Page 40 of The Bonus

“You don’t mind?”

“I’d love to come and besides, I don’t want you going alone.” She takes my hand in hers. “We’ve got this and if Gabriel Ferrara doesn’t want his baby then screw him. We do…and we will love this little baby so fucking hard.”

I smile through tears and give a weak nod. “Yep.”

She continues driving. “When are you going to tell your parents?”

“Can we just concentrate on telling the father first?” I hold my temples. “This is all too much.”

“Right.” Deb nods, she glances over at me casually. “Because your mom is going to freak out, you know that, don’t you?”

“Not. Helping.”

One week later.

The traffic whizzes by as we sit on the park bench, our eyes firmly fixed on the front doors of Ferrara Media.

“Okay, so let’s run through this again,” Deb says.

I glance at my watch. “He’s going to be walking out to have lunch with his brothers at any moment, and I’m waiting until he comes into view and I’m calling him.”

“Why don’t you just call him now?”

“Because I want to see his face when he sees it’s me calling, I want to know what to expect when I go to see him.”

“Okay.”

We wait, and we wait…and we wait.

“What if he isn’t having lunch today?” she asks.

I shrug.

“What if he isn’t even in town…the country.”

“He’s in the country.”

“How do you know?”

“His jet is at JFK.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I do,” I snap in frustration. “You are forgetting that I spied on this man for most of my adult life, I know where his fucking jet is.”

“Right.”

We sit some more and then I see Mark get out of his car and loiter around the front door. “Gabriel’s coming out now.”

“How do you know?”

“That guy in the black suit by the door is Mark, his driver.”

“Why would his driver be going to lunch with him?”

“He’s his bodyguard.”

She screws up her face. “He has a bodyguard?”

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