Page 41 of Mafia King's Surprise Baby

I take a deep breath and nod.

“Say it.”

I look her right in the eye. “I trust you.”

“Good. Because from here, there’s no going back.”

It sounds ominous, but what choice do I have? This baby inside me? I’m already its mother.

“Do it,” I say, a note of finality in my tone.

It will mean leaving the life I’ve known here, my family, Leo.

As much as it crushes me, I’m ready for it.

She pulls my hair into a loose bun on my head and places a flat cap on top. Next, a wig is dropped and arranged on top. I can hardly see through the wispy curtain of bangs on my eyebrows and dipping within my field of vision. The hair leaves my nape bare while the longer locks in front brush past my collar bones.

Hana then gets a pouch and sets to work on my face. When she pulls a mirror in front of me, I hardly recognize myself. I look like a rendition of Cleopatra or some other high-born Ancient Egypt aristocrat with the straight hair and bangs.

I’m also getting a new identity. I want something that sounds like my name, so at least starting with a B. And if I’d gotten to live my life as I wanted to, I would’ve ended up with Leo. Mrs. Pellegrini.

I refocus on Hana. “Can my initials be BP?”

She nods. “Okay. Now let’s go in.”

Next, she takes me through a concealed panel and what looks like a hacker’s lair, and in a corner is a setup with a white background and a camera on a tripod in front.

“B, this is Alfie.” Hana makes the presentations. “Alfie, this is B.”

“Oh, so we’re going with B as first initial, are we?” He rummages in a drawer—I can see a sea of passports of different colors. “You speak French, right, love?” He looks up at me and lifts up a small booklet. “Canadian? Quebec?”

I don’t know where the insight comes as I speak up. “No way. I can’t do that accent.”

He nods. “ So French it is, then.”

I’ve lived in Paris for five years, and it wasn’t hard for me to pick up the way Parisians speak. I can be way more convincing as a Parisian than a Quebecoise.

Hana had my new passport in hand the next day. She told me to attend to any last tasks I had in the city, then we would be on our way. I did as told, bid a quiet adieu to Central Park, my gaze landing on the Richmond Club a few hundred yards ahead. What I wouldn’t give to step in and see if Leo was dining there that night, one last look even if I can’t say goodbye.

But I can’t. I have to make this as clean a break as possible, make it look like there’s nothing pre-meditated about my disappearance. No one can have an inkling I’m saying goodbye—my whole ruse will be a moot point otherwise.

On my last night in New York, I stay at my father’s house. Hana found a way to send me an encrypted text, asking me to meet in an area of The Bronx—it can’t be traced, but speculation canrun that my fiancé set me up this way, sending me into Albanian territory to then abduct me, or worse.

I tell my father I’m meeting Ardian, get into the Uber in front, alight in The Bronx. I let a camera from an ATM catch me as I walk, then I slip down a dark alley, pause for a small task, and wind my way down a series of little connecting ways until I come out in a blind spot Hana told me about.

A car is waiting there—dark sedan, tinted windows. The driver hands me a purse when I slip in. In it is my new passport and a one-way ticket for Tokyo. So Hana’s sending me to her home country. She didn’t say anything about the plan, and I didn’t ask. It seemed easier to just follow along.

On the way to JFK airport, we stop at a clandestine salon where my hair is cut in the style on the passport photo and the woman shows me how to do my makeup which will be my new look from here on out.

I thus pass security at the airport and board the plane as Bérénice Picard, using the fourteen-hour flight to come to terms with the momentous jump I just made, the life I’ve left behind, the completely unknown one expecting me in a land I know next to nothing about.

I don’t cry, though. My focus, and my hand, are on my belly, cradling the life growing there. This baby is my last link with my life as Bianca Bonucci, yet it is also the future awaiting me. I’m doing all this for him or her. I can’t ever forget this. In fact, I must draw my strength from this. As I let my life as I’ve known it so far, and more heartbreakingly, the very thought of Leo Pellegrini, behind me, I turn into the mother this baby needs, the protector who will look after it for as long as we both shall live.That’s it, that’s all. Bianca Bonucci is dead, and so is the version of me who was her.

It’s mid-afternoon when I land in Tokyo. Nerves grip me as I exit the plane and go to the luggage carousel, not having any clue what to expect here. I trust Hana, though. She must have made arrangements.

I’m looking around the wide, so glossy it’s almost clinical space when I feel someone brushing past me.

“Bérénice?” a man says. “C’est Hana qui m’envoie.”

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