Page 82 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, is that the only play in the book you people know?” Dellucci cries. Then he waves his hand, shaking his head, ushering me off as if to get me out of his damn sight.

“What’s wrong with Harper?” Tessa asks. The words are all swarming around me, picking at me, like invisible hands trying to pull me back into the room. I don’t let them. I only glance back at Elijah, our eyes meeting.

I don’t have to say anything for him to understand:

This is up to you now.

***

I don’t remember the car ride over. I know I called Nadia, but it was just cruelty to keep her on the phone. She was crying too hard to speak. Couldn’t get any information out of her except “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.”

I find her pacing a hospital waiting room despite the empty seats scattered throughout. A TV perched in the corner of the ceiling plays a news program over the sound of distant urgency. Nobody watches it.

As if she had second sense, she glances up to see me.

Her face is pale, except for the pinkness in her eyes and her cheeks. When she looks at me, her expression breaks. She rushes to me as if she’s going to throw herself into my arms. It makesmy heart kick into double-time for a second, instincts bristling. She needs me. But she stops short and takes two clumsy, shuddering steps back as she thinks better of it, remembering who we are.

I march to her and pull her into my arms. Her body falls against mine as if in relief, wracked with quiet, dry sobs.

“What happened? Nadia, what happened?” I ask her again.

On the phone, she hadn’t been able to tell me so I don’t know why I expect that the answer might have changed now. It hasn’t.

“I don’t know. The school called. They said she was sick to her stomach, that I needed to come pick her up. I didn’t think anything about it. Kids get stomach bugs all the time. I was on my way there when they called back and said they’d called an ambulance. She’d started seizing and—”

Her voice cracks.

“She was fine this morning, Ren. She was totally fine. Oh, God, if it’s her heart again—I keep thinking, did I mess up her meds somehow? I just—”

She pushes her hair off her forehead.

I pull her against me again and shush her. We sway together, the moment finally settling as I feel her in my arms. The way she needs me, like she used to. I wish these weren’t the circumstances, but they are.

Gently, I lead her to one of the seats, where other dejected strangers are waiting for their own family members, huddled intight groups of support or sitting in lone, empty silence. It’s busy and it’s loud, but it feels like I’m standing in an enclosed room. All the noise bounces off the two of us, caught in the eye of a silent storm.

I squeeze Nadia’s cold hands, rub them, as if warmth and hope are the same thing. Our wedding rings clink, and for a brief moment, it feels so real. Because it hurts. Things that hurt always feel real, even when they’re not.

“The doctors haven’t said anything?”

She shakes her head.

“Just that I could be back there with her once they have her stable. But that was…” she shakes her head. “I don’t know. It feels like it’s been a long time. Too long.”

Her head drops onto my shoulder. It feels like I should tell her something. Some reassurance. What do people say? It’ll be alright. I don’t know that, so I can’t say it. I wish I could.

We sit and we wait. Eventually, in our shared, devastated silence, Nadia says, “Thank you for coming.”

“You don’t need to thank me for that, Nadia—”

“No, but I want to. Whenever this happened before, when she was younger, I sat in rooms like this alone. I…” her hand tightens on mine—the bad one—a desperate, crushing grip that should send me to the ground. It doesn’t even register. “…I know you’re here for her, but…I’m glad you’re here all the same. It means a lot, Ren.”

I stare at the woman I loved, loved for years and years, miles apart, bad blood and all. Everyone had their own names for what I felt for Nadia. Obsession. Insanity. Hate. Those were just the symptoms; the disease was love.

I used to think I was pathetic for holding onto that feeling the way I did. The way I let it consume me. A better man would have moved on, wouldn’t have let some past fling ruin him. So many years gone, and a better don wouldn’t have forgiven her for what her family did to mine. Pathetic, I would think, staring up at the ceiling from my empty bed.

Being with her here now, in this waiting room…I don’t feel pathetic. I feel vindicated. I am exactly where I belong.

“Shut up,” I whisper, too harsh, and crush her against me again. “I’m here for both of you.”

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