Page 9 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don

I fly in that blinding rush as he tears down the road. I’m suspended in the moment. It feels both like a few seconds and a small eternity before he eases his foot off the gas. My breathsare heavy in my chest, my heart hammering like an angry little hummingbird trapped in my ribs.

I feel alive. Head-to-toe, buzzing, electric.

He shares a look with me, neither one of us afraid. My stomach clenches at how much I like that, how reckless Nico is with me. For months, everyone has handled me with kid gloves. Like I’m fine china. Nico looks at me like he wants to throw me against the wall, just to see how I break.

It’s a dangerous line of thinking to follow with his eyes on me like that, all deep and hungry.

“Well, alright. Psychopath it is,” Nico decides.

“What do you want, Nico?” I ask again, once the engine quiets down. I know this isn’t going to end with just him driving me home. He’s the sort of man who will squeeze this favor for everything that it’s worth. He used to have the power to back up that kind of threat. I don’t know if he still does.

“I want you to tell me what I’ve missed.”

“Inseven years?” I scoff. “It’s not that long of a trip. Not with the way you drive. We won’t have the time.”

“Hit me with the highlights. What about my brother?”

“Are you asking how he’s doing?”

His jaw tightens, his eyes finally sticking to the road.

“…I’m just asking.”

I’ve heard there’s no love between Nico and Salvatore Mori. They didn’t like each other even before Nico went to prison. Salvatore took over as don, holding the position once promised to the man next to me. I know Nico doesn’t want to hear it, but the truth is, Salvatore has thrived as the head of the family.

“You answer my questions, maybe I’ll answer yours. Tell me how you got out of prison.”

“Man, that’s really stuck in your teeth, isn’t it? Like a goddamn pit bull. You just can’t let it go.”

I shrug and hold my silence. If he’s not going to tell me what I want to know, I’ll just return the favor. Before either of us can break our stalemate, my phone cracks the silence for us. It buzzes angrily in my lap.

There’s only one person in the world I know who still insists on making phone calls: my brother, the second-in-command of the Mori crime family.Marcel.His name lights up the screen, illuminates the interior of the car as the call continues to ring.

Word would have traveled back to the house by now. Everything that happened tonight will be burning its way through the rumor mill, spreading faster than wildfire. And nowmyname is attached to it. I wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near that fighting ring. Not tonight, not ever. And if Marcel has the whole, strange tale fed to him…

I swipe the notification away.

“Damn, Ihavemissed a lot.” Nico laughs. “Last time I was around, you worshipped the ground your brother walked on. Hecould do no wrong. Now you don’t even take his calls? Did your teenage rebellion come as late as your puberty?”

“Are you making a point, or do you just get hard to the sound of your own voice?”

“Baby girl, if I’m hard right now, it’s got nothing to do with me and everything to do with you.”

My phone rings again. I swear to God, Marcel has a sixth sense. I wonder if he had me microchipped when I was a kid. I swipe the notification away and scowl out the window, away from Nico’s Cheshire Cat grin.

“Brothers, am I right?”

As if Nico’s relationship with his brother is anything like mine.

Marcel practically raised me. He’s been my guardian from the time I was six, and he’s made more sacrifices for me than I can count. The kind of sacrifices you can’t pay back. He will work for the Mori crime family until he dies, and although I think he likes the work and has climbed far above his expected position, his future has been set in stone from the time he was sixteen. He gave up all of his choices just so he could take care of me.

And this is how I spend my time repaying him.

But isn’t that how it works?

He did his part. He got me to adulthood alive. Twenty-one years isn’t bad. Now he needs to step back and let me fuck it all up. That’s what you’re supposed to do with kids, isn’t it? In only a handful of seconds, the phone rings again.

Maybe not letting things go is a genetic trait.

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