Page 21 of Vows of a Mobster
My mother would be so proud, I scoffed sarcastically.I was a young and caring mother by day. And smut reader and sometimes writer at night. If I could add men to my menu, she might throw me a welcome back home party.
It didn’t matter what my mother thought. She lost that privilege when she kicked me out, demanding I no longer carry her husband’s last name. Talk about humiliation, she hated me so much she wanted no connection to me. Even as a simple connection as the last name. Not to mention she was the one that changed my birth name to begin with. She really enjoyed taking it all away.
Pushing the bitter memories away, I glanced at my daughter. We were both seated at the kitchen table, nibbling on our dinner. I made us paprika-crusted chicken with kale salad and hummus dressing, although it seemed neither one of us had much of an appetite.
“Hey, princess, want to try some apple juice with your dinner?” I offered. I hoped she’d go for it so she could take her medicine. Her facial expression told me she wasn’t keen on it so I quickly added, “We have some Elsa apple juice.”
Her eyes flashed in excitement, and she shook her head in agreement. I guess she thought Elsa herself made it and I wasn’t going to break her illusion about it.
I quickly got up and got her a juice box, with Elsa as a main character on the box. I grabbed the liquid medicine and sat back down.
“Here you go,” I offered her. “Take a small sip of the apple juice. Then we’ll take medicine and some more apple juice right after. Just as the doctor and Elsa ordered.”
I thanked all my lucky stars it went so smoothly. Ten minutes later we both had our teeth brushed and changed into pjs. We cuddled into her bed, as I read her a bedtime story, featuring Elsa, again. I barely made it to the third page before she fell asleep. It always scared me when she slept so much, such an opposite of her usual self, full of energy. I was almost tempted to stay in bed with her and go to sleep too. But I had work to do.
I wanted to find out what I could about Kyle’s family. I didn’t want to discount any potential donor, till Emma was healthy and cured. I snuck out of her room and headed for my bedroom. I sat on my bed, crisscrossed my legs and grabbed my Mac from the nightstand, then placed it on my lap.
“Let’s get to work,” I muttered to myself. I wished that paper with a detailed background check that my stepfather had done on Kyle made it to my hands, and I still had a copy of it. Instead my mother got a hold of it and screamed like a maniac. I still wasn’t sure what the file said, except that we couldn’t be connected to something like that. It would have ruined my stepdad’s career.
Yeah, never mind if it did anything to her own daughter.
I never told another living soul about Kyle again. The only ones that knew my daughter’s father's name were Marissa, Daphne, and I. Not even her birth certificate had her father listed.
I opened the laptop with a sigh and went straight to Google, typing Kyle’s full name and city he was from.Kyle Sullivan, Boston.
“Shit, that many,” I murmured to myself. “I couldn’t just be one or two.” I really wished I knew his middle name. “Or social security number, since we are wishing for the impossible,” I added, talking to myself.
Damn it, this was the reason you were supposed to date people. I knew absolutely nothing about Kyle, except his first and last name. He liked ballerinas. I should try typing that into Google search, see how fast that got me arrested.
I tried to recall if he attended Columbia University, or if he was just always hanging around campus. I quickly looked up the university website and searched alumni, starting with my graduating class. I skimmed through the photos of graduating students, looking for the familiar features.
When I got to my graduation photo, I paused. I looked at the picture of me and it was as if I was looking at someone else. Even the name was different.Brianna Noelle Williams.
When I legally changed my name, I adopted my grandmother's maiden name. It still hurt to think back to those days. Thank God my grandma offered it. She even spun it as a new beginning for me and Emma. Yes, Brianna Noelle Wiliams was dead. So was Brianna Noelle Johnston. She was buried the same day as her father. The only thing left in its aftermath was our grandmother’s maiden name, Bernadotte. I had to laugh because she would always tell me it was the last name of a Swedish royal family. But it was a new beginning, just like my grandmother said. The new beginning we all desperately needed.
So here we were, Brianna Noelle Bernadotte and Emma Noelle Bernadotte, two royal family members fallen from grace.
“Okay, time to get back to the task at hand,” I told myself. I continued searching and found nothing on Kyle. I tried the year before and then another year before that one, but I found nothing.
Maybe he went to another school close by?
I continued the search for another two hours and found nothing. Frustrated, I closed my laptop and put it back on my nightstand. Laying back onto my pillows, I stared at the ceiling. There had to be something that could point me in the right direction. One little clue so I could find his parents or any family he had left. I just needed their blood, a sample. It would cost them nothing but a few hours.
Daphne, Marissa, and all her brothers were already tested. Even before the results came back, I knew without a doubt they would not be a match. My gut feeling was telling me only Kyle Sullivan and his family would be a match for the bone marrow transplant.
Eleven
Mateo
Some days I could strangle my younger brother. Volunteering for me to attend a bar crawl. He could take a tab on my account. There was no need for me to attend a circle like that. He called it marketing and promotion. I called it bullshit.
There was a war brimming between the Irish and the Italians, while my brother organized fucking bar company parties. He knew there were tensions but he was so damn oblivious to everything that I had to wonder if he ever used his brain. Attending a bar where so many of our men and women would be in the same place, it would be a perfect attack spot. And he had been promoting this shit behind my back for days, using my name.
I should kick him out of this company.It would be less troublesome to just pay all his bills and have him play golf or whatever the fuck he was into these days. I was dealing with more important things than his attempt at marketing and promotion. Who the fuck did he think we were promoting to?
His office was five floors down from mine. I rarely visited him, and people jumped every time I did. Rightly so, I only came down when he fucked up severely. If I went downstairs when he just fucked up, I’d be there every damn day.
As soon as I exited the elevator to his floor, the sight of women everywhere was the first thing I noticed. He kept a lot of women on his staff. He liked pretty faces around him. Sometimes, I wondered if they had anything else to do but look pretty.
