Page 68 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don

The thought makes me wild.

I glance around furiously, wondering what the fuck I’m doing here.

“Do you know who that was? The woman who he was with?” I ask Angelo. Realizing how absolutely pathetic that sounds, I add, “I don’t want to interrupt him if he’s busy.” Fuck, maybe that sounds even more pathetic.

“That’s Mae. One of his girls.”

One of his girls.

Girls, plural.

“She’s Taiwanese or something, but her English is alright. She’s cool. She won’t mind if you go back there with them.”

The thought of walking in on Nico with another woman is terrifying. What would I do? What would I say? Would I scream at him? Would I cry?

Would I just shut down again?

“Thanks,” I say numbly.

I have a thousand other questions, none of them good. Luckily, I have too much pride to ask them of a stranger. I put enough distance between us again to be polite, facing the cage and the fighters dancing around each other.

I’m caught up in the crowd with a front-row view as I stare at the fight without really seeing it. My thoughts are a mangled wreck, like the aftermath of a car crash where time moves like syrup, slow and languid, every little detail enhanced in the surrealness of the moment. I watch as a man’s bare-knuckled fist rocks against his opponent’s cheek, sends it rippling, spit flying. Saliva catches the light in a thousand tiny particles. Right now, I know how he feels.

One of his girls.

Is that what I am, too? Just a name in a long list?

The ring jostles as the fight swarms against the edge of the cage. The larger of the two, Yancey, throws a dozen punches into the smaller man’s ribs, dominating the fight one blow at a time until Summers rears back with all his strength and knocks Yancey back with a staggering headbutt. The big man reels like a top, feet floundering. Both men are left staggered, but Yancey wobbles, off-balance. The crowd roars as the tide turns. Summers gets his senses together first. He comes up swinging, taking the bigger man down to the ground. My devastated shock and bitterness and anger are mirrored right in front of me as the two fight with all the savagery of two people who want to kill each other and are trained to do so. My burning eyes follow theblows, watching the blurry scene as an indescribable hurt lashes inside me. Some part of me chooses the underdog, urges him to keep fighting back, not to let Yancey walk all over him.

“Come on!” I whisper with the crowd, urging Summers to stay in charge of him. Yancey flips them, gets the leverage on the smaller man—a dangerous position—but Summers is quick, flexible, and he gets his leg up between them and kicks the man right in the gut, sapping the air out of his lungs.

Anger burns in my eyes, the lights catching in the tears I refuse to shed. The crowd cheers Summers on as he takes Yancey down again and again, never letting him get that same advantage on him again. Yancey goes down and doesn’t get back up. The man is barely cognizant enough to tap his hand on the mat and surrender.

The crowd roars while I slip quietly from the room and into the backroom where Nico and “his girl” disappeared.

Angelo said Nico doesn’t miss the fights, which means he must have a view of them. My instincts tug toward the upper staircase, up toward the VIP balcony—but a strange, pained shout freezes me in my tracks. It echoes through the stairwell, seeming to come from every direction. But I sense its origin—down. I have no idea what the lower steps lead to, what lurks below hell itself. The barren stairwell gives no clues, peeling white paint on concrete and a lightbulb too dim to reach the lower depths. It offers no clues as to what lies beyond.

Whispery echoes drift up from the bottom floor. I steel myself and soften my footsteps, prowling down the stairs one cat-like step at a time. I’m grateful for the concrete, no creaking wood to give me away. I round the second flight, peeking down into thenew stretch of stairwell. At the final landing, a doorway opens up into a shadowy room. I can only see some of the stained concrete floor at this angle.

The voices come clearer now, along with another groan.

“Please,” I hear a man say.

My heart hammers. I inch slowly down the stairs, trying to get a better look into the room. There’s a soft thump—the same sound I just heard in the ring—and that same voice chokes out a cry. He curses furiously, the last of the air in his lungs spent on rambling off expletives.

“You want any bones left, you better fucking stop me, Richie. You know how.”

Nico.

My heart pounds, making it hard to hear the muffled words from the back of the room.

“I don’t have anything,” the man spits back, desperate with rage. He cries out while the chaos of the room overhead drowns out the screams from the underground. The voices come from one side of the room, and very carefully, I inch my way down toward the main floor. The doorway is clear.

Nervousness bundles up in my stomach. I creep closer and dare a peek around the edge of the door. The room is vast, but mostly empty. Boxes are piled up along the walls. Chairs and an upended poker table look like they haven’t been touched in decades, and there are bullet holes scarred in the concrete walls.My eyes drift over the scene, trying to make sense of what happened down here, when the words start again:

“You breached my trust. Look at me, you fucking coward. If you insult her, you insult me. If you short her, you short me. In case you’re not good at context clues, Richie—you really,reallyfucked up.”

“That’s not how it went down,” he sobs.

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