Page 102 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King

“They already got her.”

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I take one of the cigarettes from the box left on the counter and I put it between my lips. Atlas lies on the floor at my feet, his hair a dark, wet halo. I look down at the half-conscious, kerosene-soaked man as though we’ve never met. He gargles on his teeth.

I turn this way and that, taking in the destroyed kitchen all around me. Broken shot glasses at my feet, everything on the counter overturned. One arm of the chair I was tied to has snapped off, and my wrist throbs; it may be broken. Atlas’s phone is still on the counter. Either he doesn’t have it set up, or his ugly, broken face is too distorted for the facial recognition to detect. Like an animal got him. I press his finger against the sensor instead, get it unlocked.

Elijah answers the call, suspicious of the number.

“Ren?” he asks, startled when he recognizes my voice. “Ren, where are you? What the fuck is going on, why can’t I get a hold of anybody—”

I toss the cigarette into the pool of warning: highly flammable liquid, and I shut the door behind me with a decisive snap, leave Atlas to his six minutes.

“Ren, hello?What happened?”

I glance back at the house, the gauzy smoke already trickling from the windows, and the red glow flickering in the windows.

“…I don’t remember.”

34

Nadia

When Ren doesn’t answer, I call Elijah. I stare at the wall as the call takes its sweet time connecting. I trusted Elijah before, and it all fell apart. I still don’t think it was his fault. I really don’t. But do I trust him to do this? If I tell him, “Oh by the way, all of your inheritance is going to me, unless you stop Ren from killing himself—” will he try to stop Ren? Or will he take out the simpler problem first and let Ren do as he will?

“Hello? Nadia, hello?”

I end the call. I pace the loft apartment that is twice as big as some of the apartments I’ve lived in before, and somehow it feels crushingly small, like I’m a rat, circling around the edges of its cage, feeling out its confinement. A week. Ren gave me a week to stop him, to find some other way. That’s plenty of time. Plenty—unless someone else gets to him first.

I call Ren again. No answer. I don’t know what to say on the voicemail besides: “Ren, please. I need your help.”

He’ll call back if he thinks I’m in danger. He’ll have to. When he doesn’t, I am sure that something has gone very, very wrong.

I sit on the edge of the bed, putting my head in my hands.

A tiny voice perks up next to me, Harper leaning her soft cheek against my arm.

“It’s okay, Mommy. I’m not mad at you anymore. Don’t be sad.”

I almost laugh. She lasted, what? Three hours? I wrap an arm around her shoulder and tell her the same thing I always do. That it’s going to be okay. This time, I know that it isn’t. Not for me.

I get up to give Harper her night meds. When I take off the lid, a curled-up note drops into my hands from inside the prescription bottle. I unfurl the bank number that Ren hid ‘somewhere safe, that I would find it.’ My smile hurts. I carefully roll it back up and put it back in the bottle.

As I’m hefting Harper up to drink out of the sink faucet—we don’t have any glasses, and she thinks it’s hilarious, like a game—there’s a knock at the door.

My blood goes cold.

There’s only one person who knows about this place. Elijah tried to call me back a couple times, but I let the call bounce. I didn’t think he would actually come looking here. There are a thousandhotels in New York that I could have checked into for the night, but I came here. The closest thing I could give us toa home.

The knock comes again.

“Who’s there?” Harper asks.

I shoo her away to the bed again and tell her to stay back.

“Who is it?” I ask through the door.

“I live in the next apartment over, 1107. I think you dropped this outside.”

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