Mafia's Broken Omega (Mated in the Mafia #6)

6. Avery

6

AVERY

I knew when I started this thing with Cord that it was temporary. It had to be. I was a stripper and sometimes-prostitute, and he was a mafia boss. We didn’t exactly spell happy-ever-after. I let myself believe it might last a few months—maybe even a year or two—but I didn’t expect to want more than that. The smart move would be to pocket the money and get to my retirement all the sooner now that I had his attention.

And when his attention was gone, I would just be thankful for the opportunity to have fun and make some money.

My heart didn’t get the message.

After a full week of not seeing or really hearing from him at all, I was feeling sick. Homesick because it felt like my heart was being ripped from my chest. And physically sick because I couldn’t keep any food down. Not even water.

My sadness seemed to be manifesting in the form of physical symptoms, and I had to run off stage to puke three nights in a row.

“Did you test yet?” Passion threw himself on the sofa behind my dressing chair as I was wiping the glitter from my face.

“What?” I glanced at him through the mirror. “Is Georgie testing again already? We just did that a few weeks ago.”

Passion barked out a laugh. “Don’t play dumb with me. You know what I’m talking about.”

“I do?” I spun around on my stool and looked right at him with a raised eyebrow. “Remind me what I know…”

“You’re pregnant, idiot.” Passion unwrapped a banana and took a big bite. “You know it and I know it. But what I don’t know is…who’s the alpha?”

My jaw dropped as I thought back to the past week and how I’d been feeling. Of course, pregnancy was always a risk, but that hadn’t been on my mind with Cord because it always felt temporary. We took precautions. I was on birth control. He, like many alphas, probably took a suppressant to avoid pregnancy as well. But technically, he never said he did. I just assumed he would be cautious because of his position in his family.

Not to mention the fact that I never went into heat. Being in heat wasn’t required to get pregnant, but it was often how things worked.

I’d once had a scare that turned out to be just the flu, but it was different back then. I was basically a kid with a hookup. Now I was an adult with a…well, I guess Cord was still just a hookup. A long-term hookup but a hookup all the same.

I splashed cold water on my face after I got dressed. Passion’s assessment weighed on my mind. The matter-of-fact way that he said it made me think perhaps I was in denial and I had been for a while.

There was a drugstore on my way from work to my apartment, and I made the walk of shame inside and to the family planning aisle. Like a teenager, I made sure no one was watching when I grabbed two different tests and headed home.

Oddly, it took me a while to find the courage to open the boxes. Hours passed before I was psyched up enough for the possibility of not being alone for the next nine months. I made a sandwich, folded laundry, and then scrubbed the baseboards before I finally chugged a bottle of water and went into the bathroom.

My apartment never looked so good. Guess that’s what happened when a person was hardly there. I spent almost no time here since I was with Cord most nights. Not this week, though. This week was radio silence. I kept myself occupied by scrubbing every surface clean.

The three minutes I had to wait were the longest of my life. As terrified as I was to see a positive result, I was also secretly hoping for it. I’d always wanted to have a family, and if mating and marriage weren’t in my future, maybe this was one way to do it. And at least I knew my kid would be beautiful with Cord’s strong genes.

When I finally peeked at each of the tests I’d taken, I dropped onto the toilet seat and gasped. Two blue lines on one and the word “pregnant” on the other. Holy shit, I was gonna have a baby.

Cord’s baby.

Joyful tears streamed down my cheeks until reality struck.

Holy shit, I was gonna have Cord Mennetti’s baby.

The cold, hard truth sank in and upended my happiness. Cord could never know.

By the time I was eating breakfast the next morning, I’d decided.

I would not sit around and wait for a man like Cord to take an interest in me again. Whether he did or didn’t, I was out. I’d saved up enough money to do what I really wanted to. Start my own business.

It was scary to decide to do this completely on my own, but I was mostly excited. I took a deep breath and let my finger hover over Cord's name in my phone. There was a chance he’d be happy about the baby, but there was a much bigger chance that because he was the head of a mafia family, and I was merely his hired fuckboy, I wouldn’t be allowed to carry his child. They’d force me to terminate or take the baby from me. If they decided they wanted to take the baby from me, or not let me have it at all, I wouldn’t have much recourse.

Before I had a chance to change my mind, I blocked his number and turned off the phone. I would get a new one with a new number later.

Cord had clearly moved on from our fling or whatever it was. I needed to accept that and do what I needed to do for myself and my baby. Since this whole thing had started with him, he’d never gone so long without reaching out. It had been well over a week. Message received.

The next day, I quit my job. I left no forwarding address, and the only physical address they had on file for me was a PO Box.

It was a simple decision, and I didn’t even bother to clean out my locker. The next Velvet could have whatever I left in there. The short shorts and G-strings weren’t going to fit much longer anyway.

After that, it was time to make a plan. I sat on the floor and sketched a few designs for T-shirts. Drawing and coming up with silly sayings was always a fun hobby for me. I used to imagine starting my own graphic-tee company some day but never thought I’d have the means to even consider it. But now that I was doodling characters and patterns, I realized it could be an actual thing.

And it was something I could support myself on with a baby at home.

Thanks to the fling I had with Cord, and the money I earned from it, I had more than enough saved.

I bought a pack of plain white onesies and a set of fabric markers, excited to make my first actual T-shirt a gift for my baby. It was well past midnight, and I was still sketching on the floor, trying to remember some puns I’d come up with when I was a kid.

Thoughts of Cord kept creeping into my mind and messing with my resolve. The urge to unblock Cord’s number was strong, but I just reminded myself of what I was gaining. My baby was more important than a booty call.

The next day, I pored over review sites and watched countless videos before deciding which silkscreen box I wanted and then placed an order for it, along with a box of blank T-shirts in every color they had. If selling shirts didn’t work, I’d try something else. But I wasn’t sure I’d ever have an opportunity like this to just try something that I loved…and I would not let it slip past me.

Cord hadn't tried to find me, and despite the pinching in my chest that didn't go away, I kept telling myself it was a good thing. The right thing.

He was the head of his own mafia family. I’d blocked him for a reason, and keeping my baby safe was at the top of that list.