Page 89 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King

I follow it with my eyes, but not my feet.

My first instinct is to scoop Harper up and make a run for the door like always. Then I hear the voice again, clearer now—Ren.

What if he’s hurt?

Without thinking, and with no weapon, no plan, I run to find out.

I stop in the doorway of the sitting room. My heart throbs in my throat. Ren is there, alive, and not bleeding. But he’s standing over the man who is.

Elijah kneels on the ground. His nose drips blood into his mouth. He’s clinging to Ren’s knee like he’s begging him.

There’s a fine red line between having a knife pressed to your throat and having a knife pulled across it.

“Ren, I swear—” he rasps.

Ren hits him again.

I hear a tiny, jumping gasp from just behind me. Harper slips right past my legs, and she bolts into the living room. Toward Ren. Who is towering over his brother, Elijah slumping down into just a lump on the living room floor. His hand paws the air, reaching for the coffee table, but he can’t get up.

“What are you doing?” Harper asks.

“Out,” Ren rasps.

“Harper—!”

I rush to get her as Harper totters toward Elijah.

“Did you hit your head?” she asks, all sweet, oblivious concern. “I’ll get Applesauce! He’s a doctor!”

She goes rushing out of the room.

“Nadia, keep her out of here,” Ren practically snarls.

“What the hell are you doing—”

Elijah has gotten back on his feet. He stares at the floor. Won’t look at Ren, won’t look at me. Blood drips off the end of his nose.

“What did he do?” I finally ask, anger turning cold in my gut. Was he the reason Harper was in the hospital? Or is he just the next one that Ren is taking it out on?

Harper comes zipping back in, giraffe in hand at the same moment Ren bellows an angry, “Out!” toward me.

Harper’s feet skid. Her eyes are big, shimmery, as she thinks she’s the one being yelled at. She’s never been talked to like that before. Her face crumples. Her breathing turns into a breathy sob. And then all at once, those little eyebrows knit together, and she takes a big breath, and she marches right up to Ren and pokes him in the leg with an angry finger.

“That’s not nice!” she yells at him. Her almost-crying becomes indignation in a second flat. “You—you have to talknice, or you don’t talk at all!”

She’s puffed up just like him.

“Harper,” I say cautiously, trying to draw her out of this awful mess. “Come on, leave Ren alone, he needs to—”

“No!” she snaps, with a tiny stomp of her foot. “Daddy needs to say sorry!”

Ren is shaken out of his daze.

My mafia husband stands there with bloody knuckles, a man at his feet, and his own six-year-old telling him his business like she’s the mob boss in the room.

Elijah hasn’t dared to move, the whole moment stretched and inflated like a balloon about to pop.

Ren meets Harper’s gaze. Her glare could be a mirror image of mine in all the times I disciplined her. I wouldn’t be surprised if she tries to put him in time-out, totally oblivious to the seriousness of what she walked in on.

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