Chapter 6: Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King: Chapter 6

I wake with a jolt, like falling out of a dream and onto the bed, except I don’t remember the dream; don’t remember falling. Just the lurch of awakening here .

My heart beats so loud in my ears, it hurts my eardrums.

There is a Harper-shaped indent in the bed next to me. The bedroom door is cracked open. Before I can rightly panic, I hear the signature tip-tap of little feet running around, the vibrations trembling through the floor.

Harper zooms through the house as fast as she can go. She’s making herself at home, giddy and smiling, as if yesterday was all just a nightmare.

“Harper, what are you doing?” I demand, trying to rein her in.

“Mommy, this place is huge ,” she exclaims, when she almost runs into me as she slides to a stop in her socks. “Is this a school?”

“A school? This is a house, Harp.”

“This is a house?” she practically yells. Her voice bounces off the walls.

“Harper, stop running—and stop feeding his ego—” I add in a mutter, only to be struck numb by the realization of what she’s holding in her arms. She has her giraffe, Applesauce, and she’s clutching him around his crooked neck. I’m so used to seeing her with it; it’s as natural as one of her limbs.

She takes off again while I wrestle with the confusion. She finishes another lap through the connected sitting room and foyer before I get her around the waist. I drop down to her level.

“Baby, where did you get this?” I ask, touching the stuffed animal’s head.

She points behind me.

I whip around and find Ren standing and watching us.

“He brought Applesauce here,” she says sunnily.

I stand to face him.

“Oh,” I say awkwardly, wondering how long he has been standing there. “You didn’t have to do that.” I’m not sure how he did it. Or why. “But thank you. It means a lot to her.”

I search his face, trying to read him, but Harper goes bounding off again. I turn to stop her.

“Leave it,” he instructs me. Like a dog. He lets Harper go prancing through the house, her babbling filling the air, oblivious to the two of us standing here in a whirlwind of old emotions. Ren and I feel very alone again. But the energy is…different from what it was last night. The way it feels after a storm.

“…She’s not usually so hyper like this,” I say, desperate to defend her before Ren starts second-guessing having the girl here in his house.

“I’m having clothes brought here so you can change,” he says, as if I haven’t spoken. “They should be here soon.”

“…And then?”

All I want is a clue. The slightest hint of what my future looks like, or Harper’s.

“And then we’ll discuss your punishment.”

…God, I wish he’d just get it over with. If he’s not going to kill me, then what is he going to do? Is it better? Could it be worse? I don’t know.

I force myself to nod, to accept those terms gracefully. Like I have a say in them.

“Fine,” I say. “What time is it?”

“Are you on a schedule?” he scoffs.

“She is,” I snap at him.

He gazes at me for a moment, before he relents and says, “It’s almost one.”

My heart does a nosedive.

“Jesus Christ.” I go to find my bag. I must have dropped it in the bedroom floor last night. My anxiety swells as I wrestle with how late it is, how much I overslept, how everything is so thrown off and out of my control. I was tired enough last night that I don’t remember lying down to sleep. Lights out before my head hit that unreasonably comfortable pillow.

“Harper, meds,” I call out for her, and this time she comes trotting up to me, because she knows I mean it when I say she’s taking her pills. I feel Ren’s gaze on me as I open the bottles and give her a juice box out of my purse.

He watches her take them, his face a mask. When she’s finished, she takes the rest of her juice and continues on her merry way. I’m still screwing on lids on bottles when he asks, “What’s wrong with her?”

I glare at the bottle in my hand.

“She was born sick. A hole in her heart,” I answer tersely. “She needed two surgeries to fix it. Open-heart.”

I hate talking about it. It makes it feel like it just happened all over again. Sitting in a cold waiting room completely alone, my baby, who was barely a week old, still the smallest thing, being cut open to the core.

“She’ll be on medication her entire life. And if…” I hesitate as I figure out how to say it tastefully, “if something happens to me, I have it all written down.” I take out the list of blood pressure meds and diuretics and vitamins, the names of her doctors, the dates of her next appointments. I have always carried it around. I had to. I knew what was following me. I try to hand the paper to Ren, but he doesn’t take it.

“That’s not necessary.”

I study his face, wishing so badly I could read him. That I could even recognize him. We used to talk endlessly for hours, pointless chattering about anything. Now, Ren barely gives me a few stunted sentences and a steep wall of silence that I don’t know how to climb.

“You said you won’t kill me. Doesn’t mean you’re going to let me stay with Harper. If you’re going to punish me, then—”

“Put that away,” he interrupts so sternly that even I believe him. I fold the paper back into my bag. “Where’s her father?”

I glance into his face again, looking for a sign of him. I don’t find one.

“He died.”

Ren has nothing to say to that.

I’m not surprised that he hasn’t put it together. Harper doesn’t look her age; stunted growth is a side effect of her early health struggles. She’s always been small: too skinny, too short, always prone to getting sick. She’d blend in better with some of the younger preschoolers than she does her first-grade classmates. By looks alone, the timeline doesn’t add up.

(But God, another part of me whispers, can he not see that she looks just like him? Every now and then, she will say something just so, or laugh a certain way, and I’ll hear him in her, and my heart crumbles all over again. She’d never even met him before, and she is still so much of him.)

“And that apartment in Queens—that’s how you’ve been living since?”

“For a year. Almost two.”

I feel a flare of indignation at the suggestion, but only because we had lived in far worse than a cramped apartment with bad wiring and no view.

When his silence lingers too long, it starts to get under my skin, as bad as an accusation. As if he’s just standing there, judging all my choices, having no idea everything that my girl and I have been through over the years: always running, always looking over my shoulder, forced to question every decision. Because of him.

“What?” I finally demand. “What do you want to say? Do you have some opinion about how I’m raising my daughter? Because I’ve done everything for her. And I know it’s not much, it’s not great—but it’s what I could do.”

“You took mob money from Dellucci. You’re lucky you’re both still alive.”

“I took it for her! My daughter was sick, and we had nothing. What was I supposed to do, Ren? The state and family charities took care of most of her medical debt, so that was never my problem. But landlords and grocery stores and electric companies and the IRS—they don’t care how sick your kid is, or how much time you have to take off and can’t work. When it’s time to pay, it’s time to pay. And I couldn’t. I couldn’t hold down a job while calling out for weeks at a time to care for her. And God forbid, I make too much money and lose my qualification for assistance! And I was doing all that, knowing damn well you were on my heels, making me break lease after lease, bouncing between dingy apartments and women’s shelters!”

“Then you should have faced me, instead of running.”

I almost laugh. The words are so shocking that they border on nonsense.

The man had just killed my parents, my brother. And he thinks I shouldn’t have run from him? He’s a madman. Our conversation is interrupted by the front door opening, both of us hearing it. Ren walks away without another word, leaving me there seething.

I’m brought a couple of changes of clothes by a woman named Olivia. I recognize her voice as the one I talked to on the phone last night, the one who answered instead of him. She’s as beautiful as I pictured her when I heard her talk: bleached hair and thick dark lashes, built like a Barbie doll with lip fillers and all.

“So, you’re Nadia,” she says, as if she has heard too much about me. And by that tone—she is not impressed.

“Is that supposed to mean something?”

She arches a plucked eyebrow.

“Should it?” she asks.

She doesn’t smile at me even once as she hangs up the clothes. Her perfectly styled nails and textured burgundy suit put my rumpled appearance to shame. I can tell she’s judging the state of my appearance.

“Mr. Caruso had me bring these. I’d put them on if I were you.” She glances toward my chest, where my nipples stand out against the white fabric, and smiles a cougar’s smile: all threat.

I wonder for the second time if she’s dating Ren. Assuming the shell of a man he is now is capable of something like dating . Maybe she’s just fucking him. It makes me want to scream at her either way, to tell her all about how what she ended up with is nothing compared to what I had. That I had Ren Caruso at his best, that he was so good and so perfect and so charming and that I feel sorry for her.

And then I have the worst thought—maybe he is like that for her. Maybe I’m the only one who brings out the monster in him. My hand massages the place on my neck where his fingers clenched last night.

Fuck, I deserve for her to look at me like I’m pathetic. Because I am.

I thank her for bringing me my clothes because I’m an adult, and even if Olivia is a catty, judgmental bitch, I don’t have to meet her on her level. I’ve suffered through enough toddler tantrums to learn that.

The clothes I’m brought make me do a double-take. The price tags have been removed, but I don’t need to see them to know—to feel the quality under my hands and recognize the luxury-brand names.

My head spins.

“Pick one of those,” Olivia says, setting down more bags of toiletries and makeup by the door, “He wants you ready in an hour.”

“Ready for what?” I ask.

Olivia shuts the door in my face.

***

If I’m going to be punished , whatever the hell that means, I’m going to face it with as much dignity as I can muster. I shower, style my hair, and slide into a new outfit that somehow fits like a glove. The mirror becomes a window into the past as I stare at myself, pinning glittering earring studs into my ears as the finishing touch.

Last night, I thought I didn’t recognize myself, soaked to the bone and scared stiff.

But this—this is even stranger.

How many times have I looked into a mirror just like this, dolled up and darkening my eyelashes, getting ready for him ?

Only now I feel a yawning hurt instead of a fluttery excitement. There is no one to get ready for. Not really. I ignore the wet glisten in my eyes and smooth down my shirt. Harper tires easily, and after a morning of running up and down the apartment stairs, she’s tuckered herself out. She lies on the bed, using Applesauce as a pillow and playing with my phone. I join her, curling up alongside her as I wait to be collected.

It doesn’t take long.

Elijah knocks on my door. I barely recognize him. He was fifteen the last time I saw him, and in my head, he’d stayed that age. Until now. I have to crane my neck to look up at him, just like his brother. He’s grown into himself. He has new frown lines and a neatly trimmed beard.

He smiles at me kindly, and it makes my heart shred a little. Despite everything that’s happened between our families, at least Elijah is still himself.

“It’s been too long, Nadia,” he says, even though we were never that close and he has just as much reason to hate me as Ren. “I’ll take you to Ren, if you’re ready.”

Elijah offers me his arm and leads me up the staircase.

“…How has he been?” I dare to ask. “Ren, I mean.”

“You spoke to him last night, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know if spoke is the right word,” I admit. “Maybe yelled.”

Elijah smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Not exactly a warm reunion,” he surmises as we climb the staircase. “That’s understandable. You’re…in a weird situation, Nadia.” He glances over at me, something more painful flickering across his expression as we pass the second landing, climbing higher. “A dangerous situation. I don’t know how my brother has been. Not really. I see him every day, but I don’t know. We don’t talk like that. How he is, that’s anybody’s guess. What he is, well…it’s nothing good.”

Elijah’s footsteps slow at the top of the stairs. He looks down at me.

“Be careful, Nadia,” he warns me emphatically. “Be careful with him.”

It feels like I’m choking. A chunk of anxiety lodges in my throat.

We reach the top of the stairs.

Ren sits in a bright office, the wall behind his back a full window. My hushed conversation stops abruptly at the scene. The view from his office window is the same view as it had been in our hotel years ago. The angle is different, much lower, but it doesn’t matter when there are no buildings between us and the river. It’s still the view I see sometimes in my dreams, the water dark and glossy. Daylight makes it ugly, washed out and gray, mirroring the city on the other side.

It’s a painful coincidence and brings back memories that make that knot in my throat harder to breathe around.

Ren glances up as I enter, his empty eyes flickering for a moment like a double-take, a spark of something there.

“Sit,” he orders.

Elijah pulls up a chair for me and sees himself out, closing the door behind him.

I take a seat across from Ren and try to find something brave to say. “Have you decided what to do with me?” I settle on.

“I’ve chased you for years, Nadia. I’ve always known what I was going to do with you,” Ren says, his serious gaze boring into mine, burning dark and cold. I meet his gaze right back, refusing to back down and play meek.

He pushes a picture toward me. My stomach sinks. It’s an image of a dead man—the man I pushed over the balcony railing. He still looks like himself enough for me to recognize him, but his skull is deformed, the landscape of his face now broad and bumpy, broken from the inside out. A sour emotion curdles on the back of my tongue. I wrinkle my nose and shove the image back at Ren, not wanting to look at it.

“What the hell are you showing me that for?”

“The man you killed. Did you know him?”

“No, of course not. Why would I?”

“He was Dellucci’s son.”

My heart flips around in my chest for a moment, trying to find some place to land.

“…What?” I breathe, stunned, as the realization settles. On reflex, I look at the picture again, my head all twisted up. There’s a difference between killing a mob man’s henchman and murdering his own flesh and blood.

“His name was Arlo Dellucci,” Ren continues, tonelessly. “Jon’s eldest. We’re beyond the point where I can make your debts just go away, Nadia.”

“I never asked you to—”

“You didn’t. But I need you to understand the situation you’re in.”

“…So, what then? You’re not going to kill me, you’re just going to hand me over to Dellucci, let him do the job for you?”

“Wrong again,” he says slowly, pushing off from the desk and rounding it. He puts himself in the space between me and the desk; he leans back against it. He makes me look up at him. My heart pounds as he touches my jaw, fingers tracing the bone as if committing it to memory. I feel claustrophobic. Cornered. I can’t breathe when he touches me.

“I’m the only who deserves to punish you.”

An involuntary shiver wracks my spine and settles in my gut.

“Just tell me what you’re going to do, Ren,” I demand, furious, being strung along like this all night and day.

“I’m going to marry you.”

Of all the things I had prepared for him to say, this one wasn’t on the list. I’m so unprepared for his answer, I can barely register it. I almost laugh, except, by the look on his face, it isn’t funny at all.

“…What?”

“I’m going to marry you,” he repeats, saying it the way other people say, I’m going to kill you . “I’m your punishment, Nadia. Till death do us part.”

My heart takes up a thunderous beat.

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

That hand on my cheek drops to my throat, squeezing just tight enough to threaten. I curl my hand around his wrist, a useless attempt to hold him back as my breath stutters.

“You came here because you were forfeiting your life to me, right? Well, consider it taken. Just because I’m not killing you, doesn’t mean you still get to go on living. You belong to me, Nadia,” he snarls. “I own you; do you understand? Every inch of you is mine now.”

My breath scrapes the edges of my throat.

“Why? Why the fuck would you want that?” I demand. “How is that some punishment—”

For the first time in six years, I see Ren smile.

“How is it not? I’m not the boy you knew before, Nadia. You and your family made sure of that. And the only person who deserves to be married to someone like me—is someone like you.”

Someone like me.

Nadia’s fun, but she’s not wife material.

Ren’s mouth crashes against mine like a fight instead of a kiss, claiming and bruising. My mouth opens helplessly against his. I’m pinned against the chair. He gasps like he’s never tasted air before, every muscle in his body wracked with tension.

“For every minute my parents burned, I’m going to take decades from you—”

He’s insane.

“Ren…” I try. His fingers threaten to rip the neck of the shirt he just bought me.

“You’re going to be my wife. That’s your fate, Nadia, what you almost escaped all those years ago.”

My attempts to pull away are cut short, my heart shattering and flaring with anger as the boy I’ve missed so badly kisses me again and again like he wants to kill me. Like it’s a bad thing.

And maybe Ren really is clever, maybe he knows just how to destroy me—because this hurts worse than death.