Page 108 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King

Elijah has nothing but a goddamn champagne bottle, but he smashes it against the head of one of the men, and it shatters into something close enough to a weapon. I roll over, get my hands around one of the thick broken shards and start try to saw away at the binding around my wrist. I cut my fingers more than I make any progress in trying to free myself, the sharp edge doing nothing for the thick binds of corded rope. They make it look a lot easier in the movies.

Gunshots pop off. I drop the useless piece of glass, get my feet under me, hands still tied, and I make a mad dash for the stairwell. I steal a glance over my shoulder, see the chaos. One man is flat-out on the ground, and he’s not moving. Elijah is grappling with the other. Cali is hunched over. Dellucci—he’s still on his feet, one big hand stoppering the wound on his neck, eyes wild as his huge frame lumbers toward me.

I kick the door open with my foot and run down the stairs.

All through the decrepit building, I hear chaos. Screams or gunshots, as if the whole place has erupted into some kind of frenzy.

I stop in my tracks as a man staggers toward me, but he doesn’t see me because he doesn’t have eyes. Blood pours from two bloodied sockets, his mouth open in agony, feeling his way blind along the wall. I suck in a scream and slide past him, running, heart pounding, not understanding what the hell is happening. Dellucci comes down the steps behind him. I can hear his big feet pounding the stairs until I hit the first floor. I run blindly through open doorways.

I have to lose him. I have to lose him before I can find Harper. And it shouldn’t be hard to lose a man like that in a place like this, an industrial labyrinth of abandoned machines and rotting boxes and illicit storage—but my side is on fire, and every step brings a fresh wave of pain that stops me from taking a good, deep breath.

Glimpses of chaos pass by in a flash. Scantily clad women and armed men tussling in hallways. It’s very clear who had the jump on who.

Gunshots burst behind me, and I scamper like a spooked cat, reeling into a big open factory floor where light spills through the dust of high windows. I reel around the machinery, trying to deaden my footsteps, to silence my deep wheezing breaths.

I creep, staying low, moving through the shadowed places on the factory floor. I just need to double back. Get around him somehow, slip back to the last place where I saw Harper and—

The footsteps come quicker, barreling right down on me. I make a bolting run, but a strong arm catches me around the middle. I am hauled, kicking and screaming, back into a tight grip.

The fingers lock around the back of my head, press my face into a shoulder that’s firm and familiar. I go still, breathing in a familiar scent. Like home.

“I’m never letter you go, Nadia,” Ren breathes against my ear. “I’m never letting you go.”

35

Ren

Seven strippers and a bottle of champagne. That’s what we have. Elijah compared it to trying to dig out of a prison with a spoon, but at least a spoon is therighttool for the job. I expect half the girls will cut and run when the first bullet gets loosed, and all they have are the knives they can smuggle in.

Ifthey aren’t turned away at the door.

I used Atlas’s phone to set the stage. Told Dellucci that Elijah would be coming to celebrate and settle terms. There’s still no guarantee he can get the girls inside.

But there was no guarantee he wouldn’t turn his back on me the second I called him up and demanded a ride. But he didn’t. After everything, and with the threat that I might have still decided to kill him after all, Elijah still showed up when I called for help.

Maybe I knew he would, deep down. Sounds rather sentimental, so I’m going to chalk it up to one of those failings of mine. How I just can never pull the trigger on certain people, even when I believe they deserve it.

Maybe it’s not easy, after all—maybe it never has been.

I hang back. Let Elijah and the girls get the jump, and pray, pray, pray, that the first gunshot I hear wasn’t for Nadia. The second I hear it—the distantpop-popof panicked gunfire—I storm into the factory.

I walk into chaos, one bleeding hand wrapped around a gun. I put down men like dogs. Check corners. Weave around a couple half-clad women who go running for the exit. I take out the man following them who has one hand on a stab wound and the other on his pistol. He drops.

I move through the chaos. Hear screams. The numbers aren’t nearly as bad as I thought they’d be. Most of the men aren’t even armed because they’d been busy stuffing their hands down the back of women’s thongs and pawing at their shirt collars.

As I move through the carnage, I make a mental note: If our family makes it through this bullshit, we should hire more women.

I push through, looking for Nadia. It feels familiar. Comfortable in a way. Back to my old habits—hunting her down, a gun in my hand.

I’m clearing the lower floor, following the occasional pop of gunfire to counter it with my own. Footsteps rattle the staircase overhead. I turn just in time to see Nadia, a flash of her darkhair and long legs stumbling through an open doorway. I put two bullets into the bleeding, frothing, mouth-breathing beast coming down the staircase behind her, and I do the most natural thing in the world.

I chase her.

We crash together again like waves against the shore, her hands clawing at my skin, her kisses desperate and breathless between sobs.

“Ren. Oh, God, Ren. I thought you were gone,” she sobs like it would be a tragedy.

I kiss her again. Kiss the words from her lips, the thought from her head.

---