Page 10 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King

Our eyes meet for half a second. So much time and history stretch between us in that short distance. I see it in her face. The thunder of the past claps ominously in the meeting of our eyes for as short a time as she can hold it before she lowers her gaze. She can’tlook at me.

I storm toward her, grab her by that frail little throat andmake herlook up into my face. She half screams, half sobs as I pull her toward me, the two of us lurching into each other’s proximity after six years of waiting, hunting, craving.

I finally have my hands on the only woman I ever loved. The one whodestroyedme.

“Ren,” Nadia begs, tears and rain indistinguishable on her face. “Ren, please help me. Help us.”

Her free hand tightens in the front of my damp shirt, and the way she says my name, sodesperate—it makes me insane.

“Stop!”

The man’s voice echoes through the street, trying and failing to cut through the tension between us as we stare into each other’seyes. I brush my hand under her eye, wiping off the rain and the tears.

“You aren’t theirs to chase,” I tell her slowly. “You’re mine.”

I step around Nadia. Put the woman behind me, a finish line no one else can cross alive. The flashlight catches my face. One of Dellucci’s men slows immediately. The younger one keeps coming, keeps yelling. No sense of self-preservation. My hand tightens on my gun. Lucky for him, his partner has sense and seniority. The recognition dawns. He calls out for his partner to stop.

We stand in a simmering stalemate: two of Dellucci’s men facing me down, with Nadia behind my shoulder. Somewhere, out in those rows of houses, I trust Elijah to be waiting in the wings.

“This isn’t your fight, Caruso,” the older one says, making a diplomatic show of holstering his gun. “We need the girl. It’s business.”

“I don’t think so,” I answer, calmly.

“You best watch what you bring under your own roof, Ren. If you take her in, you take everything she did with you. You give her to us now, then we never saw you here. You can wash your hands of it.”

“I’ll be washing my hands of you if you threaten me again. Jon has my number. If he wants to talk, tell your boss he can call me. But the girl, and whatever she’s done, are mine. If you have an issue with that, well…” I glance at their hands. “I count two wedding rings. Take a moment and think about how far your lifeinsurance policies will stretch for your widows before you decide what you say next.”

“Oh, for fuck’s—” the younger starts. Doesn’t get far. The bullet catches him in the stomach, rips the words right out of him. His partner jumps, flinches hard, not fast enough to make a move for his gun before I’ve put a bullet in his brain matter. He dies with empty hands, spread-eagle, like one of those cartoon chalk drawings. I walk over to the one still squirming and gasping and finish him off with anotherpopin the pouring rain.

I turn to Nadia. Her face is pale, a mask of silent shock. She stands frozen, dripping wet, shivering—maybe not from the cold.

Sirens wail from one street over, from the site of the car crash. Blue and red lights paint the distant buildings as I step up to Nadia again. She flinches. But I only peel off my jacket, drape it carefully over her dainty shoulders. I draw her away from the scene, my hand on her back, her body at my side. We walk away and leave two corpses behind us.

Those big eyes look up and search my face again as I put her in the car. I wonder what she sees—the anger, the fear, the past all simmering there in her gaze. I slam the door between us before I fall into those eyes again.

Six years of agony ends just like that. The relief is as sweet and cold as the rain, like that first hit of morphine after the pain has set in. I know too much about that. I tap the driver’s side window.

“We split cars. You take her,” I tell Marco. “Get her out of here. Sink the car when you’re done. I’ll catch up.”

The car speeds off into the night without question, leaves me and the cacophony of sirens barreling down on my location. I barely have time to wonder if Elijah is as clever as I give him credit for before he pulls up on perfect cue, headlights cut.

We speed away into the night, the engine humming smoothly as we gain distance. We watch the rearview in silence for a long time, waiting to see if we are followed. The roads are dark, or what counts for dark in New York. All shadows and streetlights, the rain muddying the windshield. We drive using muscle-memory toward the handful of places that we can lose the CCTV cameras. Going through the usual motions after an incident like that is our plan for the unplanned.

“…Was that necessary?” Elijah finally asks, his disapproval subtle.

“Do you have a complaint, Elijah?” I ask him, softly. I flex my hand, the burning pain aching in the skin and settling deep in the bone.

He keeps his eyes on the road.

“No, sir,” my brother says quietly.

He doesn’t question me again.

4

Nadia

I don’t know where I’m being taken. Either Ren Caruso doesn’t live in New Jersey anymore, or he just doesn’t commit murder where he eats. I watch the streets flicker by, my stomach a cold knot of dread, my thoughts swirling as I try to figure out where we’re being taken. Over and over, my thoughts whisper:

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