Page 4 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King

The words crush me under them.

“Never, Nadia—”

His hand closes on my throat, chokes a strangled whine from my straining vocal cords.

“Never,” he repeats, the pounding of his hips rolling deep and hard until my legs shake. The grip on my throat tightens. Squeezes. Harder. Too hard. I can’t breathe. The world becomes pinpricks of light, his voice a roar in my head like an avalanche. I can’t breathe!

“I’m never letting you go—”

2

Nadia

I lurch awake in my Queens apartment.

My bedsheets lay tangled on the floor and the mattress is damp with sweat. I peer through the darkness above my head, frantic to find what woke me up. I run my hands over my face and shoulders, feeling for roaches. Nothing. The digital clock face burns 3:17 a.m.

I lie back, staring up at the ceiling for a moment, my chest heaving with every breath.

I’m alone in my bed, just as I have been every night for the past six years. The past lingers in my thoughts, on my tongue, burning between my legs. It makes my face hot with shame that I still even dream about that night.

I have not spoken to Ren Caruso in those six years.

The boy who still adores me in my dreams, myfirst love.

Of course, he broke my heart. That’s what young boys do, I guess. But most failed teenage romances don’t leave a mile of bloodshed in their wake. Ours did.

His voice ghosts across my memory again, low and grinning,

“Nadia’s fun, but she’s not wife material.”

I block it out again.

When I dream about those times now, about the past, it’s starting to feel less and less real. My family legacy. My mob heritage. My “generational wealth.” The memories get less clear the more time passes. And Ren—he was the one who took it all from me.

A faint clamor draws my attention across the studio apartment. That sound that woke me up. I drag myself up in a daze.If Harper is trying to climb to the remote again—

I hit the bedside lamp switch. Sickly light falls over my six-year-old daughter. She’s sleeping soundly on her little bed, tucked into the corner of our studio apartment with her arms clutched tight around the world’s ugliest stuffed giraffe. My sleep-fuzzy brain clears as I see her there, her face perfectly peaceful and still.

My gaze drags toward the sound. The apartment door sits cock-eyed in its frame, highlighted in an orange glow. The light shifts as the door warps and shudders. Wood creaks and snaps from the outside. The lock jiggles.

There’s a saying I’ve heard, and I thought it was pretty corny at the time: The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing humanity that he didn’t exist. But if that’s true, then the mafia is taking notes. Everyone talks about the 1920s, and Prohibition, and thegood old days, when you could crack open a warm newspaper and read about a man being left face-down in the street peppered with holes like Swiss cheese or a car engine that turned over in Little Italy and lit up like a fireball.

But the mob isn’t gone. They just write the headlines now.

And once again, they found me.

I bolt across the apartment, shoving our tiny loveseat full force toward the door and ramming it against the frame. I fling two bar stools on top of it, Harper’s backpack, a consignment-shop KitchenAid knockoff ($15.99). I don’t exactly have heavy furniture. The wood shudders violently. Whoever is on the other side gives up on being sneaky and starts ramming the door down.

I snatch Harper up. Her dead weight slumps against my shoulder. She whines, sharp and incoherent at being moved around in the dead of night. Cheap plywood shudders and begins to break. The door crumbles like cardboard as they kick it in piece by piece.

I wrench open the fire escape window, years of thick paint splintering for the first time. The rush of cold wind shoots up my arms and lifts the back of Harper’s shirt. She wakes instantly.

“Mommy?” She straightens up.

“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay, don’t look.”

I try to keep her face pressed against my neck as I ease backward out the window. Cold metal stings the bottom of my feet, and a howling wind shudders against my nightgown. I try to get my footing on the narrow platform. A shadow climbs over the couch, a biblical giant of a man, who comes stomping into my apartment.

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