Page 75 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don

A little after noon, Frankie comes sashaying through my deep, empty dreams.

“Oh,Ava,” she calls, singsong, right at the place where sleep and wakefulness met. I crack open my sleep-crusted eyes and find the room full of bright daylight. Frankie is one of those people who knock at the same time as they open the door, rending the whole gesture pointless, and I barely manage to look half-awake as she lets herself into my room.

“Lookie what I’ve got for you, sweetheart,” she croons. “Someone’s been a good girl this year.”

The words activate me like a sleeper agent: back straight and face doe-eyed and oblivious, ready to play stupid and innocent, like I’ve never heard anyone use the wordsgoodandgirlback-to-back before. No, sir, not me.

It takes my half-awake brain a few seconds to realize she has two packages under her arms, white boxes tied with dark, satiny ribbon.

“Spoiler alert: it’s not coal that’s in here,” she adds, tossing them down. “But it might just get you some by Christmas.”

By the way her pierced eyebrows wiggle, I know it must be something bad. She hands the packages to me, the ribbons holding them together already crinkled and skewed from tampering. I’m already blushing and annoyed, wondering what it is she might have seen as I scoop them away from her.

“You know tampering with someone else’s mail is a felony.”

“This didn’t come by mail. It came by sweaty-faced delivery boy. And is that really any way to talk to the lady who would take an anthrax hit for you?” she asks, all faux innocence. I give her a look, because we both know no one is coming after me with anthrax.

I peel open the box. Frankie watching my face makes it all the worse. I check the note. To my surprise, the gift is from Thaddeus. Inside, I unfurl a shimmery silver cocktail dress with a modest cut-out top and a high slit up to the hip. He’s left instructions to wear it tonight, 8:00 P.M., at an address in Manhattan that I don’t recognize.

His text was so unenthused, I had taken it as a no. I feel a little bad for doubting him.

Simply the brand name on the minimalist tag gives me a hint of the value I’m holding in my hands. This isn’t bad at all. Just as I’m about to breathe with relief, I open the final package: a discreet, brand-name box, textured and silken to the touch. Inside, I find what made Frankie grin like a middle schooler:

A set of white lingerie.

The full set rests against the gift paper, all sheer lace and straps and tiny bows. It feels sinfully bridal.

Frankie sighs dramatically. “My little girl, all grown up. I remember when you used to wear long sleeves in the summer. Those big, oversized sweaters—”

“Stop,” I groan, forcing her out of my room as she laughs.

“Well, hey, just know—if some guy got that for you, he didn’t get itfor you. He got it for him.”

The door closes between us.

And she’s probably right. Thaddeus did get this for himself, but my first thought is of Nico—how he would feel if I put this on for another man, and how he would rip it off of me.

And then what would he do? Whisper dark little promises of knocking you up, and then bail on you when it actually happens?

I toss the lingerie down with a disgusted sound. Sleep hasn’t made the pain of that revelation any better.

I trace the subtle, intricate design on the lingerie, and a second idea bubbles at the back of my thoughts—a way out.I see it as clearly as if it is stitched into the lace. This is the small miracle I have been begging for night and day. This is an invitation. If I sleep with Thaddeus tonight, it would be only a few weeks’ difference.

Sometimes, babies come early.

It’s all so neatly explainable. It also makes me want to throw up for the second time today. I don’t want to pass off Nico’s baby as another man’s. But then, what I want doesn’t really matter.Nico is the one who doesn’t want kids. If this baby will just be a burden to him, or worse, just a pawn in some fucked up game he’s playing, then…

What I want to do isn’t even in the equation. In my heart, I believe what I should do is whatever is best for the baby. And right now, what’s best for the baby is being born into this family, to me and Thaddeus Mori.

And then Nico can go be as non-domestic as he wants, with whoever he wants.

With intricate lingerie hidden under my dress and a new nausea in my stomach, I arrive at my birthday dinner. Or so I think. Thaddeus has not invited me to a restaurant after all. I arrive at an upscale bar—the only bar I’ve ever been in that took my name at the door before they would let me enter. All eyes in the room turn on me as I step inside, as if I am the odd one out. The dim, smoky room is discreet and intimate, the men mingling together in loose groups. It feels like a company dinner, or an old-school London club, so many men boasting name-brand suits, imported watches, and thinning hair.

Thaddeus greets me, beckoning me over to the bar where he sits with another man. The woman on the stranger’s arm—too young and too pretty for him, with her cleavage about as precariously placed as her posture—tilts dangerously off the edge of her barstool. She stares forward without acknowledging us as we are introduced, coming alive only when the bartender replaces her gin and tonic.

I get the sense she is paid by the hour.

We get through the tedious introduction of the man beside him. It’s pointless information that I tune out like a weather broadcast for the West Coast. Mind-numbing business credentials that have literally nothing to do with me but make the men at the bar give snakelike grins to each other.

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