Page 5 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King

The man-giant yells, “Come here, bitch!”

Well, since you asked so nicely.

Harper realizes what’s happening. She’s not afraid of the dizzying heights or the bitter cold or the man yelling at us from our front door. Harper’s eyes land on her ugly giraffe abandoned on her bed, and she lets out a bloodcurdling scream of despair. She clutches her stubby fingers to the windowsill, desperate not to leave it behind.

“Harper, come on!” I scream, and she screams back as I snatch her away, paint coming off under her little fingernails. She thrashes against me.

Dangling thirteen stories above dark New York City asphalt, I remember suddenly: I’m afraid of heights. Cold wind whips against my skin and blows my hair into my mouth and eyes. I cling to my baby as hard as I can, even as she knees me in the ribs and digs her fingers in my hair, reaching back for her toy with heaving sobs. I inch along the metal shelf bolted precariously to the weatherworn brick.

Organized crime is a spider web. It hangs all over this city, and if you have bad luck or bad genes, you might just run right into it face-first. And a spider web, once it’s on you, no matter how much you pull and panic and scream, doesn’t come off easily.

The spider scuttles toward me.

His hulking shadow blocks the light from the window.

“Stop!” he yells. There’s a gun in his hands, but it’s a useless threat. He’s not going to shoot me, and I know it. I have to be taken alive or I’m not worth anything.

I feel blindly for the next rung of the fire escape with my bare toes. My hair is in my face, my baby screaming in my ear. It doesn’t matter what’s below me. It doesn’t matter that just climbing a step stool turns my knees to Jell-O or that I can feel in my palms the years of acid rain that has eaten away at the rungs of metal anchoring me to the side of the apartment complex.

I work my way down to the next landing. The man’s shadow falls over us. He steps onto the fire escape with us. I make it down one set of steps, then two—rushing, tripping. He’s right on my heels, coming down two, three steps at a time. He grabs me by the arm. I scream and thrash, jerking away until I break his grip and go flying, launched by my own desperate momentum. My back hits the metal railing. Terror branches through my belly as I feel that yawning expanse behind me. The banister holds.

The man and I come face to face. He’s bald, all face tattoos and cigarette breath. He tries to drag me back up the stairs, toward the apartment window. I curl my fingers tight around the rusted metal banister, holding myself anchored, but he’s so strong. He yanks me up toward him again and again, trying to break my grip on the banister as I scream. With my other arm, I crush the full weight of my six-year-old daughter to my chest. Her little arms wrap so tightly around my neck, she threatens to choke me out, her terrified crying blowing out my hearing.

“It’s okay,” I hear myself saying.

It’s not okay.

“It’s okay.”

Between the wind and her screams, Harper can’t hear me, but I say it anyway. I am compelled to say it, just as I have said it for years. I dig in my hands, my feet, the last measure of my strength holding out as the giant yanks me back up toward him again and again. A flashlight cuts through the street below us. Someone is down there, waiting at the bottom of the fire escape. His partner, probably.

Bad, bad, bad.

Six years of having mostly a toddler for company, and you forget how to curse.

Suddenly, the monster gets his hand around Harper—into the back of her shirt. He starts pulling her away from me. She takes a chunk of my hair with her.

“No!” I scream and break my stubborn grip on the railing just to get both my hands on her. He tosses her aside on the landing now that he has me where he wants me, gets both those big, sweaty hands on me. His grip crushes my throat as he pushes me back against the banister, dangles me over the edge of the railing. I twist against the open air as the wind howls.

“Did you think we wouldn’t come after you just because you’re a woman?” he snarls. “Aprincess?”His gold tooth glints in the light before he spits on my face. I turn away, my hands clawing blindly for his eyes.

Harper huddles in the corner of the fire escape landing, where she hunkers down and screams as the mob man and I dance in the dark. There’s no room on this narrow scaffolding, and I keep fighting him, keep twisting, like a mad dog in the catcher’s leash, kicking and thrashing and hitting like my life depends on it.

I get my knee between his legs. The air leaves his lungs in a furious, sickened snarl as he stumbles back away from me. His back hits the opposite railing. When I slammed into it, the railing’s height reached around my belly button. Totally safe. But this man is taller, much taller, and so top-heavy. His hips catch the rail. I realize that at the same moment he does, that split second of terror, as his center of gravity pulls him groundward.

Funny how split-second decisions seem to take a cartoonishly long time to make. I fling myself at him with a shriek, shoving on his chest with all my strength, finishing the momentum.

He topples over the bars.

His hand snags around my wrist. My shoulder threatens to rip from its socket as the weight of a full-grown man pulls me down with him. I scream in agony as I grip the railing. He doesn’t let go of me, his desperation threatening to drag me over the metal railing that groans against our weight. I dig in my feet, armpits hooked over the metal edge.

I think my arm will snap off.

His other hand clings to the bars, his feet kicking over the open air. I stare down at him, my heart pounding.

“Don’t let me fall,” he begs suddenly, trying and failing to haul himself up. “Don’t let me fall!” he screams, his voice thick but small, like he’s aging backward into a scared little boy. His body pendulums in the open air. I look into his eyes. He could be one of Ren’s men. One of my uncle Marlow’s. I’ve made too many enemies; I can’t even tell them apart anymore.

But his words have tipped me off—this one was sent by Jon Dellucci.

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