Lovely Beast: A Dark Mafia Enemies to Lovers Romance (The Atlas Organization)

I get dressed. Angelo takes a shower. “Gotta wash off that fucking fancy Oak Club,” he grumbles as he turns on the water.

I put on sweats and head into the living room, thinking about room service, when the phone rings. I frown at it, not sure what to do, since I’ve never actually heard it before, but decide to go over and answer.

“Ah, yes, Mrs. Fabbri.” I smile to myself. That’s Angelo’s last name—they must think we’re together. “You have a visitor down at the front desk. He says he’s your father.”

My blood runs cold.

“My… father?”

“Yes, ma’am. Shall I send him up?” I can’t speak. My mouth opens and closes. How did he find me here? What the hell is he doing, showing up at our hotel at eight in the evening? “Ma’am?”

“Yes, uh, yes, send him up.”

“Gladly. Thank you.” The front desk manager hangs up with a click.

I stand there, feeling overwhelmed, and a sense of panic starts to rise in my chest.

Dad knows I’m staying in a hotel with Angelo.

Panic turns to horror.

Dad knows I’m here, in a room, with Angelo.

The terror overwhelms me and I can’t move. I can’t do anything but stare at the door. Dad’s coming, right now, he’s coming. Right after I had sex with Angelo, my Dad is coming to visit, and I don’t know why. I’m so afraid of what he’s going to say and what he’s going to make me think, and I suddenly want to call the front desk back and beg them not to let my father come up here.

But it’s too late. I hear footsteps outside above the drone of the shower in the other room.

He knocks twice and I move forward woodenly.

“Hello, Sara,” Dad says, and I open the door a crack. “I wasn’t sure you’d let me come up.”

“Dad. How did… what are you… what’s happening right now?”

His lips press into a tight line. “I told your friend Robyn that there’s a medical emergency and that I needed to speak with you right away. She told me that you’ve been staying here, at this hotel.”

Robyn. Shit. “Is there an emergency. Is Mom—?”

“No, Sara, everything is okay. Except for you.”

I’m so mad I could scream. “You lied?”

“Not exactly. There is a medical issue, and besides, I did what was necessary. You weren’t at your own apartment. I checked, multiple times, and you simply weren’t there anymore. I had to find my own daughter.”

“Dad, you could’ve just asked me.”

“And, what, let you mislead me?”

“Funny, considering.”

He gives me a harsh smile. “We need to talk.”

I swallow a lump in my throat and step aside. Dad breezes into the room and looks around. I’m suddenly very aware that Angelo’s been using the couch as a bed. There’s a folded blanket, a few pillows. It’s obvious I’m not alone in here, and I can feel Dad’s disapproval growing.

“Can I get you something?” I ask, feeling stupid and not sure what else to do.

He slowly turns to me. “You’re staying with him, aren’t you?”

“It’s not what you think.”

“Tell me what to think then.”

I clear my throat. How can I explain this to him without sounding insane? “You know the case I’m working on is dangerous.”

“I was under the impression that it’s unsavory. But dangerous?” He makes a face. “What have you gotten yourself into, Sara?”

“Angelo’s just… he’s a friend and he’s helping me. He’s keeping me safe.”

“Oh, honey, this is unacceptable. It’s simply unacceptable. How could you?”

“Dad, please, before you rush to judgment—”

“You’re staying in a hotel room with a goddamn criminal, Sara. My daughter, my only child, is sharing a bed—”

“We’re not sharing—”

“—my only daughter is living with a goddamn gangster. Tell me why I shouldn’t be upset. This is embarrassing. This is mortifying. Can you imagine how this is going to look?”

I open my mouth to apologize—

And stop myself.

Why the hell do I care how it’s going to look? What does it matter to me if Dad is embarrassed? So what if his judgmental asshole friends at that snooty horrible club think his daughter is a tramp or whatever. None of that matters, not anymore.

“This is my decision. This is my life. If you don’t like it, you can walk out of that door.” I stand aside and gesture. “Go ahead. Leave.”

Dad’s face twists with rage.

I’ve never stood up to him before. My head’s dizzy and my heart’s going on overdrive. I’ve never wanted to deny him, and for so long I thought my father was perfect, or at least that he knew the right way to live. I thought if I could only meet his exacting standards, I’d finally be happy. I wanted success and money and prestige and everything he’s managed to build, and I wanted his love and approval.

I wanted to be worthy of my famous surgeon father.

Now all I want is to be left alone.

“You don’t understand what’s going on here,” Dad says softly like a white-hot fire crackling through the room. “I know, Sara.”

“You know what?”

“I know that you’re pregnant.”

My mouth opens. I feel like I’ve been hit with a truck. I try to find words. But I don’t know words anymore. I don’t know how to move, how to think. My hands cover my belly instinctively and I try to make sense of what he just said but it’s like a black hole in my brain.

This can’t be happening.

This isn’t possible.

I haven’t told anyone. I’ve kept this a total secret from my friends, from my employers, from absolutely everyone in my life. Nobody knows, not even Angelo, the father.

Except Dad.

“How?” I whisper, and I feel like I’m going to fall apart.

He sneers at me and shakes his head. “I ran into Dr. Bernetti at a conference a week ago, and you know what she said? She said, congratulations on your grandchild, you must be so excited. I pretended like I knew what she was talking about, but can you imagine how I felt? I thought she must be wrong, she must be confused, but she wasn’t, was she? My own daughter, pregnant. And I didn’t know.”

Dr. Bernetti. Oh, god. My OB. And if my father wasn’t sure before, I just confirmed it for him. She was the only other person in the entire world that knows. She happened to run into my father and one small comment, one tiny breach of ethics and trust, and now—

I feel like I’m falling into a pit.

Dad comes closer. He looks like he’s ten feet tall and growing bigger. “Your life is going to end, Sara, and any freedom you once had is finished. You can’t take care of a child and still work at Klein and Houndson, and forget about meeting with friends for drinks or going out to dinner or any of the other minor pleasures you might have in your life. That’s all gone now. You have no clue what you’ve done. How far along are you?”

“About ten weeks now,” I whisper.

He groans. “Ten weeks. My god. You’re almost at the end of your first trimester for fuck’s—But no, it’s not too late. You can still take care of this. You can solve this problem and you can still have the life you’ve always wanted, if only—”

The door to the bedroom slams open and Angelo storms out. He’s in a pair of sweats and a t-shirt, his hair soaking wet. “No,” he roars, and his eyes are wild as he advances on my dad. “No, no, no, that’s my fucking baby, that’s my child, and you’re not going to make her solve anything you sick, twisted piece of shit.”

Angelo looks like a crazed rhino ready to charge.

My father stands his ground.

I stagger back, heart racing. Angelo stands seething near the bedroom door while my father tilts his chin up, his eyes gleaming horribly, an awful smile on his lips. I look between the two men, from beautiful and terrible Angelo to my father, the man I’ve always looked up to, always respected, my rock.

“Your baby?” Dad asks quietly, and Angelo steps forward, hands curled into fists. “Do you really think you can claim ownership to something you accidentally squirted into my daughter? You have no rights to her and no rights to this baby. You’ll only drag them down to your pathetic level at best, killed at worst. Or perhaps dying now would be a mercy over letting you anywhere near my grandchild.”

“You piece of shit,” Angelo snarls. “You motherfucking—”

“Please,” I choke out. Tears roll down my cheeks, fat and hot. I don’t remember starting to cry, but I can’t stop it now. I manage to keep the sobbing under control, but the tears won’t stop flowing. “I didn’t want you to find out like this.”

Dad seems surprised. His mouth opens, and he looks from me to Angelo and back again—and he laughs, a bitter and ugly sound. “He didn’t know,” he says. “She kept it from you.”

Angelo’s jaw works. He stares at me now, eyes beseeching, pleading for something, but I don’t know what.

“I didn’t want to get you involved,” I say and wipe my face but it doesn’t help. More tears replace whatever I manage to push aside. “I didn’t think you’d want anything to do with—this.” I put my hands over my stomach.

“How could you have known that?” he asks quietly. “That’s my baby, how could you have thought I wouldn’t want to be in your life?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Dad says before I can reply. “Look at you, boy. You’re a walking disaster. You’re a criminal and you’re basically one misstep away from being thrown in jail for the rest of your worthless life. Can you really blame her for want to protect her baby from you? Do you want your child to grow up with a father behind bars?”

“My baby,” Angelo whispers. He’s staring at me, ignoring my father, and it’s killing me, it’s like a knife’s jammed down my throat and I want to scream it out but I can’t. “You’ve known all this time, haven’t you?”

I nod, lip trembling. “I thought I was doing the right thing. Not for me, but… for the baby.”

“Of course she did,” Dad says, coming closer. “She wants to protect her child from you. Can you really stand there and say you’d make a good parent? Do you really think you’d be the father my grandchild deserves? You know what you are, Angelo. Why make things harder for her?”

Angelo stares at me for a beat longer before taking a step back. He turns to my father, and he’s trembling, his face red, barely holding back his rage. “You don’t know me. You don’t know what I am.”

“I know that I can help my daughter more than you ever could. I’ve raised a child once already, and I can raise a second. I have money, I have security, I have stability. What can you offer?”

“I don’t—” Angelo starts and stops himself. “You just told her you want to handle this problem. I know what that means. You want to kill my baby. I’m the father. That’s my baby.” His eyes move to my stomach and his lips are pulled back.

But I don’t want him to look at me,

I never wanted this to happen. I knew putting off telling him the truth while also getting closer to him would backfire eventually, but I kept hoping something would happen to take the decision out of my hands. I kept thinking, maybe I’ll tell him, maybe I’ll let him find out, and it would be ugly and hard, but we’d get past it and move on eventually. Only I didn’t know how he’d handle finding out the truth, and I was afraid that it would only push him away when whatever we have brewing between us is still so fragile.

I didn’t want to risk losing him.

Now I see how stupid and naive I’ve been.

Angelo doesn’t want to be a father. He barely wants to be a boyfriend. This man is wild, careless, beautiful and incredible, but also dangerous. Dad’s words keep playing in my ears. I don’t want my child to grow up in the shadow of his gangster father. I don’t want my child to visit their father in prison.

I want my child to have a future like mine.

“I can help you,” Dad says softly and puts a hand on my shoulder. I flinch, but I don’t pull away. I close my eyes, crying. “Come home with me. Your mother and I are disappointed, but we love you, Sara. We can help with this baby, but only if you swear you won’t speak to this man ever again. We’ll hire nannies, we’ll get you diapers and bottles and a crib, and you won’t have to give up your life for this baby if that’s the decision you make. But please, honey. Let me help you.”

I open my eyes again and Angelo’s standing there, jaw tight, looking at me like he’s going to break.

And I know how he feels.

Because I’m feeling it too.

I think I’m going to crack open and shatter. It’s like there are two halves of me, each fighting for control.

There’s the Sara I’ve always been, the rule-follower, the good girl, the straight-A student, the honor roll overachiever, the girl that wants to go home and sleep in her old bed and let Mom and Dad tell her what to do.

Then there’s the new Sara, the one that’s falling for this strange gangster, this violent thug, this clever and funny and gorgeous man, the new Sara that wants to be free of her old life, that wants to find something new and perfect and all mine.

Both parts of me want opposite things and I don’t know how I can survive.

“That’s too much,” I say and wipes my eyes. “I can’t—he’s the father. I can’t just cut him off.”

“You can,” Dad says. “If you want your baby to have a chance, you will.”

“Sara,” Angelo says, and he opens his mouth as if he wants to explain something, as if he wants to beg me to stay with him—and I want him to say it, I want him to ask me to stay, to ask me to give him a chance, to beg and plead and make me believe him, and if he does then I will, I know I will— but the words dissipate and he only shakes his head. “Don’t give up your life for me.”

My stomach twists and the tears come faster, heavier, thicker. I want to drown in these tears. The room blurs, and I never want to see the world again.

“See, honey? Even he knows this is the right choice.” Dad steers me away toward the door. “Come on. Come home. We’ll talk about your options and we’ll take care of everything. All you have to do is leave him behind.”

Leave Angelo behind.

The moment things were beginning to turn—now I’m walking away.

But I’m doing it for my baby.

I don’t want this. If I could have it my way, I’d stay here in this hotel with Angelo and explore this new version of myself that’s only just beginning to blossom. I want to revel in freedom with him, in a physical and visceral experience I’ve never felt before. I want him and all of him, unmediated, closer than I ever thought possible.

But I have to think of my baby now, and Dad’s right.

My parents can give me stability. They’ve been through this before—they know what to expect.

They can help me, and I won’t pretend like I’m not scared of what’s going to happen.

To my body, to my life.

Even Angelo knows it’s true.

I shouldn’t give up my dreams for him.

Dad keeps steering me and I keep walking, moving woodenly. I want to turn back and go to Angelo, to kiss him, hug him, tell him that everything’s okay, tell him that he can be the father of this child if that’s what he wants, but I can’t bring myself to do it.

All my life, I’ve tried to do what’s right.

I’ve followed the rules.

Even when the rules chafe against who I really am.

I’ve done it because it’s right.

And I’ll do it again now.

Right now, at my lowest, at my worst, I’ll do the right thing.

For my baby.

Even if it kills me.