Page 39 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King

When I was close to having Harper, the girls pooled what money they had to give to me. But Red, she was the one who turned it into a plan. She slept with Marlow. Got him nice and drunk and passed out, so she could raid his apartment and his wallet for all the cash he had on him and all the night’s tips and every cent that came out of the register that day. She could have taken that money and run herself, but she gave it to me and sent me off with the firm direction that I would take care of my baby, and she would never see me there again.

I know what probably happened to her. I just don’t want it to be true.

Luna and I don’t say much else to each other, both lost in grim thoughts, until Cali and Sincere come back. They drop back into chatter, warming the mood. It never hits Luna’s eyes. She’s gorgeous, with a big, brilliant smile and heavy-handed makeup, but underneath all that, she looks just as hollow as Sincere, just in a different way.

I sip the last dregs of my coffee. Sincere drops her head onto my shoulder, grinning as she snaps a selfie of us together, her smile big and wide. The shutter noise clicks, a multi-lens camera capturing my resolve on a cracked screen. My mouth smiles, but my eyes are steely with determination. I’m going to see just how much power the wife-to-be of Ren Caruso has.

13

Ren

Her perfume burns my nose before I see her. The hair on the back of my neck stands on end, flush with the feeling of being watched. My glare flicks to the doorway, where Olivia stands and looks me, arms crossed, working on her frown lines. I wonder how long she’s been standing there, obscured by the light of the monitor. I sigh, turning my gaze from the screen.

“What?” I ask, shutting down the computer. The sunset lights the room orange. I don’t remember when it got like that.

“Did you send Nadia out today?”

“I did.”

“…which means you took a look at the Blackwell offer,” she prompts like a disapproving mother already knowing the kid didn’t wash the dishes.

I glance at the black screen, my own reflection like an apparition staring back at me. In the distortion, my eyes look hollow, a skull in a suit.

“Not yet.”

A muscle in Olivia’s jaw ticks. I have been in here for a while. I glance at the sky again as it fades to the color of an old bruise.

Blackwell and I have been in talks about a business acquisition for some time. He got into the online media frenzy early, specializing in local news. He had a brief and blazing early success managing a handful of journalists, so he branched out and made it into a full media company. His business has taken a downturn in the last decade, and Olivia has been salivating over the thought of us acquiring it.

“…then what have you been doing?” she prompts.

“Research.”

She licks her lips, tastes the air like a snake, like maybe she can draw a drop of patience out of it.

“I wish you had told me. I would have prepared something for you to review, whatever metrics you wanted to—”

“It’s not related to Blackwell. It’s personal.”

The emotions that play out on her face are good enough for Broadway.It’s personalwas the excuse I would give whenever I was hunting Nadia. It was my rationale for money thrown at private investigators, phone records scraped from data centers, and the occasional trip to Venice, where I followed a false leadthat Nadia had taken a flight out of the country and was living abroad. Everyone either knew not to question what I was doing, or they learned fast. There was no amount of money, time, or blood that I wasn’t willing to part with in pursuit of her.

Olivia has always seemed exasperated that I don’t golf, get wasted in country clubs, and bribe my way out of DUI charges on the weekend like arealbusinessman.

“I know that…caution is necessary where you and Nadia are concerned,” she says, each word carefully chosen and spoken with a low murmur of respect, “but I have an obligation to tell you the truth. You didn’t hire me to bullshit you, so I won’t. And the truth is, I don’t like where this is going. I’m worried. Elijah is worried. You let this woman into your house, let her wander around and spend your money, when we don’t even know her. You barely know her.”

I can handle plenty of hard truths, but that one makes my jaw tick and my brain feverish. She’s gone too far. I know Nadia. I know Nadia the way you know the road to your childhood home, every bend and curve; it’s so familiar that you feel it in your bones.

Olivia wets her lips again. “I know you wanted to find her. And you have. So why does it feel like you’re still looking for her? Like nothing has changed?”

“What would you like changed?” I demand lowly, prompting. “Maybe a change in staff?”

Olivia has never succumbed to my threats. She always holds her head high against them. That’s why she’s lasted so long whenothers didn’t. She weathers the threat like a glancing blow and tilts her jaw defiantly.

“I want you to see Nadia for what she is and what she always has been: a distraction. I think you hunted her for so long that you’ve lost sight of why you wanted her. I thought—we all thought—”

Finally, she blurts it out, the question that has been itching under her skin like a rash. “Why is she still alive?”

“Do you think I’ve hunted her for years to enjoy killing her in a few minutes? Do you think I amthatshortsighted?”

---