Page 35 of Mafia Doctor's Secret Baby

“Listen to me,” Emil urges me, grasping my arm tight. “I’m not going to let something happen to you. You hear me?”

His voice is laced with a protectiveness that brings me back down to earth. I know he’s trying to do the right thing—he’s trying to make sure I don’t go and get myself killed running out on some mission of mercy to get Katie back, and he’s right.

“Yeah, I know,” I reply, managing a small smile. “Dad would kill you.”

He chuckles slightly, the sound breaking the tension between us.

“Yeah,” he mutters. “Something like that.”

He pushes a hand through his hair and lets out a long breath, and then steps forward, taking Polly from me.

“Call your apartment manager,” he instructs me. “We’ll get Polly settled in. Then I’ll send out all my contacts in the city to figure out what’s going on here. One of them will have seen something, I’m sure of it, and when we have our lead, we can go from there.”

I nod. “Okay,” I murmur, reaching for my phone. I head through to the bedroom so I can gather myself for a moment before I take the call. It strikes me that I don’t even know if we can feed Polly right now. Is there formula in the house? Did Katie pump and leave breast milk in the fridge? I suddenly feel so useless, as though there isn’t a damn thing in the world I can do right.

And the thought is only compounded when I see the broken window in front of me, gazing out onto the street below. I go over to it and peer out to the ground below—it’s a narrow staircase, and I can’t imagine it was easy for her to get down in such a panic. Did they threaten Polly too? Were they going to take both of them, and Katie offered herself up? I can see her doing something so recklessly brave, not allowing them to so much as lay a finger on her daughter, even if it cost her everything in return…

Anger grips me again. I should have been here. I shouldn’t have left for work. I shouldn’t have been so arrogant to think that my coming here wouldn’t cause any kind of problems, because I’m supposed to be smarter than that. I’m supposed to have a good head on my shoulders, but I was so caught up in the fantasy of living this little family life with her that I forgot, and it might have cost me everything.

I wish I could go back in time, to when I woke up next to her—but this time, I wouldn’t leave the bed. I would call in sick to work and tell them that there’s no way I could come in today, and I would spend the afternoon with Katie and Polly. I would leave the rest of the world behind for a while, and I could make believe that it’s just the three of us in the world…

But I didn’t do that. No, I got to my feet and left, and now Katie is gone. My head is a mess with the possibilities of everything the Magliones might be doing to her. Hurting her is a given, but in what way? I know they’re involved in sex trafficking—as far as I’m concerned, their main base is in my home city, but they might have outliers out here too. They could be planning to sell her off to one of them, make it so nobody will ever find her—and even if they do, she would never be the same again.

My hand is shaking as I dial up my apartment manager’s number. I know he’s going to be surprised to hear me make a demand like this, but he knows to jump when he is told. He’s worked with plenty of people like my father, making sure we have a safe place to turn to when the going gets tough, and he provides everything we ask for, no matter how ridiculous it might seem.

“Of course,” he mutters, once I’ve finished telling him everything I need. “I’ll have it set up by the end of the day. Is there anything else…?”

He lets the words hang in the air pointedly, as though he’s leaving the door open for me to tell him exactly how the hell I came to be the guardian to an infant baby. I ignore it. I’m not going to give him any more than he needs to know. If he’s smart, he’ll keep his mouth shut instead of blabbing to someone—but then, he does know my father. And perhaps he’ll think that my dad has a right to know what I’m doing with a child…

I brush the thought aside and say goodbye, and stride back out to join Emil and Polly—he’s rooting through the fridge, his mouth set in a hard line, as she cries in his arms. I lift her into mine, and she settles slightly, looking up at me with a worried expression on her face.

“It’s going to be okay,” I murmur to her. I know she can’t understand me, but I think I need to hear those words as much as she does.

We head over to Emil’s place first, and I grab her some formula on the way—I don’t know what she needs, but I know I have to provide for her. I try my best to feed her, but she’s fussy, clearly upset at how much things have changed, how far she is from the familiarity of her mother’s arms right now.

Emil watches me as I feed her, and I can tell he has a million questions on his mind. But one, over all the rest, eventually comes out of his mouth.

“Looks like you really care about her,” he murmurs, and I glance up at him, surprised.

“You thought I wouldn’t…?”

He shakes his head. “No, it’s not that,” he replies. “It’s just…I never saw you having kids. Not before me, anyway.”

“You thought I wouldn’t be a good father?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I just didn’t think of you as a father at all,” he admits. And just like that, those words hang there, and it strikes me how far I’ve come from everything I thought I knew up until this point.

A few months ago, I was working for my father, patching up wounds and taking care of our men without a second thought—picking up girls on the weekend, enjoying my life, with no worries in the world. Now, we’re on the run to another city to avoid a threat to our family, I have a daughter, and the woman who brought her into this world has been kidnapped by our enemies, who are planning to do God only knows what to her.

“Neither did I,” I confess. It’s the truth, no point in trying to hide it. I’m not anyone’s idea of a father—there’s no part of my life that would fit a child. And yet, when I hold Polly in my arms, it’s hard to believe I could be anywhere else in the world right now.

“What are you going to do when you go back to the city?” he wonders aloud.

I sigh heavily. “Look, I don’t know,” I reply. “I just need to get through the here and now, and we can talk about everything else later, okay?”

He nods, though I can tell he’s not entirely convinced. “Sure.”

I fall silent again for a moment, but then I let out a small snort of amusement.

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