Page 15 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King

“Looks like Arlo Dellucci missed his hearse.”

Behind me, Elijah sighs.

The police have already investigated Nadia’s apartment. Here, the crime scene tape isn’t broken, and it’s the only thing stretched across the dark entryway. Most of the door is in pieces. I step into the tiny space, following the footsteps of officers and apartment managers that came before us. It’s a narrow studio with two beds, one of them only big enough for a child, the other a twin mattress. There’s barely enough room for one person, much less a little girl.

I flip on the light, which hums irritably and turns everything orange and dingy.

“This is where she’s been staying?” Elijah asks behind me, ducking the tape.

There’s no room for it to be messy, the only aftermath of the fight the few items left upended on the floor. A giraffe lies abandoned on a pink pillow.

“Get her clothes sizes. Text them to Olivia.”

Elijah doesn’t ask what for. He finds the closet, and he does as I tell him, giving up on questions that I’m not interested in answering. I walk to Nadia’s empty bed, run my fingers over the pillow, through the covers where she’s slept. I try to center myself, thinking about her body stretched out here night after night. Alone. Bunkered down like a fox in her hole, just waiting for me to come smoke her out, chase her down, run her to the ends of the earth.

And somehow, Dellucci beat me to it.

My fingers grasp the bedcovers, and I lift them, breathing in her scent.

It makes me dizzy with the past. The present. The future.

All the prominent families knew I was hunting Nadia Petrone. If Jon knew where she was, if she came to him once asking for loans and money without ever tipping me off, then he’d already disrespected me.

It would be war either way—Nadia just did me a favor by making it hurt him a little more.

6

Nadia

I wake with a jolt, like falling out of a dream and onto the bed, except I don’t remember the dream; don’t remember falling. Just the lurch of awakeninghere.

My heart beats so loud in my ears, it hurts my eardrums.

There is a Harper-shaped indent in the bed next to me. The bedroom door is cracked open. Before I can rightly panic, I hear the signature tip-tap of little feet running around, the vibrations trembling through the floor.

Harper zooms through the house as fast as she can go. She’s making herself at home, giddy and smiling, as if yesterday was all just a nightmare.

“Harper, what are you doing?” I demand, trying to rein her in.

“Mommy, this place ishuge,” she exclaims, when she almost runs into me as she slides to a stop in her socks. “Is this a school?”

“A school? This is a house, Harp.”

“This is a house?” she practically yells. Her voice bounces off the walls.

“Harper, stop running—and stop feeding his ego—” I add in a mutter, only to be struck numb by the realization of what she’s holding in her arms. She has her giraffe, Applesauce, and she’s clutching him around his crooked neck. I’m so used to seeing her with it; it’s as natural as one of her limbs.

She takes off again while I wrestle with the confusion. She finishes another lap through the connected sitting room and foyer before I get her around the waist. I drop down to her level.

“Baby, where did you get this?” I ask, touching the stuffed animal’s head.

She points behind me.

I whip around and find Ren standing and watching us.

“He brought Applesauce here,” she says sunnily.

I stand to face him.

---