Page 19 of Mafia Doctor's Secret Baby

Her eyes dart back and forth as she considers her answers. Which isn’t exactly making me feel a whole heap better. I squeeze her hand, trying to push her into giving me an answer.

“Cara, if there’s something I need to know…”

“He’s involved in some dark stuff, babe,” she tells me gently, finally. “Like…criminal stuff. You know?”

My stomach drops, my body tensing. I guessed it was something dark, but this…

“How criminal?” I whisper to her. “What did you find out? How did you know…?”

“I did a little snooping around when I saw him with you,” she confesses. “Looked up some stuff about the hospital…you know he only started working there a couple of months ago?”

My body tenses. A couple of months…?

“But I slept with him at the event?—”

“I know you did,” she replies grimly. “God knows what he was doing up here.”

“I thought he was just a doctor,” I mutter, shaking my head. “This doesn’t make sense?—”

“He is a doctor. Well, on top of everything else,” she tells me. “His family…they’re part of a criminal empire. Mafia stuff. His father has a hell of a reputation back in Harrotsville, and I would guess he’s down here going undercover to get away from some heat he doesn’t want to face back there.”

“Heat like what?”

She shrugs. “Take your pick. He’s been involved in some heavy stuff. Drug dealing, weapons trafficking…”

I clench my jaw for a moment, taking it in. This is…a lot. No wonder he was telling me I need to get as far away from him as possible—if he’s really part of this criminal family, then he likely has some serious skeletons in his closet, and I’m not sure if I’m ready to face them.

I glance toward the bedroom again, where Polly is asleep. And there’s her to think of in all of this. I might not want to admit it, but she’s pulled into anything that I am now. I’m still wrapping my head around the fact that everything I do from here on out will have some kind of blowback on her—no matter how much I might want to pretend otherwise.

“You should keep your distance from him,” Cara tells me. “I know he’s Polly’s father, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to have him as part of your life. Or hers.”

“Shit,” I mutter.

She stares at me for a long moment, her eyes searching mine.

“When he was with you the other day,” she remarks, speaking slowly, as though the thought has only just occurred to her, “did something…happen between the two of you?”

I dart my eyes away from her. I seriously don’t want to have this conversation right now, but I get the feeling that she’s not going to let this drop quite so easily.

“Yeah,” I confess. She draws in a sharp breath, and I quickly leap into defending myself.

“It wasn’t that I went there intending for something to happen,” I tell her. “I…I just wanted to talk to him. About everything that happened. About Polly. About the fact that he was her father. I needed to see him, you don’t understand, I…”

“But did you need to sleep with him?” she counters bluntly. She has never been one to hold back on what is going through her head, and I’m sure she has every right to chew me out in all the ways she sees fit right now.

“No,” I confess. “But I…we just ended up hooking up again. One more time. There was nothing more to it than that. And I’m not going to let anything else happen, I swear.”

“You really shouldn’t,” she replies, her brow knitting together with obvious concern. “A guy like that, with the shit he’s involved in…you don’t know where that could lead you. Or Polly.”

As soon as she mentions my daughter, a rush of emotion courses through me—so intense that, for a second, I can hardly think straight. He slept with me again, knowing that he’s involved in all of this dark shit? He allowed me to come to him and hook up with him, and then for us to be seen in public together, when he probably has enemies out there who would do everything in their power to hurt him if they knew they had found a way to make it happen…?

“Jesus,” I mutter, as the enormity of it begins to sink in. I’ve barely had my daughter for a couple months, and I’ve already got her in the middle of something this…this dangerous. It kills me. The thought twists deep into my guts, and I have to bite back a groan of panic as I make sense of it.

“Yeah,” Cara agrees. She knows what’s going through my head. She can tell how panicked I am right now, how impossible it is for me to get away from this.

“I’m never going to see him again,” I announce, a sudden rush of certainty coursing through my head. “Never. I can’t risk it. If he’s really involved in all of that, then we’re done. I’m never going to be in the same room as him again…”

She reaches out and gives my hand a squeeze—I guess she must be able to tell how shocked I am right now, how scary all of this is for me.

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