Page 16 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King

“Oh,” I say awkwardly, wondering how long he has been standing there. “You didn’t have to do that.” I’m not sure how he did it.Or why.“But thank you. It means a lot to her.”

I search his face, trying to read him, but Harper goes bounding off again. I turn to stop her.

“Leave it,” he instructs me. Like a dog. He lets Harper go prancing through the house, her babbling filling the air, oblivious to the two of us standing here in a whirlwind of old emotions. Ren and I feel very alone again. But the energy is…different from what it was last night. The way it feels after a storm.

“…She’s not usually so hyper like this,” I say, desperate to defend her before Ren starts second-guessing having the girl here in his house.

“I’m having clothes brought here so you can change,” he says, as if I haven’t spoken. “They should be here soon.”

“…And then?”

All I want is a clue. The slightest hint of what my future looks like, or Harper’s.

“And then we’ll discuss your punishment.”

…God, I wish he’d just get it over with. If he’s not going to kill me, then what is he going to do? Is it better? Could it be worse? I don’t know.

I force myself to nod, to accept those terms gracefully. Like I have a say in them.

“Fine,” I say. “What time is it?”

“Are you on a schedule?” he scoffs.

“She is,” I snap at him.

He gazes at me for a moment, before he relents and says, “It’s almost one.”

My heart does a nosedive.

“Jesus Christ.” I go to find my bag. I must have dropped it in the bedroom floor last night. My anxiety swells as I wrestle with how late it is, how much I overslept, how everything is so thrown off and out of my control. I was tired enough last night that I don’t remember lying down to sleep. Lights out before my head hit that unreasonably comfortable pillow.

“Harper, meds,” I call out for her, and this time she comes trotting up to me, because she knows I mean it when I say she’s taking her pills. I feel Ren’s gaze on me as I open the bottles and give her a juice box out of my purse.

He watches her take them, his face a mask. When she’s finished, she takes the rest of her juice and continues on her merry way. I’m still screwing on lids on bottles when he asks, “What’s wrong with her?”

I glare at the bottle in my hand.

“She was born sick. A hole in her heart,” I answer tersely. “She needed two surgeries to fix it. Open-heart.”

I hate talking about it. It makes it feel like it just happened all over again. Sitting in a cold waiting room completely alone, my baby, who was barely a week old, still the smallest thing, being cut open to the core.

“She’ll be on medication her entire life. And if…” I hesitate as I figure out how to say it tastefully, “if something happens to me, I have it all written down.” I take out the list of blood pressure meds and diuretics and vitamins, the names of her doctors, the dates of her next appointments. I have always carried it around. I had to. I knew what was following me. I try to hand the paper to Ren, but he doesn’t take it.

“That’s not necessary.”

I study his face, wishing so badly I could read him. That I could even recognize him. We used to talk endlessly for hours, pointless chattering about anything. Now, Ren barely gives me a few stunted sentences and a steep wall of silence that I don’t know how to climb.

“You said you won’t kill me. Doesn’t mean you’re going to let me stay with Harper. If you’re going to punish me, then—”

“Put that away,” he interrupts so sternly that even I believe him. I fold the paper back into my bag. “Where’s her father?”

I glance into his face again, looking for a sign of him. I don’t find one.

“He died.”

Ren has nothing to say to that.

I’m not surprised that he hasn’t put it together. Harper doesn’t look her age; stunted growth is a side effect of her early health struggles. She’s always been small: too skinny, too short, always prone to getting sick. She’d blend in better with some of theyounger preschoolers than she does her first-grade classmates. By looks alone, the timeline doesn’t add up.

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