Page 6 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King

I guess, at this point, it doesn’t matter. It’s just who gets billed for the grave.

I lean down and sink my teeth deep into his hand.

The giant plummets with a scream, then there’s a crack like an egg dropping. I hear it all the way up here. Humpty-Dumpty, right onto the top of the closed dumpster, where he belongs. Ashes to ashes, trash to trash.

My chest heaves, lungs shaking. I turn away from the sight. His partner’s anguished yells reach me. I scoop my sobbing girl up into my arms and climb back up the fire escape and through the window.

The apartment is silent. Empty.

These are the ruins of our little life. The year or so of safety I had managed to eke out before the past caught up. All gone now. Harper wheezes for air. I push her hair back from her face, urging her to breathe. I check her pale face, the color of her lips. I rub her back, desperately trying to soothe her and calm her down.

Getting scared like this isn’t good for her.

“Come on, baby. Come on, we have to go. We have to go right now.”

I walk toward the door, swiping my phone from the dresser along the way, grabbing Harper’s countless pill bottles and shoving them in my bag.

In the hall, snippets of normal life drone all around us. Muffled late-night infomercials yap from behind closed doors—Three easy payments of $19.99—contends with the domestic dispute breaking out in the apartment across the hall. I breathe in the waft of weed and stale cigarettes. The world goes on, while mine turns upside down and spins out of orbit.

Finally, my brain kicks into gear, and I start running.

“Mommy,” Harper sobs as she bounces against my shoulder. I shush her as I keep moving.

“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. We’re just playing tag. You love tag.”

Jon Dellucci is one of those devils who everyone believes no longer exists. Another mob man. I owe him money. A lot of money by now. It’s pointless to count. I know how mob interest works. Even if I could put a figure on it, it would never be enough. When the bills kept coming, and Harper was just a baby then, I went to him for a loan; just something to get me on my feet when the world kept slipping out from under me.

I didn’t know then that I was on a slippery slope. I didn’t know how far I could fall. I kept slipping, and slipping, and I needed more, just a little more…

Eventually, Dellucci’s generosity ran out.

We spill out into the alleyway on the opposite side of the fire escape. I make a break for it before anyone else can arrive on the scene.

I sprint past the window of a computer repair shop, its logo a cartoon of a manic, smiling printer. A siren roars to life in the distance. My mind is a blur, my feet moving with no direction in mind.

What’s next? What’s next?

I don’t know.

I’ve just killed a man.

What am Isupposedto do?

Repeatedly, only one name comes to mind. My thumb shakes as I open my phone. I swore I’d never turn to him, that nothing would ever be worth it.

But…

I’m on solid ground now, but I still feel the yawning depths stretching out under my feet. Enemies circle me on every side. On one side is Dellucci. On the other…

My finger hesitates on the screen, lingers over the call button a moment too long.

I hate that my first instinct is to still reach out to him.

I hear shouting in the distance, which means I need to run again, just as I have been for the last six years. Apartment to apartment. Job to job. The past is always right there, like my shadow, never far behind.

I push the urge to call Ren aside and focus on putting distance between me and the men. Thecrime scene. I keep moving through the gridlock, street to street, while trying to avoid stepping on old trash and broken glass with my bare feet.

Wading through garbage in a back alley gives me that same numb, curious disbelief about how I ended up here. The way the dead man snarled the wordprincessechoes in my head. I spent my teenage years globetrotting across Europe, booking private flights, and dancing in ballroom galas with the sons of royals and billionaires. Who would know any of that by looking at me now?

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