Chapter 34: Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King: Chapter 34

When Ren doesn’t answer, I call Elijah. I stare at the wall as the call takes its sweet time connecting. I trusted Elijah before, and it all fell apart. I still don’t think it was his fault. I really don’t. But do I trust him to do this? If I tell him, “Oh by the way, all of your inheritance is going to me, unless you stop Ren from killing himself—” will he try to stop Ren? Or will he take out the simpler problem first and let Ren do as he will?

“Hello? Nadia, hello?”

I end the call. I pace the loft apartment that is twice as big as some of the apartments I’ve lived in before, and somehow it feels crushingly small, like I’m a rat, circling around the edges of its cage, feeling out its confinement. A week. Ren gave me a week to stop him, to find some other way. That’s plenty of time. Plenty—unless someone else gets to him first.

I call Ren again. No answer. I don’t know what to say on the voicemail besides: “Ren, please. I need your help.”

He’ll call back if he thinks I’m in danger. He’ll have to. When he doesn’t, I am sure that something has gone very, very wrong.

I sit on the edge of the bed, putting my head in my hands.

A tiny voice perks up next to me, Harper leaning her soft cheek against my arm.

“It’s okay, Mommy. I’m not mad at you anymore. Don’t be sad.”

I almost laugh. She lasted, what? Three hours? I wrap an arm around her shoulder and tell her the same thing I always do. That it’s going to be okay. This time, I know that it isn’t. Not for me.

I get up to give Harper her night meds. When I take off the lid, a curled-up note drops into my hands from inside the prescription bottle. I unfurl the bank number that Ren hid ‘somewhere safe, that I would find it.’ My smile hurts. I carefully roll it back up and put it back in the bottle.

As I’m hefting Harper up to drink out of the sink faucet—we don’t have any glasses, and she thinks it’s hilarious, like a game—there’s a knock at the door.

My blood goes cold.

There’s only one person who knows about this place. Elijah tried to call me back a couple times, but I let the call bounce. I didn’t think he would actually come looking here. There are a thousand hotels in New York that I could have checked into for the night, but I came here. The closest thing I could give us to a home .

The knock comes again.

“Who’s there?” Harper asks.

I shoo her away to the bed again and tell her to stay back.

“Who is it?” I ask through the door.

“I live in the next apartment over, 1107. I think you dropped this outside.”

A woman’s voice. I breathe relief and open it. Olivia Basham surges into the apartment, knocking the door wide as my feet trip over themselves.

I have half a second to feel stupid. No New Yorker would have cared what I dropped outside my apartment. They would’ve just kept walking.

“How the hell did you find me?” I snap, the two of us walking circles around each other, like two cats about to fight but neither one of them committed.

“You think I don’t see every cent that goes in and out of this business?” Olivia sneers. “Maybe Ren never bothered paying attention to what you ran around doing all day, but I did. I always pay attention, especially where you’re concerned.”

I stare at her, still lost, my breath hitching. And what the fuck does it matter how, really? It’s not like if I convince her she shouldn’t know about this place, she’ll just turn around and leave.

“When a reoccurring monthly payment popped up for an apartment all the way out here, under Elijah’s name, the day after you and he went out on some little excursion? I made inquiries.”

I swallow. So Elijah didn’t rat me out to her. Maybe I should have made that call after all.

“Is this where you were going to fuck him?”

“…What?”

“You and Elijah, sneaking off to your own little love shack together? It wasn’t enough to have one of them. The greedy little bitch wanted two.”

“Ew,” I say, on reflex—it feels a little unfair to Elijah, and I regret it but he’s my technical-husband’s younger brother. “No, I’m not—this wasn’t for either of us—”

“It doesn’t matter now, Nadia. You don’t have to keep your lies in order or figure out what you’re going to tell Ren. All that’s over, thanks to you. I didn’t even bother telling him about this place. Knowing Ren, he might just kill me for suggesting it.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I’m just here to collect my last paycheck.”

“If Ren finds out, he’ll kill you anyway—”

“Oh, he’ll find out. Too little too late, as always. And if I’ve learned anything about Ren, in the years I’ve worked for him? He’s really shitty at finding people.”

She steps a little closer, eyes darting over the sparse surroundings. There’s nothing, nothing in this brand-new apartment. No knives, no frying pans. Not even a toaster to chuck at her.

“You care about him, right?” I ask. I don’t know why. Maybe I think we’ll find some common ground and go rushing off into the sunset to save Ren together. Instead, Olivia slides a box-cutter out of her sleeve and extends the tiny blade.

My mouth opens and closes. Olivia senses the silence stretching between us, the moment growing more awkward than tense as we stare at the tiny weapon. Her neck turns red. She gets angrier the longer the silence stretches.

“Look, I mean it’s—it’s not all about the size—” I start.

“This thing can cut your fucking throat just as easily as it can cut a piece of paper, Nadia—!”

“It’s just—you work for the mob, and you don’t have a gun?”

She shrugs a shoulder, pushes a lock of that expensive dye job off her face.

“What can I say? I’m in finance.”

She calls out, whistles back toward the doorway. Like loyal lapdogs, two men step in from the hallway. My odds, which I was just starting to like, suddenly shrink to zero. They close the door behind them.

Fuck .

Olivia lunges at me. My back hits the counter as I scurry back. I duck away, but her fingers knot in my hair and jerk me hard. We wrestle to the ground, my hand around her wrist, holding the blade at bay, scratching and clawing and kicking. Even with a weapon, we fight like two high school girls, going for the hair and digging nails into skin. In the chaos, I get my fingers on her earring, and I rip that bitch clean off.

She screams as we go rolling across the floor again.

Olivia gets me under her.

I’m scratched up, but not cut. My lip tastes puffy, but Olivia’s nose is going to need some more plastic to set it right. We stare into each other’s faces, her blood peppering my chin as she gasps over me. She wipes a hand against her mouth, smearing it.

Her goons stand over us, not interfering, just making sure this goes her way.

“So, are you coming with me? Or am I giving you a makeover to go with all those new clothes Ren bought you?” Olivia pants as if she’s enjoying herself.

On the floor, I crane my head back and have a straight view under the bed, where Harper is staring back at me with wide, terrified eyes. I can’t leave her, and I can’t take her.

“My daughter—”

Olivia’s expression flickers. She glances around the room, looking for her. For a second, it seems like she doesn’t know what to do either. Like maybe we’ll have to put my kidnapping on hold because I can’t find a babysitter on such short notice.

“Tell her to come here.”

“Fuck you; you tried to kill her once—”

“I—” her expression turns stony, but something storms in her eyes. “I did what I had to do! I didn’t know she already had a condition!” She makes it sound like someone else already gave her hell for it. I wonder if it was Elijah. “She was never in any real danger! I measured it all out! She was never going to die, I was never going to actually hurt the brat—”

My hand comes up and catches her on the jaw, a resounding slap that seems to echo off the big, black windows. We twist and tumble again across the floor, the blade swinging. It catches me a couple times in the stomach, so sharp and smooth that it barely stings. I feel it touch my skin without snagging, gliding like butter.

We roll again, twist around, biting and kicking and snapping. Suddenly, Harper does the one thing I had silently begged that she wouldn’t. She comes flying in as fast as she can, her anger overriding her fear like it always does.

“Get off her!” she yells, at the top of her little lungs.

I try to sling Olivia off me, roll her away from Harper. My girl comes in kicking and hitting, uselessly, but it helps. Olivia clutches the box cutter to her chest between us as she ducks away from the useless blows, until Harper sinks her teeth hard onto Olivia’s shoulder. Olivia yells and scrambles off me, but she doesn’t hurt her. Like even Olivia Basham, the poisonous, traitorous bitch, can’t override her instincts not to hit a child.

The men are scrambling to interfere and get between all of us, breaking up the mess. I take the chance to scramble to my feet and yank Harper behind me.

“Don’t make me involve her in this again!” Olivia yells, all three of them still between me and the only door. We’re both staggering, winded. My shirt sticks to my side. The cut’s shallow, harmless. But it’s the kind of cut that would end you if it went across the right spot on your throat.

My phone vibrates on the counter. I glance toward it, just barely able to make out Elijah’s name. I calculate my odds of getting to it.

“If you don’t want to hurt her, then prove it. Just leave—” I beg her.

“I’m not going anywhere without you. I didn’t have to hear your stupid name for three years just for it all to go down like this! Fuck that and fuck you.”

We stare at each other for a long moment.

“Leave!” Harper yells, trying to step past me. I don’t know where she’s gotten this temper from, but she’s fearless and angry, and if I wasn’t physically holding her back, she’d charge right at a woman holding a blade and two grown men.

“We both know what Dellucci is going to pay you isn’t worth this. If he pays you at all.”

She scoffs softly.

“You think I really care about the money? All I have ever done was protect this family, and I’m going to keep doing that. Even if Ren Caruso isn’t a part of it anymore.”

“You’re the one who isn’t a part of it anymore.”

She shakes her head, steps closer again, anger turning her face beet red. Harper launches Applesauce at her head, but misses. She stares down at Harper with cold steel in her eyes. She draws a deep, steadying breath.

“I already crossed lines I swore I never would. What’s one more?”

She nods to the men behind her, giving up her own fight to let them take over now that she’s had her fill. They march toward us again with a new determination, and this time I am sure, there will be no holds barred. Not even against Harper. I hold up my hands as they press in too close.

“Alright,” I say, “Okay. I’ll go. Willingly. But—let me drop Harper off at the house. Somewhere she’s familiar with. Somewhere safe.”

“No shot,” Olivia snarls.

“Ren’s not there, Olivia, please—”

I don’t know if anyone is there, but I like her odds more if she’s somewhere familiar.

“Take them both,” Olivia barks. She shrinks between the closing shoulders of the two men.

***

My hands and mouth are bound. Harper’s, too. One of the muscled men now has a pretty ring of small purple teeth marks on the outside of his thumb. The car bumps along as I keep my head down, breathing through the thick knot of cloth making it impossible to shut my mouth.

What are they going to do with Harper?

It’s the only thing I can think about. Every wrong turn I made. To Dellucci, to Ren, to Elijah. I am the common denominator. The one who failed her over and over.

What are they going to do with her?

An angry scream builds up behind the cloth again, shaking my whole chest as I let it out, thrashing and kicking again. The men have to hold me down, even restrained, until I am dragged out of the back of the car like a dead body.

Olivia brings Harper behind us, walking her along. I wish she would run. Just take off somewhere and find help. Maybe her odds would have been better without me all along. But she follows me, like she always does, steered by the shoulder by Olivia.

I can’t tell where we are, but it smells of chemicals. The floor is dilapidated, aged, the high walls peppered with graffiti. Abandoned machinery stands in long aisles that we walk between. Some kind of old garment factory, maybe. I can’t lift my head long enough to make it out.

In the back rooms, which have been gutted of their machines and office supplies, a handful of men watch our approach like a parade. A couple of them are counting something out, standing amid cheap tables and doorless supply closets, their eyes lifting from their work to watch me get hauled through their midst. We pass stacked boxes teetering in corners, guns leaning against walls, casually, like they’re waiting for something, too.

I am knelt before a table, forced onto my knees that scab against worn concrete.

A clapping arising from behind the table. Slow and mocking.

Dellucci rounds the table, nearly barreling it over in his carelessness. We’re not in an office. It’s not even a proper desk. It looks like a prison, almost, with slabs of plain wall and oppressive yellow light. His face comes into focus against the glare. He’s aged a lot in just a few years. Or maybe a few weeks.

The cloth is ripped out of my mouth, but the cotton feeling stays behind.

“Jon,” I rasp. “Jon, please. My daughter.”

That self-satisfied smirk withers up into an ugly snarl.

“Jesus Christ, girl, if I hear one more word about that whelp of yours,” he threatens, his voice low and angry. I bow my head in front of him. Hate the way my hands shake underneath me.

“But it would be something, wouldn’t it?” Dellucci asks, his voice gruff and low. “One of those rare times you can really give somebody a taste of their own medicine.”

I shake my head.

“He attacked us,” I cry.

“Because you ran, Nadia. You always run.”

I lean over until my forehead is pressed to the damn floor.

“Please,” I beg, choking on my own wracking sob. “She didn’t do anything! I took your fucking money; I killed your son!”

Dellucci rounds the desk where he can look down at me properly. I hear his steps, see his shoes in the edge of my vision.

“Please—”

He sighs.

“You know what I think the problem is?” he asks, rolling the words around in his cheek. “What got us all in this big, ugly mess? You’re just too pretty when you cry.”

My throat closes with a hitch. I hear something in that tone. I glance up, not sure if it’s something I can use to get out of this. It makes my stomach turn, but if there is something— anything —that I can trade for Harper, I will give it away.

“Something like that, it really gets to me. An Achilles heel they call it. If I had just turned you over back then…” he huffs out a low, disappointed sigh in himself.

I look at the floor because it doesn’t matter. The world is one wet blob dancing in my vision.

“What do you want, Jon? Just tell me what you want for her.”

“I don’t know what kind of man you think I am, Nadia—”

“The kind of man who sends someone to kick down a single mother’s door in the middle of the night,” I hiss between my teeth, unable to stop the rage from building up. His boot connects with my chest, and all the air snaps out of my lungs, releases that angry pressure by punting it right out of me.

I tumble over, drawing in a gulp of air.

“And you were a money-grubbing little bitch, ratting her way around this city, so let’s not cast stones.”

“I was running from him,” I croak.

“I’m not having this argument again!” Dellucci bellows. He strides away from me, leaves me kneeling between the feet of two men as he goes to talk to Olivia. I overhear their warm welcomes, their thanking each other.

“The families agreed that we could settle this with blood and bullets, and we still have done a damn fine job of avoiding that, thanks to you.”

“Luckily for you, I may be up for hire in the near future,” Olivia says. I can hear the grin in her voice.

Dellucci laughs at that.

I feel like they’re in another world. I eye the gun on the hip of the man next to me, but I know better than to think I’d get anywhere with it.

“Where did you take Harper?” I call out. I am rewarded with another kick in the stomach, and another, until I stop repeating it. I still try, but the words come out as a whimper.

There’s a commotion suddenly. A rise of distant voices coming from the stony-eyed boys we passed.

I think I must be dreaming, because Cali saunters into the room. Short-shorts and oiled skin and high heels that tap across the concrete. That same split-dye hair color, black on platinum blonde. She doesn’t make sense here. Like a figment of my imagination, or an imaginary friend.

She doesn’t look at me with any recognition, smiling her signature smile at the men in the room. The smile that says look down at her plunging neckline and pushed-up breasts.

I tilt my head, trying to make the puzzle piece fit somewhere it shouldn’t when Elijah comes striding in behind her with a grin and a bottle of champagne, completing the missing edge of the puzzle piece.

“Congratulations,” he tells Dellucci warmly, holding out a hand to shake. Olivia has straightened up like a scarecrow, looking as if she doesn’t know where to land. She is just as surprised by Elijah’s arrival as I am, her mouth opening and closing.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help to bring her in. Ren caught on to what happened between us at the meeting. He wasn’t going to let me within a mile of her. Olivia,” he adds, giving her a nod, “I thought you would have run. I’m glad you didn’t.”

Her ruffled feathers smooth marginally, but she still asks, “Why are you here, Elijah?”

“To talk truces,” he says. “Obviously.”

I lift my head, trying to tell him they have Harper. The words won’t come. Just drawing in enough breath to speak makes pain lance through my rib cage. My whimpering goes pointedly ignored.

“No more fucking truces,” Dellucci snarls. “I’ve got the girl, and I’m paying the woman who brought me the bounty.”

Elijah holds up appeasing hands.

“I’m not here to bargain for her. I’m here to talk the new power dynamic in the family. Per the agreement in the meeting, Ren is out, I’m in. And I want to make sure that you and I get off on the right foot.”

“Where is Ren?” Olivia asks, as if it’s just polite curiosity.

The world goes quiet. I swear I somehow stop my own heart, deaden my own pain, as I strain to hear that answer.

“…Someone already took care of that for us,” Elijah says, his voice tight. “Atlas?”

Dellucci nods.

“Hired help. He does good work. Nasty jobs, but good work.”

“Killed one of our best bodyguards in the process,” Elijah grumbles, with no more heat than if someone got mud on his freshly washed car.

My heart won’t start up again. It’s just sitting there, dead and heavy in my chest. A car battery that won’t turn over even after trying and trying. The next sound that comes out of me is all sob and it has nothing to do with the pain in my side. The heaving, airless sounds come as I try to process it—Ren, gone .

My head is pressed to the concrete, an incredible pressure in my ears as I lie there, being crushed into the ground under my own grief.

“It’s not an easy thing for me,” I hear Elijah say in some other world. “But in a way, we always saw it coming,” he says. I see him glance at Olivia. She doesn’t look happy either, more contemplative, her eyes downturned as she grapples with the same news.

Elijah continues, but his voice drifts in and out of my hearing.

No one is coming to save us this time.

“With Ren out of the picture, and now that I’m taking charge, I want to do things right between us. Start fresh. I brought women and alcohol—if your men don’t like that, our families might not get along after all.”

He offers the bottle.

Finally, Jon grins. A slow, half-amused thing.

“We might get along fine. Go ahead and pour yourself a drink, Elijah,” Dellucci says, clapping him on the shoulder. “For the mourning.”

Elijah shrugs. The champagne bottle froths messily as he uncorks it and pours a generous amount into his mouth. He swallows without flinching.

The silence trickles on in the aftermath, Jon’s wary smile growing warmer. Before long the two are laughing it off, the cobwebs of suspicion lifting as they bring and pour glasses. Jon is taken with Cali, who waltzes around him with a grin.

“For the mourning,” Dellucci repeats, this time for himself, his eyes heavy on me. He takes a big mouthful, then spits the champagne down over me. I shield my face, curled up, waiting for someone to either decide what to do with me or forget about me again.

Elijah steps forward, too. Pours a tiny stream of champagne down over my head.

“A lot of trouble for one woman,” he says, as if commiserating with Jon.

Dellucci huffs his agreement. “They’re always trouble,” he says, with a thick handful of Cali’s ass, as he draws her in.

“But I don’t mind a little trouble now and then.”

I stare at Elijah, remembering us standing face to face on the front steps of the house. Blood on his face and a dozen different shades of heartbreak in his eyes. He doesn’t look twice at me.

The room settles into a comfortable din of conversation, as if I am not the bound centerpiece of it all, trapped on the floor.

“Let’s take care of this business first,” Jon says, reaching down to haul me up by the back of the neck. I scramble to my feet, twisting and kicking.

“Harper—” I rasp, looking at Elijah. Begging. He sips his drink.

I’m made to look into Jon’s face, champagne and tears mingling on my cheeks.

“Come on, sweetheart. Me and you are gonna take a walk.”

Dellucci and his men haul me away. One of them looks similar enough that I think he might be another of Dellucci’s sons, and the way he manhandles me makes me believe it. I am dragged up flights of stairs, the tops of my feet scraping on old metal. I twist, trying to look around, but there’s no sign of her. No sound.

Our procession makes it up to the roof.

As I realize what’s going to happen, I drag my feet against the floor until the skin slides off the bottoms. They haul me toward the ledge, and I experience pure animal fear, kicking and fighting for my life. Every scream hurts, but I scream anyway, my voice flying up into that big open sky and vanishing. No one to hear it.

We aren’t nearly as far up as Arlo had been. But we’re far enough.

“Well, Nadia,” Jon says, as he we reach the ledge. I fight the binds on my wrist, twisting and sobbing and trying to do anything to put space between me and that steep drop. “You should have taken me up on my offer. Doesn’t seem so bad now, does it?” he asks.

He dangles me over the edge as I remember that offer. That I could pay off my debt to him in other ways. I would have taken a real offer, done work, even the shady kind that the mafia is known for—but Dellucci had curled his hand around my thigh as he said it, and I knew what kind of work he meant.

I stare into the abyss over the edge of the buildings, the potholes and the cracked asphalt that will be rushing up to greet me.

Cali’s face appears over his shoulder, her arms around his neck—his eyes bulge, wide and stunned, as she buries something into his neck again and again. Quick as she can move. He throws her off with a rattling roar. The men holding onto me rush to interfere, drop me dangerously close to the edge. I throw myself sideways and narrowly avoid going off the roof.

Elijah has nothing but a goddamn champagne bottle, but he smashes it against the head of one of the men, and it shatters into something close enough to a weapon. I roll over, get my hands around one of the thick broken shards and start try to saw away at the binding around my wrist. I cut my fingers more than I make any progress in trying to free myself, the sharp edge doing nothing for the thick binds of corded rope. They make it look a lot easier in the movies.

Gunshots pop off. I drop the useless piece of glass, get my feet under me, hands still tied, and I make a mad dash for the stairwell. I steal a glance over my shoulder, see the chaos. One man is flat-out on the ground, and he’s not moving. Elijah is grappling with the other. Cali is hunched over. Dellucci—he’s still on his feet, one big hand stoppering the wound on his neck, eyes wild as his huge frame lumbers toward me.

I kick the door open with my foot and run down the stairs.

All through the decrepit building, I hear chaos. Screams or gunshots, as if the whole place has erupted into some kind of frenzy.

I stop in my tracks as a man staggers toward me, but he doesn’t see me because he doesn’t have eyes. Blood pours from two bloodied sockets, his mouth open in agony, feeling his way blind along the wall. I suck in a scream and slide past him, running, heart pounding, not understanding what the hell is happening. Dellucci comes down the steps behind him. I can hear his big feet pounding the stairs until I hit the first floor. I run blindly through open doorways.

I have to lose him. I have to lose him before I can find Harper. And it shouldn’t be hard to lose a man like that in a place like this, an industrial labyrinth of abandoned machines and rotting boxes and illicit storage—but my side is on fire, and every step brings a fresh wave of pain that stops me from taking a good, deep breath.

Glimpses of chaos pass by in a flash. Scantily clad women and armed men tussling in hallways. It’s very clear who had the jump on who.

Gunshots burst behind me, and I scamper like a spooked cat, reeling into a big open factory floor where light spills through the dust of high windows. I reel around the machinery, trying to deaden my footsteps, to silence my deep wheezing breaths.

I creep, staying low, moving through the shadowed places on the factory floor. I just need to double back. Get around him somehow, slip back to the last place where I saw Harper and—

The footsteps come quicker, barreling right down on me. I make a bolting run, but a strong arm catches me around the middle. I am hauled, kicking and screaming, back into a tight grip.

The fingers lock around the back of my head, press my face into a shoulder that’s firm and familiar. I go still, breathing in a familiar scent. Like home.

“I’m never letter you go, Nadia,” Ren breathes against my ear. “I’m never letting you go.”