Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King (Possessive Mafia Kings #29)

20. Nadia

20

Nadia

My head spins like someone has set wedding bells off in it. My groom? My groom…in this exact moment? Am I getting married right now? My hands curl into the silky fabric billowing from my hips, taking fistfuls of the dress and squeezing tight. This can’t be happening. Not right now, not this second. Talk about a marriage of inconvenience.

I double-check the time, then the mirror. This was supposed to be something planned, wasn’t it? A big, proper ceremony. Ren’s victory lap, where he could parade me around like the wild horse that he finally caught and broke or whatever. It wasn’t supposed to be last minute, no notice. Fuck .

I hear Harper arriving home, talking animatedly to Elijah in the front of the house. She’s made it home, and she’ll be safe and sound for the afternoon.

I look out the window, then down at my ridiculous outfit. A half-cocked plan starts to form. If I was still a reckless teenager, I’d probably just tear off across the city in a wedding dress, but as a grown woman, I’m realistic enough to know there’s no way I’m getting anywhere like this, which only leaves one question.

Do I trust Elijah to collect Sincere for me?

I’m not sure I have another choice. If he’s gone so far as to get the apartment, I have to hope he’ll see the rest of my plan through.

I message Luna at the last second, letting her know Elijah might show up in my stead. I send the message—and my apologies—as Harper crosses the threshold and gives a big, breathless gasp as she sees me in the wedding dress.

“Wow,” she yells, jumping up and down in excitement. “Mommy, what are you doing?” she cries, amazed. “You’re like the Barbie doll in the store! Are you getting married?” she gushes, touching the edge of my dress in fascination.

“Maybe!” I say, forcing a smile. “Do you like it?”

“Yeah!” she says and rubs the fabric against her cheek. “Are you getting married to Ren?”

It shouldn’t hurt that she can guess that. Of course she would guess that. I just wish it wasn’t so obvious.

“Yes, baby. To Ren.”

She makes one of those adult-like expressions that look hilarious on a girl her age, eyes blown wide as if I have dropped the juiciest gossip of the century.

“So does that make Ren my daddy?”

“It does,” a low baritone says from the doorway. Ren’s eyes sweep over me again, his face pinched by that same expression he wore when he made me try this dress on in the store. All that incredible pain branching through me like lightning.

Harper rushes him, tackling him into a tight hug around his hips.

“Thanks for the heads-up,” I say, forcing the words to sound cheery and let my feral expression do the rest.

But Ren is staring down at Harper, his expression vacant. It sends a chill up my spine. He doesn’t answer, his attention fixed on her with some distant thought playing across his face. Like the words are seeping in and settling in his bones. I call his name to bring him back to the present.

“What did you say?” he asks.

“Why am I dressed up like this, Ren? You didn’t tell me anything about this!” I say in a false whisper, trying to keep Harper shielded from the reality of everything that’s happening.

“You knew we were getting married, Nadia. Did you think we picked out a dress for show?”

“Okay, so you said we were getting married eventually. You didn’t say today! You didn’t even…”

Ask me.

His expression darkens as we stand in a tense, looming silence. My throat works. I have a feeling this is all coming out wrong.

“Did you think it was an empty threat, Nadia? Or that I’d change my mind? The when came sooner than expected, that’s all. But it was always going to be this way—”

“I know, but…”

“But what, Nadia? Do you have some objection?” he asks, as if challenging me in that cold voice that tells me his mind is already made up. That he is inviting me only to waste my breath.

“Just…another time? A day’s notice; is that too much to ask? If we could just do this tomorrow—”

Ren steps closer. There’s a wildness in his eyes that makes me uncomfortable, as if he is on the verge of another one of his moods.

“I’ve lived through enough tomorrows , Nadia. I’m done waiting. I’ll give you the wedding you deserve one day, if I have that chance. Today, this is what you get.”

He takes me by the arm and guides me out into the foyer. His mood is all wrong.

“You could have at least asked!”

“It wasn’t a question.”

Elijah’s gaze sweeps over me, takes in the sudden change of plans for this evening. Harper is enchanted, dancing around our feet, still over the moon as she plays with the train of my dress. She asks Ren if she gets to wear a pretty dress, too. As she has Ren’s attention for a moment, I glance at Elijah.

“Pick up my dry cleaning for me?” I mutter. He checks his watch, his expression grim as we share looks.

“Ren, do you need me for this?” Elijah asks.

“No,” Ren says. “This will be quick—just a formality.”

“A formality you had to dress me up like a doll for,” I mutter under my breath, arms crossed.

We had been close to getting along, so I had almost forgotten Ren’s explanation, his reasoning for all of this— it’s all a punishment. The good and the bad. It’s all meant to hurt, even the parts that shouldn’t.

As we wait for Marco, Ren stares and stares at me like he can’t tear his eyes away.

“What?” I mutter, through gritted teeth. I’ve been birthday-suit naked under Ren before, but wearing this dress is the most naked I have ever felt with him, like the seamstress has stitched my heart right onto the flowing sleeves.

Ren looks away, shoulders slouched. When the silence wears on too long, he finally says, “It’s just in case, Nadia. The meeting is tomorrow. We don’t… I don’t have time to wait. I’m doing this now in case this all goes wrong. If I can give you a real wedding, then I will. One day. But I’m doing this now in case this ends up being the only time.” The words come out rough as he adds, “I’m not dying without becoming your husband.”

It’s like he’s poured cold water over my anger, my thoughts evaporating in a puff of steam. If I were one of Harper’s beloved cartoon characters, I bet it would have come out of my ears.

I tell myself Ren isn’t a romantic, but I am, and the only thing worse than being a romantic is also being a gullible romantic. And I guess I’m that, too, because the thought of Ren giving us the only wedding we might ever have puts a firm gag on my complaints.

My eyelids flutter as I try to piece together what that means. Why it would be important to him? He didn’t say before I make you my wife . He said without becoming your husband.

For the first time, I look at Ren and think—maybe he doesn’t hate me after all.

Maybe it’s something worse, that same awful emotion that I feel for him.

Love.

***

The sky is still a gray slab sitting over us, as if the skyscrapers are the pillars holding it up, turning New York into one big parking garage that we are trying to escape.

The landscape changes outside the window, trading asphalt-gray buildings for asphalt-gray sky and long stretches of highway. Ren warned me it would be a long drive. I surrendered my phone to Harper and let her erode a little of her attention span. I wonder about Sincere. Elijah. Anything to keep my thoughts off the perfect, white gown spilling all over the leather seats and the tremor in my heart.

It reminds me of the sounds Harper’s heart made during the sonograms. Ba-ba-BUM, ba-ba-BUM . Fluttery and fast.

I can’t stop thinking about the why behind all this.

“Does a wedding really matter, Ren?” I ask once I am well and truly lost on the twisting roads we travel, “Or is this just for you?”

He doesn’t tell me.

We arrive at our wedding venue. The car passes through a wrought iron fence and onto a lick of gravel road. Hills of trimmed, dry grass stretch out before us, with rows and rows of hunched stones jutting from the uneven ground. A cemetery. An old one, judging from the small gravestones crumbling at the crux of the nearest hill, their names and forms lost to time. Others are fresh, lined with thick, fake flowers and plastic flags and scarred dirt. Some families are tucked away in their own mausoleums, sequestered from the impoverished dead in the ground. Rotting in the dirt is so low class, after all. Their family sigils are stamped on thin, wiry gates. The designer-branded dead.

The car stops. A man in black waits for us. At a glance, I could mistake him for an old-school gravedigger, but the white square on his collar corrects my assumption.

Harper piles out, all energy and eager to stretch her legs. She rushes to one of the nearest graves, practicing her letters as she tries to read it.

I step from the car and take a sweeping look at our surroundings. Dark, glum weather, humid, stagnant air, and a bunch of dead people.

“This is why women do the wedding planning,” I mutter under my breath.

I swear, for a moment, I almost catch Ren smiling.

They gather my dress and train so that it doesn’t drag on the ground. I am taken before the Caruso family crypt. Ren’s parents—whatever parts of them didn’t burn—are held here. I can’t bring myself to look at the tombs as we stand before them, like those bodies might jump out, all charred bones, and scream at me and shake me and demand to know why they deserved to die.

I don’t know why. Why would I know? I was seventeen. But I still can’t look at them.

There is no ceremony.

I am dragged before Ren’s parents as if to say This is why you deserve this . The dead are the only “family” in attendance to our union besides Harper. The driver is our only legally binding witness, unsmiling and serious, as he folds his hands in front of him.

“Are we waiting for anyone else?” the priest asks.

“This is all.”

As Ren and I stand together before the holy man, I feel an immense silence stretching around us. The people who should be there. My own family. His. When I had grown out of my bratty teenage years, I finally realized that going out shopping with my mother was not the karmic torture I’d once thought it was at thirteen. She’d sometimes point out dresses that would suit a mother of the bride, and would tease me by asking if I’d let her wear it to my wedding one day. She was so convinced I was going to have a big, happy wedding. Emphasis on both the big and the happy. She had a saying: “A father should cry twice for his daughter’s wedding—once when he sees her walk down the aisle, and once when he gets the bill.” She loved a good party.

A cold wind shivers against the back of my neck.

The dead have been planted all across the hills, scattered like fruitless seeds that will never sprout, and stretching as far as I can see to the tree line. This is the audience we have. The audience we deserve. My gutted childhood dream finally come true: I’m marrying Ren.

The priest cracks open a leathery bible, and I almost laugh at the absurdity of it. The stretch of my cheeks makes me aware of the tears already drying on my face and the way they feel crinkly and stiff. Not tears of joy. Not by a long shot.

Ren stares right at me. My tears and my silent devastation. I am right where I daydreamed about being—across the aisle from him.

“Do either of you have vows you’d like to read?” the priest asks.

Of course I don’t. I wasn’t given time to prepare myself for this, much less something to say. And what the hell would I even say if I did?

I shake my head.

Ren’s silence is heavy. When he doesn’t answer either, the priest continues. He reads a passage out of his book. Something about devotion and Christ’s love and eternity. We’d probably be better off if he picked one of the passages about hell. At least it would be relevant.

Ren takes a ring from his pocket as the traditional vows are exchanged—through sickness and in health, till death do us part. My voice betrays me, hitching tight and high. My emotions flood over into my eyes. Ren is stony-faced as I start to cry, unable to hold it back anymore as a cold, tight band slides around my finger.

Everything I wanted right here together.

Me, him, her.

So why does it make me sad? So, so sad.

The priest continues. He has probably seen his fair share of crying brides, and my tears don’t stop him.

“You may now—”

“Kiss the bride!” Harper yells in delight. “Kiss the bride, kiss the bride, kiss the bride!” She jumps up and down as she chants at us like we’re at a football game, urging us to score.

The interruption trips the dour, serious priest up so badly that I laugh through the tears. And Ren—he smiles again. For a second. Just one perfect, precious second.

I chase that side of him, the side of him that can still smile and laugh, and step into his arms as our mouths meet. My forwardness surprises him. I taste my own tears between our lips. His thumbs stroke them away, tug me closer by the small of my back.

His hands clench into the fabric as if he’s trying to root me to him.

It shouldn’t last as long as it does. That kiss should be professionally short. Damning. No more emotionally charged than signing our marriage certificate. But I kiss him anyway, long and slow, as my dream comes true and I become Ren’s unworthy bride—Nadia Caruso.

It’s not enough for karma to just be a bitch. She also has to have a fucked-up sense of humor.