Page 42 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King

“He robbed me, tormented me, and the people who work for him, and now apparently, he betrayed his own fucking blood!” she yells, her voice cracking again. “You say my parents deserve what you did to them. Fine. Fine! Maybe they did—but if that’s true, then he deserves this. I’m owed, Ren!”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Excuse me? I’ve seen you kill people. I’ve seenexactlyhow simple it is. That’s what you said, right?” she asks, leaping to her feet and crossing the room. She gets up in my face, the orange light behind her throwing her face into shadow. “That it waseasy.”

I should push her back. Get her off me. But my hands feel like lead, heavy at my sides as she leans in too close, her eyes coming into focus in the dark.

“Are you just going to let him get away with it?”

“I’m not your attack dog.”

“You were two minutes ago before I told you who I wanted you to go after! Where’s your rage now, Ren? Why all the loyalty for a man who lied to you for years, who betrayed me—”

“Enough,” I snap, pushing past her. I have to get away from her, or I’m going to drive out into the night and beat Marlow Gatti to death with my bare hands. Forget the gun; I wouldn’t need it.

My thoughts are so intense, I can barely see in front of me.

I storm out of the bedroom. Nadia’s feet come prowling right behind me, not leaving it alone for a second.

“Ren—” she demands. I ignore it. My thoughts collide in my head like cymbals crashing, rattling my skull and my teeth.

It’s sure as hell not loyalty keeping me from going after Marlow. I don’t owe the man a damn thing except a nice, slow hanging. I just can’t.I can’t.

Salvatore Mori is already breathing down my neck, goddammit. If I drop another body, if I go about thiswrong, that’ll be the end of us. Taking out a man like Marlow unprovoked, a guy I do business with and who has, by all accounts, been loyal to me since I swore him into my service? The other families would look at me like a rabid dog, too dangerous to keep alive.

Like they don’t already.

Nadia gets her hand around my arm, turns me around to face her.

“Where are you going?” she demands.

The question shakes me back to the moment, back into my own skin.

I find myself pulling my jacket back on. I stand on the threshold of the house. Cold air wafts in through the open door. Herquestion echoes. WhereamI going? I don’t know. My heart is hammering in my chest, my mind blank with rage. Am I going after Marlow, anyway? Telling my mind that I can’t, while I blindly run off and—

Fuck.Fuck. I try to ground myself, clench my hand for that old familiar pain to bring me back to the present. Nothing. It’s still gone, and now I fuckingneedit.

I shudder and lean against the doorframe. They’d lock me up in an insane asylum if they knew what it was like, that sometimes the world just goes black inside my head, but my body keeps moving, keeps acting, even if I’m not the one steering it. I run my fingers through my hair.

Nadia’s hand touches my shoulder. I shrug it off.

“Don’t.”

“Ren, come back inside,” she says.

I can’t.

I need to go somewhere else. Somewhere I can think, somewhere I don’t have to look at her and be overwhelmed by this awful urge to storm off into the night and kill a man just because she asked. Nadia is more right than she knows—it would be easy. So easy, I’d barely fucking remember it.

“Go back to bed.”

“Wait, I—I wanted to talk about this. Why can we never just talk about anything? I ran away from you for years, just so you can finally run away from me? The fuck—”

I shut the door in her face and slump against on the other side of it, drinking in the cold air like it can put out the fire in my head.

I wander, trying to stay present, stay in control. I force my feet in any direction that isn’t toward that sleazy bastard with his oil-slick grin. I reach the river, cross the empty roadway to look out at the water and the rest of the towering city that stretches out on the other side.

What Nadia doesn’t understand is that I’m not running from her; I’m running from what she makes me.

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