Page 96 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King

I wonder how much of a hypocrite I would be if I lied to her right now. I bite my tongue and force myself to tell her the truth. “We’re going to a new place, Harp.”

Her expression falters.

“…where?” she asks, in a small voice.

“I don’t know. Is Applesauce all ready for a trip?” I ask. But she doesn’t play along. She just stares at me, her panic building in micro-expressions breaking across her face.

Her face turns pink.

“Are we going to come back?” she asks.

“I don’t know. Maybe—”

Probably not.

She gives a big, heaving sob. I get her in my arms, but she wants nothing to do with it. “I don’t want to go!” she screams at me, throwing herself on her bed. “I want to stay here!”

“Harper—”

She screams and kicks and cries, bouncing away from my every attempt to get to her and settle her down.

“I don’t want to go!”

The crying devolves into a full-blown meltdown, until I am on my knees, bargaining and begging and trying very hard to calm her.

Finally, she gets enough air in her lungs to ask,

“Is Daddy going?”

She might as well have punched me through the chest and taken my heart in her tiny little fist, squeezing it as hard as she can.

I shake my head.

“Not yet—”

And goddammit, if she doesn’t stop—

My face mirrors hers. Harper and I have always shared a resemblance, but now we are mirrors of each other, pink face and wet cheeks. The sob claws out of my throat, ragged and broken, as I sit on the floor of my daughter’s bedroom and finally just cry.

I don’t want to leave him either.

Harper has never cared before. As long as we had Applesauce in tow, or some of her favorite books, whatever she was obsessed with at the time, she didn’t mind going from apartment toapartment, home to home. It was always just our next little adventure.

Now, she weeps like she’s grieving. A six-year-old shouldn’t understand grief.

When it becomes clear that no comforting or coddling is going to work, I go through the motions like I always do. I gather up her things, forcing myself to leave a screaming, kicking toddler on the bed, her fingers dug into the sheets so tightly, I think they’re probably going to have to come with us.

Marco stands waiting by the front door, his expression grim. The moment he sees me, he comes to get my suitcase from me. It frees me up to go back and get Harper, who writhes against me, kicking and smacking like she never has before, screaming “No! No!” over and over.

She slips free and goes running, making a break from the bedroom and climbing up the stairs as fast as her little legs will carry her. I chase after her.

She barrels straight into the closed door of Ren’s office, smacking straight into the wood with a pitched, breathy sob. She runs her hand across her forehead, briefly stunned out of her own tantrum. “Harper, baby, please—maybe we can come back, but we just need to go for now.”

She snarls again and beats her fist against the door, screaming for him. The door opens. Ren stands on the other side, looking down at her.

Harper launches herself against his leg, clinging to him, desperately trying to tell him what an awful, horrible mother I’m being trying to save her life.

“Harper,” he snaps, his voice like a whip. He doesn’t coddle her. Doesn’t scoop her up and soothe her like he always does. He points sternly and says, “Listen to your mother and go.”

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