Page 101 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King

I try to say that I’m not in shock, but when the words come out as a slurry murmur, I think I might be in shock.

I sit up, trying to claw my senses back. Pull at the zip ties.

“You know, I have just the thing for this,” he says, “Sort of a…specialty of mine. I’ve had plenty of stubborn holdouts who got a little too much brain trauma too early or just didn’t respond to agood beating. But that’s alright. I’ve got something else. Sort of a one-size-fits-all solution.”

He steps around me and leaves me looking at a lopsided kitchen with a row of souvenir shot glasses lined up on the windowsill, the blinds shut. I lift my heavy head, and the room isn’t lopsided anymore.

When Atlas returns again, he steps around me with something in his hands. “Had to go out to the garage to get it,” he says, and sits a can of kerosene down at my feet. He lights a match and presses it to the cigarette between his teeth. A cold panic seeps low into my stomach.

I look at the clock hanging on the wall, its second hand tick-tick-ticking away. Six minutes. That’s a long time. God, that’s a long time.

“Sort of an old friend of yours, too, I take it,” he says, gesturing to the can. I writhe against the chair. Kick. Thrash. The whole thing upends, sending me and the chair onto the floor.

“Don’t have to cause all that fuss, Ren. Just tell me what I want to know. Where’s she at?”

“Fuck you.”

Atlas sighs and hauls me upright again with a heaving grunt.

“Alright,” he says, taking the can of kerosene and splashing it onto my shoes.

“You’re gonna burn up your own goddamn kitchen—” I ask.

“Not my kitchen,” he shrugs, careless. “But I’ve got a fire extinguisher. We’re gonna do this nice and slow, Ren. A controlled burn, just like they do out in California. Your parents, that was just a wildfire.”

My eyes flick up, study his face. His smile cuts like a blade.

“Yeah,” he says, filling in the question I didn’t ask. “Sorry. And just in case you do decide you’re dying for this girl, you might as well know before you get to the afterlife and start causing a big embarrassing scene there—it wasn’t Nadia’s dad who put me on that hit; it was her uncle.”

The pain is running circles around my head like Harper spinning on that carousel. Like Nadia and me, spinning around and around in the bar.

The stench of the kerosene singes my nostrils before it’s even lit.

Atlas takes one last drag of his cigarette, then holds it out.

“You ready?” he asks.

I look at the clock again.

“Might as well,” I agree.

Atlas smiles, almost looks pained as he nods back to me.

“Well, just remember, Ren. We can stop anytime. You just have to tell me where she’s at.”

“I’ll burn, thanks.”

He steps closer. The smell of burning nicotine fills my nostrils as I stare down the flare of the cigarette’s end, red and hot, the ashes slowly eating away at themselves as he draws on it and then holds it out over the small puddle at my feet. The smallest ember. That’s all it will take.

I feel the sweat on the back of my neck. Too hot already.

We both wait, time stretching on unbearably long in just those few seconds. But I know better than to think the anticipation is worse than the pain that comes after. It’s not. Not when it comes to burning.

Atlas’s phone chirps from the counter. He smirks, puts the cigarette back in his lips and strides over to check it. His mouth sags, and he growls something under his breath.

“Well, goddamn Ren,” he sighs, staring into the screen with an expression I don’t understand. “Looks like you don’t have to tell me shit. You can die with all the dignity you’d like.”

My head snaps up, understanding dawning. It is the face of a man who just lost $250,000.

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