Chapter 26: Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King: Chapter 26

“Don’t let me fall.”

The man sways from the balcony railing his feet kicking out over the open air. My wrist aches. My elbow screams in its socket. He’s about to plunge down into a dark, empty nothingness. Our eyes meet. His face is strange, flatter than it should be, the eyes and nose not quite in their right places. Already broke. The face of a dead man.

“Don’t let me fall!”

His teeth are cracked.

His grip stars to slip. Terror in his eyes.

“Mommy, he’ll drown!” Harper’s voice cries.

The man slips out of my grip. Plummets. Grabs Harper as he falls, surging down, snatching her down into the night with a scream—

The chair jerks as I bolt upright in it, my stiff neck catching hard. I sit up and find myself in a dim, private hospital room, buried under a scratchy blanket. They moved Harper out of the ER and into a private room for overnight observation, just in case. I don’t remember falling asleep.

Harper is awake. Her eyes are lidded. I think she’s sucking on her thumb at first, but she hasn’t done that in years. She’s chewing on her nail as she listens. Her heavy eyes are transfixed and unblinking. She’s staring at Ren. He sits next to her on the bed, his back to me, head bowed over a children’s book. He’s reading lowly, keeping her fixed attention. She listens to him with both arms wrapped tight around Applesauce. He must have had someone bring it for her.

I watch them for a few minutes. Who knew Ren Caruso does voices? A low, grumbly growl for an old man annoyed by a pesky, clever cat. The cat sounds like a mobster from Jersey, high pitch and cartoonish. Harper giggles, mumbling along tiredly with the story she has heard over and over, knowing every line by heart, and saying her favorites. My smile hurts as I listen, not daring to move, not wanting to interrupt this.

“I said get gone cat, scat,” she echoes with him. She tries to do the voice, too, whispering low.

She loves him, but that’s a given. Harper loves just about anybody that will smile at her. But he loves her, too. That feels special. Precious. The way my love for him used to feel—the most real, bona fide love in the whole world. Sometimes, I miss being a dumb kid.

Ren finishes the book, snapping it shut. She instantly asks him to read it again, again . Ren actually turns back to the start.

I stand up, sparing him from getting caught in that loop. Harper notices with an excited gasp. “Good morning!” she says, in the middle of the night. Little hands reach out for me. I sit on the bed, on the other side of her, and gently pull her up into my arms.

Ren has gone a particular shade of dull red, his hands slack on the book.

“Caught red-handed,” I confirm, just in case he was wondering if he got away with it. He sets the book aside like he’s handling a murder weapon.

“Don’t stop on my account. Maybe I want a bedtime story, too. I know you’re not shy.”

His half-grin almost shows his teeth. Almost a smile.

“I’m out of practice.”

“Well, you’ll have time to polish up.”

I see something in his gaze. Something shadowy and sad, like he doesn’t believe that.

“When can we go home?” Harper asks. “I’m hungry .”

I laugh and kiss the top of her head, again and again. I could drown her in love. Could squeeze her so tight she’d probably bite me. For a few minutes, it feels like everything is going to be alright. And I don’t want anyone, not even Ren, to convince me otherwise.

We have to stay until late morning, but the hospital staff all seem pleased with Harper’s recovery and appetite. She, of course, takes it all in stride. She’s used to the hospital routine, and unlike me, nothing about it scares her anymore. You don’t get used to seeing your child in the hospital, no matter how often it happens. It always feels wrong.

The nurses bring her breakfast, and I’m embarrassed that I can still get teary-eyed over something as innocuous as Harper eating a full meal. She’s made an amazing turn around already. Now that the medication wore off, it’s like she’s back to her old self.

We aren’t even out of the hospital yet, and I’m already trying to convince Harper to stay in her bed, and to be still, and maybe try to get some rest. She’s squirmy and excited, and almost completely back to her normal self now that they’ve flushed her system and pumped her full of electrolytes. The world settles as quickly as it fell apart. There’s no surgery or months of recovery. A storm cloud passed over the sun, but now it’s bright again, like it never happened. I’m not used to disasters just passing like that. For me, they always seem to linger.

Ren leaves us to get things ready for Harper going home. He kisses the top of her head, and then, seemingly without thinking too much about it, does the same to my forehead. A soft, absent-minded kiss as he’s heading out the door. And it feels like him again.

I watch him, feeling a little dazed as he walks out the door, and I have the most absurd urge to run after him, screaming and begging him not to go—because that Ren might not come back.

Harper is wheeled to the car, enjoying her mandatory wheelchair ride as we exit. Waiting for us isn’t just one car, but three, and all the men inside are more Marco look-alikes. Shaved heads and gear bodies.

Marco himself opens the back door for us. I’m surprised Ren isn’t among them.

“Where’s Ren?” I ask.

“Running some business, ma’am.”

Then shouldn’t these men be with him? My thoughts circle back to the meeting. He never did tell me how it went. Maybe his silence should tell me enough. I step into the back with Harper, and we are escorted home in slow, cautious procession. I hear chirps and static voices from the front of the car, like a police radio scanner, but the words are too muffled to make out.

The curb of the house is littered with trash as we arrive. I could mistake it for a homeless camp. A little bit of everything is strewn in front of the building. Smashed cartons of eggs, an overturned bottle of Windex seeping into the sidewalk cracks. A half-eaten head of lettuce has rolled, forlorn, into the gutter. Nothing is even bagged.

“What happened?” Harper asks, amazed at the mess.

I heft Harper up and tiptoe over the trash. Marco steps inside first. A cleaning crew are tackling the downstairs level of the house. They’re cleaning out the pantries and fridge. Even the wine rack has been stripped bare—as if I poured Harper a full-bodied red into her juice box for school.

The cleaning crew won’t look at me, and they don’t look at each other. They work fast, like ants, ducking their heads from something. I get the uneasy feeling that it’s not money keeping them moving methodically and fast, but threats.

Our entourage reports our arrival over a headset clipped to Marco’s ear.

It all feels too dystopian for my taste. I take Harper into her bedroom, close the door between us and the rest of the world. I don’t know what else to do. Ren is gone, and even with a whole team of security guards, I feel utterly alone.

Harper and I spend a sleepy afternoon together, with drizzly rain tapping on the window outside. I keep her wrapped up in my arms as she watches TV. She’s already asking if she gets to go back to her new school tomorrow. I can barely stand the thought of it; I don’t even know what tomorrow looks like.

But the question jogs my foggy memory. The school forwarded me the security footage, and I watch it on my phone while Harper dozes off against my shoulder, the two of us dogpiled on her bed with clean sheets right out of the laundry. Harper hasn’t even noticed.

I watch Harper on the screen. She eats out of her own lunch box. She doesn’t swap with any of the other kids or get anything extra out of the lunch line. I study every minute of that half-hour footage, and I come to the same conclusion as the school administration: If Harper ate something tampered with, it was something that I put in her lunch box with my own hands.

The thought makes me want to vomit.

I curl up around Harper, my stomach sour. It was bad enough when it was her own body trying to hurt her. Now, is it someone else? Someone that has the keys to this very house? I lie awake, tired and stiff from a night in a hospital room, but sleep doesn’t come easy.

Only as the hours pass, and the TV shuts off automatically, and the window grows gray and wet, does my cheek finally tilt against the crown of Harper’s dark hair, and I fall asleep.

***

Glass shatters. I’m on my feet before I know I’m awake.

They’re breaking down the door, and they’re going to take me—

I blink my old studio apartment out of my fogged mind, find myself in Harper’s bedroom.

“What was that?”

She’s sitting up next to me, all wild bedhead and big eyes, as we stare toward the doorway. There are voices. Shouting.

“Stay here,” I tell her immediately. I go to the door and peek out, ignoring the tremor of fear shaking my kneecaps like a cup of Jell-O.

My eyes sweep the floor of the foyer, drawn to something that isn’t trash. Small droplets of red spatter toward the living room. It’s not a river of blood, but it’s still blood. Violent little breadcrumbs.

I follow it with my eyes, but not my feet.

My first instinct is to scoop Harper up and make a run for the door like always. Then I hear the voice again, clearer now— Ren .

What if he’s hurt?

Without thinking, and with no weapon, no plan, I run to find out.

I stop in the doorway of the sitting room. My heart throbs in my throat. Ren is there, alive, and not bleeding. But he’s standing over the man who is.

Elijah kneels on the ground. His nose drips blood into his mouth. He’s clinging to Ren’s knee like he’s begging him.

There’s a fine red line between having a knife pressed to your throat and having a knife pulled across it.

“Ren, I swear—” he rasps.

Ren hits him again.

I hear a tiny, jumping gasp from just behind me. Harper slips right past my legs, and she bolts into the living room. Toward Ren. Who is towering over his brother, Elijah slumping down into just a lump on the living room floor. His hand paws the air, reaching for the coffee table, but he can’t get up.

“What are you doing?” Harper asks.

“Out,” Ren rasps.

“Harper—!”

I rush to get her as Harper totters toward Elijah.

“Did you hit your head?” she asks, all sweet, oblivious concern. “I’ll get Applesauce! He’s a doctor!”

She goes rushing out of the room.

“Nadia, keep her out of here,” Ren practically snarls.

“What the hell are you doing—”

Elijah has gotten back on his feet. He stares at the floor. Won’t look at Ren, won’t look at me. Blood drips off the end of his nose.

“What did he do?” I finally ask, anger turning cold in my gut. Was he the reason Harper was in the hospital? Or is he just the next one that Ren is taking it out on?

Harper comes zipping back in, giraffe in hand at the same moment Ren bellows an angry, “Out!” toward me.

Harper’s feet skid. Her eyes are big, shimmery, as she thinks she’s the one being yelled at. She’s never been talked to like that before. Her face crumples. Her breathing turns into a breathy sob. And then all at once, those little eyebrows knit together, and she takes a big breath, and she marches right up to Ren and pokes him in the leg with an angry finger.

“That’s not nice!” she yells at him. Her almost-crying becomes indignation in a second flat. “You—you have to talk nice , or you don’t talk at all!”

She’s puffed up just like him.

“Harper,” I say cautiously, trying to draw her out of this awful mess. “Come on, leave Ren alone, he needs to—”

“No!” she snaps, with a tiny stomp of her foot. “Daddy needs to say sorry!”

Ren is shaken out of his daze.

My mafia husband stands there with bloody knuckles, a man at his feet, and his own six-year-old telling him his business like she’s the mob boss in the room.

Elijah hasn’t dared to move, the whole moment stretched and inflated like a balloon about to pop.

Ren meets Harper’s gaze. Her glare could be a mirror image of mine in all the times I disciplined her. I wouldn’t be surprised if she tries to put him in time-out, totally oblivious to the seriousness of what she walked in on.

“I shouldn’t have shouted,” he finally says. “It wasn’t at you, Harper.”

“Come on,” I try again, but Harper’s feet are rooted down.

“That’s not saying sorry.”

Elijah laughs and groans at the same time, and for a moment, I think Ren might just take it out on his ribs. Ren wipes a hand over his face.

“I’m sorry, Harper.”

I can already see the light has come back into his eyes. She forgives him, with more rambling speech about being nice and all the other moral lessons Ren would have done well to learn from PBS Kids. At least she’ll never let herself get pushed around by a man, I reason. I take Harper back to her room. Something shatters after I close the door. I don’t bother to check. It might have been Elijah going through the coffee table. I still don’t know if he deserved it or not.

“Come on, Harp. Let’s get you in a bath. We can go outside in a little bit if you feel like it.”

I’m just trying to get us out, get us anywhere out of the blast zone.

I run her a warm bath, let the water run, let it wash out the sound of anything happening beyond this little room. I want to go investigate, but I won’t leave her alone in the bath. Not today. Usually, Harper is good about washing off on her own, but the day after she’s had a seizure? I’d never risk it.

The water drums over anything happening beyond the room, but not loud enough to block out my thoughts. I wonder what he did. If he betrayed Ren. If betrayed me. If he hurt Harper, abandoned Sincere—

A cold ball of guilt sits heavy in my stomach when I think about that. I got so wrapped up in Harper going to the hospital, I haven’t been able to look into it at all. And Luna…she never answered any of my messages. Maybe something’s happened to her, too.

I know it’s probably bad, but…

My whole world splashes suds onto the tile bathroom floor. I had to be there for Harper. I didn’t have another choice—that same, sad mantra of my life. I didn’t have another choice.

Once Harper’s are getting pruney, I peek my head out of the bathroom, listening. The house is quiet. No more yelling or shattered glass or upended furniture. I turn off the water.

Harper dresses herself while I sneak out into the silent house to see the damage.

The fight’s done, it seems, and Elijah is alive. He hobbles out the door, dragging his bad leg and avoiding my gaze. I call out to him, but he ignores me. I find Ren in the kitchen, standing over the sink. The water runs into the basin again, but this time, he’s cleaning blood off his good hand.

“…Did he deserve it?” I ask.

“He knows what happened. He just won’t tell me. Where’s Harper—”

“In her room. Getting ready to go out.”

“I need to talk to her.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

He turns around to face me, expression flashing dangerously. I step in close, closing the space between us and making him look me in the eye when he answers. I don’t know why I bother. Like I’d be able to read a man like that.

“Did he hurt Harper?” I demand.

He looks away.

“Yes or no, Ren? Are you just beating the hell out of him for sport—?”

His sigh is a frustrated snarl,

“I know enough. He came here groveling for forgiveness. He sold us out—sold you out—at the meeting of the families. Whatever he did, he betrayed us—”

My stomach tightens into a knot.

That can’t be right. Not Elijah. Not the boy who blushes over his crush and can’t hear the word pussy without almost causing a vehicle accident. He was worried about Ren. He thought I could help him somehow. That Elijah hadn’t given up on us, I know it.

“…If you believe that, then why is he still alive? Why is he here at all?”

Ren doesn’t have an answer for that.

“Did you even let him speak?”

He doesn’t answer, so I turn away from Ren and go after my own answers.

Impassive security personnel watch me march by, straight out the front door. Elijah hasn’t made it far. He’s slumped down on the front steps, picking pieces of glass out of his hair.

“I’m leaving,” he croaks, trying to get to his feet like I’m just there to chase him off.

“Did you poison Harper?” I ask, stepping into his path. Unlike his brother, Elijah is not emotionally empty. Not unreadable and cold and broken. His guilt shows. A pained expression flickers across his face, but he steels himself and sniffs blood back into his nose. He shakes his head,

“I didn’t mean for that to—no, I—Nadia, I’m sorry. I didn’t. But I can’t tell you—”

“Did you know it was going to happen?” I demand.

He shakes his head again.

“No. No, I…I didn’t know.”

“Then tell me what the hell happened!”

I suddenly understand why it was so easy for Ren to start swinging at him.

“It’s my fault,” he says, “That’s enough. That’s all you need to know. It’s my fault.”

The door opens with a clatter, and suddenly Ren is between us, throwing Elijah down into the sidewalk before either of us can react.

“Get the fuck away from my wife,” he snaps. Elijah staggers down the stairs, hits his knees but gets up just as fast.

“Ren, stop,” I snap at him, trying to pull him away. “Let me talk to him—”

“He’s done talking. Get inside, Nadia. You shouldn’t be out here.”

“I can do what I want. And you need to figure this out! He’s your brother! Don’t you care what happened to Harper—”

“That’s why I don’t want you anywhere near him!”

“You don’t even know how he’s involved!” Ren and I stand in the middle of the sidewalk, yelling at each other like we’re in the middle of a trailer park instead of standing before luxury New York real estate. “You want blood, you got it! I want answers!”

Elijah stands apart from us, his breathing ragged and the side of his face swelling.

“Ren…they already searched me. You know I don’t have a weapon. Just let me talk to her, for fuck’s sake.”

Ren’s eyes flash dangerously. Whatever Elijah says, the words don’t seem to register. I take Ren’s face in my hands, make him look at me. Calm my voice.

“Let me talk to him, Ren,” I beg, making him look me in my eyes. His throat bobs. “You can’t hear him right now, but I can.”

He’s shaking with such rage, I’m surprised Elijah walked away the first time. That Ren had the sense of mind to stop .

“Go check on Harper for me. Will you do that?” After an uncertain beat, I add, “She asked for you.”

That moves him. Finally, the dark cloud in his eyes passes, lets in a little bit of light. I coax Ren back inside the house, but the security guards come out to stand watch over me and Elijah. I imagine they are here on Ren’s orders, but I don’t mind an audience.

Elijah slumps down on the stairs again, a groan slipping from him. I can’t feel much sympathy for him. Not yet.

“Well?”

He stares off into the distance, the bloodied side of his face turned away from me.

“I’m sorry, Nadia—”

“Don’t think I can’t kick your ass, too, Elijah. Answer my question and tell me what happened to my daughter.”

Elijah steels himself, works his stiff jaw up into speaking.

“Marlow was there. At the club, when I went to pick up Sincere. I think he’d caught onto what was happening. I don’t know how. It sounded like he knew you’d been there. Maybe surveillance, maybe someone told him. I don’t know. He was ready for you, but he got me instead.”

My heart sinks.

He hangs his head, rubs his hands over his face.

“What did he do, Elijah?” I demand, bracing myself for the worst.

“I tried to barter for her, for Sincere. Play it off like it was just business, but he knew what I was going to do if he hadn’t been there. I offered to pay him off, or…work out some kind of deal. I tried to make it sound like I wanted her the same way any of his other clients do, but Marlow knows what I go to the club for. Or…who. Sincere had travel plans that were already arranged and paid for, and they weren’t changing. That’s what he said.”

He chews on his next words.

“I don’t know how well you know your uncle—”

“Too well.”

“Then you know what his threats sound like. He threatened Cali. Not directly, not in so many words. But it was a threat. He told me to keep Ren out of the meeting of the families. Made me leak the time and location so he could be there himself. He said if I didn’t get control, if I didn’t make sure this went Dellucci’s way—”

His expression darkens.

“I put someone else on the job. I just said I needed a distraction to get Ren out of the meeting. Whatever it took. I never thought they would poison a child . Nadia, I swear I didn’t think it would go that far. It didn’t even…didn’t even occur to me. Christ, they could have messaged him and just lied about it, that would have done just as much—”

I know he’s trying to protect her, but there’s only one person with free access to the house that would have been able to accomplish that.

“Olivia.”

His eyes close—a certain yes.

“I guess it doesn’t matter. She’s long gone now. I gave her a head start.”

I stare out into the street, watching the occasional passing car. It’s a warm day, but my limbs feel cold. Like all the blood has drained out of me.

That bitch.

“Like I told Ren. This is my fault, whether I did it or not. I only came here because I wanted to help him. I didn’t want to betray him.” His voice almost breaks, but he clears his throat hard. “I hope you understand that I did what I had to do, Nadia. I know Ren won’t. But Ren isn’t the only one who gets to drive this family into the ground over a woman.”

Having heard the whole tale, I don’t know how to feel.

“I think Ren is right,” I finally say, “It’s better if you go for now.”

“…are you going to tell him?”

“Do you think that’s smart?”

His expression pinches and he nods in agreement with me. The less Ren knows right now, the better. Before he stops using his fists and starts using something faster and more decisive.

“Go home, Elijah. And don’t come back here until you’re told to.”

If he’s ever told to.

I sit on the steps a while longer, letting my emotions settle. Sincere is probably gone. Dead or sold off to someone. Luna hasn’t answered me, so she’s probably in just as much trouble, if not something worse. And Harper—Harper got mixed up in mob business and ended up in the hospital.

I put my head in my hands.

“Ma’am,” I hear Marco say, his hand on my shoulder. “…You really shouldn’t stay out here longer than necessary.”

I almost break down in laughter.

As if anything would happen to me .