Page 70 of Nanny to the Mafia

“I should have known. When your mother called and asked to do her shopping, I should have known. She never asks me. Rosa should have thought why now?”

“Nah. I haven’t even figured her out yet. Then how can you? Go to bed. I will talk to her.”

“She is very angry, figlio mio. She wouldn’t listen to anything we had to say.”

“Don’t worry. I have my ways of calming her down.” I doubted if any of my seduction techniques were going to work on her this time. It pissed me off that I was going to have to grovel. But I was going to do it, anyway.

“No doubt.” Rosa chuckled, brightening up. She seemed to have more confidence in me than I did.

“Come on. It’s late. Go to bed.” I winked at her. “You don’t want to be caught in the crossfire.”

“You’ve got a wild one on your hands. Worse than any Sicilian girl.” Chuckling, she ambled off to her room.

I didn’t wait for her to leave before taking the stairs several at a time. I burst into our bedroom only to find it empty, the bed made from this morning when I had taken her on her hands and knees. That suddenly seemed ages ago now.

I checked in on Cora’s room, where I found my baby sleeping soundly, her fist in her mouth, wrapped around her teddy bear, but no Divya in sight.

I skidded down again, roaming from room to room to find them all empty of her presence.

Dashing back up, I opened and closed all the room doors one by one till I found her previous room door locked.

No fucking way! She had moved out of our room.

I rattled the doorknob. “Divya.”

Silence.

I took a deep breath, resting my head on the door, trying to rein in my frustration. “Mia cara, open the door.”

Crickets. It irked me more than I cared that she moved out of my room.

“Open the fucking door, Divya!”

Niente.

Fucking hell! I didn’t have the patience to put up with this shit.

Taking a step back, I kicked the door open, sending it flying open, the noise of creaking wood echoing in the hall. It was that or show her what I did straight away by pulling the guns out. A bit too soon, perhaps.

I found her, a ball of silk pyjamas, huddled in the corner of the empty bed; the only accessory in the room was the framed picture of her smiling parents.

In contrast, she was a slobbering mess. Eyes red, she shouted, “What happened to privacy? Go away.”

Like that’s going to happen. Approaching her, I said tightly, “You are my wife. We. Sleep. In. The. Same. Room.”

“No,” she snapped, scooting further away. “I can’t be with a killer.”

Anger burst so hard in my chest that it left me trilling. A venom I didn’t recognise crept into my veins. “Like hell, you can’t.” I hissed, “Come now to our room, and we will have this discussion.”

“No!”

“Yes,” I said, my tone hard. I didn’t bother to hide the wrath behind it.

She crept further away, trying to embed herself against the wall. What did she think she was? Fucking wallpaper?

“Fine. Don’t say I didn’t try.”

She thought I gave up. Like I ever would. Just when she relaxed her grip around her knees, I swept in and hauled her up, carrying her upside down over my shoulder.

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