Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King: A Dark Mafia Secret Baby Romance (Possessive Mafia Kings Book 29)

I always hear nostalgia talked about fondly. I guess it’s because we always see the past through rose-colored glasses. A certain lemon-scented cleaner that takes you back to your mother’s kitchen, or the crisp smell of autumn leaves returning you to the edge of your first bonfire, watching the pearly skin of your marshmallow bubble and blacken on the stick.

But this nostalgia, it feels bitter as it washes over me.

I stand again in the ruins of our life, being chased out of own home, even for as little time as we could call it ours. I don’t have a suitcase of my own, so I steal one from Ren’s closet, let it thump vindictively down every step in the goddamn house.

I put Harper’s clothes in first and then use what little bit of room that’s left for mine. Things that will work for a job interview. Perfume. The jewelry that Olivia bought me, though I don’t think any of it is very expensive. I’d feel disgusting putting it on, but I won’t mind parting with it at a pawn shop.

I can’t believe Ren was given a choice to bury the hatchet, and he turned it down. He didn’t even tell me . He didn’t care at all what I thought about it. I told Ren he could do whatever he wanted with my life. I did not extend that same offer for Harper’s.

Harper watches me.

“Are we going somewhere?” she asks.

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.noveldrama

“…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 to apartment, 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.”

She keeps babbling and crying and begging, when Ren snaps, much louder, “I said go!”

The boom of his voice makes me, a grown woman, jump. It makes Harper stumble back, bumping into my legs and sitting down on my shoes.

And finally Harper is really and truly convinced. She doesn’t hop up and yell at him, or wag her little finger. She just slumps into the floor and cries like she used to, before she could walk. Big tears of sorrow now mixed with tears of fear.

When I lean down to pick her up, this time, she puts her arms around my neck. I look at Ren, but he’s already turned away from the door. It slams before I get a good look at his face.

Marco has our things already in the back of the car, waiting for us.

“We can take you to the subway, a bus stop, or an airport. From there, we aren’t allowed to follow,” he tells me. The gun he usually keeps concealed is now holstered to his waist.

It feels surreal, being turned out into the night. Marco gives me a sleek suitcase. I ask what’s in it, but he admits that he doesn’t know. That he was told to hand it over to me by Ren. He tells me not to look inside until we are somewhere safe.

Harper and I wander off into the night, catching a bus crawling slow through the city streets. She cries and huffs and shakes, head to toe, still wanting to throw her fit, just barely holding herself together. I snuggle up with her and whisper promises into her hair, like I always did. It’s really no wonder they don’t work on her anymore.