Page 22 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King

She must know who he is, or have some sense of his authority, because she obeys without question. Her smile is tight and offended as she is repeatedly shooed away from her job, as if she is just an annoying pest getting in his way, but she never argues. She takes her trained smile to some other part of the store to wait once again.

This time, I wish she wasn’t gone.

Ren slides his hand across my middle, pulls me back against him until I am pressed flush against his body. I sway on unsteady feet, suspended against his commanding touch. His body heat seeps into me, the rigid tension of his muscles outlined through the suit.

“Open your eyes, Nadia,” he commands firmly. “Look.”

He makes me look, makes me stare into the image of us there reflected back. Whatcould have been.

“This is the one,” he says, hand sliding down the sheer, almost transparent lace of the bodice. Heat follows his hand, stopping low in my belly, where it coils tighter.Wanting. It catches me offguard. My heart is broken, but my body is still trained to respond to him. Like it never forgot what it was like to be touched by him.

“…Why are you doing this?” I ask. “What do you get out of it?”

Ren’s grip tightens around my middle, his voice a growl against my ear as I watch myself be tugged closer, watch him lean in and whisper those words against my ear without ever having to break eye contact in the mirror,

“I get what I’ve always wanted—you.”

8

Ren

When I take meetings, I take them on my terms. No one else gets to dictate them—not even Salvatore Mori. We meet on neutral ground on Long Island, armed with four men each, in the rundown front of a so-called restaurant. The kitchen has a freezer and a microwave and a single brand of frozen meals packed in the back. The wallpaper is peeling and the tables are clean and cheap. It has a distinct money-laundering aesthetic you don’t find very often these days.

Mori is the head of one of the oldest mob families still left in New York. One of the few families that survived into the modern century. Most of us sprung up into the power vacuum that was left when the old powers that be finally crumbled under the pressure of the Feds and regulations and the digital age. That was how my father came to power, anyway.

The mafia is a new beast for a new age. It doesn’t play by the same old-school rules that it used to. At least, not when it comes to money. When it comes to blood, everything is exactly the same.

Mori arrives second. We shake hands—cordial—but I see disapproval in his eyes.

“Caruso,” he says curtly and gestures for us to sit.

Mori likes to pretend he has some say in how the Italians conduct themselves. He likes even more to pretend that it’s because of his family’s long legacy and the respect they are due. In reality, everybody knows it’s because Mori has big enough connections to play peacekeeper and a big enough war chest to back up his threats if anyone steps out of line.

“It’s been a long time,” he says.

“Not long enough.”

The first time Mori sat down across a table from me, I’d just become don. I was young. Vengeful. Mori had tried to relate to me, back then. Said he had been forced to take over his family at a similar age. He tried to give me advice. I had just lost my father; I wasn’t looking for another one. It hadn’t gone well.

“Did Dellucci send you or is this a courtesy call?” I ask.

“No one sends me anywhere,” Mori answers, leaning back comfortably. “But when three bodies turn up overnight, left on the street still warm, I know who to look to. I’ve warned you before, Ren. The way you do things—”

“The way I do things is none of your business.”

“Oh, and you best pray it stays that way,” he says, with the first flash of threat in those dark eyes. I ignore his anger, look instead at the scar on his cheek. “If you start causing problems and draw the wrong kind of attention, the families will either unite for you or against you. We both know I’ve gotten leniency for you before, whether you asked for it or not. But eventually, the excuse of being young and not knowing better wears thin, Ren. I don’t want to be your enemy.”

“Then don’t be,” I say, “and keep out of it.”

Mori scoffs.

“What a goddamn luxury that would be.”

We silently size each other up. Salvatore sighs under his breath. “This is my warning to you, Ren. If you think I’m having a similar sit-down with Jon to stop him from retaliating, I’m not. He’s owed blood. I have no right to ask him to stand down. But if there’s any chance you’d be willing totrymaking peace with him—”

“What Jon wants, I’m not going to give him.”

Mori’s frustration is just as visible as his resignation. He can tell I won’t be swayed.

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