Page 85 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King

“…I was too afraid to tell you at first,” she admits, whispering. “I didn’t know what was going to happen. What you would do.” She doesn’t look at me either, but I can hear the tears in her voice. “Guess I still don’t.”

We’re both trapped here in this silent room, just us and the truth, neither of us able to walk away. We’d sat without looking at each other on opposite sides of an invisible confessional, the truth pouring out like old, stagnant water. But I can feel her looking to me now for some kind of reaction. Anything.

Harper is mine. The idea sinks in slowly like the cold, spreading slow and seeping from my chest outward. It’s not an easy thing to believe. The more I look at Harper, the less possible it seems. She’s so innocent. If I was ever that innocent, I don’t remember it. I don’t know if people are born good or born bad—but I know she was born better than me.

“So you kept her from me. You kept yourself and our daughter away from me.” I turned to stare at her, anger and hurt battling inside of me.

“Can you truly blame me?” She whispers. And she’s right. I can’t blame her. But it doesn’t change the fact that it still fucking hurts.

Everything both of them have been through, every single time they’ve thought they were alone, every day they struggled for food, for a safe space. I curse myself—this is my fucking fault, too.

I look at the beautiful girl lying in the hospital bed, my heart clenching with fear and pure happiness. She was already mine, the moment I discovered Nadia had a daughter. But knowing she’s truly, irrevocably mine…I don’t think I could ever express the joy filling my chest.

I have a daughter.

I drag my hands over my face, trying to reign in my emotions. Trying to get a grip on myself so I don’t throw both of them over my shoulder and run like a fucking caveman. Goddamn tears prick at my eyes and a smile tugs at my mouth, and I breath through everything. Nadia seems to wait for some big reaction. The atomic force of the truth to detonate and level me. She seems braced for it—resigned to my outrage or my disbelief. It doesn’t come.

“This doesn’t change anything, Nadia. The fact that you hid this from me… I understand it.” I admit, realizing it out loud. I swallow hard to reach over and brush a lock of hair from the girl’s clammy forehead, looking at her with visible adoration inmy eyes. “She’s already mine, blood or not. I’ve never seen her otherwise.”

Nadia’s breath hitches with another sob, but she keeps herself together this time.

“She adores you,” she admits with a wet smile.

I feel uncomfortable with the warmth spreading through my chest at that truth. I know she does. But I just don’t think I deserve it.

“She’s a child. She doesn’t have good taste yet.”

Nadia laughs wetly. A strange tug pulls at my cheek, so unfamiliar, the muscle feels stiff from disuse. I don’t hold back this time, and grin back at her.

“Well, if she takes after me at all, she won’t grow out of it,” she admits, and a rough laugh escapes past my mouth.

I know exactly what this is. It’s an illusion. A mirage. Water in the desert. This room is a neutral zone with no history around it. A place out of time. Once we leave it…I am still the man who murdered members of her family. Still her captor who forced her into marriage. Still the man who goes dark, lights out, when he closes his fist or reaches for a weapon.

For now, I get to be what Nadia has been for a long time: a worried parent.

I wish I could whisk Harper up into my arms. Pry her out of that cold bed and the nest of tubes and wires straight into safety. I close my eyes and bow my head, but I am not a praying man.

Nadia’s apologizes again, but I don’t bother hearing it. I don’t need it.

Pleasant nurses weave in and out of the room from time to time. Her vitals are checked. Clear bags suspended from hooks changed and replaced as they drip into the tubes snaking into Harper’s arms.

Time starts to lose all meaning as we sit there. Harper is supposed to sit up. Giggle. Break something. I don’t like how she just lies there, so still. Too still. The phone in my jacket pocket buzzes between us. I let it. The ringing persists, over and over, until even Nadia pulls back enough to ask,

“Aren’t you going to answer that?”

“I already know what they’re going to say.”

And it’s nothing good.

I let the call bounce. I don’t care about what’s happening out there, or what’s waiting for us both just on the horizon. The only thing I care about right now is half a foot away from me, and I can’t do a damn thing to help her.

Nadia crushes my hand in hers. And that must be just as devastating, having only me to lean on. Like leaning on a dud missile with its nose buried in the dirt, never knowing if it’s going to blow you to pieces at any second.

Sometimes, I don’t know who you are…

Sometimes, I don’t either.

We lapse into silence. My phone rings again. I ignore it again.

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