Chapter 4: Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King: Chapter 4

I don’t know where I’m being taken. Either Ren Caruso doesn’t live in New Jersey anymore, or he just doesn’t commit murder where he eats. I watch the streets flicker by, my stomach a cold knot of dread, my thoughts swirling as I try to figure out where we’re being taken. Over and over, my thoughts whisper:

Did I make the right choice? Did I make the right choice?

The image of two lifeless bodies lying in the rain has been branded behind my eyelids. I see it every time I blink.

Ren didn’t hesitate. That first time we were together—when Ren took a life and my virginity in the same night, he had told me: It was easy. And that was exactly how he made it look, six years later. Easy.

Will he be that quick with me?

I still feel the way his fingers tightened on my throat.

My arms slide around Harper as I bury my face in her hair, the dread low and heavy in my stomach as I am taken through the city toward the unknown. For some reason, I had hoped we would go to his home. Some place familiar. I’d been there once or twice a lifetime ago, where he grew up, Hoboken. My family had always lived in New York in the heart of our own territory. Ren grew up in a mansion across the Hudson, and I loved teasing him about it. Whenever we would have one of our playful fights, I would tell him to go home and cut his grass. That once-warm memory has curdled and gone sour now.

We arrive at a narrow, multistory townhome—not far, I realize, from that hotel we shared that night. Our secret meeting place, with the East River just a block away. I step into a single-unit townhouse, sprawling up multiple floors. The place is immaculate, and for a moment, I have the unsettling feeling of having time traveled. This is reminiscent of the places I consider my real home; the lifestyle imprinted on me when I was a little girl, the setting of my childhood. A sprawling parlor floor with coffered ceilings and crown molding. Hell, at this point, I’m just impressed at the thought of having bedrooms , plural.

Harper stands beside me, tucked behind my leg. She’s never been in a place like this before in her life.

“This way,” the driver says, motioning me to follow him.

“When will Ren be here?” I ask, dripping water over the cold tile floor.

“When he can.”

Harper and I are left in a glitzy attached bathroom to clean ourselves up from the rain. Looking in the mirror for the first time since this night started, I’m surprised Ren even recognized me.

“Where are we?” Harper asks, barely daring to whisper.

“We’re at a friend’s house,” I lie, trying for a smile as I rub a fluffy towel through her damp hair. “We just…we had to get away from some bad people. But they can’t follow us here.” I subtly double-check her breathing and her pulse. She’s trembling still, and terrified, I think the last couple hours have left her exhausted and shocked by it all. I scoop her up in my arms.

“And right now, Harp, you get this big, warm fluffy bed in this big house all to yourself. What do you think about that?” I toss her down onto it, trying for playful. She doesn’t absorb my plasticky good mood, curling up on herself and looking up at me.

“What about Applesauce?” she asks.

That awful stuffed giraffe. It shreds my heart a little bit that she’s still thinking about him. I hear voices in the foyer—men’s voices. I pull the covers over her.

“…We’ll have to get Applesauce another day, okay?”

When she doesn’t even cry or argue, I know she’s absolutely had it. I tuck her into the guest bed, with clean sheets and a big heavy comforter that swallows her up. Floorboards creak nearby. My pulse races as I kiss her temple, certain my heart is going to beat right out of my chest, that I will die right here before Ren ever gets his hands on me.

“I love you, Harp. I love you so much.”

I press my head against hers, wanting nothing more than to curl up around her and hold her against me until I am physically dragged away. But I can’t do that. I have to make use of whatever time I have to ensure her safety, her future. I have to do whatever it takes to give her a good life, even if I can’t keep mine. I rub my hands over my wet eyes and turn around, forcing myself toward the door and the approaching footsteps—

The door opens before I can reach it.

Ren and I come face to face in the threshold.

His dark looming figure fills up the whole space and seems to suck the air right out of the room.

I know I look like a drowned rat in a damp tissue. No makeup, hair a mess, nightgown wet. But Ren…I could almost think he hasn’t changed. The years have carved out his jaw and his cheekbones a little more maybe. Made him more serious, more mature. But his eyes—those are different. He has a stranger’s eyes, the color of stagnant water. No light behind them.

He grows blurry, and I have to blink him back into focus.

The part of me that still loves him wails and rages inside me like that sad teenage girl I was years ago. After everything he’s done to me, I hate that I can still feel this for him, that I will feel it to my very last breath. I hate him, without question. But I love him, too.

“Not here,” I say.

As if I can make demands.

He looks toward Harper, the little bump under the covers. He relents. Silently, I’m marched out the door. I don’t look back at my daughter again. I’m afraid if I do, I’ll lose my nerve.

We’re alone in a sitting room with white, crystalline light. The house is empty and the space feels too bright, like an interrogation room.

“Sit,” Ren commands.

I take my place on a dark loveseat. He doesn’t join me. I watch him out of the corner of my eye as he moves around the room out of my line of sight. I hear him pour a drink.

“I’ve looked for you for a long time, Nadia,” he says, his voice measured.

“I know.”

“And you also know, I don’t like unfinished business.”

My heart clenches hard.

He paces back into my vision, coming to a stop in front of me. He takes a sip of something dark, his eyes raking over me. My nightgown is sheer and white and wet, and his eyes drop from my face down to my body. His knuckles pale around the glass. He takes another sip.

“We have a lot of catching up to do,” he says. My stomach flips sickly, tickling my gag reflex. “Tell me what happened with Dellucci and his men.”

“You saw what happened—”

“From the beginning.”

I know there’s no getting around the explanation. That doesn’t make it easier to say, to give the whole ugly story of my failures. I wish I hadn’t accepted his offer to sit. Being on my feet made it feel like I could still run away. A comforting illusion.

“I owe him money,” I finally say. “I’ve owed him for a few years now. I couldn’t…” I swallow my excuses and cut to the point. “I dodged him for a long time, same way I did you. I worked remotely. Calls. No video. I was really careful.”

Thinking it over, I wonder where I went wrong. If it was a bad move or just bad luck.

“I don’t know how he found me this time, but he sent one of his thugs to break my door down tonight. I…” I brace myself to say it, expecting to feel guilt, or horror, or whatever people are supposed to feel after they kill someone. All I see is that man pulling Harper away from me. I don’t feel a single thing that could be mistaken for guilt .

I hope he had a few seconds of awareness down there in the dumpster with all his bones mangled up inside him. I hope he felt it.

“I did what I had to do,” I finish. “I killed him.”

Ren’s mouth is a flat line, his eyebrows steady. No reaction. But he paces again. “And when the others came after you, you called me,” he surmises shortly.

I know how it looks, like a scared little rabbit running blind into the wolf’s den.

“I’m not here to try to save my skin, Ren,” I say. “I’m not that stupid. I know how you feel about me. I know what you have to do. I’m only here for my daughter. If something happens to me, she doesn’t have anybody. The state will take her, and God knows where she’ll end up. They might even try to give her to my uncle. I can’t let that happen to her. Please. She can’t live like this. She’s innocent in all of it, and…you’re her best chance. You know people, you can give her a life with a good family. She’s just a baby. I need to know she’ll be taken care of. That’s all I’m asking.”

He looks at me again.

God, those eyes are terrifying. I don’t know him. It’s like I’m begging a stranger. The truth is right there on my tongue—that she’s his —but his cold silent fury weighs down on me. I swallow the truth, afraid he’ll be more repulsed, that he won’t help her just because she’s half me . When he doesn’t say anything, my desperation grows hot and angry,

“You want me to fucking beg?” I demand, dropping to my knees in front of him. “Is this what you need to see?”

“Get up,” he snarls, hauling me to my feet and throwing me back onto the loveseat. We glare at each other. He steps closer, wedges himself between my knees. A fist tightens in my hair, and he makes me look up at him. “Is this what you are now?” he asks. “Is this what I’ve been chasing this whole time? Some whore?”

“You’ve made me be a lot of things these past few years, Ren: a thief, a beggar. But I’ve never been a whore.” I knock his hand off me. “I called you for help before I ever tried spreading my legs to get out of something.”

He scoffs and paces away again. “The kid suggests otherwise.”

My anger grows chilly, the silence settling between us.

“Maybe I’m the one who was wrong about you. I heard all this talk about how you make a show of sex offenders that move into your territory. How you crack down hard on CPS calls on your turf. Maybe everything they say about you is all bullshit, and you’re going to take your hatred for my family out on a literal child—”

“Nadia, enough—”

“You can finally finish it, Ren! You can be done with me. Put the vendetta behind you and bury me, but just do this for her. Do it despite me. Please—”

My anger becomes desperation again. The emotions come in waves. I’m willing to give him anything he wants as long as Harper will be okay, as long as he’ll give me his word on just that. It can’t be that hard to find mercy for her. God, she’s so little.

His voice goes low. A whispered, gravelly sound that makes my skin flush with alarm.

“Is that what you think I want? That I chased you all this time just to bury you, Nadia? To bury the past?”

Ren swallows the last of his drink and tosses the glass onto the floor listlessly, watching it shatter. I stare at him for a second, wondering if he’s lost his mind. But he just stares at me with that same serious face.

“Do you think that’s how the world works?”

When I don’t have an answer, he nods to the broken glass splintered over the floor.

“Fix that,” he orders.

When he shows no sign of joking, I crawl onto the floor and carefully pick up the shards of glass at his feet.

“I said fix it,” he snarls, kicking the shards out from under me, scattering them further, “not pick it up.”

I look at the mangled pieces still cradled in my hand.

“I can’t,” he makes me say, like I’m an idiot.

“You’re goddamn right you can’t. The present is just the consequence of the past,” he says, the glass crunching under his shoes, “and you can’t change that. You can’t fix this , Nadia. Putting you in the ground won’t make my parents pop out of it.”

I bow my head against the ugly words as if I can duck them, the pain still sharp when I think about it. Ren keeps going,

“Do you know how long it takes for someone to burn to death?”

“Ren, please—”

“Almost six minutes, in their case. I don’t know which one of them went first, because by the end, their screams sounded about the same—”

“Ren, stop,” I say, the glass dropping out of my hands as I stand up.

“They were holding each other. The coroner had to cut them apart where their skin had melted together—”

Bile hits the back of my throat, and I force it down, pushing my hands against his chest just to get him to shut up, shut up. I can’t fucking hear it.

“Stop it! Like you were any better!” I snarl, “I had nothing to do with what happened to your parents! You pulled the fucking trigger on mine! Sure, maybe my dad earned it for what he did. But what about my mom? My brother? How about you tell me how that went?” I scream at him, pushing him again and again, even when it doesn’t move him an inch.

“Nadia—” he says slowly.

“What? Suddenly, you don’t have all the gory little details? Own what you did and tell me—”

“Nadia,” he snaps, so viciously that it freezes me in place. He glances aside meaningfully, and I follow his gaze. Harper peeks around the open doorway, huddled on the floor with that same terrified look she’s had all night. My heart sinks. Goddammit . I immediately go to her, scooping her up into my arms.

“Why are you yelling?”

“Nothing, baby, I was just—Mommy was being too loud. I thought you were asleep.” I glance over my shoulder. Ren stands apart from us, watching from a distance. I take Harper back into the bedroom, smoothing over her comforter and trying to assure her everything is alright. Usually, Harper lives in her own little world, always daydreaming and babbling to herself. Tonight, she is hyper-aware.

“I’ll join you in just a little bit, okay?”

I stroke my hand over her hair, feeling as exhausted as she looks. The light in the doorway shifts. Ren fills it again, leaning against the frame.

“Does she need anything?” he asks.

The question catches me off guard. That he would even ask it…

“No. She’s fine,” I say.

“Applesauce,” Harper whines, as I try to leave. I grimace.

“Applesauce…” Ren repeats, a shred of doubt in his voice. He reaches for his phone, as if he’s going to order Mott’s right there on the spot.

“No, she doesn’t need apple—it’s nothing. It’s the name of her stuffed animal. Baby, I told you —” I say, turning back to her. She whines softly, gives a few half-hearted sobs as she settles down.

“Stay with her. Go to sleep,” Ren says, like an order rather than an offer. He turns to leave.

“Wait.”

I don’t understand the shift in the atmosphere. What is this emotion left behind after the outburst and the accusations? Why is Ren walking away now, when we were finally in the middle of it? Burning off all that ugly hurt that’s been brewing between us all these years. It’s like a scab that just won’t heal, and now that I’ve started picking at it, I don’t know if I can stop. I inch carefully off the mattress, crossing the room so we can speak in low hushed tones.

No matter what, I can’t go to sleep without knowing what happens when I wake up. If I wake up.

“What do you want with me, Ren?” I demand in a whisper, searching his face. “If you don’t want to kill me, then what? Why have you been hunting me?”

“I already told you that,” he says, with no warmth, “a long time ago.”

He turns his back on me.

The door closes quietly between us, leaving me in the bedroom to think about the answer. I hear it clearly in my memory as surely as if Ren had said it just now.

I’m never letting you go.