Page 18 of Mafia Boss's Surprise Baby

“All right, whatever you want, pretty girl,” he says, and I hear him going down the stairs.

I hadn’t made those plans with Marta, because I really am not the traditional type, but now, I feel like I need some time away from Dante to sort out how I feel.

If heishaving an affair, I need to know about it.

I call Marta. “Be ready in ten minutes,” I say.

“Ready for what?” she asks.

“A stakeout,” I say firmly.

* * *

“I’m not crazy,”I say to my best friend as she stares at me in awe.

“You’re not crazy. You’re just following your fiancé on the day before your wedding because...you heard him talking on the phone?”

“It wasweird, Marta! It was...flirty,” I insist, huffing out a breath.

Marta rolls her eyes. “Sure. Not crazy at all.”

“I just want to put my mind at ease,” she says.

My best friend shifts in the passenger side of my car.

“I don’t know, Mia. This could get dangerous, given what Dante does.....”

Marta knows the score. She comes from a member of the famiglia just like I do, and neither of us sticks our noses in our family business.

“It’s not about business,” I say quickly. “I don’t care about that. I just want to make sure he isn’t cheating.”

“I don’t understand how you can think that just from one phone conversation...” she trails off when I don’t answer, parked outside the gate of the mansion that Dante’s car had pulled into. There are other cars on the street, so it doesn’t look too obvious.

“We’ve been sitting here for hours,” Marta complains. “Can’t we at least leave to get food?”

“We’ll get lunch later,” I say, staring at the mansion, hoping (or not hoping) to see a woman coming out of there.

Dante finally comes out alone, and I let out a long breath.

He drives away, seemingly not noticing my car, and heads down the street. I throw the car into gear and follow him while Marta gasps and grabs on to the car door for purchase.

“You drive like a bat out of hell on the best of days,” she grumbles, but I ignore her.

When Dante pulls into a hotel, my heart drops to my toes.

“Bastardo,”I mutter.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Marta says as I drive by the hotel, knowing that he’ll see my car in the parking lot. She puts a hand on my knee. “It doesn’t have to mean anything. Our family does a lot of in and out business in hotels.”

I know that she’s right, but I can’t help suspecting.

I don’t know how to ask him about it without revealing that I was eavesdropping, but I feel nauseous at the thought of it.

I haven’t responded to Marta and she squeezes my knee.

“Are you still going to marry him?”

I swallow hard, thinking of Dante’s hazel eyes, how he smiles at me after we make love, how he cried in my arms at his father’s service.

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