Page 26 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King

Maybe the obvious answer is Ren Caruso really just wants to hurt me—but if that’s true, then why hasn’t he?I’m right here. He could hit me, choke me, scream at me. But he hasn’t. Our bodies crash together as we come face to face, the moment suspended. Our lips are inches apart. I run my hands over those rigid shoulders then up to cup his face.

“Ren,” I beg. I want so badly to find some part ofhimin there still. I feel the stutter of his breath. Hear the low growl against his clenched teeth. He leans in, and I’m certain he’s going to kiss me.

“No!” Footsteps come flying at us. Harper launches herself into Ren like a little torpedo. “Get off my mommy!” she yells, pushing and hitting him as best she can with a tiny, angry fist.

“Harper!” I cry, scrambling to sit up under him.

Ren beats me to it. He swings off me, whisks Harper off the ground and up into his arms.

“Ren, wait—” I beg, terror choking my voice as I scramble to my feet. But he just holds her, stares into her furious, red little face. Her chest heaves.

“Leave her alone!” she says again, in the same stern tone I use when I tell her to stop misbehaving.

“Did you think I was hurting her?” he asks.

“You were on top of her.”

Harper trembles, and it breaks my heart. I thought she had bounced back so well from the other night, like kids do sometimes. That she had just moved on like she didn’t see me get attacked, like we weren’t violently run out of our own apartment. But she hasn’t. She so clearly hasn’t.

“Baby, it’s okay—”

Ren holds up a hand to silence me. He sets Harper down on the edge of the bed and drops to his knees in front of her.

“Your mother and I were playing. That’s all.”

Harper glares at him, that face saying she does not believe him for a moment. She turns to me, those eyebrows so serious. It’s one of those looks that remind me of him.

“He’s right,” I say, Ren and I locking eyes. “He didn’t hurt me, Harper.”

I won’t tell her that we were just playing, but I can give her that much truth.

“Well, you shouldn’t roughhouse,” she scolds, her voice still wobbly and eyes welled up from her fright. “It’s not nice, and—and you could still get hurt.”

“Harper,” Ren says, drawing her eyes back to him. “I’m sorry if I frightened you.”

My jaw drops, my silent rage and shock playing out cartoonishly. I have to snap my mouth shut before Harper can notice.

She glares at him for another moment, as if considering his apology very carefully.

“You have to promise you won’t hurt her,” she says, and then, as solemn as the grave, Harper holds out her pinkie finger. “Swear.”

Ren’s gaze drifts to me, our eyes meeting.

He studies her outstretched little finger with equal seriousness, as if making a blood pact. Finally, Ren hooks his pinkie around hers.

“I won’t hurt her. I swear.”

“…Okay.”

I feel like I’m losing my mind as my six-year-old daughter and my mob boss ex-boyfriend arrive at a pinky-swear truce about my well-being. Ren offers to escort her back to her room and tells her to bid me goodnight. Harper slings her arms around myneck and tells me not to play rough anymore, that we all need to go to sleep.

I squeeze her tight, grateful and so, so worried about her.

I feel a faint unease as I watch them go, Harper leading him by the hand out of the room.

My thoughts swarm like vultures, brutally picking apart every kind gesture Ren offers us, trying to dig down to the bone hidden deep under all the soft tissue, getting to the hard truth of it all. I’m overthinking, overanalyzing, certain there’s some cruelty hiding just out of sight.But what?The room is silent, but my thoughts are so loud.

I sit alone on the edge of his bed. My eyes wander to the window as they leave me behind, voices echoing from the hallway, as if I am not even there. A cold sense of loneliness creeps into my stomach.

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