Page 111 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King

Harper is so relieved, she cries.

***

I’m sitting in the passenger seat of a car, staring at the red cloth wrapped around Ren’s hand when I finally come back around. My head pops up from my semi coma brought on by a crushing amount of fear and adrenaline. The animal in me just trying to survive finally slinks back into the shadows of my thoughts; I come to with a big gasp and trembling hands.

“Nadia,” Ren says sharply. The bandaged hand is around mine, I realize, and it squeezes.

His words drift back to me, finally settling, as if it took them that long to finally reach the bottom where I have been trapped.We’re going home.

“Sorry,” I say, voice stiff in my throat. “I’m fine.”

I’m not. I can feel that. A kind of uneasy, sick feeling lingering over me. But Iwillbe fine. For the first time, I really feel like it might be possible. The next time I tell Harper everything is fine, I might actually be able to mean it.

We stop by the apartment first. I pick up Harper’s meds, and the letter, the suitcase and our own luggage. There’s so much in there that I have yet to process. There’s been no time. I walk through the kitchen where Olivia and I brawled, feeling like it happened a lifetime ago. Her earring glitters on the tile. I wonder what happened to her.

We finally make it home. Harper is still trembling, and this time, when I try to lift her, I feel the catch in my ribs. The pain that shoots through me like a knife. Ren swoops in for me, and this time, I’m grateful as he steers us inside.

It’s empty. Just the three of us as we step back into the life I thought I had left behind forever. I look at it as if seeing it for the first time. We make it to the couch, and then we all collapse down together, exhausted and relieved, falling into each other’s arms.

For a long time, we don’t even talk. Even Harper sits, quiet and shellshocked, just letting us hold her. Suddenly, Ren starts to speak. It sounds familiar. I realize he’s reciting that book he read her—the one he read from the hospital. He struggles to remember the words off the top of his head, but Harper knows them all, and she laughs her little manic laugh when he deviates wildly off the tale.

She can still giggle and laugh and kick her feet in excitement, and just like that, Ren takes all that pain and trauma of today and starts to wrap it up and dissolve that, too. Spin it out of existence.

My body hurts, and my mind is blank with exhaustion, but my heart feels a million times lighter than it has in years.

***

When it’s almost dark, we’re settled in with painkillers and exhaustion. A man comes to stitch up Ren’s hand. I don’t recognize him, but they seem familiar with each other. They disappear to somewhere in the house, putting at least a floor between us. I’d like to go with him, but I know how men are. They like to lick their wounds in private. Maybe later, when it’s just the two of us, I can get my hands on him the way I want and kiss away all that pain from him.

I leaf through Ren’s letter in the aftermath, all the dense legal paperwork with my mother’s name peppering the page. Proof of life, again and again. The possibility of seeing her again is finally settling in. If we can find her.

But then, what would that even look like? Would she even forgive me for settling in with Ren? Would she grab me by the shoulders and try to shake me out of it, or scream at me for betraying our family’s memory?

My head throbs. I put the folder down as Ren comes back into the living room. Harper has fallen asleep with her head on my thigh.

“Should I take her to her room?” he asks.

“I don’t want her to wake up alone, not after that.”

He takes a blanket from off the couch to tuck around her.

A clean white bandage now makes a stark contrast to the dark glove on his other hand. He’s patched up on that arm, too, but I can only see the bandage peeking out from under his shirt sleeve.

“How are you feeling?” he asks.

“Confused, mostly,” I admit. He settles down with a glass of something dark amber between his hands. He offers me one, but I don’t think it would help right now. “Who did that?” I ask, gesturing to his hands.

“A nobody,” he says. “Just someone who’s dead now.”

There’s a lot of filling in to do—connecting the dots, trying to figure out where all these lines of my life have finally intersected. Ren and Elijah knew that bringing armed men into Jon’s place was a sure way to get me killed; the only weapon they had in their arsenal was the element of surprise. Elijah’s loyalty was still a gray area, and Ren used it to his advantage. I don’t know if that means they’re on good terms now or not—but I know that family ties won out in the end.

“And what about…I mean,strippers?” I ask, giving Ren a sideways glance. The corner of his mouth twitches, and he gives one of those lazy shrugs.

“Dellucci said women were his weakness.”

It doesn’t feel right to joke about a dead man, but Ren’s grin is infectious.

“Stop,” I mutter, nudging him with my elbow, but there’s no conviction in it. “Why would Marlow agree to that? He and Dellucci—I thought they were on the same side.”

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