppeteering my voice. “My daughter; she’s in the hospital—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, is that the only play in the book you people know?” Dellucci cries. Then he waves his hand, shaking his head, ushering me off as if to get me out of his damn sight.

“What’s wrong with Harper?” Tessa asks. The words are all swarming around me, picking at me, like invisible hands trying to pull me back into the room. I don’t let them. I only glance back at Elijah, our eyes meeting.

I don’t have to say anything for him to understand:

This is up to you now.

***

I don’t remember the car ride over. I know I called Nadia, but it was just cruelty to keep her on the phone. She was crying too hard to speak. Couldn’t get any information out of her except “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.”

I find her pacing a hospital waiting room despite the empty seats scattered throughout. A TV perched in the corner of the ceiling plays a news program over the sound of distant urgency. Nobody watches it.

As if she had second sense, she glances up to see me.

Her face is pale, except for the pinkness in her eyes and her cheeks. When she looks at me, her expression breaks. She rushes to me as if she’s going to throw herself into my arms. It makes my heart kick into double-time for a second, instincts bristling. She needs me. But she stops short and takes two clumsy, shuddering steps back as she thinks better of it, remembering who we are.

I march to her and pull her into my arms. Her body falls against mine as if in relief, wracked with quiet, dry sobs.

“What happened? Nadia, what happened?” I ask her again.

On the phone, she hadn’t been able to tell me so I don’t know why I expect that the answer might have changed now. It hasn’t.

“I don’t know. The school called. They said she was sick to her stomach, that I needed to come pick her up. I didn’t think anything about it. Kids get stomach bugs all the time. I was on my way there when they called back and said they’d called an ambulance. She’d started seizing and—”

Her voice cracks.

“She was fine this morning, Ren. She was totally fine. Oh, God, if it’s her heart again—I keep thinking, did I mess up her meds somehow? I just—”

She pushes her hair off her forehead.

I pull her against me again and shush her. We sway together, the moment finally settling as I feel her in my arms. The way she needs me, like she used to. I wish these weren’t the circumstances, but they are.

Gently, I lead her to one of the seats, where other dejected strangers are waiting for their own family members, huddled in tight groups of support or sitting in lone, empty silence. It’s busy and it’s loud, but it feels like I’m standing in an enclosed room. All the noise bounces off the two of us, caught in the eye of a silent storm.

I squeeze Nadia’s cold hands, rub them, as if warmth and hope are the same thing. Our wedding rings clink, and for a brief moment, it feels so real. Because it hurts. Things that hurt always feel real, even when they’re not.

“The doctors haven’t said anything?”

She shakes her head.

“Just that I could be back there with her once they have her stable. But that was…” she shakes her head. “I don’t know. It feels like it’s been a long time. Too long.”

Her head drops onto my shoulder. It feels like I should tell her something. Some reassurance. What do people say? It’ll be alright. I don’t know that, so I can’t say it. I wish I could.

We sit and we wait. Eventually, in our shared, devastated silence, Nadia says, “Thank you for coming.”

“You don’t need to thank me for that, Nadia—”

“No, but I want to. Whenever this happened before, when she was younger, I sat in rooms like this alone. I…” her hand tightens on mine—the bad one—a desperate, crushing grip that should send me to the ground. It doesn’t even register. “…I know you’re here for her, but…I’m glad you’re here all the same. It means a lot, Ren.”

I stare at the woman I loved, loved for years and years, miles apart, bad blood and all. Everyone had their own names for what I felt for Nadia. Obsession. Insanity. Hate. Those were just the symptoms; the disease was love.

I used to think I was pathetic for holding onto that feeling the way I did. The way I let it consume me. A better man would have moved on, wouldn’t have let some past fling ruin him. So many years gone, and a better don wouldn’t have forgiven her for what her family did to mine. Pathetic, I would think, staring up at the ceiling from my empty bed.

Being with her here now, in this waiting room…I don’t feel pathetic. I feel vindicated. I am exactly where I belong.

“Shut up,” I whisper, too harsh, and crush her against me again. “I’m here for both of you.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have said it. It starts her off again, tears sliding down her face and hiccups in her chest.

“I miss you,” she says, like she’s been holding it back. Not missed. Not past tense. Nadia actively, currently misses me while I’m sitting right here. I don’t pretend to misunderstand the meaning—I know exactly what she’s talking about. I miss a lot of things, and no matter how much I have tried to redo them, to send us back to that place and time, it never feels the way it did before.

The hospital seats put a barrier of arm rests between us and I can’t stand it. I get her up and put her on my lap, where I can wrap my arms around her properly and hold her against me. She sinks into me like I am the only safe place to land.

I remember how this felt. Like I’ve been thrown back in time. We’re both on the same page. There’s no space in this stuffy, obnoxious waiting room for our bullshit. No past or future here, nothing complicated about this moment. We’re sharing the same thoughts, the same feelings, the same gutting anxiety.

Nadia buries her face in my neck, hides herself from it all. I watch, uncomprehending, at the scenes that play out in waiting rooms. Phones on speaker. Music blasting too loud from headphones that don’t fit right. Nurses and doctors coming and going, bringing news. The occasional crying or laughing.

Nadia is right. It feels like it’s been too long. I want to go be with Harper. I want to tell her the stupid lies I can’t even tell her mother, like everything is alright (it isn’t) and I’m there for her (I won’t be).

My fingers drag through Nadia’s hair without realizing it.

Finally, a doctor approaches. I nudge her forward. She stands in a breathless rush, leaning into my hand on her lower back as we stand side by side. I brace for the worst—the way you brace to be hit by a semi pushing eighty-five. Totally pointless.

“Harper’s alright for now—” the doctor says. That alone nearly takes Nadia off her feet with relief. “—but Ms. Petrone, we don’t believe this is related to her heart condition. Everything seems fine there, which is good news and bad news. Is there anything she could have gotten into? Cleaners, chemicals, medications—?”

Nadia stares, her face pinched.

“I…no? I don’t know, she was at school when it happened, they just called me—they said she got sick after lunch.”

“Did she eat lunch provided by the school?”

My thoughts leap ahead, bounding from one question to the next, as if watching a string of dominos beginning to fall. The trajectory obvious and inevitable, yet you still can’t look away as they crash together one after the other in that long, predictable line—

“I fixed her lunch like I always do,” she insists. Her hands come up to her mouth. “Was it something I gave her?”

“That’s not likely, unless there was a chemical contaminate you didn’t know about. This isn’t your standard food poisoning.”

“But you are saying she’s been poisoned—” I say, softly.

“Based on her symptoms, it’s likely she’s ingested something toxic, yes. We’re still waiting for toxicology to come back with something definitive. She’s responding well to a generic round of treatment to flush out her system, though, so until we can isolate what it is, we’ll continue with a broad-spectrum treatment. I’d have more confidence if we could say for sure what she might have gotten into.”

“Can I see her?” Nadia asks.

“Of course. We have her under mild sedation to keep her relaxed. It’s better if you don’t wake her for now.”

The doctor leads Nadia back into the room. My feet follow her, though I don’t remember moving them. She pulls me along by the hand, refusing to let go, our fingers knotted together like the universe might try to snatch us apart.

It could have been an accident, I try to tell myself. As if I would believe it. That part of me that blacks out with rage and wrath—it’s dead silent now. I don’t need it. I am it, except this time, I am coldly, clinically aware.

Harper is stretched out on a hospital bed that seems to swallow her up. The white sheets making the pallor of her face gray. Her eyes are closed, breathing quick and shallow. One look, and I don’t think I can stay in here. I need to go. Need to find someone, something—make them pay for it.

Nadia takes Harper’s hand. She looks up to find me frozen in the doorway.

“Ren?” she asks.

All I wanted to do was get in this room. For half an hour, I counted the goddamn seconds. But now that I’m here, I can’t do a goddamn thing for her, and, in its own way, that feels worse. My hands clench.

When I linger in the doorway too long, she looks back at Harper.

“Go if you have to,” she says. Like she can read me. She used to be able to. So many inside jokes; it was like our own language.

I take that murderous little voice in my head and drown it in my own anger. Hold it under until it stops breathing, just for a little while. I go and put a hand on Nadia’s shoulder. I can’t do anything for Harper, but I can still stay here for her.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

We lapse into another thoughtful silence.

“This is my fault,” she says.

“You didn’t do this.”

She looks at me, searching my face for the truth.

“Did someone else…?”

“I don’t know.”

But I’m so convinced of it, it feels like a lie.

It can’t be coincidence. The timing was too perfect. I don’t bother calling Elijah or Salvatore. Somehow, in my gut, I already know what has happened at that meeting. I am sure when we get home—with Harper in tow, alive and well, because that must be how it is—Nadia will clean house, from top to bottom. Wipe down everything, throw out every piece of food, check every bottle cap, clean her room until it’s spotless.

I am going to clean house, too. Just not like that.

Nadia sniffles quietly, both her hands locked around Harper’s smaller one. The room is too quiet.

“She’ll be alright,” I say finally say, but it’s not an empty promise. It’s an ultimatum. I’m not giving Harper another option. My first stern demand as a father. Live, or you’re grounded.

Nadia seems to get worse instead of better. Time weighs down on her, wears her thin.

“I should have told you a long time ago, Ren,” Nadia eventually says, her voice an intrusion on the silence pressing in on us. “I should have told you the truth. Not that it matters right now, I just…” Her hand palms at her eyes, but they’re dry now; she’s all cried out. “You can only carry so much guilt at once, you know? And I’m full up.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t have to pretend like you didn’t figure it out. I know you put it together.”

I stare at her, still unsure.

“Nadia, I’m not in the mood for guessing games,” I sigh, but it’s more a plea than a warning. I just don’t have the mental energy for it. Not right now.

“Jesus, you’re really going to make me say it… She’s yours, Ren,” Nadia admits softly, searching my face. I search hers, looking for another clue, as if the words don’t fit together. “Harper is your daughter. She basically announced it. At the dinner? She’s almost seven.” She laughs, the sound wet. “What was our favorite thing to do almost seven years ago?”

I stare down at the little girl on the bed, my heart going a mile per hour after hearing Nadia’s words. My head feels dizzy, the words ring untrue. How can a sweet, lovely little kid like Harper… be mine?

My daughter. My biological daughter.

I swallow hard, clearing my throat. “What?” I bark, “…That doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

“What, you don’t believe me?” Nadia asks, on the verge of hysteria.

Fuck. We probably shouldn’t do this. Not here and now, but when else?

Her derision becomes a frantic laugh, “All this time I’ve tried to hide it from you, when I could have just waved it in your face, and you can’t even bother believing me—”

I snapped. “I’ve been going insane, Nadia, thinking who the fuck is the father. Who is the little prick that got even a little bit of your attention? You said he died!” I roar, the words leaving my mouth without my permission.

“Yes! Because I thought a part of you did! The part of you that loved me, at least. I was talking about you, Ren. You are the only man I’ve ever loved!”

My breath is now coming in short gasps, trying to think past the cacophony of voices in my head screaming she’s never had another man in her life. There’s no one else I have to kill, no ghost I have to fight for her attention. She’s utterly, truly, completely mine. And so is our daughter.

I let out a manic laugh, unable to control myself. She’s right, though. The part of me that loved her… It should’ve died—but it’s a stubborn old thing. Like one of those cancer patients that somehow keep living through their last year, again and again, defying the odds. A green leaf still on the branch late into winter. Like the nerves in my hand. That part of me wouldn’t die even if it was better for me.

“…Then there was never someone else,” I grunted, trying to wrap my mind around the fucking bomb she dropped on my lap. And what a fucking bomb.

“No one. Not one single person. You aren’t the only one who waited, Ren.”

The words slip under my skin, wreak havoc in my veins, my heart, my head. I look up at the white, overly bright lights above us. Nadia waited. She waited for me, just like I kept waiting for her. Fuck. My head and heart and mouth lock up as if I don’t want to believe it, as if I can’t. Things like this…They never happen to me. There must be some reason it isn’t true. Some catch.

“…I was too afraid to tell you at first,” she admits, whispering. “I didn’t know what was going to happen. What you would do.” She doesn’t look at me either, but I can hear the tears in her voice. “Guess I still don’t.”

We’re both trapped here in this silent room, just us and the truth, neither of us able to walk away. We’d sat without looking at each other on opposite sides of an invisible confessional, the truth pouring out like old, stagnant water. But I can feel her looking to me now for some kind of reaction. Anything.

Harper is mine. The idea sinks in slowly like the cold, spreading slow and seeping from my chest outward. It’s not an easy thing to believe. The more I look at Harper, the less possible it seems. She’s so innocent. If I was ever that innocent, I don’t remember it. I don’t know if people are born good or born bad—but I know she was born better than me.

“So you kept her from me. You kept yourself and our daughter away from me.” I turned to stare at her, anger and hurt battling inside of me.

“Can you truly blame me?” She whispers. And she’s right. I can’t blame her. But it doesn’t change the fact that it still fucking hurts.

Everything both of them have been through, every single time they’ve thought they were alone, every day they struggled for food, for a safe space. I curse myself—this is my fucking fault, too.

I look at the beautiful girl lying in the hospital bed, my heart clenching with fear and pure happiness. She was already mine, the moment I discovered Nadia had a daughter. But knowing she’s truly, irrevocably mine…I don’t think I could ever express the joy filling my chest.

I have a daughter.

I drag my hands over my face, trying to reign in my emotions. Trying to get a grip on myself so I don’t throw both of them over my shoulder and run like a fucking caveman. Goddamn tears prick at my eyes and a smile tugs at my mouth, and I breath through everything. Nadia seems to wait for some big reaction. The atomic force of the truth to detonate and level me. She seems braced for it—resigned to my outrage or my disbelief. It doesn’t come.

“This doesn’t change anything, Nadia. The fact that you hid this from me… I understand it.” I admit, realizing it out loud. I swallow hard to reach over and brush a lock of hair from the girl’s clammy forehead, looking at her with visible adoration in my eyes. “She’s already mine, blood or not. I’ve never seen her otherwise.”

Nadia’s breath hitches with another sob, but she keeps herself together this time.

“She adores you,” she admits with a wet smile.

I feel uncomfortable with the warmth spreading through my chest at that truth. I know she does. But I just don’t think I deserve it.

“She’s a child. She doesn’t have good taste yet.”

Nadia laughs wetly. A strange tug pulls at my cheek, so unfamiliar, the muscle feels stiff from disuse. I don’t hold back this time, and grin back at her.

“Well, if she takes after me at all, she won’t grow out of it,” she admits, and a rough laugh escapes past my mouth.

I know exactly what this is. It’s an illusion. A mirage. Water in the desert. This room is a neutral zone with no history around it. A place out of time. Once we leave it…I am still the man who murdered members of her family. Still her captor who forced her into marriage. Still the man who goes dark, lights out, when he closes his fist or reaches for a weapon.

For now, I get to be what Nadia has been for a long time: a worried parent.

I wish I could whisk Harper up into my arms. Pry her out of that cold bed and the nest of tubes and wires straight into safety. I close my eyes and bow my head, but I am not a praying man.

Nadia’s apologizes again, but I don’t bother hearing it. I don’t need it.

Pleasant nurses weave in and out of the room from time to time. Her vitals are checked. Clear bags suspended from hooks changed and replaced as they drip into the tubes snaking into Harper’s arms.

Time starts to lose all meaning as we sit there. Harper is supposed to sit up. Giggle. Break something. I don’t like how she just lies there, so still. Too still. The phone in my jacket pocket buzzes between us. I let it. The ringing persists, over and over, until even Nadia pulls back enough to ask,

“Aren’t you going to answer that?”

“I already know what they’re going to say.”

And it’s nothing good.

I let the call bounce. I don’t care about what’s happening out there, or what’s waiting for us both just on the horizon. The only thing I care about right now is half a foot away from me, and I can’t do a damn thing to help her.

Nadia crushes my hand in hers. And that must be just as devastating, having only me to lean on. Like leaning on a dud missile with its nose buried in the dirt, never knowing if it’s going to blow you to pieces at any second.

Sometimes, I don’t know who you are…

Sometimes, I don’t either.

We lapse into silence. My phone rings again. I ignore it again.

Harper stirs. The slightest twist of her limbs. The white hospital sheets shift. I’m on my feet before I remember standing, leaning on the edge of the bed.

“Harper,” Nadia murmurs softly, stroking her hand over the girl’s wild hair. “Harper, I’m right here, okay? I’m right here.”

She blinks without really seeing us. Her eyes close again, and she breathes a big, stuttering breath, and relaxes again.

I am overwhelmed by the urge to do something. And finally, when the phone rings the next time, I answer it. Salvatore Mori, just like I knew it would be.

“How is she?” Salvatore answers at once.

“She’ll make it,” I say, as if there isn’t another option.

“Good.”

“That’s the last of the good news, isn’t it?” I ask him. A grim silence answers me. “What happened, Mori?”

“You want to hear it from me or my wife?”

“Does it matter?”

“I don’t sugarcoat. And if I tell the truth the way I see it, you’re gonna want to do something about it, and I don’t know what that something is going to be.”

I brace myself. And then, second-guessing, I slide my hand out of Nadia’s and cross into the hallway, out of earshot.

“Elijah gave her up, didn’t he?”

“…The weasel didn’t even try,” Salvatore confirms, almost gently for such a condemning sentence. He says it like he’s breaking the news that my brother died. He might as well have. All the times I looked into Elijah’s face that morning, I read him totally wrong. Salvatore continues, once my ears have stopped ringing, “He said the family was interested in a resolution. The resolution didn’t seem to include you. The way he made it sound, the whole family is ready to move under new management.”

I stare at the wall opposite me, where a dry erase board has been hung up. An array of sloppily drawn smiley faces stare back at me, numbered 1 to 10, the big blocky numbers: RATE YOUR PAIN LEVEL written in colorful marker. The 10 face and I stare back at each other, its scribbled red expression mocking me with its open mouth and teary eyes.

Would Elijah betray me like that with no reason? Have I given him a reason? That moment of having a knife pressed under his jaw comes back to me. But I didn’t hurt him. I never hurt him, not really—

My throat feels tight.

“What was their resolution?”

“The families backed Dellucci, but they’re giving Elijah a chance to settle things. If Elijah takes over and gives Nadia over to Jon—the whole thing’s settled. They won’t have to wipe out all of you. It might buy you some time.”

So, it’s not open season on everyone. It’s just open season on me.

My eyes move past the 10 smiley. Feels like there should be another one there. Something beyond that level of pain, beyond the physical.

“My brother wouldn’t do that.”

“I watched him do it. If you can pack up and run, you should.”

I stare down at Harper. Weak and small and helpless.

“I’m not backing down from this.”

“Ren—”

“I’ll send Nadia and Harper off somewhere. I’ll make sure they’re safe. But I’m not running.”

Salvatore shuffles on the other end of the line.

“If it gets violent, I don’t know how much I can do for you.”

“I understand.”

“Keep in touch. And good luck to your little girl. I hope she’s alright.”

The line goes dead. I glance at my phone again—the messages and calls that I missed. Nothing from Elijah.

He wouldn’t do that.

Maybe Olivia warned me. She said they were worried about me. That they had expected getting Nadia would make me better, stop the distractions and the rage. Maybe that’s all this has ever been—the hope that once I got her back, I would be better, and they’ve just been biding their time all these years. Playing patient.

Maybe they finally realized there’s nothing to wait for. Nothing can fix what I am. Not even her.