Page 56 of Secret Baby for the Mafia Don

“Elio?”

I lift my head from the hospital bed. My face feels puffy and sticky. I’m momentarily confused about where I am. I realize with a start that I am at the hospital and that I didn’t imagine Kate tumbling down the stairs and falling into a coma.

“Here, let me watch her for a while,” Esther La Rosa says to me as she comes around the bed. She presses me back into the hospital chair and hands me some tissues.

“I have to stay with her,” I insist stubbornly.

My mother smiles softly at me. “I know you want to be with her, but she won’t vanish if you go home and take a shower and get some rest.”

“I have to protect her,” I say, shaking my head. I blow my nose and make a face at the result. I realize that I must look a fright.

“I know,” my mother says agreeably. She pulls up another chair and sits down beside me. “But you know me, I don’t go anywhere unprotected.” She pats her designer purse, and a grin lifts the corners of my mouth for a moment.

My mother has never left the house without her concealed carry weapon, a can of pepper spray, and one or two knives at least. They are often sitting side-by-side with crayons, cough drops, and tissues in her purse.

I know that she’s right, that I need to go home and recover, but I have this irrational fear that if I leave Kate, she’ll just slip away into the ether, never to return. If I’m being honest with myself, I’m not even sure that she hasn’t already done that.

“What happened?” my mother asks.

I sigh and drive my hands through my thick hair, cradling my head. My skin feels sensitive, burned, and too tight for my body.

Every one of my nerve endings feels painful, like I’ve been treated to extensive torture.

“Kate told me she didn’t want me to sign the deal that the Baldinis wrote up. She said it would put my life in danger and put the lives of all of my family at risk. I guess I just never intended to honor the damn thing, so I felt like if I signed it, we’d get her and Mateo out, and then I would rain down hell on the Baldinis.”

I sigh, leaning back in the uncomfortable chair. “But then I thought, I’ll add a clause to the contract that promises that I am signing it in exchange for the safety of Kate and Mateo. I let her come in and read the document. I wanted her to know what was going on.”

My mother narrows her eyes at this, but she just nods for me to continue.

“She wanted to add a clause that would leave Mateo in Grazia’s care if she died. All of us rejected that idea. The Baldinis knew this would remove the leverage that they have over me and Luca hates the idea of anyone that isn’t a Baldini being sheltered in their home. Hell, he hates outsiders so much he almost chased Emelia off just because she wasn’t family.”

“Luca’s crazy,” my mother says with a sigh. “Everyone knows that.”

I nod. “Anyhow, I got really angry,” I admit sheepishly. “I thought she was threatening to take Mateo away from me. I thought she didn’t want me to have custody of him. I didn’t see that she was just trying to remove him from the equation; to keep him safe. I…threatened her.”

My mother tsks and gives me a dark stare. “Elio, for shame,” she says to me and the disappointment in her tone is like a knife to my chest.

I groan and close my eyes. “She kept saying over and over that she was a risk to me and to Mateo. That we would both be safe if she was dead.

She got a letter opener off the desk and held it to her own throat. She said she would kill herself if I didn’t promise not to sign the deal and if I didn’t promise to let Mateo go to be with Marco and Grazia.”

My mother utters a curse, then crosses herself, turning her eyes to Kate’s crumpled form in the big, sterile hospital bed.

“She went down the hall, trying to buy us time, I think. I realize now that she might have thought I could subdue Luca and Enzo if she was serving as a distraction. Luca and I got into a fistfight, and she jumped on him.” I smile and say proudly, “She even cut his face.”

“Brave girl,” my mother says approvingly.

“In the scuffle, Luca flung her off of him and she fell down the stairs. You know how long and steep those staircases are at the front of their disgustingly posh house. She had a brain bleed and then a stroke, Mom. They don’t know if she will wake up and if she does, what her condition will be like.” My voice gets thick with emotion as I choke out the last words.

The thought of Kate unable to walk or talk, having to learn to take care of herself again, breaks what’s left of my cold, black heart.

My mother is silent for a long time, then she rises and whispers something near Kate’s ear. She comes to sit down beside me and stares into my face for a long moment.

The ringing slap that she delivers to my face comes out of nowhere, and I suck in a surprised breath, tamping down the rush of anger coursing through me in response.

“That is for your disrespect, as well as your negligence, for both Kate and your son,” she tells me, her voice level, calm and devoid of emotion.

She leans forward and pats my clasped hands. “Now, go home and get some rest. I will watch over her while you are gone.”

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