SWNOVELS Sold to the Italian Mafia Boss: Chapter 13
My heart is in my mouth. My skin is crawling, feverish. But I’m cold, too. Racked with chills, I pace back and forth through the massive en suite bathroom, the tile freezing under my bare feet. It’s OK; I counsel myself. Everything is going to be OK. OK. OK. But my mouth is dry, my pulse is all over the place, and my thoughts keep catching and crashing into one another.
It started this morning.
When I woke up—I knew. Something was different. Everything was different. I’ve been so stressed lately that I could barely be expected to notice the little changes that were happening to me. The heat that seemed to be in my blood like a fever. The morning brain fog that had me staring blankly at my computer screen for minutes at a time before snapping out of it. And the other morning, when it was still dark, and I woke up with my stomach cartwheeling and sweat rippling up the back of my neck, I thought it was anxiety, food poisoning, or a fluke.
I stop in the bathroom doorway, looking at the three white plastic sticks arranged beside the sink. My chest feels so tight it could crack. I check my watch. Two more minutes.
Until what, Kate? I shake myself and begin pacing again, faster now, running my hands roughly over my tired face through my tangled hair. You know. You know what every single one of those fucking pregnancy tests is going to tell you.
And I do—don’t I?
I trail to a stop again, this time gently sliding my palms over my belly. Is it possible? Is it luck, is it a curse, is it a trap, or will it be the end of the world? The alarm on my watch goes off, and I silence it, standing haunted in the doorway, unable to even turn around. I close my eyes, trying to get myself to calm down, to just breathe.
To think.
I hate Luca. Of course, I do. I have to. He kidnapped me. He has held me hostage. He’s been cold and aloof and cruel and demanding. He refuses to make peace with me. To make peace with my father, for fear of looking weak. He is my enemy. I should hate him. I do hate him.
No. I don’t. I don’t think I have since that first night. And every day since, that petulant anger has only loosened and weakened and fallen away. I hold my belly and squeeze my eyes shut harder. I beg myself to hate him. I beg myself to end this—all of this—before it begins.
But when I try to think of all the things Luca has said and done that should arm me against him, I can’t drown out everything else. The way he looks at me with faint awe, with admiration. The way he touches me. The way he gave me a gun and trusted me not to kill him. The way he has been at least relatively transparent with me. He didn’t have to do that. He didn’t have to do any good thing; he could have killed me. Sold me to the highest bidder. He could have done anything, anything, and he did the best thing.
He chose me. For his own benefit, but for mine too. He took a loss to protect me. He protected me. What kind of enemy does that? No, what is happening between Luca and me isn’t simple, conventional, or orthodox. It’s wild and crazy and stupid and brilliant and passionate, and even though I’ve only been here with him for a little less than a month, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have feelings for Luca.
Fuck—I’ve been around the block. I’ve lived a full life, with love and hatred and danger and safety and self and loss and fear. I don’t just have feelings for Luca.
I’m in love with him.
And now this. And now this. A baby? Brought into this world of violence and unpredictability? A baby born to parents on opposite sides of the war?
Is that the only option? I open my eyes, bracing myself. I know the truth in my bones, in my body, and in my womb. But I need to see it. I need to look it in the face.
When I turn, it’s not terror or grief that seizes me. It’s a relief. Because all three of the pregnancy tests, unsurprisingly—are positive. I cross to them, stroking my fingers gently over the little pink plus sign. One after another after another. A baby. With Luca Romano. I catch my reflection—to my shock, I’m smiling, tears welling in my eyes. Just hormones? Or something else?
Are there things that make no sense, things that can’t be justified, things that, when they fall into your lap by fate or design or accident, you can only be grateful for? I would never have asked for this. For any of this. But now that I’m here, and I know Luca, and I know myself, and I know who we are when we’re together—God, it just feels right. Dangerous, but right. Full to the brim with hope.
I don’t know when Luca will be back. I know he’s angry with me. I don’t blame him. In fact, I’m angry at him, too. How could I not be? But now that things are more serious due to this pregnancy, I get the sense that Luca will be open to negotiating. We’re going to be a family, a real family now. Bound by much more than a flimsy paper contract. Bound by blood. DNA.
What way would it be? To introduce our baby into the world when their father has killed their grandfather?
Could this be it? Is this how I save us? Is this how I save myself, my father? Is this how I save Luca from himself?
I don’t know the answer. But I know that if I’m happy he’s going to be the father of my baby, all of this is more complicated than I could ever have imagined.
But some part of me feels that that’s exactly why it will all work out.
***
The cold, blunt muzzle of a rifle brushes a strand of hair from my eyes.
For a moment, I’m dreaming, lying half under the silk duvet and half out of it, vulnerable on my back. My hand rests on my bare belly, still so flat, still so early, and so far from bringing life into this world. It’s pitch black in the bedroom, and I’m hazy with sleep, and for a moment, I think it’s Luca standing over me. Luca, with his dark eyes, with his soft mouth. Luca with his hands, so gentle, so deliberate with me.
Then the horror slams into my chest like a truck. What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck—
I sit up sharply, batting aside the muzzle of the rifle. I open my mouth to scream and to curse. But my assailant slams a hand over my mouth before I can make so much as a sound.
“Easy.”
The voice shocks me—a woman’s. I knew it. I fucking knew it. I go still. Still enough that Ariana releases my mouth and lowers her rifle. My eyes are adjusting, and in the dark, I can see her wolfish white smile and her wild eyes. Her long dark curls are bound loosely at the nape of her neck, and she wears all black, a big heavy man’s coat, and a high-collared black shirt that hugs every curve. She looks lethal.
She looks in her element.
“You sleep like a queen,” she says, slinging her rifle over one shoulder and crossing her arms. She wears a big silver watch, and even in the dark, I can see the cockiness in her hooded, smiling eyes. “Like you’re safe in your palace. Like nothing and no one could ever get to you.”
I finally exhale, my shoulders and my neck loosening. She’s not going to kill me yet, at least. I have time to negotiate. I have time to get myself the fuck out of this. Slowly, I slide my legs over the side of the bed. “I sleep like I’m tired,” I say, running a hand over my face. Ari knows me enough to know I’m not naïve, innocent, or weak. I can’t convince her otherwise. All I can do is meet her with honesty—that, I think, above all else, she can respect. “I sleep like I was kidnapped and forced into marriage and impregnated by my enemy.”
Her eyes flash, and her smile shifts slightly. Her expression becomes one of calculation. I know her, too. Has she forgotten?
“Now, that’s something,” she says, kneeling before me. She’s quite tall, and even crouching with me sitting on the edge of the bed, we’re almost at eye level. “Pregnant, and so soon. How fertile your little Irish womb must be.” She reaches for me, and I know better than to flinch away, even as she dances her fingers over my belly. “But you’re not slipping by telling me that, Kate.” Her eyes flick up to meet mine. “You and I both know how much that pregnancy increases your market value.”
“Yes,” I say. Why lie? “So. Who will sell me to?”
Ariana grins, retracting her hands and resting her arms on her knees to look up at me. The way she does it makes her look childish, impish. All mischief. In another world, maybe we’re not enemies, I think grimly. In another world, maybe she and I are friends.
But not in this one.
“The pregnancy helps,” she admits. “I was going to sell you to your father. But now Luca will be highly, highly interested.”
My pulse rockets. I swallow, and Ariana seems to clock it, her gaze dripping over me. Ever calculating. Moonlight is coming through the window—I forgot to close the drapes, as per usual—and slowly, as my eyes continue to adjust, it reveals her to me. The detail comes in gradations: the rifle, brand-new, stolen from the bunker. The jacket, a Russian brand, new and expensive. The watch—her late father’s.
“There is a third option,” says Ariana. Her smile drops, and she looks at me squarely. Her gaze is so intense I almost want to look away. It’s so intense that I don’t think I could even if I tried. “You burn your marriage contract with Luca…and come with me instead.”
I stare straight back at her, knowing better than to laugh. It’s not something she says lightly. It’s not something she says not meaning it. “And, what? My connections, at the end of the day, belong to my father. This child is Luca’s. You have nothing in Russia to return to, and I have nothing to offer.”
She grins, wolfish as ever. “No. You’re right. It’s illogical. But it would make a very good story, don’t you think?”
I feel myself smile. In another world. “A good story, maybe. But it’s not reality. It’s not what’s going to happen.” I take a deep breath, holding her gaze. Hoping I can get through to her. For all of our sake. “Ariana. You don’t win this.”
Her eyes narrow, and any goodwill, any humor between us, dissipates. Burns straight off list mist in the summer sun. “You know nothing, McNamara.”
“I know a lot more than you give me credit for. Luca will kill you. My father will kill you. You have enemies everywhere, and what little protection you gleaned from Luca is gone now. It was gone the minute you put that gun to my head, and you know that.”
She stands, towering over me. Menacing. Impressive. “Yes. I do know that.”
So, it has all been taken into consideration. Of course, it has. I know who I’m dealing with. Ariana isn’t new here. She’s not new to betrayal or betraying. In fact, it’s somewhat her modus operandi, isn’t it? She is, after all, a turncoat.
“Leave,” I say, standing. “Go now. Take everything you need. Take money. Take weapons. And disappear. Go back to Russia. Leave this life and never look back, and you’ll live. You can have the life you deserve, Ariana. A normal life. A life none of our fathers ever got.”
A cloud passes over the moon beyond the window, and darkness erases her features, all but the cold black glint of her eye. “I would rather die fighting,” she says, “than run and live forever.”
When I open my mouth this time, she moves—so fast I don’t even register her fist until after it has caught me in the face. I’m on the floor, on my knees, blood running out of my mouth, my lip busted in and outside of it. My breath comes ragged, and I look up at her, stunned. I find myself eye-to-eye with the barrel of her rifle.
“Get up, McNamara,” she bites out, jerking the gun toward the door. “The night has just begun.”