Page 27 of Mafia Doctor's Secret Baby

I nod. “Yeah, she really does,” I promise him. “She hasn’t met many people, but she’s usually a little nervous around them at first. Not you. She couldn’t wait to get to know you.”

His smile widens. “Yeah, well, I’m looking forward to getting to know her too.”

I chew my lip, my mind flying to what he said to me the other day—that he was only going to be in this city for a few months, and then he would be going back to his family. His real family, that is, not whatever we have going on here.

“You think you’re going to be around long enough for that?” I ask him nervously. I know it’s none of my business, not really, but there’s still a part of me that wants to know just how far this goes for him. I can tell that he’s struggling to think about that, with the way the smile instantly drops from his face.

“I have no idea,” he admits, after a long silence. “I don’t know how long all of this shit with my father is going to go on, and even when it’s over…”

He trails off. I almost don’t want to know what’s lingering in those unsaid words, but I’m sure I have to find out.

“Even when it’s over…?” I prompt him.

“I don’t know if we’re going to come out on top.”

His voice is hollow and hard, as though it’s the first time he’s been able to even think something like this. My heart drops. All this time, I’ve assumed that they are the ones to be scared of, but what if there are people out there even more dangerous than him?

“What’s going on back there?” I ask him. “I mean, why did you leave…?”

He sighs, and pushes a hand through his hair.

“It’s not like we could just walk away from it,” he mutters. “We could never let him do what he was doing, I…”

He pauses once he gets a look at the baffled expression on my face, and then goes back to the start, realizing that I don’t have a damn clue what he’s talking about.

“There’s this guy,” he explains. “Rival gang leader. And he started to push into our territory a little. We pushed him out, he would push back, this went on for a few years and I never thought it was anything more than just the usual bullshit we put up with. But then…”

He shakes his head.

“He started getting stronger. More men, better trained, better weapons. He started taking territory from us, and then we found out how he’s funding all of this.”

He flicks his tongue over his lips, as though he wants to avoid actually coming out and saying it.

“Sex trafficking.”

My stomach curls into a ball at the mere mention of those words. Something so cruel, so dark, so twisted, it makes me feel sick. And the look in his eyes tells me that he feels exactly the same way.

“My father couldn’t let that stand,” he continues. “None of us could. We know this business has its downsides, everyone knows that, but something like sex trafficking…it’s over the line, even for us.”

I’m slightly surprised, I have to admit, to hear that all of this comes with limits of some kind—that there are boundaries that even people involved in his game will not overstep. I wonder if this is normal, or if he’s an outlier—someone who has hung on to his morals for dear life every step of the way.

“You don’t…I mean, you’re not involved in anything like that?”

He stares at me for a moment, as though he can’t believe what I’ve just said.

“You think I would be involved in something like that?”

The tone of his voice tells me how angry that makes him. I know he’s not pissed at me, but at the thought that I might believe it.

I stare at him for a moment, and lower my voice slightly. “I don’t know anything about your world,” I remind him. “I don’t know what you are and aren’t capable of. You have to understand that.”

He closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingertips, and then he nods.

“You’re right,” he admits, finally. “I’m sorry. But my family would never get involved in shit like that. I would never—the thought of it alone?—”

He falls silent.

“I wouldnever,” he repeats, and that’s about as much as I’m going to get from him on the topic. I stare at him for a long moment as he gathers himself again, considering the new information I’ve just discovered. I have to admit—it’s not what I expected to hear from him, but it’s clear he feels strongly about it.

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