Page 79 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King

I will not see Ren again until after the meeting, and there’s still been no word from Luna. Elijah isn’t here. I checked each floor, stumbled upon the housekeeper vacuuming Ren’s office and almost startled her out of her skin. We laugh it off. At least there’s some sign of life around here, but the whole house feels hollow. Like a pit, and I am sitting at the bottom, alone and cut off from the rest of the world.

I fix Harper some dinner, just to enjoy the feeling of doing something mindless with my hands for a while. The distraction takes the sting out of all the thoughts circling in my head.

Here I am, standing in Ren’s kitchen, fixing dinner for our daughter, his wedding ring on my finger. If I had closed my eyes at seventeen, this is the scene I would have pictured behind my eyelids. Except he would be here, pulling me back against his chest and kissing my neck, and making some little joke abouthow I never grew out of playing house from the time I was seven years old.

I take Harper her dinner and let her eat in her room for once.

I try to distract myself from the worry gnawing at my gut. I glance over her reports from school today. She’s behind her other classmates. The teacher wants to make a plan to get her “up to speed” as she puts it. Of course Harper is behind. She just got fast-tracked to the private academy life after being enrolled in an underfunded public school for the first couple years of her education.

I used to fantasize about letting Harper have the kind of education I did—tutors for her classes and coaches for her hobbies. Real hobbies, not just after-school extracurriculars. I was already in ballet by the time I was Harper’s age, before I grew out of the figure for it. It’s something I should have asked Ren about a while ago. I know he won’t care, won’t so much as blink at the thought.

Olivia’s words circle around my head for a moment—I won’t let you take advantage of him.

Well, that’s too bad, isn’t it? What else is a trophy wife to do? Except I am not the trophy wife who walks around at dinners, smiling and playing nice with the rich men who just want to look down my cleavage. I am the other kind of trophy for Ren. The kind you behead and hang on the wall.

I glance down at my wedding ring again.

It’s what you always wanted, so make the most of the most of it.

So what if things can’t go perfectly right for me? I believed, deep down, that Ren and I were soulmates. Maybe that’s just how it works. Every path was always going to lead to Ren and I being together. An inescapable fate.For better or worse, till death do us part.

Thinking about my dreams and past and future is giving me a dizzying headache, so I try to turn my attention to someone else’s dreams for a little while. I check my phone again, even if I already know the verdict. No messages.

I tell myself it’s because the club is open. Luna is either shaking her ass on a stage under purple neon lighting, or she’s backstage, shoving tissues at a weepy girl and fussing at her for ruining her mascara before she goes on. Of course she doesn’t have time to answer me.

But where’s Elijah?

As I see the housekeeper gathering her things, I can’t help it. The curiosity gets the best of me. I ask her to stay late, and I pay her for it on the spot despite how she tries to insist that it isn’t necessary. But she takes the money and the promise that I will be back in less than an hour. I just need to go check in on a friend.

***

The feeling that I am not supposed to be out alone haunts me as I slip through the streets, dodging shadowy sidewalks and double-checking over my shoulder as I get out of the cab. I’m not worried about what Ren will do to me if he finds out. My only punishment has been an absolutely mind-blowing edgingsession that made me want to explode—in a good way and a bad way. Maybe this time, he’ll make me wear a vibrator while I walk around the house so he can use it at his whim. If those are Ren’s ideas of punishment, I could stand to be a bad girl now and then.

But I still feel guilty going out alone. He’d be worried, if he knew.

Elijah has probably been busy getting Sincere settled in, making arrangements for her. Getting groceries, or clothes, or amenities. It makes sense. It’s not a simple thing that I’ve asked him to do—but alarm bells are ringing as I approach the cozy little apartment and its long, bright hallways and Apartment 610.

I let myself in with the spare key.

The studio is pitch black, and the bed is empty.

25

Ren

The meeting room is a windowless, cold box. Like a slaughterhouse kill room. If the FBI had a hunch and a decent set of balls, they could turn some old-school Italian bloodlines into blood puddles. But that’s no way to treat an old business partner, is it?

Mori, Rossi, Santos, Greco, Corsetti—the families are each represented, some by their leaders, others by those they’re willing to sacrifice in case this room becomes a shooting range before all is said and done. We’ve all been patted down, but it’s the mob. There are no guarantees.

The long table cutting the room in half is bare except for ashtrays. No drinks offered. No one among us dumb enough to drink the Kool-Aid.

Dellucci sits at the opposite end of the room, a couple of his cronies on either side, and a cigar squirming in his teeth like a dying animal caught in an alligator’s jaws. He’s talking to Greco when I enter. Conversation and smiles die off as Elijah and I step into sight.

One by one, I make my way around the room to offer respect. Short, brisk handshakes. Dellucci and I are expected to shake hands, and as the number of people between us dwindles, the eyes of the room turn to the two of us in expectant silence.

Salvatore gives my hand an extra firm squeeze, holding my gaze steady—eyes that saydon’t react. Tessa sits beside him, her hair pulled up in a strict, no-nonsense bun. She’s the only woman in the room, but her handshake is just as professional as the rest.

Jon and I finally stand face to face. I’m not the one Dellucci has an issue with, not really, but I am the roadblock standing in his way, and he looks at me the way a train looks at a car caught on the tracks. Like he will run right through me if he has to. It doesn’t bother me. I’m not a car trapped on the tracks—I’m just another train barreling head-on, right toward him.

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