Page 97 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King

She keeps babbling and crying and begging, when Ren snaps, much louder, “I said go!”

The boom of his voice makes me, a grown woman, jump. It makes Harper stumble back, bumping into my legs and sitting down on my shoes.

And finally Harper is really and truly convinced. She doesn’t hop up and yell at him, or wag her little finger. She just slumps into the floor and cries like she used to, before she could walk. Big tears of sorrow now mixed with tears of fear.

When I lean down to pick her up, this time, she puts her arms around my neck. I look at Ren, but he’s already turned away from the door. It slams before I get a good look at his face.

Marco has our things already in the back of the car, waiting for us.

“We can take you to the subway, a bus stop, or an airport. From there, we aren’t allowed to follow,” he tells me. The gun he usually keeps concealed is now holstered to his waist.

It feels surreal, being turned out into the night. Marco gives me a sleek suitcase. I ask what’s in it, but he admits that he doesn’tknow. That he was told to hand it over to me by Ren. He tells me not to look inside until we are somewhere safe.

Harper and I wander off into the night, catching a bus crawling slow through the city streets. She cries and huffs and shakes, head to toe, still wanting to throw her fit, just barely holding herself together. I snuggle up with her and whisper promises into her hair, like I always did. It’s really no wonder they don’t work on her anymore.

29

Ren

Staying is suicide. I know that but still. I stand at the window, looking out at the darkening sky and its long shadows. Facing east, the view gives the illusion that the sky is tilted, and all the light is slowly seeping to the west, draining away, leaving lights, water, memories.

Just down the street is the hotel where I met Nadia after our first time together. I had to bully the original owner of this townhouse out of it, but eventually, with a little pressure and a little blood, he sold. And I still gave him a damn good price for the trouble.

I had to have it. Just like I had to have her.

Nadia and I had been dating for a time, but she still didn’t give it up easily. Made me work for it. Kill for it. I liked that. I liked that she wasn’t easily impressed, that even though everyone teasedand said she was crazy about me, that everyone knew she wanted to be with me—she still made me prove I was worth it.

I proved it. Back then, it was easy.

I tilt my head against the cold glass, a warm sigh fogging up the window. My own voice thunders through my head.I don’t want you here.Sometimes, I just lose it. This wasn’t one of those times. I didn’t snap on my daughter on a whim. I don’t think I ever could. It was a calculated, awful choice, and I had to be aware of it for every goddamn syllable.

I just wanted her to hate me. I just wanted her towantto go. Maybe if she wanted to get away, if she hated me, then she wouldn’t miss me or this place. She’d grow up, and she’d forget everything except for that hateful, mean man she lived with once, like a funny dream with a bad ending.

Maybe she won’t have to mourn.

I pour myself a drink, set a loaded gun out on the table, and watch the night pass over the water. I walk through all the old memories one last time. The scrapbook that my mind became during the years after.

Once I had Nadia back, that was all I knew how to do. To try and…pick up right where we left off. To replay it all again, like listening to a song to finally get it out of your head. My mouth curls down at the thought.

I swallow the last of the drink.

I test the way the gun barrel feels under my chin. Then against my temple. I let the feeling of death settling in real close washover me, let it burn through those survival instincts that make my index finger stiff. It grows loose and pliable under my coaxing.

I am coldly sure that I could do it. That’s all the comfort I need. I could do it now and just get it done with. A business transaction with a bullet.

But I hate unfinished business.

If I’m going to hell, there are a couple people I would like to try taking with me.

30

Nadia

The fading fumes of a city bus leave me in the shadow of a familiar, squat building. The loft is dark and empty. I flick on the light, let it wash over the exposed brick and the high, looming rafters lined with old industrial pipework. I was so excited to get this place for Sincere. I suppose I should be grateful that I wanted her to have somewhere nice. Or what counts as nice in New York.

Harper isn’t speaking to me. I think she’s a little young to know the art of giving the cold shoulder, but she does and she’s a natural. She doesn’t have a bedroom of her own to slink off to and slam the door, so she takes up the bed and my phone, and pointedly puts her back to me.

I try to talk to her about it, but it’s obvious she doesn’t want to hear it. I let her have her space and sit instead on the kitchenbarstool. Even for a few grand a month, everything in the loft has that cheap, pre-furnished wobble to it.

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