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

Nadia and I pile into the car. Harper sits between us. A clueless barrier. She’s still talking about Tessa’s baby. Some stakeless argument about whether she was or wasn’t ever that little. She refuses to believe it. I wouldn’t know.

She’s six years old.

Almost seven! her proud voice echoes in my thoughts, the way it has all dinner.

I glance at her, my thoughts acid eating away at me. There are only two possibilities: Either Harper is mine, or Nadia moved on right away. Maybe while we were still together.

I never asked her why she cut me off in the week leading up to my parents’ murder. Why, no matter how I tried to reach her, she wouldn’t answer me. There isn’t a lot that frightens me, really. Fear is one of those emotions that lands numb in my chest. But the answer to that question—that lingering why gnaws away at me inside—I don’t know if I want the answer to it. I am afraid of what it might bring out in me.

If she told me that she knew it was going to happen to my parents, if she could have warned me and changed everything, could I handle that? A suspicion is just a suspicion, and I’ve held that one for a long time. If I learned that for a fact…

The thing that sometimes takes over stirs under my skin again. Like a shadow under the surface of the water. The car rumbles over a pothole, jostles me out of my thoughts that are swirling down and down, drawing me deeper into my own head.

I always thought she knew. But maybe it was something else entirely. Something more innocent for a teenage girl. Maybe she was just fucking done with me. My hand throbs. For the first time in days, pain has taken up residence in my arm again. I felt it all through dinner. I rub my hand against my knee, try to chase out the growing ache pulsing under my skin.

Or the other option…I look at Harper, and I can’t even consider it. Nothing that good would come from me. It couldn’t. I look at her, I just see Nadia—Nadia and some stranger.

I want to ask her about him.

I want to kill him again, even though he’s already dead.

The shadow stirs and slinks around my thoughts.

“What’s wrong?” Harper asks.noveldrama

I sit straighter, but she isn’t talking to me. Nadia stares out the window. Streetlights reflect in a tear on her cheek, and she wipes it away.

“Nothing, baby. I just yawned.”

She wraps an arm around Harper and pulls her in against her side.

I wonder how much she loved the man that made her. I turn away, my thoughts static. I need to focus. Need my eyes set on the future, not the past. But I can’t stop imagining it. Imagining him. Some stranger. Did Harper get big enough to know him? Does she remember him at all?

I feel like I’m going mad.

I should reassure her—tell her that the dinner went fine because it did—but I can’t bring myself to speak. If I do, I know exactly how it will sound. We make the ride in silence.

Nadia sends Harper to get ready for bed when we get home. Elijah comes out to greet us as though he’d been pacing the floor. He’d asked to accompany us given the severity of the situation. How much depended on this. I’d forbidden it.

“How did it go?” he asks immediately. He does a double-take at Nadia and her wet dress, how the dark stain pools around her inner thighs. “That good, huh?” he says, eyebrows raised.

I’ve barely clocked the joke when my fist collides with his cheek. He staggers back. The handle of a pocketknife appears in my hand, the blade flicking out. I press the tip under his jaw.

“Ren!”

Nadia’s hand snags in my elbow, yanks my arm away. I stare at Elijah. I feel what just happened, but I barely remember it. I look in at the knife in my hand as if someone else put it there.

But it was just a threat. Just a threat.

Elijah takes a step back, his glare dark and angry.

“What the fuck—” he says in a shaky breath.

“Maybe next time you’ll think twice before disrespecting my wife,” I say, between angry breaths. I push away from the both of them, heading up the stairs. “The meeting went fine,” I add over my shoulder, ignoring the way they stare at me. I just have to get away, get somewhere that I can think without anyone else to lash out at. I don’t have the patience to field a bunch of questions. Not like this, with my head howling, the past circling like wolves trying to tear me limb from limb, my arm on fire, fire, fire.

I march upstairs, shedding clothes as I go. I catch my reflection in the mirror, the ugly scars running up my arm. I run my fingers up bumpy, white skin. Dead skin. No nerves. I trace the pain, try to dig into the flesh that I can’t feel. As if I can dig straight to the bone and pull the fire out of me. I grit my teeth; the pain is everywhere and nowhere at once.

I turn away and splash cold water on my face, trying to come back to myself. Nadia comes up behind me.

“Are you psychotic? Harper was right around the corner—!”

“I know.”

“I am not going to raise her in a house where people have knives pulled on each other for no reason! Or any reason, actually—”

“He shouldn’t say things like that about you.”

“It was a joke! And you know that, don’t you?” Her wet dress hits the floor, and she slings it away, annoyed. “I know what you’re really upset about, so why don’t you take it out on the person who deserves it?” she demands. “Where’s the knife you want to pull on me, Ren?”

I reel around to face her.

“Is that what you want me to do, Nadia?” I demand. “Leave you black and blue? Put a knife to your throat?”

“I don’t give a fuck what you do to me, as long as you leave my daughter out of it and keep it behind closed doors,” she says quietly. Almost begging. She’s in nothing but her underwear now, black slips of fabric over her breasts and hugging her curvy thighs in a tight V shape.

My eyes roam her body, but they wander back to her eyes instead. There’s a slew of emotions there as she tries to grapple with what I am.

“Ren, I know…”

“Who was he?” I demand.

She looks confused.

“Harper’s father. Who was he?”

Her mouth opens and closes, expression twisted like she doesn’t know what to say. It burns me up inside. Outside. All over. My hand clenches again. When she doesn’t speak, I finally add, “Were you in love with him?”

“Yes,” she eventually whispers.

I scoff under my breath, steel myself for the next question I want to ask. I can’t bring it up. My throat closes on it. I am pathetic—and it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.

“Ren,” she says. She steps forward, reaches out to touch me, as if trying to have a heart-to-heart. One hand brushes my chest. The other—pain lances through my arm like a machete as she touches it thoughtlessly. I shove her away, biting down on the pain with a low, angry growl. She staggers back. Bumps the wall with a breathless little “ Oh .”

I look at her, and I can see that she’s afraid.

It makes me want to destroy something—but not her. Never her.

“Ren,” she begs, her tune changing fast now that she’s actually afraid. “It doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago; just let it go. Please let it go. I belong to you now. I’m yours, Ren. I’m all yours. Whatever you want. Please .”

Her hand slides along my tie.

“You said you would take care of me.”

“You think I’m not trying—”

Her touch wanders up to my cheeks, makes me look at her.

“Ren. Take care of me.”

She presses her lips to mine, sets me on the path she’s trying to drag me down. Nadia gives me her body like a balm, an anchor point. The pain in my hand retreats to the back of my head, sulks into the corner as the heat slowly takes over. She kisses me, long and demanding, a distraction. And weak idiot that I am, I chase it. I take it willingly, like swallowing down the pills or the booze. Whatever it used to take to get through the night before it all stopped working at all.

I gather the pain up, forge it into willpower as I scoop Nadia up and take her to the bed.

She pulls me down to her, crashes me into her.

Half my weight lands on my hand, but I barely feel it as I box her in against the mattress.

“There you go,” she whispers, like she’s the one taking care of me. It makes my chest ache. Memories go off like flares inside my head, lighting up the dark corners of my thoughts for brief, brilliant moments. Nadia and I laughing in bed after. Curled up against her, still half hard inside her. Some cartoon on the TV playing on mute. One of those moments so peaceful and profound, it imprints itself on your memory despite how simple and mundane it is. Everything worth remembering happens in your head—a feeling without words—but you still never forget it.

The memory sizzles out, fades, lets the shadows creep in again.

I want to capture it. Capture her. Make sure it will never, ever escape me again.

“Stay there,” I rasp at her.

She stretches out on the sheets, watching me move around the room. I drop my watch onto the dresser and massage my wrist. Nadia lies in my bed like she’s drowning in it, treading the water of the silence stretching between us. Just waiting for me to come pull her up or push her under.

I find an extra sheet in the closet and I twist it tight into a rope. She watches. Doesn’t question or complain when I tie it snug around each wrist, pinning her hands behind her back.

I take my tie and do just as I told her I would with it, hooking the fabric around her mouth, between her teeth. Once she’s gagged, I roll her over onto her side, hike her leg up so that it hugs my shoulder. I run my hand over her panties, massaging the wet heat between her thighs. I take in the sight of her like that. Completely fucking helpless.

Her gaze bores into mine. I feel a shudder of déjà vu. A flicker of familiarity. How many times did I see eyes like hers looking up at me? That same desperate helplessness. Her bloodline, looking for pity.

It makes guilt tug at the back of my throat. I look away, look at her body, her curves, the tight lines of her bound arms. Anything to avoid those begging, pleading eyes.

“I loved you, Nadia.”

She lifts her head, squirms pathetically on the mattress as I play with her pussy. She tries to talk around the tie, her words muffled into whimpers. Her head drops against the pillow, surrendering as the fight in her arms lessens.

“This is exactly how I want you,” I confess, “Helpless. Pathetic. At my mercy. Because this is exactly what you did to me—”

I torment her clit with my fingers, breathing out slow and steady as I remember just the way she used to like it. How effortless it was to work her up. I was the one who figured it all out about her. In my parents’ conservatory or on a jet over the Atlantic. Those few times we were together, I studied her like a map, and I never forgot it. I might have learned her pleasure better than I knew my own.

She twists against the mattress as I move my fingers, relentless and punishing, just a little too hard on her clit. She rocks her hips. Clenches the muscles of her thighs. If she’s trying to get more or trying to push me away, it’s not clear. And it doesn’t matter because I’m not going anywhere.

I don’t kiss her, don’t touch her. I let her body burn and twist under me, making her spine arch as I thrum her clit with all the vigor of a sex toy. She just isn’t in control of it.

Her moans break around the tie in her mouth. Drool tints the corners of her open lips. Her glassy eyes roll back, the thighs that had been trying to clamp shut now falling open. She moans and grunts against the gag in her mouth, bucking up into my touch.

I take it away.

I push her thighs back, spread her pussy with my fingers to dip my head between them and tongue her pink, slick walls. I eat her out, avoiding her clit at all costs. The tension clamps in her belly and her legs. Those slutty moans turn into whimpers. Questions without words.

Please? They whisper.

I curl my tongue inside her again.

No, it answers.

Nadia shudders, head to toe, gasping through her nose as the pleasure burns hot and hungry. She needs me to fuck her. I blow cool air against her clit and make her whimper again, tugging at the sheets bound around her wrists.

“Imagine I had you just like this, Nadia,” I whisper, tracing her clit without ever really touching it. “For years, and years, and years. And this was all you could think about. All you wanted. What do you think would be left of you after that?”

I rub my fingers against her clit again. Her head falls back, a choked sob of pleasure breaking from her heaving chest. Her nipples strain, neglected. Her pussy drips. I walk her to the edge, where the sweat glimmers on her skin and her breasts heave with tight gasps.

And I take it away again. A sharp pinch. A firm clap of my palm. She cries out as I edge her, over and over, building and building the release that might not ever come. Tears stream down her face and soak into my tie.

Her belly becomes a tight, flat plane, clenched hard, her pussy fluttering and tightening around nothing. I wedge myself between her thighs, keep her good and open, soaking in the sight and sound of her coming apart and begging for release.

My cock is a rigid line against the seam of my pants, a mirror of Nadia’s own helpless frustration.

“I could keep you like this all night. Is that what you want me to do, Nadia?”

She shudders, gasping and breathing in just wet cloth.

“Answer me.”

My hand claps against the side of her ass. She shakes her head, begging me as she glances down the line over her body, over her swelling breasts and between her parted legs. I grind my fingers into her clit again and make her shudder, white teeth bared against the color of the tie as she bites into it.

“You’re going to feel something for me, Nadia. Just as strong as you felt it for him. It doesn’t have to be love. It can be hate. Fear. Need. But you’re going to feel it.”

Her breathing stutters. The muscles in her belly flutter. I don’t think I can bare it another second.

The sound of the zipper jerks her head up. Like it might give her some relief. I toss my belt aside, let my pants hang around my hips. I take out my cock, stroking it in front of her, tugging at the metal bar to feel a brief sting of pain. She watches it like it might give her relief. Like I might stuff it inside her and forgive her for all those years.

I jerk my hand against it in front of her. Her eyebrows knit, expression shifting as she watches me. Hunger to horror to frustration. She throws her head back and listens to me get off.

It’s easy, having her spread beneath me like that. Her breasts heaving and pussy glistening, Stretched out and bound for my pleasure. I stroke fast, brutal pumps into my closed fist, skin meeting skin. I chase the pleasure until it peaks and spasms deep at the base of my spine, a tight rushing heat that washes over me. I come on her pussy. Let her feel my cum seep against the folds of her empty cunt. My pleasure the cherry on top of her frustration.

Then, I put my fingers back on her clit.

She’s helpless to her own body. As long as I put my hands on her like this, play her pussy the way I know that it likes, she can’t resist. She looks up at me, begging. Without words or hands, telegraphing with just her body everything she needs from me. To give her that quick, rough push over the edge just the way she likes it.

I gently grind my fingers back up into her clit, until her body is dancing on my fingertips like a goddamn puppet.

She lasts a commendably long time. I start to wonder which is going to break first—her orgasm or her mind.

Finally, I drag her up to me. I rip the tie off her mouth and throw it aside.

“Ren,” she gasps.

She sounds like she’s been swallowing sand, her voice a dry, broken crack.

“Ren please, oh fuck, get me out of this—I need it—”

She squirms against the restraints again, but I don’t let her go completely.

“Shh, shh,” I whisper, crowding over her, pressing my fingers to her lips. I wait until she’s looking up at me. Really seeing me above her and not just in a sex-induced haze. “I only took that off so I can hear you scream when you come for me.”

“Please,” she groans.

Her mouth is pink at the edges, her cheeks wet. God, I hate how beautiful she is. How she looks at me with those big, searching eyes, like I can save her. Like I can save her from me.

I put my hand on her pussy one last time, and this time, I keep the pressure, the rhythm. The mattress jerks under Nadia as she bucks and kicks against the pleasure running rampant through her belly again and again.

Her whole body is pink, sweaty, primed for this moment. She lets out a sharp, almost pained gasp as she gets right there, right there—

I see her come undone. And it’s always a little different every time. Just like sex. Sometimes, she goes very still, like she has to hold every muscle taut, just right, to keep the pleasure pumping for a long as possible. This time, she comes like she’s been shocked. Twisting and kicking and shuddering under me as she rolls onto her side and screams out just how I wanted. Her vocal chords strain through the pleasure.

She takes big heaving breaths through clenched teeth, sweat glistening down her face as it’s finally over. I must have had her like that for almost an hour, teetering and torturing her on the edge.

I roll her over onto the bed and unlace the sheets on her red wrists. She’s still shaking, eyes closed, breath just shy of erratic.

“Shhh.”

I draw her up to me, forehead to forehead. Drink in her pleasure and her exhaustion, that place where pain and rapture meet.

“Breathe,” I order. “Slow.”

She whimpers softly, like that big orgasm might still be fading out of her system. She matches my breathing and finally leans in, resting her head against mine. I run my palm over her flat, tense belly.

“…You have a funny idea of what constitutes torture,” Nadia finally breathes. The first words she manages to wrap her panting tongue around.

“I know exactly what torture is. I’m just not man enough to do it to you.” I lie beside her and absently stroke the back of my knuckles up her thigh.

“…Does it make you feel better?”

It’s such a juvenile question, it makes my skin crawl. Mainly because it does make me feel better. I clench and unclench my hand again. Nothing. No pain.

“Yes,” I admit.

She rubs the sweat and tears off her face, finally falling back into the pillow and staring up at the ceiling. The room smells like sex and her perfume.

“Is that why you let me do it?” When she looks at me, questioning, I add, “You never say no. You never act like you don’t want it.” She lets me have my way, lets me tie her up one moment while looking at me like I’m a monster the next. That’s a lot of trust to put in a monster, if that’s how she really sees me.

If she sees the truth , something in me corrects coldly.

“It was my idea,” she reminds me.

“Some of it was your idea,” I allow, my thumb tracing the red marks binding her wrists. “But not all of it. And you still let it happen.”

Nadia rolls toward me on her side, our bodies almost touching. But she leaves that inch of space between us, those few inches like a chasm, neither willing or able to jump it.

“…If I said no, would it matter?”

It sounds like an honest question, not an accusation, but it still annoys me that she would doubt it.

“Of course it would matter. I—” My defense of myself withers on my lips as I try to think of how stupid it would sound to her. After everything else that I have done, why would Nadia believe I have any lines that are uncrossable, any action unthinkable? Maybe I’m not even sure of it myself. Maybe I just know what I want to be true.

When I don’t continue, Nadia simply answers:

“I never said no because I never wanted to.”

I huff out a sigh and push my hair back where it’s starting to droop in my eyes.

“You always were like a rabbit.”

She laughs in surprise. That familiar sound, rich and offended.

“Excuse me? You always made the first move. Always.”

“That’s not true.”

“It’s absolutely true!”

“Not how I remember it.”

Her foot bumps my leg under the bed, the weight on the mattress shifting. She looms in closer, hovers almost over me, light dancing her eyes.

“You have a very selective memory, Ren Caruso.”

Her sickle-shaped smile curves so pretty and sharp, you could cut yourself on it.

“My memory is perfect.”

I swap our positions. Flip her under me suddenly, pinning her down again with the breath knocked out of her lungs.

“You always had me just like this,” I tease. “I was lucky if I could get out of bed when we were together. And then, you’d…”

I lean in and kiss her. I taste her mouth in the aftermath, with all the heat and passion and pain finally in the background. I kiss her slowly. Simple and unhurried, and I like it. The way I started to like the pain medication after a while. When it wasn’t just for taking the edge off anymore.

We kiss, drawing it out, knowing that it leads to nothing.

Salt stings against my tongue. I pull back and find Nadia’s cheeks wet, big silent tears streaming down her face. Guilt dries up my mouth. I pull away from her, realizing I’ve gone too far.

“Stop it,” I order her, wiping the tears away with my thumbs.

“Sorry,” she croaks. “You can keep going—”

As if I would when the act of kissing her makes her break down in tears. I can fuck Nadia good enough that it’s just sex, and it feels good. Pleasure for pleasure’s sake. She might not mind that. But kissing her like that—I should have known it would be a step too far. There’s a reason even prostitutes have a rule against it, and it’s not just the threat of bad breath.

“Ren,” she begs again, when I don’t come back. I shrug out of her grip.

“No. We should stop. Before it turns into a disaster.”

Nadia flops back into the pillow bitterly and stares at the ceiling. She laughs again, and this time, it isn’t that warm sound I miss so much.

“What’s one more disaster between enemies, Ren?” she asks.

I smile back at her, the two of us sharing a bittersweet look.

“It all went pretty wrong tonight, didn’t it?”

“Elijah has been dealing with me longer than you have, Nadia. He understands. He won’t take it personally. You’ll see. Tomorrow, it’ll be like it never happened.”

“I’m not talking about Elijah.”

“Mori?” I ask.

“The whole dinner. It was so important and I…I couldn’t hold it together for an hour and a half without something— everything —going wrong. Harper wasn’t raised like you and I were. The most formal dinner she’s ever been to was some five-year-old’s birthday party. Then you seemed distracted the whole time. I’m sure that’s not how you wanted it to go…”

“Nadia. The dinner couldn’t have gone better.”

She blinks at me.

“…Am I behind on my fine dining etiquette?”

“I needed them to get to know you, Nadia. You and Harper. The more…real you seem to them, the better off you’ll be. A perfect dinner with perfect manners and polite conversation; the Moris probably sit at a dinner like that three times a week. A dinner like the one they had tonight? Fuck, at least they’ll remember you.”

I draw her gaze to me, make her look me in the eyes.

“No one is coming to my rescue in this mess, Nadia. If someone intervenes, it’s going to be for you and for her.”