Page 32 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King

Elijah’s annoyance darkens. He glances at me apologetically.

“Right,” he says tensely.

“I presume Olivia had everything rescheduled,” Ren says, shrugging out of his jacket with the same ease he shrugs off Elijah’s complaints.

“She did.”

“So why am I hearing about it?”

Elijah can’t come up with an answer, swallowing his anger like it doesn’t go down easy. He fumbles his response, then gives up on trying to scold or guilt his older brother, who seems so far removed from those emotions they may as well not be real.

“Sorry to disturb you,” he says, pointedly to me instead of his brother, and sweeps off into the house. He passes Olivia, who watches from the doorway, her arms crossed and her glare solidly on me. She turns to join him. Their voices fade as theymove deeper into the house and I catch other voices somewhere far off down the hall.

Ren and I stand in the remnants of an awkward silence.

“You were saying?” he prompts me, as if nothing happened.

“…I don’t understand how you’re going to torment me in a wedding dress one day and then treat my daughter like a princess the next. I don’t…I don’t understand you, and I don’t know what to expect, and I am terrified constantly, so if you could just tell me what your stupid plan is—I—” I run my hands over my hair, trying to find a way to put so that it makes sense. “It’s like I’m constantly bracing for impact, but I don’t know when it’s going to come, so I’m just flinching constantly and waiting for it to hurt. So just…can you justtell me?”

“Does it not all hurt?” he asks.

“Of course it hurts,” I mutter. “Just standing here with you hurts, Ren.”

“Then that’s enough. It will keep hurting. When I take you to bed. When I walk you down the aisle. When you have my children. Your life belongs to me, Nadia. That’s torture enough. I don’t need to go out of my way when it’s already easy.”

“…But why are you doing this to yourself, too?” I demand. “You didn’t want me. You sure as hell didn’t want me to be your wife back then. Sure, you’re trapping me here with you—but you’re trapping yourself, too. What happens when you finally realize you got me, and now you’re bored, and you can finally move on with your life—”

His hand comes up my face, fingers digging into my jaw.

“There is nomoving on.”

I’m held on my tiptoes, dancing in his grip.

“You think every person in this house, every person in my inner circle, didn’tbeg meto let you go? Do you know how much I’ve spent looking for you, Nadia? Money. Time. Sanity, of which you didnotleave me much to spare—”

My hand wraps uselessly around his wrist, the two of us stumbling back and forth in a fruitless tango. My back hits the wall.

“So how many times do I have to tell you—” he snarls.

“Until it makes sense!”

Suddenly, Ren captures my captive lips against his own like he’s trying to take the breath from them, as if there’s an answer somewhere in the gesture, in the dark taste of him. He doesn’t care if I don’t kiss him back, if I pull back against his grip that wraps around both my arms. His mouth chases mine, hunts it down until I’m drowning in the taste and feel of him again.

“I’ve had six years to make sense out of what I feel for you,” he says, between breaths. “So good fucking luck getting those answers. I still don’t have them.”

That feeling from last night, like the air itself was about to catch on fire, stirs again. I can’t resist it. I don’t want to. I surrender, let my walls crumble under him and pretend, for just a few minutes, that he is exactly as I remember him. Hell,maybe he is.

I kiss him back, my lips meeting his with the same urgency, the same taste of desperation and longing.

Ren breaks the kiss.

He stumbles back from me, glaring at me as though he’s never seen anything like me before. He runs the back of his glove across his lip like I’ve punched him.

“What?” I demand, marching toward him across the tile, giving him no distance and pushing my hands into his chest. “What’s wrong, Ren? You can dish it, but you can’t take it? Is it suddenly toocomplicatednow?”

He stares at me for one long, suspended moment. Then he scoops me up over his shoulder. I squawk like a kidnapped macaw and shut my mouth before any other stupid sounds can come out of it. I’m hauled up the stairs like a piece of furniture. Ren takes me up one easy step at a time, as if I weigh nothing.

“Ren!”

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